Light of the Jedi(5)
Asteroids, maybe? Space rocks, somehow thrown into the system? Some kind of weird space storm, or a comet swarm? It couldn’t be an attack, that much he knew. The Republic was at peace, and looked like it was going to stay that way. Everyone was happy, living their lives. The Republic worked.
Besides, the Hetzal system didn’t have anything worth attacking. It was just an ordinary set of planets, the primeworld and its two inhabited moons—the Fruited and the Rooted—with a deep focus on agricultural production. It had some gas giants and frozen balls of rock, but really it was just a lot of farmers and all the things they grew. Merven knew it was important, that Hetzal exported food all over the Outer Rim, and some of its output even found its way to the inner systems. There was that bacta stuff he’d been reading about, too, some kind of miracle replacement for juvan they were trying to grow on the primeworld, supposed to revolutionize medicine if they could ever figure out how to farm it in volume…but still, it was all just plants. It was hard to get excited about plants.
As far as he was concerned, Hetzal’s biggest claim to fame was that it was the homeworld of a famous gill-singer named Illoria Daze, who could vibrate her vocal apparatus in such a way as to sing melodies in six-part harmony. That, in combination with a uniquely appealing wit and rags-to-riches backstory, had made her famous across the Republic. But Illoria wasn’t even here. She lived on Alderaan now, with the fancy people.
Hetzal had nothing of any real value. None of this made sense.
Another rash of objects appeared on his screens, so many now that it was overloading his computer’s ability to track them. He zoomed out the resolution, shifting to a system-wide view, making a clearer picture. Merven could see that the things, whatever they might be, were not restricting themselves to entering the system from the safety of the hyperspace access zone. They were popping up everywhere, and some were getting awfully close to—
“Oh no,” Vel said.
“I see it, too,” Merven said. He didn’t even have to run a trajectory analysis.
The anomalies were headed sunward, and many of them were on intercept courses with the inhabited worlds and their orbital stations. The things weren’t slowing down, either. Not at all. At near-lightspeed, it didn’t matter whether they were asteroids, or ships, or frothy bubbles of fizz-candy. Whatever they hit would just…go.
As he watched, one of the objects smashed through an uncrewed communications satellite. Both the anomaly and the satellite vanished from his screen, and the galaxy got itself a little more space dust.
Hetzal Prime was big enough that it could endure a few impacts like that and survive as a planetary body. Even the two inhabited moons might be able to take a couple of hits. But anything living on them…
Sella was on the Rooted Moon right now.
“We have to get out of here,” he said. “We’re right in the target zone, and more of these things are appearing every second. We have to get to the shuttle.”
“I agree,” Vel said, some semblance of command returning to her voice. “But we need to send a system-wide alert first. We have to.”
Merven closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
“You’re right. Of course.”
“The computer needs authorization codes from both of us to activate the system-wide alarm,” Vel said. “We’ll do it on my signal.”
She tapped a few commands on her keypad. Merven did the same, then waited for her nod. She gave it, and he typed in his code.
A soft, chiming alarm rang through the operations deck as the message went out. Merven knew that a similar sound was now being heard across the Hetzal system, from the cockpits of garbage scows all the way to the minister’s palace on the primeworld. Forty billion people just looked up in fear. One of them was a lovely scarlet-skinned Twi’lek probably wondering whether her favorite Mirialan was going to come by the tavern that evening.
Merven stood up.
“We’ve done our job. Shuttle time. We can send a message explaining what’s happening on the way.”
Vel nodded and levered herself up out of her seat.
“Yeah. Let’s get out of—”
One of the objects leapt out of hyperspace, so near, and moving so fast, that in astronomical terms it was on them the moment it appeared.
A gout of flame, and the anomaly vanished, along with the monitoring station, its two scantechs, and all their goals, fears, skills, hopes, and dreams; the kinetic energy of the object atomizing everything it touched in less than an instant.
“Is this real?” Minister Ecka asked as the chimes rang through his office—consistent, insistent, impossible to ignore. Which, he supposed, was the point.
“Seems so,” Counselor Daan answered, tucking a curl of hair behind his ear. “The alert originated from a monitoring station at the far edge of the system. It came in at the highest priority level, and it hit system-wide. Every computer linked to the main processing core is sounding the same alarm.”
“But what’s causing it?” the minister asked. “There was no message attached?”
“No,” Daan replied. “We’ve repeatedly asked for clarification, but there’s been no response. We believe…the monitoring station was destroyed.”
Minister Ecka thought for a moment. He rotated his chair away from his advisers, the old wood creaking a little beneath his weight. He looked out through the broad picture window that made up the wall behind his desk. As far as he could see: the golden fields of Hetzal, all the way to the horizon. The world—the whole system, really—believed in using every bit of available space to grow, create, to cultivate. Buildings were roofed with cropland, rivers and lakes were used to grow helpful algae and waterweeds, towers were terraced, with fruit vines spilling from their sides. Harvester droids floated among them, plucking ripe fruits—whatever was in season. Right now, that would be honeyfruit, kingberries, and ice melons. In a month, it would be something else. On Hetzal, something was always in season.