Crash and Burn

(This chapter takes place simultaneously with the end of Chapter 7.)

"Strap yourselves in, ladies," Han Solo said. "We'll be entering the Chery system in... two minutes."

Leia was already seated behind the co-pilot's chair, and she checked her crash webbing to make sure that it was securely fastened around her. Jaina, their daughter, sat down next to her and behind Chewbacca's large and furry form, but made no move beyond that. "We've done this before," she said. "Hundreds of times."

"We don't know how friendly the Chery border patrol is going to be," Han warned. "Especially since nobody's responded to holonet correspondence in days."

Jaina swallowed hard and wrapped the flexible fabric strips across her chest and legs.

There had been three escapees from the guarded camps in the Doldur asteroid belt. Two vanished wishout a trace, but Jaina and Zekk determined that the third had originally come from Cherzor, the third planet in the Chery system, and it was the best lead they had. Perhaps if they could find the man, they would be able to get more information about what was happening on the asteroids and, more importantly, why. Zekk immediately returned to guard duty on Yavin 8, while Jaina took the information to Uncle Luke and her mother, and Uncle Luke suggested that she go with her parents to look for the man.

They didn't have much time to complete the mission, but there was hope and belief that it wouldn't take longer than a few days to track down the anonymous escapee and call him in for some gentle questioning. If there was an emergency senate meeting - they seemed to be rather frequent, and already three in the last five months had been called - then Leia was able to attend remotely via holo as long as they weren't in hyperspace at the time, but Han could be pulled away at any time and required to be back on Coruscant in forty hours.

Jaina had argued that they should take two ships, then, so that he could leave when he could and leave her and Leia, but that idea had gone over like a skyhopper with a broken repulsor. She could understand his reluctance to leave them, especially since no one had heard from either Jacen or Anakin in over three weeks, nor their traveling companions. Jaina was convinced that they were still alive, but even her hopes for their safety had begun to weaken as her connection to Jacen did the same.

Maybe he was just almost out of range, and that was why she barely felt his presence in the galaxy, and only when she concentrated. The important thing, though, was that the connection still existed, and perhaps it would strengthen again when they were not so far away. That was what they had to hope for, but as more days passed and there was still no word from Dantooine or any of the four Jedi who left on the Silent Runner, it was difficult not to be discouraged.

And now Chery appeared to have fallen victim to whatever was happening on Dantooine. At least that effectively ruled out "natural disaster." Jaina drew in her breath and waited as they entered the system and moved into realspace, but the transition was smooth, and no ships were in sight.

They coasted through space for a few moments. "I've got a bad feeling about this," said Han.

"You too?" Leia glanced over at him and then focused back on the sights through the viewport - which weren't much; a binary star system, orange and yellow, and a few pinpricks of light which were planets or more distant stars. "I think I would feel more comfortable if we were being shot at." Chewbacca clearly didn't agree with that, but he quieted when he saw how utterly still Chery was.

"It feels deserted," Jaina added. "There should be at least eight million people on Cherzor alone, and that doesn't count the station on Chering or any of the moons. I know that we've been facing, um, limits on our Force abilities lately, but this feels very different from what I felt on Yavin and even some of the smaller systems on our way to the asteroid belt. It's like everybody defoliated the plants and then left."

They waited for several tense minutes while Han tried to make contact with the Chery space patrol, only to get no response except static. Finally, though, when they had crossed half the distance from their entry point to the planet Cherzor, the static changed in tone and the rasping voice of an elderly male human came over the link. "Unidentified ship, please turn around and go back to where you came from."

"This is General Han Solo of the New Republic," Han said gruffly, and after a pointed look from Leia, he added, "To whom am I speaking?"

"Greetings, General. I am Captain Briken Rati of the Chery Border Security station on green Cherzor. Unfortunately, it is not green anymore, and I must ask again that you leave the system immediately."

"I'm sorry, but I can't do that. We're looking for an individual who has some important information and we know he's on Cherzor." Han waved Jaina away when she leaned forward with a protest on her lips; they didn't know for certain that the man had even come to the planet, although it was looking more and more probable.

"If you enter the atmosphere you will not be able to leave. To come to any of our planets is certain death."

"You're still alive," Han pointed out.

"Only for a short while. I am afflicted as well and have only hours. Our interstellar communications system was knocked out or we would have sent out a distress call earlier, but we were penned in by a Stellar Imperial fleet for three days and unable to contact anyone outside of it. The entire system - Cherzor, Chering, Cherala, and the moons - are all under quarantine and we cannot admit anyone or let anyone out."

"Hold on a minute." Han switched off the microphone and looked over at Leia. "Do you think he's telling the truth?"

"I don't see any reason to doubt him. It could be a falsehood, but nothing else explains so well why the planets seem so stripped of life and why we lost communications with the entire system."

Han nodded and went back to the microphone. "Captain Rati, when did this begin?"

"The first deaths were six days ago, Captain Solo, near the spaceport. This was about the same time that the fleet arrived. Ever since then people have been dying in large numbers and we have only a few hundred left, perhaps as many as a thousand in underground bunkers. Our animals and plants are dying as well - nothing left alive."

"Six days," said Jaina. "That was when the man we're looking for should have arrived if he didn't make any stops along the way."

"Anyone that you are looking for is unable to speak with you," Rati said. "For the last time, return to where you came from, General."

"We only need to take a quick look around," Leia said. "I will send word to Coruscant immediately and try to get together-"

"No! Leave at once!"

"We're going in," Han said, and for the second time he cut off communication with Cherzor. "Just to fly down, see if he's giving us a story, and get out again. Won't even open the doors."

"But if he is being honest, then who knows what will be on the hull?" Jaina asked.

"It doesn't matter. Little bugs that make people sick won't survive the return trip if they're outside and not inside." He looked over to Leia and raised his eyebrows, waiting for affirmation that they should enter the atmosphere.

"Do it," she finally said. "We'll be sure to have the outside sprayed down with a solvent before we get through the Coruscant space lanes."

If it weren't for the fact that the Millennium Falcon's navicomputer showed without any uncertainty that they were in the Chery system, Jaina would have believed that they had made a mistake and ended up somewhere else, somewhere with a similar binary star system and the right number of planets and moons. There had to be hundreds of other such systems in the galaxy, as vast as it was, and what little she saw of Cherzor from the viewport was so unlike the holo she saw earlier that she kept second-guessing the situation, wondering where exactly they were. Rich green forests were reduced to crumpled brown heaps, fields of grass and flowering plants lay tan and withered, and there was no sign of animal or sentient life except for static lights glowing in the spaceport city. Not one ship, not one speeder car. The wreckage of a small corvette was still smoking, leaning up against one spaceport platform, tilted, with the other end on a half-crushed lower platform. A closer sweep of the surface revealed hundreds of dead bodies, person and beast alike, weathered by days of dust storms but in states of minor decomposition suggesting only hours since death.

Han shook his head. He said, "Something's not matching up, and I don't like it. Let's get out of here." Chewbacca growled in agreement; no departure could be too fast.

"But what about the survivors?" Leia asked. "There have to be survivors and we can't just leave them to fend for themselves."

"I am not lowering the boarding ramp for even part of a second. Whatever is down there is nothing we want to mess with. If the Senate wants to send some doctors and scientists to take a look, in hazmat suits, that might be good idea, but I've got you and Chewie and Jaina on board and we're not staying around whatever killed those people. Killed the whole damn planet."

There was a long silence while they hastened to Cherzor far behind them. Jaina bit her lip and tried to think of how to say what was on her mind. There was no way to subtly bring up what she was thinking of, though, so she simply spoke: "This could explain Dantooine."

"Explanations are in very short supply right now," Han said. "We could use a few."

"I meant that whatever happened here probably happened on Dantooine. The pattern is the same; first the comm systems knocked out, and then nothing. A biological agent of some kind is released, and it kills everything while the system is cut off from any travelers in or out. It keeps the plague contained."

"Don't know why the Stellar Imperium wanted to destroy Chery. There's not much here; it's good for food production, and there's a small mining operation, but that's all."

"They didn't want to destroy the system," Jaina said, exasperated. "The plague was on the asteroids, and spread here when the escapee went home. It looks like the Imperial fleet was doing everyone a favor - one infected person getting out of the system could make it spread anywhere, everywhere."

"First Dantooine, then three other systems and an asteroid belt, and now Chery." Leia sighed and rested her forehead against her fingertips, suddenly looking older than her forty-six years. "There has to be a reason for this. Even Isard wouldn't play with infectious agents this dangerous and contagious."

"An experiment that went a little too well, and now they're trying to keep it under control and failing," Han muttered.

"You might be right."

"Yeah, well, this time I'd rather be safe than right."

Nobody said anything more. Even Chewie was silent, and Jaina knew that her parents were afraid. There was a proverbial rancor in the living room; Jacen and Anakin had gone with two elder Jedi Knights to Dantooine. None of the four had reported in for... seventeen days. They didn't need to voice their concerns, because they were already in the cockpit, thick in the air.

"Mom?" Jaina finally said. She couldn't deal with the silent tension.

"What?"

"Um, nothing. Never mind."

Leia raised her head and wiped her eyes. "Jaina, say it. Whatever it is."

"I... I didn't feel a darkening inside. When Jacen was nearly drowned on Mon Calamari three years ago, it was like a thread inside me was frayed and about to snap. I don't feel that now. Everything's fuzzy and dark, but he's still alive. Maybe they're in orbit around Dantooine and not allowed to land or leave."

Han only grunted, and Leia said, "I hope that's what happened. But, Jaina, you said yourself that was three years ago -"

"Before the rise of the Stellar Imperium," Jaina finished. "I know, but wouldn't you know if Luke was killed? Don't you know intuitively when one of us is in danger?"

"Sometimes, Jaina, sometimes. The Force is so dim and clouded that it's difficult to trust it. And I have had so little time to train and learn."

"This is ridiculous." Jaina jumped out of her chair and marched toward the doorway out of the cockpit.

"Where are you going?" Han demanded.

"Getting a glass of water and moving my legs," she said, without looking behind her. "Jacen and Anakin are fine, and there's an explanation for why they're being quiet. Something simple. And then we're all going to laugh about it."

The water didn't do much to calm her nerves. She'd been a little too uptight for the past few days, a little too anxious. It wasn't anything she could force herself to dispel, and almost unconscious, almost under the radar and indetectable. Jaina had attributed this to too many days without adequate rest, too many stim pills, too many crises. But it came and went without warning, without any connection to how tired she was or how many pills she had swallowed in the last twelve hours. It was building again, and she had to take control of her breathing patterns, meticulously regulating her oxygen intake to try to keep her adrenaline levels from jumping.

The glass shook in her hand.

Someone screamed. Jaina dumped the glass into the sink and didn't even bother to secure the plastic sink cover before she ran back to the cockpit. There, she found Chewie in Han's chair, and Han standing in front of Leia, pressing her tightly to his chest.

"What is it? What's happened?" Jaina cried.

Han's eyes locked with Jaina's, his rimmed with crinkles of concern and disbelief. He shook his head slowly while Leia sobbed.

"Tell me!"

"It's - it's Anakin," Leia wept. "He's in pain, and he's dying. I know it, I know it."

"No. That's not true," Jaina protested. "It's just not true. Maybe he got hurt, but he's alive!"

"Jaina, you shut your mouth." Han stabbed his finger through the air at her and scowled.

"But -" Jaina cut herself off, then, and sagged back into her chair, eyes averted. Her little brother had to be fine; he was with Jacen, and Jacen was alive, and he wouldn't let anything happen to Anakin. Not when it counted. Would he? Could he hold back the plague of Dantooine?

Leia's low wails turned into a piercing shriek, sounding vaguely like "he's gone," and Jaina had to cover her face. She pressed her fingers to her eyelids and tried to make herself very small, shrinking away from the chair and her parents and Chewbacca, like in a dream. Making it into a nightmare of sleeping and not of waking, so that she could get out of it. But when she pulled her hands away nothing had changed, except that the nervous energy was replaced with a hollow and weary, and she could only stare forward blankly, waiting to return to Coruscant. Waiting for the next stage of the war against the Stellar Imperium.

If volunteers were called to make the Imperium pay, she was going to raise her hand. She wouldn't look into her memories and see Anakin slipping out of the temple to "find" Tahiri, with a mischievous smile half-hidden in the corners of his mouth. She wouldn't see him racing a landspeeder across the Tatooine sand next to Jacen. Instead, she thought of the Stellar Imperium, and how to bring it down, piece by piece, until it was crumbled and the destruction would stop.

Then she would let herself mourn.