Light of the Jedi(33)
Others could not look away, and these people saw what happened next. The star did not explode. The people did not die.
Across the galaxy, cheers of relief and joy. Yes, scowls from those who lived in darkness, hoping for the Jedi to fail, to be crushed, to die—but they were few.
This was a Republic that valued and celebrated life and those who preserved it.
This was a victory.
For this day, at least, the light had prevailed.
It was over.
It was not over.
In the Ab Dalis system, farther along the same hyperlane the Legacy Run had been traveling when it met its end, seven fragments of that ship emerged from hyperspace, just past the transfer point.
Not the largest nor the smallest was a chunk of the huge cargo vessel’s superstructure, a durasteel support beam still attached to a large portion of the ship’s hull.
The fragments were moving at just below lightspeed, but all were unpowered, electronically inert, and well inside the normal transfer point from hyperspace where vessels could arrive in the system. The sensor arrays and early warning systems did not pick up the anomalies until it was far too late, and even if they had, there was no Republic Cruiser full of Jedi nearby to save the day.
All seven fragments were traveling along the system’s ecliptic, but Ab Dalis was not as densely populated as Hetzal. Space was immense, and the fragments were, in comparison, tiny.
Six of them hit nothing, passing through the system and out the other side without incident.
The seventh hit a glancing blow on the most densely populated world of the system, a swampy wasteland interrupted only by city-sized factories, slums inhabited by the workers who operated those factories, and, here and there, the towers inhabited by those who profited from both. The fragment was vaporized in the impact, but the concussion flattened one of those cities, and the slums, and the towers.
Approximately twenty million people were killed.
This was the first Emergence.
Ab Dalis. Never a lovely world, always shrouded in swirling, brown-tinted clouds as if the swamps on the surface were trying to escape the planet’s gravity. Now, though, it looked even worse than usual. The orbital impact had forced an enormous cloud of vaporized water and mud into the air, and much of that had ionized, causing gigantic lightning storms to flicker across the planet’s atmosphere.
It looked like some form of hell.
A convoy of six freighters made its way through the system, away from the ravaged planet. They held the entire workforce, along with their families, of Garello Technologies, a midlevel materials research and manufacturing concern based in the Keftia district. Beyond the people, the freighters’ holds also contained much of the company’s most important research, databases, machinery, and financial resources. All of it had been loaded aboard the six starships to bring it offworld for safety while the disaster unfolded on Ab Dalis, a massive effort that consumed all of the day and night that had passed since the impact.
The company’s chief executive, Larence Garello, had made the company’s other starships available to the Ab Dalisian government for relief efforts, but he had chosen to take care of his people and his business first. Many people relied on Garello Technologies, and he wanted to ensure that when the crisis abated, every person who put his trust in him would be safe and sound, and would still be working for a company that could continue producing the ideas and products that supported so many.
Many Ab Dalisian business owners at Larence’s level scoffed at him for going to such great expense to temporarily pack up his operation and move it offplanet, but he didn’t care. The oligarchs and trillionaires cared more for a single durasteel beam in their factories than the people who worked in them. Larence was wealthy, yes, but that was because good people in his employ gave him their all. He was damn well going to take care of every last one.
The convoy was headed to the system’s outer edge, where it would stop to wait to see how the situation developed.
But before the ships could reach their destination, they encountered something strange.
It looked like a storm, or a storm cloud, perhaps. A massive, blue-gray swirl of vapor out in space, dense and threatening, and directly in the convoy’s path. Faint lights flickered from deep within it, like sparkflies at dusk above the Ab Dalisian swamps.
The lead ship in the convoy was the Arbitrage, captained by a dark-furred Shistavanen named Odabba, a good, steady hand who had worked for Garello Technologies for over a decade. He scanned the cloud, but the sensors could not provide any information. He gave the order for all ships to divert course, to go around the thing, whatever it was. Better safe than sorry.
But there was no safety—not anymore.
The storm cloud lit up. A massive, jagged spike of energy shot out from the middle of the cloud, lashing out past the Arbitrage to impact one of the other ships in the convoy, the Maree’s Diligence, named after Larence Garello’s mother.
The other ship glowed brightly for a moment, surrounded by phosphorescent fire, then went dark, its running lights deactivating along the length of its hull and engines fading out. The Maree’s Diligence began to drift away from the rest of the convoy, all its systems clearly offline.
Captain Odabba ordered the convoy to raise shields and prepare for battle—but all six ships were freighters, not warships, and in the rush to evacuate the planet, no guard fighters had been arranged. The cargo vessels were all but unarmed, with only a few light laser cannons each.