Light of the Jedi(74)
Wataro nodded.
“Why are we doing this stupid droid thing when Admiral Kronara and the RDC should just be hunting down whoever tried to extort the Eriaduans?” Noor went on. “That Kissav person—I think that was the name Governor Veen said. We find them, we ask them where the next Emergences will be! Done. Easy.”
Noor frowned out at the array again. The initial hum had deepened into an unpleasant buzz—not a sound, but a feeling, deep in his bones.
“I respect the chancellor’s choices, but I wish she would consider a different approach,” he said.
“Perhaps you should run, Senator,” Jeni said.
She always said this, and he knew it was a sort of passive-aggressive thing, like she was pointing out his hypocrisy in criticizing the chancellor when he never actually ran for the office.
“Maybe I will, Wataro—maybe I just will,” he said. “Wait and see.”
* * *
A large screen was set up on the observation deck above the array, currently displaying a rough approximation of the Legacy Run disaster, accelerated to ten times the actual speed at which it had occurred. Keven Tarr, the Jedi, the senator, and the other Republic and local officials watched solemnly as the events played out. Many of them had been there while it happened—people had died. Not as many as could have, but still—this was a tragedy, and no one spoke as they watched.
Keven looked down at his datapad, which provided him with another essential information set—the status of the navidroid array. All 57,708 processors, running incredibly high-level calculations at the very limit of their capability. Keven could, with a few taps, expand any of the three main nodes to look at subnodes, smaller groupings, even individual droids. The array was designed to work like a massive brain, with neurons, nerve cells, all of it.
The readouts gave him the speed at which each node, unit, and individual droid was running—useful, but not the primary data points upon which Keven was focused. No, he was concerned with another figure, also displayed at the far end of each long chain of data…the heat.
This many processors running together at full capacity was basically one enormous oven. Keven had planned for it as best he could—that was why the array was outside, in the wind and the relatively cool temperatures of the Rooted Moon. He could have built it in space, but heat didn’t dissipate through vacuum—it would have been even worse out there.
Many of the droids had internal cooling units—that was the source of the hum rising off the plateau, now getting louder, more insistent. Keven didn’t need to check his datapad to know the temperatures were rising, and fast.
Fortunately, the observers all seemed to be riveted by the events unfolding on the large display screen: every brave rescue of Legacy Run survivors, every tragic death, every hairbreadth escape. Keven, despite the burgeoning issues with the array, took a moment to appreciate the enormity of what the Jedi and the Republic teams had accomplished here.
The Hetzal system should be gone. It was astonishing that he was still standing here, on the surface of the Rooted Moon. He shook his head, watching the simulation as the final fragment sped toward Hetzal’s sun, the tank of liquid Tibanna that had almost destroyed the entire system. He remembered these moments clearly—he had been certain he would be dead in moments, knew it down to his bones…and that hadn’t happened.
The Jedi had come together to move a gigantic piece of metal that did not want to be moved, in precisely the right way, in perfect coordination though millions of kilometers from one another.
It was impossible. Yet somehow, they had done it.
Keven watched it happen again, the fragment skipping away, just missing one of the system’s suns. It seemed so simple, so easy on the screen. He knew it had taken everything the Jedi had. Some of them had even died in the attempt.
They had succeeded. He could not fail now.
The simulation of the Legacy Run disaster was complete, and a second node kicked into life, this one modeling the first Emergence. The display showed the seven fragments appear in the Ab Dalis system, and the impact of the last on the planet. The watchers stood in silence—another tragedy, but this one not prevented by a miraculous Jedi intervention.
Keven, however, had stopped looking at the screen. He could not take his eyes from his datapad. The temperatures were rising faster than he had anticipated. For his algorithm to work, the systems had to continuously model everything that had happened, every detail, every fragment, every trajectory, all at once. As each new Emergence was added to the simulation, the load grew greater.
It felt like heat was already rising off the plateau. Surely that was his imagination. Keven wiped his sleeve across his forearm—damp.
No. Not his imagination. The array was running hot, and they still had almost thirty Emergences to model.
Senator Noor shifted uncomfortably. He turned to his aide, gesturing out at the air above the droid array, which was shimmering, heat haze rising into the early-morning sky.
“Wataro,” he said. “Is that…how this is supposed to work?”
“I…I’m not sure,” she replied, taking a cloth from her tunic and blotting little green dots of sweat that had appeared on her forehead.
Keven was worried about Node Five. Secretary Lorillia had done his best, but obviously not everyone was willing to give up their best, state-of-the-art navidroids, no matter how noble the cause. A good number of the droids in the array were older models, or even retired from active service. They could still do the job, but not as well or as fast as the others.