“Okay,” Elzar said, his tone thoughtful. “I might have an idea. I’ve never tried it, but the theory is sound. You’ll be able to sense what I’m doing. Anything you can do to help would be appreciated. I can’t imagine I’ll be able to do this alone.”

Elzar seated himself on the ground, folding his legs together, then lifted his arms and closed his eyes. Avar reached out, trying to follow what he was doing. He was calling on the Force…but to do what?

She suspected this was one of his…refinements. Ideas were constantly popping into his head, ways the Force might be used to do new things, new ways the light side might answer his call. He failed, all the time, but she found his commitment to bringing new ideas to the Jedi inspiring. To Elzar Mann, what the Jedi were was nowhere near as interesting as what they could be.

Avar listened to the song of the Force…and suddenly she understood what Elzar was trying to do.

Impossible, she sent to him, a concept basic enough to be conveyed through the very loose emotional linkage the Force could give them.

He smiled, not opening his eyes.

Help me, he sent back.


Elzar Mann was talking to the air. It was hot here at the surface, above the furiously working droids, but much cooler high above. The hot air was rising, as it liked to do, but slowly. Not fast enough.

He asked the Force to help with that, and it responded, though sluggishly. Air was heavier than it looked.

Then, an easing, and he knew Avar was with him. That was good. Everything was easier when she was at his side. Literally, in fact—he opened his eyes briefly to see that she had knelt next to him, her forearms resting loosely on her thighs, her palms facing upward and her eyes closed, her face tilted up toward the sky.

The small patch of heated air rose higher, both Jedi creating currents to waft it into the sky above the plateau. This did very little to cool the navidroid array, though that was not really the idea here.

As the hot air rose, it reached cooler zones higher in the atmosphere. The heated air carried moisture with it, evaporated from the surface. Those tiny molecules of water found one another, touched, connected.

Elzar and Avar did it together, nudging the air, helping it do what it wanted to do anyway, helping the individual bits of water become one. Elzar felt something like exultation. Not pride—that was not the Jedi way—but joy in a difficult job being done well, by two people connecting on a deep level, without any need to explain to each other what they were doing.

They had always been this way, ever since their Padawan days. Their connection made many things better—but if he was being honest with himself…it also made some things worse.

The two Jedi worked. Elzar felt exhaustion creeping over him. He and Avar were only working with a small region of the atmosphere, a relatively tiny volume of air. Shaping it, molding it, trying to bring it to a critical mass that would let the moon’s weather systems do the rest of the work—essentially creating a seed—but it was still grueling.Sweat poured from his body, and he knew that was only partially due to the heat rising off the array. Every breath became an effort, and his chest felt like it was being pressed in a vise, as if the air moving above was being sucked directly from his lungs.

But Elzar Mann did not stop, nor did Avar Kriss, and slowly, something began to appear in the sky above the plateau. Huge, gradually darkening as the moments passed.

A cloud.


Fifty-one thousand and eighteen navidroids remained, and while Keven had managed to keep the simulation intact—the vidscreen was now playing out the thirty-first Emergence, which meant they were just minutes away from being able to move past modeling things that had happened to projecting things that would happen—but there was no way the array would last that long. Every single remaining droid was in the red, even the most advanced models. Keven was maneuvering the pill droids above the entire array in big, sweeping arcs, trying to chill the whole thing at once. It was working, to some extent, buying them additional seconds—but his datapad also displayed their coolant reserves, and most were down to single digits.

At this point, all he could hope for was that they might be able to predict an Emergence or two…even a few might help prevent a future tragedy. They almost certainly wouldn’t be able to find the Legacy Run’s flight recorder system, which was obviously the secondary goal of all this—it would help them understand what had happened here and, hopefully, prevent it from ever occurring again.

But you took the good where you found it, and so Keven kept using the systems he had left, pushing them as far as he could, even as another few hundred navidroids burned out and died.

Something hit the back of his neck, startling him. It was soft, maybe an insect, or—

Another impact, this time on the back of his hand as it moved rapidly across his datapad’s surface, and he realized what was happening.

“It’s…it’s raining,” he heard Senator Noor say.

And suddenly, with a rumble of thunder, it was. Rain, pouring down over the array. Steam hissed up from the overstressed navidroids, and Keven had to swipe the side of his hand across his datapad to clear the water so he could read it. Temperatures were dropping rapidly, across every node. The navidroids were hardened for operation in vacuum—a bit of water wouldn’t hurt them.

Clouds of steam drifted up from the array, and Keven turned to look—first at the Jedi, Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann, who knelt side by side, arms lifted, eyes closed, trembling with sustained effort as the rain soaked their tunics. The Jedi looked as if they were trying to lift a starship with their bare hands. The sun was still bright off the plateau, and the light shone through the rain, causing a glinting spectrum to surround them both.

Beyond the straining Jedi, the vidscreen finally displayed something new: a zone of uninhabited space where the thirty-fourth Emergence would occur.

There had only been thirty-three Emergences to date.

The system worked. It was predicting the location of future Emergences, and as long as the rain held up, it would remain stable.

Keven realized that he hadn’t failed after all. He, Keven Tarr, a farmer’s son from Hetzal Prime, had sliced hyperspace.

What a strange galaxy this was.


Star Wars The High Republic Light of The Jedi Chapter 29