Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (30 page)

Chewie growled a protest—it was a lot of work, after all.

“We’re going to empty them by ourselves?” Anakin asked doubtfully.

“No,” Han replied with his unrelenting sarcasm. “We’re going to find some help.”

Before Anakin could even finish his sigh, a great cry came rolling down the street, a hundred voices, at least, joined as one. “Tosi-karu!”

“The goddess is here,” Anakin remarked.

“Well, let’s go and see if she’s in charge,” Han remarked, and he led them down the street. Around the next corner, they found the old man, sitting comfortably on a doorstep, hands crossed over the top of his walking stick.

“We thought we’d go meet the goddess,” Han remarked dryly.

“No need to go any further, then,” the old man replied.

That stopped them in their tracks, and Han eyed the old man suspiciously. “You?” he asked.

In answer, the old man laughed and pointed toward the sky, out to the east, and the three turned to see the moon rising in the still-blue sky.

And what a moon! It seemed huge, as if it was a second planet the size of Sernpidal. Han spent a moment remembering the information he had garnered about the place when schooling Anakin on their flight and descent plan. Sernpidal did have a moon—two of them, in fact. One was substantial, nearly a fifth the size of Sernpidal, but the other was much smaller, perhaps only twenty kilometers or so in diameter.

Han, Anakin, and Chewbacca watched in amazement as the moon broke the horizon, lifting up in the eastern sky, higher and higher, soon to crest overhead.

“Moving pretty fast,” Han remarked.

“Faster every hour,” the old man replied, drawing curious stares from the three.

“Which moon is that?” Anakin asked curiously, and he turned to Han and the old man, his expression fraught with fear. “That’s Dobido, isn’t it?”

“Dobido’s the tiny one,” Han replied.

“Indeed it is Dobido,” the old man said.

Han and Anakin stared hard at each other, the old man’s words—
faster every hour—
reverberating in their thoughts. Chewie put his hands over his ears and roared.

“Are you saying that Dobido is coming down?” Han asked, echoing Chewie’s words.

“That would be my guess,” the old man replied calmly. “I
think the locals’ explanation that Tosi-karu has arrived is a bit more far-fetched.”

The three looked up at the moon, now passing its crest above them, speeding for the western horizon.

“How long?” Anakin asked breathlessly.

Han started to attempt some calculations, but without any points of reference, soon gave up that exercise. Another thought interrupted anyway, a more pressing one. “Get back to the
Falcon,”
he cried, and he sprinted back toward the dock, Anakin and Chewie following quickly.

“It may already be unloaded,” the unflappable old man called after them, ending with a wheezing chuckle edged with profound sadness. Anakin paused and stared at the old man intently.

“I was elected the mayor,” the old man explained with a sigh. “I was supposed to protect them.”

“Hurry up!” Han called back to Anakin, his tone almost desperate.

Indeed, when the three returned to the
Millennium Falcon
, they found the unloading process well under way. Scores of people of many different species crowded around the ship, most throwing out cargo, but a few opportunistic others taking the time to go through the goods.

“Hey!” Han yelled, rushing the mob and waving his arms frantically.

They ignored him, even when he grabbed a couple of people and pushed them aside.

“Get away from my ship!” he demanded repeatedly, running all about, always seeming to be a step behind, as one or another of the mob broke open a cargo carton and ran off with the contents.

Chewbacca took a more direct route, running to the landing ramp and moving up high, then cutting loose one of his patented thunderous roars. That caught the attention of more than a few, and even those who did not outright flee took care to keep far from the Wookiee.

And Anakin’s method was different still, the boy walking calmly among the looters, “suggesting” to them casually that they would be better off leaving. The inflection of his words, his use of the Force, made him many friends that day, friends who were glad to take his advice.

It took the three more than half an hour to clear the area, and another half an hour, with Anakin and his sensitivities guiding them, to clear the hidden stowaways out of the
Falcon
.

Han then wasted no time, didn’t even bother to call in to the ground controllers for permission. He put the
Falcon
up, straight up, a lightning run to orbit, and put in a course to chase the rushing moon.

“There it is,” he said to his son as they came over the horizon, moving to close pursuit. “Ten trillion tons of danger.”

“Torpedoes?” Anakin asked.

Han looked at him incredulously. “That’d be like shooting a bantha with a tickle stick,” he replied. “It’d take a Star Destroyer to blast that moon, and even if it did, the falling pieces would devastate Sernpidal.”

“Then what?” Anakin asked.

“Never seem to have a Death Star lying around when you need one,” Han muttered. He glanced over his shoulder at Chewie, who was busy checking readings and working some calculations.

The Wookiee stared intently at the screen, scratched his hairy head a couple of times, then issued a wail, poking the screen.

“Look at what?” Han protested, swiveling his chair about.

Chewie roared emphatically.

“Seven hours?” Han echoed, stunned. “Let me see that.” He slapped the Wookiee’s hand away, but his scolding ended abruptly as he read the line Chewie had been indicating.

“Our day just got better,” Han said, looking back to Anakin. “Sernpidal’s got seven hours.”

Anakin’s jaw dropped open.

“Only chance is that the moon skips along the atmosphere for a while before crashing through,” Han explained.

Even as the words left his mouth, the ridiculousness of the whole situation struck him profoundly, left him shaking his head. “This moon’s been in orbit for a million years,” he commented. “How is this happening, and why now?” A look of suspicion crossed his face, a look that made clear that he wanted to discuss this further with a certain shady operator who had sent him out here.

“You think Lando knew?” Anakin asked, his tone skeptical.

Han offered no response to that theory, but he did wonder if one of those characters with whom Lando dealt might have something to do with all of this—if one of them, perhaps, wasn’t pleased that Lando was delivering cargo to a rival. But still, who knew how to bring down a moon? The whole notion seemed utterly preposterous.

To Han, who had spent the better part of the last thirty years fighting against, and utilizing, utterly preposterous plans and equipment, nothing seemed impossible.

The scope on the console to Anakin’s side beeped.

“What do you got?” Han asked.

Anakin bent over the scope. “Weather satellite.”

Han looked at the moon, rolling along before them. “Get us to it,” he instructed his son. “Download its banks,” he told Chewie. “Let’s see if we can find any clues, or a pattern.”

A few moments later, Anakin brought them right up beside the weather satellite, an older Thunderstorm 63 model, and Chewie wasted no time in tying the
Millennium Falcon
’s computers into the satellite’s banks.

Han took the helm back from Anakin and, as soon as Chewie was finished, used some nifty flying to bring the
Falcon
in close to the moon, even circumnavigating the thing a few times to try and see if there were any added features—a few well-placed ion drives, perhaps. The close inspection offered not a clue, though.

“Keep your eyes open,” he instructed Chewie, as the
Wookiee swapped places with Anakin, moving back to his customary seat at Han’s side.

Chewie growled his assent and worked in perfect sync with Han to keep the
Falcon
moving slowly and deliberately, as close to the moon as possible.

“Seven hours,” Han muttered. “How are we going to get all those people off the planet in seven hours?” Even as he finished the rhetorical question, he put out a general distress call, signaling any and all ships in the region to proceed with all haste to Sernpidal.

That was a call few, if any, would hear in time, he knew.

“You see anything?” he asked Chewie.

The Wookiee growled and shook his head.

“It’s coming from the planet!” Anakin cried behind them, and they both instinctively looked down toward Sernpidal and then, when nothing seemed apparent, glanced back at Anakin.

The boy rushed forward, bearing a printout from Chewie’s download from the weather satellite. “Look,” he said, pointing to a diagram he had generated with the data to show the plotting of Dobido’s last two weeks of movement.

The circles showed the smooth ellipse of the orbit until only a couple of days before, when the moon had taken a sudden dip in trajectory with regard to the planet.

“Look at the descent,” Anakin explained. “Every time it crosses this part of the planet, it comes down steeper. Something’s pulling it down.”

Han and Chewie studied the diagram, and sure enough, they could see that every time Dobido crossed over the region of the planet near Sernpidal City, it did indeed dip.

“Maybe they’re calling it home with their prayers,” Han muttered.

“Something’s doing it,” Anakin replied, too enthused to catch the joke. He poked his finger against the printout. “Something in the exact middle of this arc.” He traced his finger to his estimate of that point, a spot not too far to the east of the city.

Han looked at Chewie, and the Wookiee turned to Anakin, calling for the printouts.

“It’s got to be there,” Anakin said to Chewie as the Wookiee pored over the data.

Chewie looked up at the boy, then at Han, and howled his agreement.

Now they had a clue, and perhaps a solution would follow.

Han laid in a course for that region, the
Falcon
swooping under Dobido and breaking right back through the atmosphere. He and Chewie studied the region east of the city, looking for some clues, or for a ship, perhaps, like an Interdictor cruiser, known for its gravity-well projectors that could simulate the tremendous effects of a stellar body in hyperspace and prevent fleeing ships from making the jump to lightspeed.

Meanwhile, Anakin studied the movement of Dobido, which was again crossing the area of greatest descent. Sure enough, the moon dipped noticeably in its trajectory, and Anakin updated Chewie’s calculations with the new data.

Han heard his groan. “What do you got?”

“No way will the moon skip off the atmosphere,” Anakin explained. “Not if that pull remains. And I’m guessing under six hours, not seven, because the descent increases with every pass. One more thing …” He paused, waiting for them to turn around. “Not that it really matters, but I think the moon will hit Sernpidal City.”

“What a coincidence,” Han said dryly.

Chewie growled his accord, and it was the first time Han had ever heard such an obvious display of sarcasm from the Wookiee.

Sernpidal City came in sight again a moment later, the
Falcon
turning about in its patrol. “There’s fifty thousand people in that city alone,” Han remarked.

“And probably no more than a hundred ships,” Anakin added.

Along silence, a long moment of dread. “We’ve got to find the source,” Han demanded.

They took the
Falcon
right in for the dock. Han prepared himself to argue with the controller, to succinctly tell the man to back off, but no call came out to them at all, and as they neared the place, moving to a lower position, they understood why. A huge quake rocked the city, with waves of moving ground rolling under buildings and down streets, toppling walls and throwing pedestrians wildly.

“Good thing it’s not a coastal city,” Anakin remarked.

At the reminder, Han brought the
Falcon
out of its descent and zipped away to the south, toward the nearest seacoast. Nestled in a valley on the back side of the mountain range south of Sernpidal City was a large village, a settlement of several thousand.

Anakin groaned as the
Falcon
climbed past the initial peaks. Han didn’t even have to ask why. The boy was extremely sensitive to disturbances in the Force—he had just felt the death of the mountain village.

Sure enough, as the
Falcon
crested the last peaks, they saw the disaster, the rushing sea swarming into the valley, washing away homes, trees, everything, with such sudden, violent force that before they even dipped lower they knew that everyone in the valley was already dead.

Han swooped back to the north, accelerating, and brought the
Falcon
in at a straight run to the docking bay. A crowd swarmed about the gates as the ship arrived—people suddenly realizing the fact of their impending doom and desperate to find an escape.

Han looked to Chewie. “You load the ship,” he instructed. “Pack them in as tight as you can.”

“We’ve got to mobilize all the other ships,” Anakin said. “We can’t let any take off unless they’re full.”

Han nodded. “Still not enough,” he reminded. “We’ve got to find that source and take it out.”

“I can find it,” Anakin volunteered.

Han froze and looked at him hard.

“I can,” Anakin insisted. “Then you and Chewie come in with the
Falcon
and blast it.”

Han spent a long moment studying his younger son. He understood that he’d be better suited than Anakin to do the necessary evacuation work here at the docks—it would take someone of Han’s age and experience, someone who could maintain respect, and, in the absence of that, control the crowd with cunning. Anakin would be able to do much, particularly with any use of the Force, but this situation might become politically charged soon enough, especially if Sernpidal’s authorities—and where were they, anyway?—showed up to investigate, bringing with them all those layers of intrigue that always accompanied such situations. Given that, Han’s experience would prove invaluable.