Hetzal system monitoring station

A monitoring station was located far out in the Hetzal system of the Outer Rim Territories by 232 BBY. It was crewed by two Galactic Republic scantechs, Vel Carann and Merven Getter, who monitored incoming and departing starships in the star system. The scantechs could also use the station's computers to send out a high-priority system-wide alert in case of an emergency.
In 232 BBY, debris from the destroyed freighter Legacy Run began emerging in the Hetzal system. Carann and Getter, unaware of the nature of the unidentified near-lightspeed objects, tracked their trajectories and briefly speculated on their identity before realizing they had to send out a system-wide alert and evacuate the station aboard its shuttle. After the scantechs sent out the alert, however, they both perished when one of the anomalies materialized in the station's vicinity and explosively collided with it.
==Description==
A monitoring station was located far out on the ecliptic of the Hetzal system, situated in grid square Q-16 of the Standard Galactic Grid as part of the Outer Rim Territories and the Slice. The station was at the far edge of its star system from the system's primary planet, Hetzal Prime.
The monitoring station had an operations deck that featured workstations for two scantechs. The workstations included computers with holoscreen monitors and keypads, with the computers' subroutines allowing to track and analyze the trajectories of space objects arriving or departing the system and also to run analysis of those objects' properties. The station's two crewmembers could also use their computers—with authorization codes being inputted from both of them—to send a system-wide high-priority alert, at which point an alarm would be sounded on the operations deck, as well. In addition, the monitoring station's complement included a shuttle that could be used for commuting to the inner system.
==History==
===Scantechs and subroutines===
By 232 BBY, the station was used to monitor the arrivals and departures of starships in the Hetzal system—the flight plans of which had usually been logged ahead of time. The facility had a crew of two Galactic Republic scantechs, the Mirialan Scantech (third-class) Merven Getter and Scantech (second-class) Vel Carann—who supervised Getter's work and also tended to read Jedi romances on a datapad while at her workstation. After the end of his shift, Getter, who lived on Hetzal Prime's Rooted Moon, would use the station's shuttle to travel to the spaceport there. He would afterward visit a local cantina and entertain the bartender Sella with stories about life on the far edge of the Hetzal system.
After the monitoring station's systems were once again upgraded at some point, Carann did not put in the effort to learn how to run the computer subroutines for analyzing the properties of the objects tracked by the facility. The subroutine for tracking the objects' trajectories, in contrast, had remained unchanged for around two years by 232 BBY.
===An alert sounded===
====Unexpected discovery====
At one point that year, not long before the end of Getter's shift aboard the monitoring station, he noticed on his screens the appearance in the system of a multitude of unidentified objects that were moving sunward at near-lightspeed—unbeknownst to either of the station's scantechs, the anomalies that reverted to realspace in the Hetzal system were debris from the freighter Legacy Run, which had been destroyed during hyperspace transit.
Getter's surprise at the unexpected appearances was noticed by Carann, and both scantechs then proceeded to speculate on the possible identity of the anomalies. After Carann admitted that she did not know how to run an analysis on the objects, Getter suggested that she track their trajectories instead.
====Time to go====
Eventually, both Carann and Getter noticed that many of the anomalies were on an intercept course with the system's inhabited worlds, with upcoming collisions projected to cause a high number of casualties. Getter, realizing that the station was in the objects' target zone, suggested that they evacuate via using the facility's shuttle. Carann agreed, though she also brought up their imperative of sending out a system-wide alert first. After the scantechs sent out the signal, they both moved to evacuate, with Getter noting that they could send an accompanying explanatory message on the way. At that moment, however, an anomaly materialized in the station's vicinity and collided with it, causing it to explode and both Carann and Getter to perish.
Later, while an alarm triggered by the alert was being sounded at the office of the Hetzal system's Minister Zeffren Ecka at the Ministerial Residence of Aguirre City, the minister's counselor Daan explained to him that the alert had originated from the monitoring station. The counselor further noted that, due to the lack of response to the inquiries as to the cause of the alert, it was believed that the station had been destroyed.
==Behind the scenes==
The Hetzal system monitoring station was created for the 2021 novel Light of the Jedi, written by Charles Soule as part of the Star Wars: The High Republic multimedia project's Phase I. Prior to the publication of Light of the Jedi, the chapter of the novel in which the monitoring station appears was published on StarWars.com on November 20, 2020.
==Appearances==
*The High Republic: Light of the Jedi 
==Sources==
* 
*The High Republic Free Digital Sampler
==Notes and references==
Category:Galactic Republic space stations
Category:Hetzal system space stations
Category:Unidentified space stations