Star Wars

by Charles Soule

  That statement was true of people, and it was true of droids, and it was true of the entire galaxy and everything in it. The deeper the systems you learned to access, or the rules you understood, the greater the change you could create. That was what had helped him rise so quickly on Hetzal, all the way to a prime posting in the Ministry of Technology before he was twenty-five. When he was still a kid, he figured out that four different crops were interacting in a complex sort of relationship, and that a routinely exterminated pest wasn’t a pest at all but in fact a symbiotic partner to the crops. If the plants were just allowed to occupy the same fields at the same time rather than being kept separate, and the so-called vermin were allowed to live, not only would overall yields be higher but the seeds and grain the crops produced would be of better quality. Beyond even that, a sort of hybrid fruit would emerge twice a year that couldn’t happen without the contributions of all four plants.

  That little project had gotten him all he really wanted: access to bigger and better systems he could spend his time trying to understand. The Hetzalian authorities gave him increasingly important assignments, from developing crop rotation algorithms to modeling weather, all of which he found deeply engaging and rewarding. The only thing he found frustrating was how slow it could seem. He couldn’t just dig into anything he wanted, even with his high-level role in the system’s Ministry of Technology—there were still many things he could not access without permission.

  That was his choice, though. Keven knew he could be one hell of a slicer, breaking into computer cores of all types, but he didn’t hold with that. He believed in law, and he believed in the Republic. He had decided long ago that the only way he would ever work with the really significant systems was if he could earn those privileges through his skill and dedication.

  Well, now that moment seemed to have arrived. It didn’t get much bigger than what he was about to try to do.

  He, Keven Tarr, was going to slice hyperspace.

  A soft, cool breeze touched his face, drifting across the plateau overlooking the array. A good sign.

  Keven glanced at the other observers standing not far away, chatting quietly among themselves. If he’d had his preference, the first test of his machine would have happened in private in case something went wrong, but it was all too important, time was too short, and too much had been invested in creating the array. Many people, powerful people, had chosen to back Keven’s idea, and they all wanted to be present to see whether that idea was worth a damn.

  Senator Noor and his aide, Jeni Wataro. Secretary Lorillia. Minister Ecka. The two Jedi, of course, who were chatting with Marlowe and Vellis San Tekka, who had, honestly, been incredibly helpful. Beyond supplying the twelve navulators, they had also provided hyperspace modeling tools far beyond anything Keven would have been able to access on his own. He’d signed all sorts of agreements with their company’s legal department saying that he’d never use the tech for anything else, but that was no problem. Actually, he thought he might see if the San Tekkas wanted to work with him after this was all over. Hetzal was his homeworld, but he was ready to move on. The planet was a system, too, and he’d sliced it about as well as he could. Onward, to bigger and deeper.

  Of course, if he couldn’t make the array work, none of those exciting possibilities would happen. If you said you would try to do something, people heard that as you would do something, and if you didn’t achieve the goal then they thought you had failed. And blamed you for trying at all. It wasn’t exactly fair, especially because predicting the future with a massive computer array made from wired-up droid brains was basically impossible. But that was how the system called society worked, and Keven Tarr would never be powerful enough to change that set of rules.

  His situation was binary. Succeed or fail. He’d done everything he could to make sure it was the former, and that was all.

  He lifted a comlink and spoke. “You guys got that last batch of droids linked up?”

  A crackle—this many droids in one spot was causing interference. You could taste it in the air, like touching your tongue to new metal.

  “One more left,” came the response from Chief Innamin of the Republic Defense Coalition—Petty Officer Innamin until recently, promoted based on his heroic efforts during the Legacy Run disaster. He and his shipmate, Peeples, then an ensign now a lieutenant, had decided to stay in-system after the disaster to help however they could, as a way of honoring the sacrifice of their captain, Bright, who had died during a rescue attempt on a solar array.

  Keven liked that the two officers were contributing their skills—thought it was noble and good. More important, Innamin had the necessary engineering training to be particularly useful here on the Rooted Moon, and to supervise Peeples, even though the lieutenant was technically his superior officer. Peeples didn’t seem to mind, and had even offered to swap ranks with Innamin. The chief declined, after letting out a heavy sigh. In any case, the duo was currently completing the wiring for the subnode tasked to model the fifth Emergence.

  Privately, in a way he would never, ever voice, Keven wished there had been a few more Emergences. Every single one was a data point, and so far there had been twenty-nine. Not bad—a pretty good set—but the more information his machine had to draw on, the better. He wouldn’t get a second chance at this, for many reasons.

  Mostly for one reason, in fact, something he had purposely decided not to tell the kind people who had helped him gather all these rare and valuable machines for his array.

  Keven sent a furtive glance at Jeffo Lorillia, the Republic’s transportation secretary, not far away on the plateau and deep in conversation with Senator Izzet Noor, his long face uncharacteristically animated. Lorillia had pulled in incredible favors to bring so many navidroids together, and on such short notice. The Outer Rim was still in its hyperspace quarantine, much to Senator Noor’s intense frustration, but Secretary Lorillia’s requisition had taken so many navidroids out of circulation that it wasn’t just the Outer Rim experiencing shortages. Shipping all over the Republic was beginning to be affected.

  Yes, if Keven’s algorithm performed correctly, they would know where the Emergences would happen next, and could end the blockade—but that was a big if. He only had fifty-seven thousand droids, when the number he actually needed was more like twice that. The calculations he had to run would now take at least double the time, even pushing his system to the limit. That much stress on the machine for that long would generate…well. He had his doubts about how many of these hugely precious electronic brains would make it through the process. That was the essential fact he had chosen not to share with Secretary Lorillia. The array, once powered on, would be hungry, and what it ate…was navidroids.

  But this was the solution he had. He had to try—even though he knew what would happen to him if he failed. That’s what good people did.

  “Peeples! Get your toe out of there! What do you think you’re—oh, that’s actually a pretty good idea, I guess,” Chief Innamin said over the comlink, his voice a little distant, as if he had turned to yell at someone on his side of the transmission. Then he came back, strong and loud. “We’re good here, Mr. Tarr. Linkage complete.”

  “Thank you, Chief—and you can call me Keven. Clear the area, and pull out any other teams you see out there. Get off the plateau, back up here on the observation platform.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Just pull everyone back, all right?”

  Keven lifted a datapad, the central control unit for the entire array. He shot off a quick prayer to the Vine Matron, patron saint of the area on Hetzal Prime where he had been raised, then tapped the single button that turned the whole blasted thing on.

  * * *

  Farther along the plateau, Senator Izzet Noor fanned his face as the huge networked array of navidroids hummed into life. It sounded like a hive of insects—not even a sound, really, more like a sensation,
just below the level of true perception. He was also praying, but not to the Vine Matron, more of an unfocused “please, please, please” muttered under his breath.

  All over the Outer Rim, worlds were on the verge of revolt. While the chancellor had authorized aid shipments to worlds suffering from lack of hyperspace transit, it was still far from life as usual, and the occasional shipment of emergency rations wasn’t the way to quell unrest.

  If this Keven Tarr’s insane droid scheme didn’t work, he’d have to go to Chancellor Soh and beg her to reopen the hyperlanes, regardless of the danger. At a certain point, she would have to see that the damage being done to the people of the Rim outweighed the risk of another Legacy Run–style crisis.

  “Can you believe all this?” Noor said to Jeni Wataro, his closest aide going on ten years. She was Chagrian, with blue skin and thick, horn-tipped tentacles curling out from the sides of her head and draping down across her chest. Wataro was essential to his work in endless ways. Every politician could use a Chagrian aide, Noor believed.

  “What do you mean, Senator?” Wataro said.

  Noor gestured vaguely out at the gigantic droid array spread out on the plateau before them.

  “All this, Wataro. Use your eyes. We’re going to such massive expense, and there’s no guarantee that this will even work. I don’t see any reason why we can’t just reopen the hyperlanes.

  “And you know what?” he continued, turning to her. “Someone else out there clearly already has the ability to predict Emergences, based on what happened at Eriadu.”

  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.

  He had distributed the older droids throughout the array in an attempt at load balancing, but inevitably, some sections ended up with a few more of the less-capable machines. Node Five was one of those. The heat was rising quickly, and it was just a matter of time until—

  A shower of sparks shot up from the array, and Keven didn’t have to look at it to know it was coming from Node Five. One of the older navidroids had blown its circuits, the heat essentially frying its computational matrix to sludge.

  “Blast it,” he said.

  “What’s happening, Tarr?” he heard Senator Noor call over.

  Keven didn’t answer. He didn’t have time. If Node Five went down, then the whole simulation would have to start over, and he knew they probably wouldn’t let him do that. This was most likely h
is only shot. Fortunately, he had anticipated the problem—at least to some degree.

  A phalanx of pill droids floated off to one side of the array, all equipped with cooling units able to send out blasts of wintry air wherever they might be needed. Keven had kept them in reserve until now, but it was clear that the time had come.

  He tapped his datapad, and several of the pill droids zoomed over to Node Five, shooting out cold air from their vent attachments that immediately brought the temperature down. Fine. It was fine.

  As long as the pill droids’ coolant held out, and as long as he didn’t lose too many more navidroids. Fifty-seven thousand, seven hundred and twelve, now—and he really shouldn’t have even tried this with less than seventy-five thousand.

  Node Seven was starting to run hot, and Keven had learned his lesson. He sent another few pill droids in that direction to cool it down before anything went wrong.

  This can work, he thought. I can do this.

  Node Fourteen came online, modeling the nineteenth Emergence, and it overloaded immediately, hard, fifty droids at once shooting the same set of sparks Node Five had just produced. Maybe an error in the linkage, maybe that was just a particularly complex part of the simulation.

  “No!” Keven shouted.

  He was dimly aware of voices in his vicinity, asking questions, offering advice, concern…he couldn’t spare time for them, not even a moment. The array was on the verge of a cascading failure.

  Twenty pill droids whipped over to Node Fourteen—half of what he had left, and they were barely two-thirds of the way through the simulation.

  They’re going to blame me, he thought. They’re going to say it was my fault. I was just trying to help. I did my best. I did my—

  A hand touched his arm, and Keven jumped. He looked—it was the Jedi, Avar Kriss. A few steps behind her, the other one, Elzar Mann—they always seemed to be together.