Shards of Alderaan

8

The controls of the Lightning Rod felt good in his hands. As he left Yavin 4 behind, turning away from the Jedi academy, Zekk knew that he had his whole life ahead of him and the whole universe to choose from….

But he didn’t know where to go.

Peckhum had shown him how to maneuver the battered craft during their close-knit days on Coruscant, when the old man had often taken his young friend along on supply runs. Back then, with no one but each other to rely on, Zekk and Peckhum had been partners in all their grand plans.

The grizzled trader was independent, bouncing from job to job, trying to make ends meet in whatever way he could. Zekk had operated as a scavenger in the planet-wide city’s lower levels, occasionally spending time with his unlikely friends Jaina and Jacen Solo.

Now, though, he had only himself … and he needed to choose a destination.

Zekk drifted out of the Yavin system, reveling in his freedom, the freedom to sever ties with his troubled past. He could create a new life for himself, start over and do things right this time—if only he could escape from the shadow-blot that continued to fill him, no matter how much light he tried to draw in.

After hours of aimless cruising, unwilling to dive into hyperspace without a preset course, Zekk finally selected a place to go-He would go home.

But not to any of the worlds in the Core Systems, where the Shadow Academy and Lord Brakiss had made him an integral part of their struggle for a Second Imperium. No, those planets would never be home, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.

And not back to Coruscant either. That place held too many bad memories for him, too much past.

He wanted to go where he could forget his last few years and start anew … a place he could still think of as home: the planet Ennth. That was where he had come from, where he had spent the first eight years of his life, where his parents had died in the recurring disaster that struck that world every eight years.

Zekk had been born on Ennth. Less than a year later, he and his parents had moved to one of the crowded and dirty refugee stations in orbit near Ennth, as his people waited for the planetary convulsions to subside so that the colonists could return and rebuild their ruined cities on the scorched ground. Zekk had been only a child when the new settlements—ambitious structures and waterways—were erected from prefabricated modules.

The fresh ash that had rained down from erupting volcanoes made Ennth’s agricultural lands fertile. Civilization on the planet had blossomed frantically during those quiet years, like a desperate flower in the desert after a rain, pouring its energy into a brief flash of life before time and the environment ultimately claimed it.

Zekk had been nine when the year of disasters returned. A bright and promising child, he had been evacuated and sent again to the crowded refugee stations, where he was expected to endure a miserable existence for many months … until the cycle of reconstruction and growth could begin all over.

That time, though, his parents had stayed on the surface too long, retrieving their last meaningless possessions, trying to salvage everything they had planted, as well as their furniture and mementos. A groundquake had struck unexpectedly. The seismic shock, larger than all previous ones, had its epicenter directly on New Hopetown, the village Zekk had helped build, the place a small boy had called home. Fissures opened up. Lava spewed forth….

And no one had survived.

Orphaned at only nine, his home destroyed, young Zekk had been smart enough to realize that he did not want to stay without guardians on a world that proved so resistant to human settlement.

Acting brashly, Zekk had stowed away on one of the supply ships, not knowing where he was headed or where his luck would take him.

Luck. He’d always had a knack for finding things, choosing the right path. It had seemed a coincidence back then, but Brakiss had taught Zekk that he had an aptitude for using the Force. It had helped Zekk escape from Ennth.

From that point on, he had hopped from one ship to another, scrounging a life for himself. He had finally hooked up with old Peckhum, who treated him with kindness and caring, giving him a chance.

Now it was time to go home.

He scoured the Lightning Rod’s navicomputer records, projecting holographic paths from the generator Jaina had newly repaired, as he searched for the proper coordinates. Ennth, by no means a popular world, was located on no major trade routes.

Luckily, Peckhum had several obscure navigational files—including records of the previous evacuation. Zekk was surprised to see that the old man had been to Ennth during the initial supply runs, helping to take people off the planet. Peckhum had never told Zekk…. Maybe his old friend felt somewhat responsible for not staying to do more for the colonists.

Zekk punched in the coordinates, anxious to see how much the anguished world had changed since he had left it. Eight years had passed.

The Lightning Rod shot into hyperspace.

When the planet appeared in front of him, long-forgotten memories flashed through Zekk’s mind. He sat in the pilot’s chair, powering up the comm system as the Lightning Rod settled into normal space again and approached Ennth.

The large moon had a pocked and cratered appearance, as if it held many mouths full of fangs waiting to devour human settlements on the primary world. The moon’s path was highly elliptical, oscillating around Ennth in an endless planetary dance. Once every eight years the orbit brought the two celestial partners so close together that the moon grazed Ennth’s atmosphere. Tidal forces and increased gravity cracked the ground, sparked volcanic eruptions, and kneaded the world’s surface, producing groundquakes and tidal waves. Hurricanes and storms destroyed anything on the exposed ground, while the approaching moon ripped away portions of the atmosphere, which was replenished by the volcanic outgassing from Ennth’s interior.

Now Zekk saw a bustling flotilla in orbit: merchant ships, rescue ships, traders, and a motley assortment of ragtag vessels, as well as huge cargo haulers that had been stripped of their hyperdrive engines to make more room for living quarters inside.

Refugee stations. Zekk recognized them from his previous unpleasant time spent aboard.

He had come at just the right moment, when people and his homeworld needed him the most. The colonists were evacuating Ennth again. This could be a way for him to redeem himself, a time to focus only on helping others.

The giant moon hovered close in the sky, hurtling along in its disruptive orbit. Zekk shuddered as a half-forgotten fear leaped within him. But he drove it back. He would have to rise above his fears if he was going to make a difference here.

The disaster was about to strike again.