The Fallen Star (Star Wars: The High Republic)

by Claudia Gray

Finally, action. A chance to move on the Nihil. Bell had wanted this—needed it—ever since the loss of his former Master, Loden Greatstorm. Not for vengeance. Greatstorm would never have wanted that. For the knowledge that Bell had done something, anything, to counteract the evil that had robbed his Master of his life. The Nihil were already beaten, it seemed—Master Avar Kriss seemed on the verge of capturing their leader, the Eye, at any moment—but neither Bell nor the rest of the galaxy would be at peace until the threat had been laid to rest forever.

Meanwhile, the Gaze Electric rested in quiet space between systems far away from the Jedi battle.

Stellan Gios was among those Jedi who perceived the Force as the entire firmament of stars in the sky.

Terrible winds had badly damaged the desalination structures that supplied the planet’s only fresh water. This was a crisis that would devastate an independent planet, leading to a mass exodus or even starvation. But planets in the Republic had a reason to hope. “And so, instead of returning to its place in the heavens, Starlight Beacon was transported here, to Eiram!” The storyteller gestured at the holo that showed Starlight being towed through outer space, for only the second time ever, following a lifesaving mission to the planet Dalna. Ringed around the storyteller, dozens of children oohed and aahed in wonder. The shimmer of the holo was reflected in their bright eyes. “The Republic and the Jedi came to save us all, by bringing us water, supplies, and most of all…hope.”

After a moment, Burryaga lay one shaggy paw on Bell’s shoulder. “Thanks.” Bell’s eyes were hot, but he blinked back the tears. A Jedi shouldn’t feel too much grief, for too long. Master Loden had become one with the Force. To grieve too long was to deny that transcendent truth.

Bell Zettifar leaned forward, clearly hesitant to speak but compelled to do so. “With all due respect, I disagree. Our first priority should be investigating this disturbance in the Force on the station.”

Koley stooped down to check the ship’s undercarriage, then heard a low hum and a thunk.

mirrored faces stared back, reflecting

The stranded travelers marooned aboard Starlight Beacon made up a motley bunch, and they wandered throughout the station. It was easy enough for Werrera, Leyel, and Cale to blend in with the groups and travel where they would.

His attention drifted toward one of the doors to the docking bay—the one that led, roughly, in the direction of engineering and the cargo bays. The source, it appeared, of the greater problem affecting every Jedi aboard.

“To put it simply, Bell, you must always be willing to lose me, if it is necessary to do what we ought. I must be willing to lose you. We must be willing to sacrifice ourselves, and each other, for the greater good.”

The Jedi aboard Starlight Beacon had a lot of administrative work to do.

Indeera took a deep breath and reached out with her feelings. What she found was— —was nothing. The Force was not speaking to her here. There was the faintest…call it a whisper…proof that she hadn’t lost her mind,

The lights were on, but it was as though—as though she couldn’t take in the light— Indeera’s eyes opened wider as the floor began to melt. As the walls shifted color and shape. She knew she was hallucinating, but knowing did no good; reality was nowhere to be found. This phantasmagoria surrounded her, entrapped her, took away everything that was true and good.

“Worse than dead,” came Orla’s response. “His body has been—changed, somehow. Into this dry, almost powdery version of itself. I haven’t touched him because I’m scared he’ll fall apart.” Stellan looked across the Hub at Nib Assek and Elzar Mann, whose dismay mirrored his own. “Another husk,” Stellan said. “And this time, on Starlight itself.”

Whatever horror had finally stolen the life of Loden Greatstorm had made its way aboard the station.

Affie hurriedly said, “Geode’s a Vintian. It’s not like there’s anything he could do with a human, even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t. He dates in-species only. Which for most people I think is kind of narrow-minded?

The Force would find her, it would find her, she wouldn’t just vanish into the void, she wouldn’t just become nothing—or no one— Cold seized Orla, piercing her flesh, seemingly freezing her very bones. She wanted to hug herself against the brutal chill, but her arms no longer obeyed her commands. Her legs wouldn’t move. Nor her head and neck—she wanted to look down and see what had gripped her, but she couldn’t any longer. Her face became even whiter. Then gray as ash. She fell onto the floor, unable to move, ever again. The Force was silent, and nothing was left of Orla but fear.

“That is precisely what I’m telling you.” Leox took a moment to consider, then decided the last station they’d been docked at, the one orbiting Parlatal, was their best bet. “This is the Vessel calling, reporting an emergency at Starlight Beacon. Repeat, we have an emergency on Starlight Beacon, station crashing, multiple trapped ships aboard, possibility of catastrophic impact. Please confirm signal.” It took a few seconds for a reply, which came in a bored drawl. “Vessel, this joke isn’t funny.” “Nor is it a joke,” Leox said. “This is for real.” “Okay, sure,” said Parlatal station control in much the same tone of voice. “And you’re telling us this instead of Starlight personnel—why, exactly?”

Her voice trailed off, no doubt because she was having the same realization Stellan had just reached: “The Nihil attacks weren’t scattered,” he said, sitting up straighter. “They weren’t random. Chespea and Banchii were targeted because it takes several hyperspace jumps to get from here to either planet. This wasn’t a few stragglers lashing out in any direction—it was a coordinated attack.”

A nearby Wookie Jedi put out his broad arms, shielding the nearest people, but Koley aimed his weapon at the tall ceiling of the docking bay. He shouted, “We’ve had enough!”—and fired.

By the Force, Elzar thought. He could see the shape of the upper half of the station, still fizzling with thousands upon thousands of sparking wires, shrinking in size as the two halves went separate ways, each toward its own fate. Damn the Nihil. Damn them to every hell in every mythology of the galaxy! At least both individual halves’ structures seemed to have held. The emergency lights remained on. There was still some chance for survival, embodied in the power cells Elzar needed to transport immediately. Still, before he did so, Elzar took one last moment to look at the small vanishing image of the top half of the station, as it had been and never would be again. Starlight Beacon was no more.

Ghirra Starros didn’t second-guess her choices, as a rule. She liked to say, The past is the only thing beyond your control. So don’t look back. Look ahead. Forging an alliance with Marchion Ro—using her status as a senator to assist the Nihil, particularly in their strike against Starlight Beacon—that had been a tactical move, a way to put herself on both sides of the conflict in this new part of the Republic. Whoever won, Ghirra intended to stand with them on top.

Most space stations and ships approximated a diurnal cycle through gradual brightening and dimming of the lights, but Marchion, it seemed, kept his ship in a perpetual night. It was cold, too—not frigid but on the cusp of human discomfort. Perhaps that was the temperature his species preferred.

“Marchion, these droids…what are they?” “They,” he said, “are the new crew of the Gaze Electric.”

Droid pilots and crew were usually only used by criminals. By smugglers. By the very lowest of the low. How could Marchion Ro stoop to this? “How do you like my new crew?” he said. At times it was as though he could read her thoughts.

“No more backstabbing,” Marchion said. “No more plots and intrigues in the back corridors. No more ambitious Tempest Runners bribing and coaxing my underlings for information, leading them into sedition. From this day, the Gaze Electric is wholly, completely, unalterably under my control alone.”

“It seems Carnine wishes to introduce himself.” Marchion motioned the KA-R9 even closer. “I need more than crewmembers, you see. I need enforcers as well. And Carnine is excellent at his work.” Ghirra put one hand on Marchion’s shoulder, hoping it would steady her. It did not. “I don’t doubt it.”

Starlight Beacon was burning.

The top half of the station arced through Eiram’s atmosphere like a meteor, leaving behind a long trail of glowing, incinerating debris. By this point the structure was shaking so violently it could be seen even from this great distance, and there was no way it could hold together much longer.

The temple spire. The Hub. The beacon itself. They were all immolating. Avar, please, please don’t be there, he thought. They’d already had readings suggesting the Ataraxia had made its escape, but Elzar couldn’t help worrying. It was wrong to wish for one person’s survival more than any other’s—a sign of “attachment”—but at the moment Elzar didn’t give a damn.

And then it snapped. Starlight Beacon’s upper half fell apart entirely in a burst of flame. The spire twisted violently as it turned into a plume of sparks and ash. Then Elzar spotted the glowing egglike shape that had to have been the Hub—people in there were still alive as the fire consumed them. Amid it all, Starlight’s beacon pulsed one last time, the light nearly lost in Eiram’s dazzling sky—then fell dark forever. The pain within the station intensified, fractured, died out. Tears of pain and even rage welled in Elzar’s eyes as the last of it faded away. No one had survived.

People got so shaken up about things, even when they happened to other people—Koley had never understood that.

Estala Maru. Every Republic staffer. Every civilian aboard. So many other Jedi—every single one of them, gone, and the Republic humbled—no, humiliated by the Nihil. It was a failure so complete, so appalling, that Stellan could scarcely comprehend it. The symbol of the Jedi. Their public pride and joy. Under my watch, Starlight was destroyed.

Starlight Beacon has fallen under Nihil attack. Hundreds are trapped aboard. The top half of the station is already destroyed; the bottom half requires immediate help. All ships capable of providing any assistance are asked to travel to the Eiram system immediately.

Lina Soh. She sat between Voru and Matari, reading the message transcript in increasing horror. Even through the last hours of suspense, she had always believed that the brilliant minds aboard Starlight Beacon would find answers. The Jedi always did. They would protect the station and those aboard it from the worst. Instead—half of Starlight gone? The greatest of all the Great Works, ripped apart, burning up? I should’ve called for a civilian effort before, Soh realized. She hadn’t done so in part because it had seemed so impossible that Starlight Beacon could truly be falling. But she would amplify this call and add her own. That, at least, she could do. May the Force allow her to be in time!

Among the first to hear the message were those who already knew the horror, even more fully than anyone on Starlight’s bottom half. They were those few who had escaped from the top half before the fiery end. Avar Kriss stood on Eiram’s surface, soot and grit marring her clothes, blinking against the bright sunlight.

“Half of it already burning!” Marchion Ro stood at the center of the Gaze Electric’s bridge, his arms outstretched. Even here, he wore his helmet; his smiles were not for the likes of others to see. “Half of it doomed! The Republic, the mighty Jedi, forced to go begging for help from the galaxy at large! They are nothing compared with the might of the Nihil!” “They are nothing compared with the Eye of the Nihil,” said Ghirra breathily. Another plus of wearing the mask: Ghirra couldn’t see him rolling his eyes.

But we’ve blocked them at every turn. They won’t be able to prevent the full, complete destruction of Starlight Beacon. After that, none will be able to deny that the Nihil are the true masters of the Outer Rim.”

“You’re not fully cut off from the Force.” Elzar didn’t know exactly what was plaguing the Jedi on Starlight Beacon, but he refused to believe they could be severed from the Force entirely. The Force was too vast for that; its power was eternal and universal, and would always be. “It’s just more difficult for you to call upon right now.” “And this is what you chose for yourself, in order to turn away from darkness.” Stellan’s face creased in a small, sad smile. “I wouldn’t have had the courage.” Elzar couldn’t have heard that correctly. “What?” “I’ve never asked myself who I would be without my control of the Force. Without the Jedi Order to structure and define my life.”

You see the Force as an ocean, Orla had said on their first day of the meditation retreat. But you’ve fallen into the habit of believing that the ocean is something you can control. That’s the first step toward thinking of the Force merely as a tool to be wielded however you wish. No ocean obeys any living creature—high time you remembered that.

Both far away and very near, Avar levitated with her arms outstretched, calling upon the song of the Force to sustain them all and give them strength as every Jedi in or near Starlight Beacon fought to save the station and all those aboard. Every individual was a note in the greatest, most meaningful chord she had ever known.

“A break-in,” guessed Bell Zettifar. Leox shook his head; he’d led the kind of life that taught you what robberies looked like or didn’t. “The doors haven’t been forced. Whatever was in this hold, it’s been taken out—or let out—by the people who brought the ship here in the first place.” “Explosives.” Pikka Adren, at least, was catching on. “Is this how the Nihil got them on board?” “My guess is security systems would’ve picked up any large devices on scans,” Leox said. “Besides, you don’t need anything big to do damage. Pick the right material, and you could rip the guts out of this station with a device no bigger than your palm.” “Well, they didn’t release a bunch of rathtars onto the station,” Bell said. “Explosion or no, we would’ve noticed that.”

That was quite the revelation. Leox welcomed the frankness—seemed to him like the time for tact had run out about point four seconds after that Nihil bomb went off. Granted, it also made him a bit uneasy, because he’d rather have had the Jedi at their best during a disaster. But you always had to play whatever sabacc hand you were dealt.

Elzar caught a sense of alarm—new alarm, sharper than the rest—but lost it almost instantly. He breathed out in frustration. Now that he had stopped shielding himself and once again sought the full guidance of the Force, he understood more how compromised his comrades had been. The dampening, and damaging, of the Force on this station…it was like having to work with one arm strapped to his side. While this was happening, he couldn’t be his whole, best self, and that was what he needed to be to save Starlight Beacon.

Bell could hear the wet flolloping sound of tentacles slapping metal.

Somehow…fear itself had been placed aboard Starlight. And Bell had no doubt, it was this same fear that had killed Orla Jareni, Regald Coll, and Loden Greatstorm. But what is it? How does it do this?

At that moment, her comlink hissed, and then she heard a voice: “This is Jedi apprentice Bell Zettifar, calling anyone who can hear me aboard Starlight Beacon. Do you read me?” “Reading you, Bell,” said Affie. “I’m Affie Hollow—not a Jedi, but I’m working on the escape pods here. Do you want me to find Stellan Gios?” “Maybe—but is there any way I can help you? I’m in a shuttle circling Starlight right now. Docking seems…” He hesitated a second before continuing, “…inadvisable, but if there’s anything I can—”

“…although it has descended into our atmosphere, it’s not too late to shoot Starlight out of the sky.” Eiram’s defense minister, an Enso woman swaddled in a thick coat, nodded approvingly at her adviser before turning to the two queens of her planet. “Queen Dima, Queen Thandeka, you’ve heard the report. You can see it with your own eyes. How much longer can we continue to endanger our people?” “We ask our people to accept a risk,” Queen Dima replied. She was somewhat older than her consort, with thick gray hair twined in complicated braids upon her head.

A large shape, indistinct in the gloom of a poorly lit level, swam and morphed in Elzar’s vision like a fever dream. He only knew that it was hideous, repellent, wrong. It was moving toward him—whatever it was—and everything in him recoiled. He slumped against the pod wall and lifted his arm to try to shield his eyes, but his arm was so heavy… The pod descended another level; the shape disappeared. What happened? Elzar couldn’t understand it. Where am I? What’s going on?