Crucible: Star Wars

by Troy Denning

  Nineball gave a long, half-audible hiss.

  “Nineball cannot confirm the identity of the meditation sphere,” C-3PO said, “merely that Jedi Soroc followed it to the …”

  C-3PO paused and shot a burst of static at Nineball. The R9 responded with a sharp crackle.

  C-3PO turned back to Ben. “I’m afraid he’s merging data again. Now he seems to think that Ship led Jedi Soroc into a Mandalorian trap.”

  The R9 emitted a soft, angry rumble. The holograph of the strange space station reappeared, then suddenly vanished into a boiling orange flash. When the image returned, it was shaky and filled with static. A trio of bright halos seemed to materialize out of nothingness and rapidly swelled into three Mandalorian Bes’uliiks. Bright bolts of energy began to flash back and forth between the StealthX and the oncoming starfighters. The holo spun and shook as Ohali went into evasive maneuvers, then stretched into a flashing blur as the StealthX jumped into hyperspace.

  Nineball—or, rather, Nineball’s remnants—emitted a series of blurts.

  “There is no need to be rude,” C-3PO replied. “I was only suggesting that we be careful, considering your condition.”

  “Ask him what happened after the jump,” Ben said.

  C-3PO relayed the question. The astromech hissed something soft, then fell silent.

  “He doesn’t know,” C-3PO translated. “Jedi Soroc ordered him to plot a route back to the RiftMesh and issue a distress call, but Nineball was hit by a cannon bolt as they entered hyperspace. He did not have time.”

  Nineball added another short hiss.

  “The next time he returned to awareness,” C-3PO translated, “Jedi Skywalker was working to repair him.”

  “What about navigation coordinates?” Omad asked. “Where is this space station?”

  Nineball responded with a string of coordinates that drew instant frowns from everyone present.

  “That can’t be right,” Lando said. “It’s halfway to the Core. How about a dead-reckoning history?”

  “Don’t bother,” Omad said. Ben noticed that a glimmer of recognition had come into Omad’s Force aura. “It won’t help.”

  “You know where this is?” Ben asked.

  “No, but I know where to look for it,” Omad said. “I think it’s in an area called the Bubble of the Lost.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Lando said. “What is this Bubble?”

  “A zone of ghost ships,” Omad replied. “Many tug captains claim it is half myth, but it does exist. No one really understands what it is—only that going there is very dangerous.”

  “As in normal dangerous?” Lando asked. “Or dangerous by Rift standards?”

  “Dangerous as in no sane miner would try to work it,” Omad said. “The support cooperative gave up trying to extend the RiftMesh into the Bubble more than a hundred years ago. The beacons kept drifting out of range of each other, no matter how many the repair crews placed.”

  “And where did the beacons go?” Ben asked.

  “That’s just it,” Omad said. “They weren’t really going anywhere. The repair crews often found them in their original positions relative to one another—but the distance between them was much greater than it should have been.”

  “And they were still functional?” Ben asked.

  Omad nodded. “Exactly. It seemed as though space kept growing between them, until they were out of range of one another.”

  “Like space–time being stretched,” Lando said. “Could there be a black hole in there?”

  “Maybe, but only if it’s a hole that nothing ever falls into,” Omad said. “Ships that disappear into the Bubble don’t vanish forever. They just seem to lose their way. They always show up again … eventually.”

  “Define eventually,” Ben said. He was beginning to have a bad feeling about his chances of seeing his father again. “And how is the crew when the ships return?”

  “Sometimes a vessel is lost for only a few weeks. The crew is usually shaken but fine,” Omad said. “Other times, the ship is gone for centuries. When that happens, the crew is nothing but bones and dust.”

  “So there’s no event horizon,” Lando said. “The Bubble is simply a big sphere of expanding space–time, with that weird space station at the center.”

  “Exactly,” Omad said. “Except that I don’t really know whether the station is at the center of the Bubble or in some other part. I’ve never even heard of it, so I can’t be sure that it’s inside at all.”

  “It’s inside,” Lando said. “It has to be. The pieces don’t fit together like this unless they all come from the same puzzle. My only question is, how do we actually find the station?”

  “If the Qrephs and their Mandalorians can find it, we can find it,” Ben said. For probably the tenth time that day, he began to expand his Force awareness ahead of the Falcon. He was searching for his father’s presence, of course—but this time he intended to reach well beyond the Ormni, all the way into the Bubble. “We might not be as smart as a couple of Columi, but we have the Force.”

  Sixteen

  The voices coming over the helmet’s integrated comlink were urgent and brusque, the way soldiers sounded when they were closing in on an enemy. Leia didn’t speak Mando’a, so she didn’t know exactly what they were saying—but she had a good idea. It probably concerned the two dead Nargons she and Luke had left outside the turbolift on the production level. And if that was true, she and her brother had about three minutes before their pursuers traced them to the infirmary. Next, someone would find two guards lying unconscious in their underclothes, and then the Ormni’s entire security staff would be looking for two Jedi disguised in white Mandalorian armor.

  Leia glanced down at R2-D2. At the moment, his interface arm was jacked into the droid socket next to a sealed utility hatch. The little droid was softly chirping to himself, his single photoreceptor turned toward a captured 2-1B surgical droid, who stood on the opposite wall supporting Dena Yus. Luke had disabled the medical droid’s internal comlink, but R2-D2 remained wary and made a point of watching the

  2-1B.

  “Let me worry about security, will you?” Leia asked. “Just get us out of here.”

  R2-D2 replied with one last irritated tweet, then turned his photoreceptor toward the hatch. As the droid worked, Leia felt a familiar touch in the Force. Thinking it was her brother, she glanced up the service corridor toward the intersection, where Luke stood pretending to be a Mandalorian guard. But instead of looking back toward Leia, his helmet was cocked slightly to the side, as though he were feeling the same Force touch she was.

  Not Luke’s touch, she realized, but his son’s.

  With Vestara Khai still pursuing them, there had been no chance for Luke to reach out to Ben. The young Knight would probably be worried—especially if he and Tahiri had responded to the StealthX distress signal.

  Leia held the contact long enough to let Ben know she was alive and more or less well, then turned her attention back to their escape. If R2-D2 didn’t finish soon, she and Luke might have to start looking for the nearest trash chute to jump down.

  The little droid spun his dome around and gave an inquisitive chirp.

  “About time,” Leia said. “Do it.”

  The raucous blare of an emergency alarm gave three long bursts, then a synthesized female voice came over the intraship address system.

  “This is a catastrophic-event alert. Proceed in an orderly fashion to your assigned evacuation stations and launch your escape vessels. I repeat …”

  R2-D2 emitted a triumphant whistle.

  Leia pointed at the hatch. “Forget something?”

  The droid bleeped indignantly and opened the hatch, then withdrew his interface arm. Leia peered into the corridor beyond and quickly located a wide-angle security cam overhead, then used a silent blast of Force energy to blind its lens.

  She glanced back to find Luke coming to join her, not quite hobbling but in obvious pain. His captured blaster pistol
was holstered on his hip, but his lightsaber—like Leia’s—was hidden safely out of sight in one of the storage compartments R2-D2 normally used for spare utility arms.

  The emergency alarm sounded again, and the same synthetic voice repeated the evacuation order. At the far end of the service corridor, GET administrative staff began to rush past the intersection, heading for the executive hangar. Luke gathered Dena Yus in his arms, then glanced toward Leia.

  “Ben is here,” he said.

  “Aboard the Ormni?” Leia gasped.

  Luke shook his head. “But somewhere close,” he said. “He seemed … eager.”

  “You think he found Ohali?”

  Luke shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out,” he said. “Assuming Dena’s plan works.”

  “It will,” Yus said. The wounds she had suffered during the casino firefight were already healing, yet her voice remained frail and her body weak from malnourishment. “It has to work.”

  “It better,” Leia said. There was no deception in Yus’s Force aura, but Leia thought it wise to remain watchful. Yus had obviously been working for the Qrephs all along, and there had been no time to explore the reasons for her recent change of heart. “If this is a trap, you’re the first to die.”

  Yus responded with a patient smile. “If it comes to that, you will be doing me a favor.” She directed her gaze through the hatch. “We should try for a SwiftLux pinnace. They’re designed for passenger protection, and there will be several departing.”

  Leia stepped through the hatch, then led the way down a crooked corridor into the silvery vastness of the executive hangar. She quickly blinded two more security cameras overhead, then started across the hangar. There were probably three dozen craft resting on the spotless deck, grouped by model and arrayed in orderly rows. Near the center of the hangar sat the blue wedges of five SwiftLux pinnaces.

  The emergency alarm and the synthetic voice continued to cycle, urging the crew to evacuate. The first crush of administrative staff was already arriving through the main entrance, pushing past a pair of Mandalorian guards and four edgy-looking Nargons. Leia spotted one Nargon staring in their direction and, through her helmet viewplate, held his gaze long enough to suggest she did not regard him as a threat.

  The Nargon ruffled his skull crest. Raising an arm to point out Leia’s group, he turned toward his Mandalorian superiors.

  “Don’t look now,” Leia said to her companions. “But I think we’re in—”

  Before Leia could finish, a flurry of Mando’a came over her helmet comlink. Fearing the message could be a warning to watch for two intruders in white armor, she quickly dropped back next to R2-D2, where she would be able to retrieve her lightsaber quickly. But instead of turning to stop them, the security squad stepped into the hangar entrance and began to motion the would-be evacuees to turn back.

  With the alarm continuing to sound and a steady flow of personnel arriving behind them, the administrative staff was in no mood to cooperate. A trio of older, dignified-looking beings—probably high-ranking executives—stepped forward to argue with the guards. Everyone else simply circled around them.

  By the time the Nargons had finally formed a line across the entrance, it was too late. Dozens of beings had pushed their way inside the hangar and were rushing toward the nearest vessels.

  Leia and her companions kept moving, too—and they were almost at the SwiftLuxes. She hit the overhead security cams with another wave of Force energy, then turned to R2-D2.

  “How long before the Ormni’s bridge cancels the evacuation alarm?”

  R2-D2 emitted a negative tweet.

  “Any guesses?” Luke asked.

  Again, R2-D2 gave a negative tweet, but this time it was more insistent and sharp.

  “Your astromech has a rather inflated opinion of himself,” said the 2-1B droid. “He claims the alarm cannot be canceled without disabling the entire intraship address system.”

  R2-D2 gave an affirmative beep, then sped ahead, into the row of gleaming SwiftLuxes. He veered under the middle craft and stopped behind the forward landing strut, then inserted his interface arm into a diagnostics socket. A moment later, the landing lights blinked to life, and a section of blue hull swung down to serve as the boarding ramp.

  R2-D2 turned his photoreceptor on the 2-1B and emitted a long, mocking trill.

  “You have not succeeded yet, little droid,” the 2-1B replied. “There is a difference between sneaking aboard a GET starcraft—and actually flying off in it.”

  “That’s enough, Two-One-Bee,” Yus said. As Luke carried her up the ramp, she scowled at the medical droid. “Or are you hoping the Jedi will give you a memory wipe?”

  The 2-1B’s head pivoted toward her. “They would never dare,” he said. “I am a surgical droid!”

  “You’re scrap metal unless you move it,” Leia said, waving the 2-1B up the ramp. “We only brought you along to look after Dena, and, frankly, I’m not that fond of her.”

  The droid sputtered in indignation, then hurried up the ramp, avoiding Leia’s gaze. “The sacrifices I make for my patients,” he muttered.

  The moment the 2-1B had boarded, R2-D2 withdrew his interface arm from the diagnostics socket. The ramp began to rise immediately. Leia leapt on and rushed into the SwiftLux’s cramped-but-elegant cabin, then found the interior controls and lowered the ramp again for R2-D2.

  By then Luke had already removed his helmet and was strapping the ailing Dena Yus into a nerf-hide chair. Leia waited impatiently for their droid to roll up the ramp, knowing that using the Force to lift him aboard would draw unwanted attention.

  With the alarm still sounding and the synthetic voice continuing to repeat the evacuation orders, the situation at the hangar entrance was deteriorating. A hundred angry beings were trying to push their way past the four Nargons, who had begun to bowl interlopers back into the crowd. The three executives were making rude gestures at the Mandalorians, who were stubbornly standing their ground—and resting their hands on the butts of their still-holstered blasters. The beings who had already made it into the hangar were clambering up the boarding ramps of five other vessels, including several SwiftLuxes.

  R2-D2 finally rolled aboard. Leia raised the ramp and turned to go forward—then stopped when her helmet comm fell silent. She stepped to a viewport and, with a sinking feeling, peered out.

  The Nargons were still doing their best to keep would-be evacuees out of the hangar, though another couple dozen had sneaked inside and were running for the nearest spacecraft. But the Mandalorians had turned away from the executives and were now tapping control pads on their wrists—no doubt switching to a new comm channel.

  Leia removed her helmet. “They know we’re listening, which means they found our friends in the infirmary.” She motioned R2-D2 toward the flight deck. “Artoo, fire this thing up. We need to leave now.”

  “No—we can’t be first,” Yus said. “The Ormni is the heart of GET operations in the Rift, and most of the security force is based here. If we leave first and without authorization, we’ll be jumped before we’ve traveled three kilometers.”

  “That’s better than having the blast doors slammed in our faces,” Luke said.

  “There are no blast doors,” Yus said. “The Ormni is an asteroid crusher, not a Star Destroyer. The hangar mouths do have some serious deflector shields—but only to prevent exterior attacks. From the inside, the shield generators should be easy to take out.”

  Luke glanced toward Leia, clearly as conflicted over the advice as Leia was. There was still nothing in Yus’s Force aura to suggest she was lying to them. But delaying would only give the operations crew more time to react—and that could easily backfire. Leia looked out the viewport and saw that the security team had left its post to begin a search of the hangar. Behind the team, hundreds of would-be evacuees were about to complicate that task by pouring into the hangar.

  “We might have half a minute,” Leia said. “But no more.”

  The SwiftL
ux gave a little pop as R2-D2 brought the fusion core online.

  “A minute would be better,” Yus said. “We need some cover. We just don’t want to be the first to leave the hangar.”

  “I heard you the first time,” Leia said. She stepped onto the flight deck and looked out toward the hangar mouth. The atmospheric barrier field remained a faint translucent gold. But the operations crew was standing in the control room above the hangar mouth, peering out through their own viewport at the pandemonium below, and Leia had no doubt that they were discussing ways to bring the situation under control.

  “We don’t have a minute,” Leia said. She turned back and pointed the 2-1B droid into a chair. “Strap yourself in. I won’t be giving any launch warnings.”

  Luke arched a brow. “Looks like I’m taking the cannons.”

  “Good idea,” Leia said, smiling. “Let me know if those hangar guards start heading in our direction.”

  She moved onto the flight deck and took the pilot’s seat, then waited impatiently while nearby vessels began to cold-fire their engines. After ten seconds or so, Luke’s voice came over the intercom.

  “We have Mando reinforcements entering the hangar.” He opened up with the laser cannons—no doubt trying to delay the reinforcements—and filled the hangar with flashing light. “Get us out, now!”

  Other vessels were beginning to rise around them. Leia eased the throttles back and lifted off the deck, then fell into line behind another SwiftLux and started toward the exit.

  R2-D2 chirped an alert, and Leia glanced down to find the comm system blinking for attention.

  “If that’s hangar control—”

  Before Leia could say, Ignore it, a nasal voice came over the cockpit speaker.

  “Attention all vessels: the deflector shields are being activated. There is no emer—”

  The message dissolved into blast static as cannon bolts from half a dozen vessels converged above the hangar mouth. The shield generators vanished in a blossom of sparks and molten metal, and then someone fired again—and hit the barrier-field generators by mistake.