Shards of Alderaan

15

In orbit around Ennth, safe from the powerful pull of the destructive moon, Zekk docked the Lighting Rod against the largest of the refugee stations. From the cockpit windows, he watched the planet below shiver and gasp in its death throes.

Though he felt stunned, his heart went out to Rastur. The evacuation commander still had not rested, continuing to work at high speed even on board the ships. Zekk suspected the man kept himself busy to divert his thoughts from grief over the loss of Shinnan.

Four reconditioned cargo haulers cruised in stable orbits next to each other, high above the atmosphere. The decommissioned, lumbering containers had been declared unserviceable for interstellar transport, but they served well enough as holding tanks for the cast-off people, refugees waiting to go back to a home blasted clean by lava and groundquakes. The freighters’ engines had been ripped out, and all cargo bays had been lined with bunks and cubicles to accommodate the greatest number of people. The survivors of Ennth endured. They would give up their privacy and comfort for a year before they could venture back to the surface.

Zekk remembered being a child on one of these refugee stations, how nightmarish it had seemed to him. Yet these people were willing to suffer again, as they had eight years ago and would again eight years hence, for as long as they continued to put up with the cycle of devastation.

Smaller ships flew around, supply runners continuing their ferrying duties, dropping off cargo, arranging return schedules. Now Zekk could see that while some of them had truly come to help—as Peckhum had last time—many of the traders and “expediters” were scam artists taking advantage of a difficult situation. They charged the absolute maximum for their services that the colonists could afford, and the people of Ennth had no choice but to pay…..

When the last straggler ships arrived safely at the refugee stations and Zekk had settled in, he went back to his quarters on the Lightning Rod, having declined the colonists’ offer of an assigned bunk inside the cramped station. Besides, he needed rest and peace, to be away from the crowds, away from so many people whose lives had suffered such tragedy. He slept for a full eleven standard hours, awakening stiff and sore … but no longer exhausted, no longer at the edge of despair.

Back on the bustling refugee station, he made his way toward the upper levels, taking a series of crowded turbolifts. People moved about, chattering with each other, discussing what they had lost and what they had saved, already making plans for their return to the surface of Ennth. Zekk nodded in greeting, but did not join in their conversation. Something disturbed him greatly about their persistence, their forced optimism, their blindness to the tragedy they could have avoided—but he could not pinpoint it.

When he finally reached the popular observation deck of the old cargo hauler, Zekk scanned the groups of people until he saw Rastur standing alone, hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out one of the windowports. The others left the stern man to himself, glancing sideways at him, then murmuring sadly to each other as they looked down upon the blistering surface of Ennth. The world boiled below them.

The rigid man moved to one side and stared through a macro-telescope mounted on a stand near the observation ports. He stared for a long, long time.

Zekk came up behind him. “Is it all gone?” he said.

Rastur was not startled. “I’ve checked out the positions of all our cities. Newest Coast Town, Another Hopetown, Heartland Settlement. I see nothing. No sign that we were ever there…. Once again, it’ll be a whole new world just waiting for us.”

Zekk looked through the scope and saw flaming trenches of lava. Black pillars of smoke rose up through the roiling thunderclouds. As the immense moon moved away in its orbit and stopped kneading Ennth’s surface, the weather would stabilize again, the rains would come, the lava would cool—and Ennth would be a clean slate, ready for the colonists again.

And again and again.

“Why do you bother?” Zekk finally asked. He clamped his lips tight as Rastur looked at him in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you keep coming back, when you know everything will be destroyed again in less than a decade—over and over? Every time, there’s so much pain, so much death, so much destruction.”

“And so much renewal,” Rastur added. He pointed down. “I have already begun seismic studies, mapping out a good location to build our next Hopetown. I will also choose the best spot for erecting the house Shinnan and I designed together. Maybe I’ll find another wife, or maybe I’ll Live alone. Life goes on. We must continue to do our best.”

“But why, when you know it’s hopeless? Why not go someplace where you can live out your lives in safety, build something that will last for future generations? There are plenty of other planets.”

Rastur’s eyebrows knitted together. “Because this is our home,” he said, as if the answer was obvious.

“Then find another home,” Zekk said. “I’ve lived many different places.”

“Yes, and now you’ve come back to Ennth,” Rastur said. “It all comes back to Ennth. This is our colony. We paid for it with our blood and our sweat. We can’t just abandon it.”

“Even when you know more people will die in eight years?”

“And many more people will be born in eight years,” Rastur said stubbornly. “On a planet with four seasons, the colonists live and work during the spring and summer and autumn, then crawl back into their shelters during the wintertime, preparing for next spring.

“We all go about our lives during the daytime and return to sleep at night, before another day begins. Ennth is just the same. We have seven and a half years of building and renewal and success, before we must retreat for a year during this time of groundquakes and volcanic eruptions. But then we come back again and rebuild and continue our lives. It is an endless cycle.”

Zekk was angry now, unwilling to accept this way of thinking. “It is a pointless cycle,” he said.

“But you are one of us, Zekk,” Rastur said. “You’ll understand in time. Once you see what it means to invest all of your hope and heart in a place—a home—you won’t be able to leave so easily.”

Zekk drew in a deep breath. “Then perhaps I should just leave now,” he said. “I thought this planet might become my home again … but this isn’t the kind of change I’m looking for in my life. You can have Ennth and your endless cycle. I need something more permanent.”

Zekk raced away from the Ennth system in the Lightning Rod, not turning back to look at the bloated refugee stations or the angry moon whose gravity still ravaged the planetary surface.

He flew on, his eyes and mind grimly focused forward. He would follow the Force now—the light side—letting it direct him. He would bounce from place to place until he found his destiny.

He knew that if he trusted the Force, he couldn’t go wrong.