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It seemed impossible that anything the four Jedi could do would influence the speed of this thing in any way, but they had to try. Joss Adren had been clear—even a one percent change could be significant.
“Slow…it down…” she managed, speaking through gritted teeth. She could feel oil gathering in the sacs along her ribs, her body’s involuntary response to great strain. The acrid stink of the stuff filled her cockpit, an evolutionary throwback and defense mechanism from the days when the Duros were liable to be eaten by any number of things prowling their world.

“Trying…” Mikkel spat back, strain in his natural voice slipping past the translator’s efforts to subdue it. Te’Ami wondered how Ithorians responded to stress. Probably not by producing large amounts of horrible-tasting oil.

“Captain Adren,” Te’Ami said, “we’ve done what we can. If you’re going to do something, now is the moment.”

“Acknowledged, Master Jedi,” Joss replied. He sounded tense, too. “Remember, if you can try to hold the module together once we lock on, it’d be appreciated. This might get a little bumpy.”

“We’ll do our best.”

“All right. Firing magclamps in three…two…”

Four metal disks shot out into space ahead of their formation, angling toward the passenger compartment. The thing was venting vapor from either a coolant or a life-support system, creating a thick fog into which the disks vanished. Thick, silvery lines unspooled—the cabling attached to the Longbeam’s winches, with which they would attempt to slow the wreckage down. Three of the lines went taut, the other looping and coiling in space.

“We hit it with three out of four. As good as we can hope. We’re gonna apply reverse thrusters. Get ready.”

Through the Force, Te’Ami could feel new strains and stressors on the system, all its complex linkages and connections. Longbeam to wreckage, Force to Jedi, wreckage to Force, and now a new note of confusion from the poor survivors inside the compartment, who must have heard the thumps as the clamps engaged, probably sounding like kicks from a giant, with no idea what was about to happen to them.

Honestly, Te’Ami didn’t know, either. The Longbeam activated its thrusters and dropped out of formation, the long, thick cabling stretching, growing thin, then impossibly thin, then vanishing to the naked eye. Captain Adren had told her this would happen, the silk that composed the cables was able to stretch almost to the molecular level and retain its strength. The cables were holding. The compartment to which they were attached…perhaps not so much.

“It’s going to break apart,” Nib Assek said. Burryaga whined mournfully in the background.

“No, it won’t,” Mikkel grunted. “We won’t let it. Just…hold it together.”

“Stop talking and do it,” Te’Ami said.

The overstressed box of metal, plastoid, and wiring did not want to continue to exist in its current form. It had been through too much, and knew it. It wanted to disintegrate, escape from the weight and heat and become a swarm of much tinier bits, all free to head off on their own trajectories.

If not for the Jedi, it would have done exactly that. They used the Force to keep the container in one piece, the loops of resistance they had used to slow it now used to maintain its integrity.

It didn’t seem like it would work. It was too much all at once—on top of everything else, the exhausted Jedi had to keep their Vectors flying at top speed, close enough to the passenger compartment that they could maintain their links.

And in the back of their minds, distraction, as some new crisis burgeoned elsewhere in the system. An increasing sense of alarm swelling along Avar Kriss’s network—but they had no time for that. They had their own crisis right here.

The wreckage ahead of them shifted, like a pile of stones about to tumble after one is removed, and Te’Ami opened her mouth and groaned, a sound of intense strain, as physical as internal. She could still feel the compartment pulling on her, and now she knew that if she let go, if she released her hold even a little, her Vector could be torn apart around her. Now it wasn’t just the lives of the people aboard the compartment, or even on the moon, now so close she could see its disk looming in space, growing larger every second.

Te’Ami stopped thinking about any of those things. She closed her eyes and let the Force guide her. For long seconds, nothing but chaos, strain, stress. And then…a lessening. The slightest release in tension—but it made everything simpler. As Captain Adren had said, even a one percent reduction was meaningful.

Then one became two, and more, and the objects working against one another became a single system.

The compartment slowed. More, and more, until it came to a slow stop, the Longbeam reeling it in on its cables.

“Whoa,” came Captain Adren’s voice over the comm. “I really didn’t think that would work.”

“You certainly waited long enough to tell us,” came Mikkel’s reply. Even through his translator, he sounded utterly exhausted.

“Almost out of fuel,” said Joss, ignoring the remark, “couple more seconds and we’d have had to shut off our thrusters. We couldn’t have done that alone. Thank you, Jedi.”

“We couldn’t have done it by ourselves, either,” Te’Ami said. “And the idea was yours. Whether you thought it would work or not, it did.”

Pikka Adren spoke. “We can suit up and go over there, see if there’s some way to extract the passengers. If not, we can tow it to a station, dock it there. At the very least, we can get them some medical attention. I’m sure they’re banged up.”

“All right,” Te’Ami replied. “Thank you. We’ll pass along how we achieved this—I’m sure other rescue teams will find the information useful.”

She maneuvered her Vector up and alongside the passenger compartment, moving close. The module had portholes along its length, and in them, she could see faces. Beings of all types, all ages, all alive. She sensed their fear beginning to lessen, replaced with—

A huge flash of alarm shot through the system-wide net of awareness being maintained by Avar Kriss. Again, no words, but if the sensation could be translated, it would be just these words: “Jedi. You are needed. Now.”

Something was very, very wrong. ~ Light of the Jedi - chapter 15

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My Jedi friends, this is Avar Kriss. I am on the surface of Hetzal Prime. You know I’ve been watching you all work so hard to save this system and its people. You’ve done incredibly well. But something else is about to happen, something terrible, and we all need to act together to stop it.
“One of the hyperspace anomalies is headed directly for the system’s largest sun—and it is a container of liquid Tibanna. I am told that when it hits, a rare chain reaction will result that will destroy everything in this system.

“It is up to us to move the container to a new path. We will ask the Force to come to our aid. It might not be possible, and anyone who stays runs the risk of dying if we fail. The Third Horizon is about to transit the system. Anyone who wants to leave can dock with it. My good wishes will go with you.”

Avar waited. Though she had silenced her comlink to replies, the song of the system told her that no Vectors had altered course toward the rapidly accelerating Third Horizon. They had all decided to stay. The Jedi were with her.

“Let’s begin,” she said.

She lowered the comlink. This would not be done with words.

Avar sent the concepts through the link with her fellow Jedi. Each would receive it in their own way, a series of impressions that she hoped would resonate properly with each of them. A very simple plan, really:

There is a thing, moving very fast. It is very large, and very heavy. It needs to change direction. We will all find it together, and we will all apply the Force to it together in just the same spot in just the same way at just the same time, and we will move it so it does not hit the sun.

Simple…but enormously difficult. Space was large, and there were many Jedi, and coordinating their efforts so they did not fight against one another or cancel one another out or touch the Force at slightly different moments…well. That was the task. No use complaining about it.

Avar’s lightsaber lifted from its holster, gliding up into the air through the Force. It floated up until the hilt was before her face, the crosspieces level with her eyes. The lightsaber ignited with a snap and a hiss, a bright-green beam spearing straight up at the blue sky and illuminating the field of blue grain around her.

The weapon began to rotate, slowly, like the blade of a windmill. It made a sound as it moved through the air, a low, droning hum. Avar breathed—in, out—and the blade slowly sped up. The tone of its passage through the air changed, no longer a low drone but a higher pitch, a lovely round note. The lightsaber moved faster, its blade now too fast to see; a green circle of light with a shining metallic center.

It was beautiful, but Avar closed her eyes. She did not need to see. She needed to hear. Her lightsaber was not just a weapon. Here, now…it was an instrument.

The note of the blade rose, becoming a clear ringing, the normal crackling hum and whine of a lightsaber in combat replaced by a pure, glassine tone.

Her awareness was the song of the saber, and she tuned the speed of its rotation until the note it produced was precisely in sync with—

Yes, Avar Kriss thought. I hear it.

Her mind snapped outward, the sabersong chiming in harmony with the larger chorus of the Force, in a single instant becoming the entire system and everything within it, and more particularly every single Jedi, each connected to the Force in their own way.

What she heard as a song, Elzar Mann saw as a deep, endless, storm-tossed sea. The Wookiee Burryaga was a single leaf on a gigantic tree with deep-dug roots and sky-high limbs. Douglas Sunvale saw the Force as a huge, interlocked set of gears, made of an endless variety of materials from crystal to bone. Bell Zettifar danced with fire. Loden Greatstorm danced with wind.

This was not the simple network she had built earlier. This was deeper. All of the Jedi were the Force, and the Force was all of them. And she, Avar Kriss, could touch them all, no matter how they saw the Force.

Now, though, she had to find their target. The module of Tibanna racing toward the sun. It was difficult now, with so many Jedi singing in her mind, a chorus to the Force symphony blasting at full volume. So many people, so many beings, so much life. Every grain in the dimly sensed field around her piping like flutes.

Somewhere in all of that was the module of liquid Tibanna racing toward the sun to destroy them all. It did not sing a song of its own, but that was itself something to be sensed. A silence, a caesura, a fermata of precisely the correct duration and size.

There, she thought.

She had it, without a doubt. It was—gone. She’d lost it.

“Blast it!” she said out loud, and everything wavered and almost faded away.

She’d lost the anomaly, and now couldn’t find it again, not within the chaos of everything else moving within the system. It was like looking at a particular flower in a wind-tossed meadow, looking away, then looking back and trying to find the precise blossom again.

Time was fracturing away, shards of moments flying off into nothingness, never to return. She had to find it. She had to—she could not fail. It was her responsibility. No one else could…

No. What had she said?

We will find it together.

She had a system full of Jedi working alongside her. They each had their own connection to the Force—perhaps different from hers, but no less powerful.

Avar Kriss asked for help, and help came.

Estala Maru found it first. Avar could see the Force through his eyes—to Maru, the Tibanna bomb was a single light in a single window in a single small building of an endlessly spiraling nighttime city. But once Estala had it, it was only a matter of pointing the other Jedi to look in that direction as well, and then they all did.

But now the task did fall to Avar.

She drew her awareness back, gauging how close the bomb was to hitting the star—it would not be long. The heat of the sun was already causing steam to rise from the forward edge of the tank’s outer shell. They had to act.

There is a thing, moving very fast. It is very large, and very heavy.

It needs to change direction.

We will apply the Force to it together in just the same spot in just the same way at just the same time.

Avar Kriss showed the Jedi what to do, and as one, the Jedi reached out to the Force. They did not hold themselves back. They acted with disciplined desperation, leaving nothing in reserve.

We will move it.

Not far from the Fruited Moon, Te’Ami lost consciousness, yellow ichor streaming from her mouth.

We will move it.

A group of five Vectors flying in tight formation lost control of their Drift, too much of their focus devoted to the effort to shift the Tibanna bomb. Two of the craft collided before control could be reestablished, and the three Jedi aboard those ships were lost.

We will move it.

Now, Avar thought.

Across the system, Jedi reached out to the Force. Some closed their eyes, some lifted their arms, some stood, some sat meditating on the ground while others hovered above it. Some were in starships, others on the surface. Many were alone, but others were with members of their Order, or were surrounded by small groups of people who could sense, somehow, the import of what was happening, even if they could not themselves touch the Force.

Dozens of Jedi, acting as one.

The galaxy thrummed. An invisible hand grasped the Tibanna bomb in a firm grip and threw it to one side. Gentle, but precise, like tossing an egg to someone you hoped would catch it without the thing shattering all over their hands.

Avar listened.

They had succeeded. They had moved the Tibanna.

But they had also failed.

The tank had not moved far enough. It would still hit the sun, and even now, she could sense the liquid heating inside the container, pressure building, preparing for an explosion that would presage the larger blast to come.

Again, she told the Jedi, those of whom could still hear and respond. Many had fallen unconscious at the strain of the first attempt, which meant the burden on those who remained was that much greater.

We have to try again.

Avar could sense the weariness in the song, of all her companions in her great Order, these heroes who had all stayed to save people they had never met and probably never would, people who would never know the choice or the sacrifice being made on their behalf. None of that mattered.

She felt her fellows toss aside their exhaustion, lift themselves up, renew their focus.

Not only that, but she sensed that other Jedi had brought their focus to bear as well—from Coruscant, from across the galaxy. Even Yoda, wherever he was with his little crew of younglings—his great, wise mind sang its own part of the chorus, heartbreakingly beautiful, a voice of pure light belying his physical appearance. Not this crude matter indeed.

Avar would not have believed such a thing was possible—but as she had told the admiral, through the Force, there wasn’t a blasted thing that couldn’t be done. Her great Order was with her, as she was with them, and the Force was with them all.

We will move it.

Another moment chosen, another great effort.

We will move it.

She felt the Jedi saying the words with her, each in their own way, through their own particular lens on the Force. No, not saying. Chanting. Singing.

We will move it.

More Jedi falling—mostly just collapsing where they stood, or spiraling off in their Vectors. Some managed to regain control, but others were lost forever. Rohmar Montgo. Lio Josse.

Jedi Knight Rah Barocci tottered and fell off the tower farm on the Rooted Moon where he had been helping a family whose daughter had suffered a seizure in the stress of the evacuation order. The daughter was calm, her crisis over, but Rah fell twenty stories and did not recover in time to save himself.

With every Jedi lost, the work became harder.

Elzar Mann, standing alone on a rocky promontory overlooking a pharm where the new miracle drug bacta was produced in extremely limited quantities, felt the strain, the inertia of the Tibanna bomb that did not want to be moved.

To Mann, the Force was a bottomless sea, never ending, in which all things swam. Brightly lit in its upper reaches, fading to darkness below, but all one great ocean. He reached out to it, letting himself race along its currents, going deeper than ever before, seeing and sensing things he had never before known. The sea never ended, and there was so much of it he hadn’t seen. Strength flooded through him, his exhaustion vanishing. He added that power to that of his fellows, giving them everything he could.

We will move it.

…

…

…

…

And it will not hit the sun.

The Tibanna entered the outer photosphere of the Hetzal system’s largest star. For a moment, a long moment, the song stopped. Avar Kriss heard nothing but silence.

The fragment burst out of the sun, only having touched its outermost layers, heated but intact, on a path that would take it harmlessly out of the system.

The song burst back into life.

Jedi Master Avar Kriss fell to her knees there in the field on Hetzal Prime. Her lightsaber hilt, now deactivated, hit the ground a moment later, embedding itself in the soft soil.

Avar let herself breathe. Two long breaths, then three. Then she raised her comlink.

“Thank you,” she said.


Neither Avar Kriss nor any of the other Jedi in Hetzal knew that the events of those moments had been broadcast across the Outer Rim. The signal even found its way to the inner worlds of the Republic, though slightly delayed due to the limitations of the galactic communications network. The signal was sent by Keven Tarr, working from Minister Ecka’s office in Aguirre City, still doing his job despite having had the opportunity to leave on the Third Horizon.

The broadcast was originally just a feed sent to the chancellor’s office on Coruscant at its request, tight-band and secure, to allow Lina Soh and her aides to have the most up-to-date information on the disaster as it progressed to this final phase.

But Keven Tarr made a decision. If these were to be the last moments of Hetzal—his home and the home of billions of others—he did not want such a good place to die unacknowledged. He changed the settings on the feed, stripping out the security codes and sending it to every channel, every relay, every ear and eye it could find.

This, in its way, was a feat of technology just as impossible as what the Jedi were attempting.

In any case, the people of the Republic watched as the fate of Hetzal was decided. They stopped breathing as the Jedi came together to save these worlds, full of people they did not know. This small group of brave people risked their own lives to save others, and used their unique gifts to preserve, to help.

A gasp of dismay rose on a thousand worlds as the first attempt failed, and it was clear that the Jedi had not succeeded. Perhaps could not succeed. Some looked away, not wanting to see the flare of light as the star exploded, followed closely by the death of billions of sentient beings.

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. ~ Light of the Jedi - chapter 17

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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. ~ Light of the Jedi - chapter 18

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