Which side of an Ewok has the most fur?
The outside!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

IT LOOKED LIKE THE STARS JUST KEPT EXPLODING. THERE WOULD BE a few moments of tranquillity when the blue-flecked curtain of space hung outside the blastboat canopy, as still and stunning as the first time Han had sat in a pilot’s seat. His chest would go hollow with awe at the vast beauty before him, and he would be struck by what a gift his life had been, by how much his famous Solo luck had brought him—the freedom to wander an entire galaxy at will, a real live Princess for a wife, and children who had made him proud…almost all the time.

Then the swirling ion trail of a starfighter would come corkscrewing out of the dark, or the luminous halo of an approaching frigate would drift into view. Boiling balls of fire would erupt ahead, like stars going nova. The blastboat would chug when Leia and Saba returned fire, and a bright, shrinking disk might flare away as Luke launched a concussion missile. R2-D2 would scroll a tactical update across the pilot’s display, C-3PO would declare their imminent doom, and Han would slam the yoke to one side, diving away into the shelter of the star-dappled void.

But this time, the proximity alarm broke out squawking, and crooked snakes of color began to jump across space in front of the cockpit canopy. Blue rings of ion glow formed in the dancing iridescence ahead and swelled into the backlit forms of an arriving war fleet. Almost instantly, columns of turbolaser fire began to streak back and forth between the newcomers and the disorganized Remnant flotilla that had been trying for hours to chase off the Jedi raiding force.

Han pointed their nose straight at the heart of the arriving fleet, trying to run parallel to the fiery torrent rather than ducking out before he had some sense of the newcomers’ gunnery patterns. Despite his efforts, one bolt flashed past close enough to rock the blastboat sideways and darken the canopy blast-tinting. The shield generator sizzled with strain, and the cabin filled with the caustic scent of melting circuitry.

Han cursed, then checked his tactical display and saw that not just one, but two fleets were arriving: a mixed bag of Galactic Alliance defectors clustered around Cha Niathal’s Ocean, and a flotilla of old Empire-era Star Destroyers and Scimitar-class frigates led by Daala’s renowned Chimaera.

“The Conniver Sisters One and Two,” Han commented. “Who invited them?”

“I wasn’t aware that battles required invitations,” C-3PO said, reaching for the blastboat’s comm controls. “But we should certainly extend a gracious welcome.”

“You’re asking me to lie?” Han asked. “No way.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Captain Solo,” C-3PO replied. “We are in desperate need of relief, and they clearly appear to be taking our side.”

“The only side those two take is their own,” Han said. “They’re just here because they smell blood and want to see what they can pick off for themselves.”

“Nevertheless, they are shooting at our enemies instead of us, which is the very definition of ally in nearly six thousand galactic cultures,” C-3PO noted. “Might I suggest that now would be an excellent time to broaden your horizons?”

“No.”

The intensifying brilliance of an oncoming turbolaser strike flared before Han’s eyes. He pushed the yoke forward, then slammed into his shoulder restraints as the bolt skipped off their shields and bounced the blastboat downward. The generators failed with an earsplitting thraaawkk, and acrid yellow fumes began to pour out of the recirculation vents.

R2-D2 let out a long stream of beeps and tweedles, and damage reports began to scroll across the pilot’s display. Their shields were only down until Luke could bring the backups online, but a coolant line had sprung a leak—that explained the acrid fumes—and their fusion core was about to start overheating.

“You see?” C-3PO asked. “Even Artoo is frightened, and that never happens. We should definitely request an escape vector and let them take over the fight.”

“Not going to happen, Goldenrod.” Han spotted a flight of XJs and antique TIEs streaming away from the two fleets and dropped into their transit lane, then swung back toward Nickel One. “Not while my daughter is still down there in that rock.”

The frigate that had been pursuing them most recently hung in the distance, a little above their plane of orientation, a knobby-ended cylinder trailing a long, curving tail of ions as it turned away from the oncoming fleets. Beyond it floated Nickel One itself, an inky-black nugget visible only in the sense that its dark mass blotted out the stars beyond. Swarming around the asteroid were the flickering pinpoints of perhaps a hundred vessels: the Remnant’s scattered flotilla rushing to regroup and defend their conquest.

Two-thirds of those flickering pinpoints were probably Starhunters or other small combat craft, which meant that the Remnant would be slightly outnumbered—at least until the Alliance’s Fourth Fleet returned from its escort duty to support them. Unlike the Third Fleet, which had lost nearly a quarter of its strength to Niathal’s call for desertion at Fondor, the Fighting Fourth remained at nearly full strength. It would be more than a match for Niathal and Daala—especially under the capable command of Gavin Darklighter.

Not being privy to Alliance military plans—or to the level of Darklighter’s commitment to his Darth-in-chief—Han had no idea how long it would take the Fourth to arrive. But he knew that once it did, getting through to extract Jaina would be impossible, even for him.

And he wasn’t about to let that happen. He was already so frightened for her that he could feel his heart shaking—and so sad about her mission that he hadn’t eaten anything but nutripills in a week. The thought of letting her be trapped down there after she finished her mission was more than he could bear…and he didn’t need the Force to know he wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Han opened a channel to the squadron’s number two blastboat. “Jag, you there?”

“This is Dry Ice, receiving you crisp and clean,” came Jagged Fel’s always proper reply. “Proceed.”

“We’re going in,” Han said. “You coming?”

Before Jag could reply, Leia’s voice came over the cockpit speaker. “Going in where, Han?”

“You know where,” Han replied.

“But she hasn’t sent the extraction code,” Leia objected. “We don’t even know which rendezvous point.”

“And if we wait to find out, it won’t matter,” Han replied. “Unless you can think of some way to convince Niathal and Daala to stop spooking the Imperials until we’re finished here.”

Leia was silent for a moment, then said, “Okay, maybe you have a point.”

“It would seem so,” Jag said. “We’ll join you at Extraction Point Alpha and hope for the best.”

A string of cannon bolts appeared out of empty space and came straight for the canopy. Han did not even check the tactical display to see where the attack had come from; he simply jerked the yoke up to the left—then, as their belly armor pinged with hits, cringed and wondered what was taking Luke so long to bring the backup shield generators online.

A pair of laser beams flashed past from behind the blastboat, so close to the canopy that Han felt their heat on his face. Then Fett’s voice sounded over the comm speaker.

“Right, you crazy barve!” Another pair of beams flashed past from behind, this time not quite so close to the canopy. “Who goes left?”

Han jinked to the right, then saw two sets of twin circles flash past as Fett and his wingmate rushed ahead to engage the blastboat’s attacker.

“I never did like having that guy on my tail.” Han was juking and jinking so hard that he had not even noticed that the belly turrets had gone quiet. “Hey, Saba, you okay down there?”

“Okay? How can this one be okay?” She sounded more angry than hurt. “You are letting him steal our kill!”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Master Sebatyne,” Leia said. “This looks like a pack hunt to me.”

With Fett and his wingmate now taking the brunt of the attack, Han finally had a chance to glance down and see what had opened up on them. The tactical display showed a Cutlass-class corvette coming out to block their approach.

“Where’d he come from?” Han demanded.

“I believe he came under the frigate,” C-3PO said. “There may be more Remnant vessels lurking back there—it might be wise to wait for support from Admirals Daala and Niathal.”

“And let Buckethead beat us to the asteroid?” Han pushed the throttles to the overload stops, trying to keep up with the Bes’uliike. “No way.”

Boiling puffs of color began to flower ahead as the corvette opened up with its entire bank of bantam turbolasers. Han swung the yoke hard left, easy right, then slammed it forward—diving straight toward a cloud of red flame that had blossomed a few centiseconds before.

“Captain Solo,” C-3PO began, “have you forgotten that our shields—”

“No.” Han was already rolling away from the fireball. “And don’t tell me the odds, either.”

“There really wouldn’t be a point,” C-3PO replied. “Without functional shields, our chances of reaching the asteroid’s surface are too small to calculate.”

A triangle of turbolaser strikes blossomed ahead, and Han finally recognized the firing pattern as a RandoCluster Three. While it was impossible to guess where the next volley would erupt, the pattern was actually one of the easiest to penetrate. All you had to do was be lucky.

Han took them through the center of the fiery triangle and saw the white frown of a Cutlass-class prow pumping streaks of blazing color in their direction. Two pairs of blue disks—all that was visible of the two Bes’uliike Fett and his wingmate were flying—were swinging back and forth along the upper edge of the cockpit canopy, pouring dashes of blue light back toward the corvette.

“Hey, Luke—how about those shields?” Han called back.

There was no answer, and the shield lights on Han’s status panel remained dead red.

“Luke?”

The only answer came from R2-D2, a confused whistle, followed by a long descending tweedle.

“Oh dear,” C-3PO said. “It seems Master Skywalker is no longer with us.”

“What?” Han’s heart clenched so tight it seemed to stop beating, but he kept his gaze fixed on the rapidly growing corvette. “How? Our hull hasn’t even been breached!”

The upper cannon turret fell silent, and Leia called down, “Not dead, Han. He’s in a…” She paused, searching for the word, then finally explained, “I don’t know how to explain it. Luke’s just sort of…gone.”

“Sort of gone?” Han echoed. He couldn’t help himself—he had to look. “How can you be…”

Han let his sentence trail away, for Luke was sort of gone. His body remained strapped into his seat, with his hands resting on the systems console and his gaze fixed between the shield status display and the targeting screen. But it was like looking at one of those figures in the House of Plastex back on Coruscant. Luke wasn’t breathing, he wasn’t moving, he wasn’t even blinking; he just wasn’t there.

“Great.” When Han looked forward again, it was to see that the corvette’s beam-spewing arch had grown as long as his arm. He transferred missile control to the pilot’s station and sent four concussion missiles streaming toward its bridge. “Now he decides to take some time for himself.”

Caedus deactivated his crimson blade, leaving a blackened hole where the red helmet’s eye plate had been just a moment before. The Strategic Planning Forum had fallen blissfully still. The Mandalorians were dead or close to it, the sniper had retreated into the projection booth to reload and regroup, and the Moffs were crouching in the seat rows, too shocked and confused to start bellowing orders that were sure to prove worse than useless.

Only the two Elite Guard stormtroopers who had survived the Mandalorian onslaught seemed to realize that the battle had not ended. The pair were kneeling opposite each other in the second row of seats, silently slipping thermal detonators into the grenade launchers they had affixed to their blaster muzzles. This sniper would not be killed so easily, but in the time it would take to tell them that, they would learn it for themselves.

Caedus started toward the Moffs, treading on armored bodies and ruined seating with equal disregard. He could see already that his plan had worked beautifully. Several of the Moffs who had been speaking against him—including those fools, young Voryam Bhao and flabby-necked Krom Rethway—lay sprawled across the battle-chewed seats with open eyes and smoking wounds. The rest were peering at Caedus with expressions ranging from awe to gratitude to shrewd comprehension.

As Caedus neared the bottom row of seats, the stormtroopers raised their weapons and sent their detonators flying toward the sniper’s hiding place with the characteristic grenade launcher whumpfs. Their aim was true, and both orbs shot straight into the booth’s projection aperture—then came flying back out toward the shocked troopers and astonished Moffs.

Caedus was ready. He caught both detonators with the Force…then had to close his eyes as two crackling balls of white erupted above him. The air filled with the acrid stench of disintegrated stone and vaporized durasteel, and the pop and sizzle of electrical short circuits began to sputter through a two-meter circle that had been melted through the booth wall. Several Moffs turned and quickly opened fire into the hole.

“No.” Caedus used the Force to make himself heard over the scream of their blasters. He motioned at the stormtrooper survivors. “You two, secure the Moffs in the anteroom. I’ll handle the sniper personally.”

“Personally?” Moff Westermal asked in his deep, refined voice. “Are you sure that’s wise, Lord Caedus? You’re already injured.”

“Kosimo makes a good point,” Lecersen added. “Let the Elite Guard deal with the sniper. The rest of the company will be here any moment.”

“My injuries are of no concern,” Caedus said, trying not to smile. They had called him Lord Caedus; a New Empire was at hand. “And the Elite Guard won’t be arriving in time. I’m afraid the Mandalorians sealed this section of the command warren before their attack.”

Caedus waved the Moffs up toward the anteroom, then turned back to the projection booth to see the muzzle of a pellet accelerator pushing through a makeshift firing port, which the sniper had cut through the projectionist’s blaster-scorched viewing pane. He managed to raise the arm on his injured side in the weapon’s general direction, then reached out with the Force and made a twisting motion with his hand. The barrel trembled for an instant, then started to bend against the edge of the firing port.

The sniper was not surprised. The weapon simply spun free as it was abruptly released, and the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber sounded from inside the projection booth. Despite the pellet wound his shoulder had suffered earlier, Caedus did not hesitate to activate his own blade. His pain would only fuel his power, and if he did not attack the sniper, he knew the sniper would attack him. He Force-leapt up through the hole into the smoky, flashing interior of the booth and pivoted around to block the fan of blue light that came slicing toward his neck even before he could sense who he was fighting.

Whoever it was, the enemy was good.

Caedus felt a boot slam into his ribs—an instant before he saw it coming with his Aing-Tii fighting-sight—and the breath left his lungs. He countered with a head-high backslash and brought his own foot up, landing a Force-enhanced snap-kick between the legs of the brown-robed blur attacking him. The blow drew a pained grunt but failed to even stagger his foe.

A bony elbow slammed up under his chin, rocking him onto his heels. Then, finally, Caedus felt a familiar tingle in the back of his mind, and he saw the image of a violet blade slashing at his vulnerable side. He swept his own lightsaber down across the front of his body in a desperate reverse block that barely caught the attack in time to prevent it from slicing him in two, then whirled into a spinning back kick that landed squarely in his foe’s stomach and drove him back…a mere two steps.

It was enough.

Now Caedus could see who he was fighting, and he could not believe it. A gaunt-faced man with eyes as blue and cold as vardium steel, nostrils flaring red with anger and exertion, a thin-lipped snarl filled with confidence and disdain.

Luke Skywalker.

Just a few minutes earlier, Caedus had sensed his uncle’s presence far above Nickel One, in the same blastboat as his mother, father, and Saba Sebatyne. And now here Luke was, inside the asteroid. Even Jedi Grand Masters could not be in two places at once—Caedus knew that—but he did not waste time being confused.

All that mattered was that Luke was here, somehow, and that he was the one swordsman in the galaxy whom Caedus did not dare fight one-armed. Even as Luke leapt forward weaving a basket of lightsaber slashes, Caedus sprang back out of the projection booth, launching himself into a high Force flip designed to put as much distance between himself and his attacker as possible.

Luke flew after him, not even bothering to try for the high position, simply coming up under him with a wild slash combination that was anything but subtle or deft or even tricky; just pure relentless ferocity. Caedus had to stretch himself out belly-down in midair to meet the attack, and even calling on the Force to bolster the strength in his good arm, it was all he could do to keep the powerful strikes from knocking his guard aside and leaving him wide open.

They started to drop, trading a trio of lightning-fast blows that left Caedus’s hands stinging and his heart racing. The last time he had fought Luke, he had started with a painful kidney wound but two good arms—and barely managed to survive. Now, with a relatively bearable shoulder wound and a single good arm, he had to do more than survive, he had to prevail—because now there would be no mercy at the last minute. This time, his uncle would not care whether he survived as long as Caedus died, because now Luke knew the truth about who had killed his wife.

After the third exchange, Caedus and Luke came down in the seating area, two rows apart. Both landed on their feet, Luke more lightly than Caedus.

Caedus deactivated his lightsaber and flicked his hand downward, arming the dart thrower he had begun wearing beneath his sleeve after their last fight.

But Luke did something even more unexpected, removing one hand from his lightsaber and pushing the palm forward. An instant later, the unseen hammer of a Force blast caught Caedus in the sternum and drove him not over, but through the seats behind him.

He slammed into the next row and dropped to the floor foot-to-foot with the big Mandalorian he had killed earlier—the one in the black armor and red helmet. Caedus’s head was spinning and his chest was more than aching—it was throbbing, burning, clenching so tightly he could hardly breathe.

But he still had his lightsaber—and he needed it. He thumbed the activation switch and brought the weapon up just as Luke’s blue blade came slicing down toward him. Caedus caught it on his own crimson blade, then straightened his arm, simultaneously parrying and pointing the dart thrower on his wrist into his attacker’s face.

“Release!” he commanded.

A faint puff of air tickled Caedus’s forearm as the thrower launched its darts, but Luke was already whirling out of the way. The slivers streaked past in a harmless black flash and vanished; then Luke was spinning into the row where Caedus lay, positioning himself above Caedus’s head for the coup de grâce.

There was no time to leap up or loose a bolt of Force lightning, and the angle was particularly poor for blocking and parrying. Caedus’s only hope lay at his feet, and he seized that hope with the Force, using it to pull the dead Mandalorian up over him, then hurling the corpse headlong into Luke.

Two bodies collided with the sharp crack of metal impacting bone. When Caedus did not die in the next instant, he realized he had finally driven his uncle onto the defensive. He rolled to a knee, his lightsaber ignited and raised between them.

Luke lay buried beneath the huge Mandalorian, blood pooling around his head and one motionless arm protruding beneath the fellow’s side. By all appearances, Luke Skywalker was dead—or at least unconscious.

Caedus’s heart began to pound not with fear, but with excitement. His visions of late had been filled with his uncle’s face—Luke Skywalker attacking him here on Nickel One, Luke firing on him from one of Fett’s Bes’uliike, Luke sitting on Caedus’s throne, claiming the New Empire as his own. Had he—Lord Caedus—finally put an end to those visions—finally ruled out the possibility of those futures becoming the future?

Eager as he was to be rid of Luke, Caedus was also suspicious. His uncle had been using a new fighting style, one that he had never taught his students at the Jedi academy—one that he had never, as far as Caedus knew, used on anyone who had survived to describe it. The style was essentially conservative, brutal, and ruthless, designed to deal damage without suffering it—and not all that tricky.

Which meant now would be the perfect time to switch styles and trap an unwary opponent by playing dead. Using the Force to keep the Mandalorian pressed firmly down on Luke, Caedus retreated twenty paces to the body of a fallen stormtrooper, then deactivated his lightsaber and tucked it under his wounded arm. When Luke still did not move, he pulled a fragmentation grenade off the trooper’s equipment belt. He thumbed the arming slide, then sent the grenade sailing toward his uncle and the dead Mandalorian.

Despite the ringing in her ears and the gauze in her head—despite her hugely aching skull and the big knot of hurt swelling on her brow—Jaina had never been so filled with the Force. She could feel it in every cell of her body, swirling through her like fire, burning more ferociously every moment. She had never felt so strong or so quick or so alert. She could drive her fist through a durasteel wall, or catch a blaster bolt between her fingers. Despite the red curtain of blood cascading from the gash where Vatok’s helmet had split her forehead, she was aware of everything.

Including that grenade sailing toward her.

So Jaina reached out with the Force and sent it flying back toward her brother. An instant later, the weight pressing down on her grew lighter as Caedus’s attention shifted to the grenade. She started to Force-hurl her friend’s body off—then recalled how her brother had been anticipating her attacks. She grabbed the beskad hanging from Vatok’s waist, then sent his body flying after the grenade.

The iron saber had barely cleared its scabbard before the hammerfist of a grenade detonation jolted the forum. Vatok’s body was silhouetted against the orange flash of the explosion. Jaina held him there, shielding herself from the fiery heat of the blast, and felt the searing bite of shrapnel only in her legs.

The detonation swept the last wisps of gauze from Jaina’s mind. Not waiting to see if she had been seriously injured, she let her friend’s body drop to the floor and leapt after her brother, lightsaber in one hand and Vatok’s beskad in the other.

Caedus turned to meet her with his good arm forward and his wounded shoulder behind. Jaina struck high with the lightsaber and low with the beskad. Caedus slipped back, allowing both blades to pass, then sprang forward and counterthrust, trying to impale her with her own momentum.

Jaina was already spinning past his crimson blade, pivoting on a dead stormtrooper’s chest plate as she brought Vatok’s beskad around at neck height. But Caedus had anticipated her once again, leaning away to take the blow on his wounded shoulder rather than across his throat.

Jaina did not even feel the beskad cleaving bone. She simply heard a voice—Jacen’s voice—cry out in shock and pain; then an arm landed on her boots. In the next instant Caedus was whirling away, screaming and flapping a red stump, and something hot and wet splashed across Jaina’s face and throat and began to burn like acid.

A part of her—the part that had grown up with Jacen and trained with him on Yavin 4 and traded snowballs at Coruscant’s polar playgrounds—was too horrified to act. That part wanted to stand paralyzed in shock, to pretend this was just some terrible nightmare from which she would shortly awaken. The other part—the part that had actually asked for this mission—knew what would happen if she let herself freeze.

Jaina launched herself after Caedus. The loss of an arm did not seem to faze him. He simply turned to meet her attack, his yellow eyes blazing with pain and fury, and their lightsabers met in a brilliant explosion of color. Jaina brought the beskad around again, striking low for his thigh…and knew she was in trouble when Caedus did not even try to block.

Caedus deactivated his lightsaber and let it drop between them. Jaina felt the beskad begin to bite, then her brother’s palm sank deep into the pit of her stomach. In the next instant she was riding a bolt of Force lightning across the chamber, her muscles cramping, her teeth grinding, her ears roaring with the fiery sizzle of burning synapses.

A full second later, she slammed into a durasteel wall and felt a terrible popping in her ribs, then dropped to the floor, still holding her lightsaber and the beskad. The Force lightning had died away, but her muscles remained useless aching knots, and the stench of scorched flesh was so powerful she wanted to retch. Instead, she tried to rise—and succeeded only in sparking a dozen different kinds of pain.

Across the chamber, her brother was in little better shape. He sat slumped in a half-collapsed chair, his remaining hand clamped over the stump of his missing arm, his thigh wound dripping blood onto the floor. His yellow eyes were staring at Jaina more in confusion than rage, and his head was cocked as though he could not quite believe what he was seeing.

“You?” he gasped. “Jaina?”

Jaina managed to raise her throbbing head. It hurt—a lot—and her vision was starting to blur.

“I haven’t changed that much, Jacen,” she said. With her muscle control beginning to return, she pushed herself into a kneeling position. “And I hope you know how much this Sith nonsense is steaming Mom and Dad.”

If Caedus heard her wisecrack, he did not show it. His yellow eyes began to dart around the chamber, searching for something Jaina did not understand—but maybe that was just because her head was throbbing so bad. The pain was beginning to muddle her thoughts.

Somehow, Caedus forced himself back to his feet. That would have been impressive—if it weren’t so kriffing scary.

“Where’s Luke?” he demanded.

“Right behind me,” Jaina said, also standing. The effort sent pangs of anguish shooting through her lungs, and she realized she had a few broken ribs to go with the lightning scorch on her chest. She squinted in his direction, trying to keep him in focus so she could kill him. “Come over here, and I’ll show you.”

That brought Caedus’s gaze snapping back toward her, and Jaina realized she might have overplayed her hand. She still had both arms, but the fact that her brother remained standing at all proved how much greater his Force powers were than her own. She tossed the beskad aside and summoned a fallen stormtrooper’s power blaster to hand.

Then Jaina sensed someone watching her from the direction of the antechamber where the Moffs had fled. She looked up to find a pair of gray blurs dropping into firing positions in the doorways. She loosed a burst of suppression fire toward the two troopers, then Force-flipped up into the cover offered by the ruined projection booth, landing backward so she would be facing her enemy and in a position to defend herself.

Jaina’s boots had not even touched the floor before the stormtroopers opened fire. She dropped the power blaster and used her lightsaber to deflect their bolts, angling them down toward her brother. If she kept him busy enough, he wouldn’t be able to hurl another lightning attack her way. His lightsaber snapped to life and began to weave a crimson shield in front of him.

Then Jaina experienced an abrupt draining as her Force energies returned to their normal level. Suddenly she felt cold, tired, and in pain, and she barely had the strength to hold her lightsaber as it flicked back and forth, batting away blaster bolts. She retreated deeper into the projection booth, stumbling over combat debris that she normally would have sensed without any conscious thought. When she reached the wrecked control panel, she could finally drop behind cover.

Caedus’s voice sounded out in the forum, still deep and booming and strong. “Not her! Skywalker is the dangerous one.”

Skywalker?

Was Jaina beginning to hear things now, too? Or was Caedus beginning to imagine them?

The blasterfire shifted away from the projection booth and grew more erratic. Jaina poked her head up, peering over the scorched control panel through what remained of the projectionist’s one-way viewport.

Her brother was limping up toward the anteroom, finally starting to look a little weak and dizzy himself. His good hand was still holding the stump of his severed arm. But his yellow eyes were round with fear and his brow was furrowed with anger, and he was looking toward the far corner of the chamber, which Jaina could not see from her vantage point.

“There, you fools!” he yelled. “Blast him!”

The two stormtroopers seemed to study the corner for a moment, then obediently opened fire again. Energy bolts quickly began to ricochet back into the seats, but whether they were being deflected by a lightsaber or merely bouncing off the walls was impossible to guess.

Jaina did not have the energy to investigate. She dropped back to her haunches and opened herself completely to the Force, drawing it into her exhausted, battered body from all sides. The muffled crumphs of door-breaker charges began to sound somewhere out in the forum as the rest of the Elite Guard began to blast their way into the battle area. She knew that her mission had just gone from difficult to impossible, but when was she ever going to get a better chance? Caedus was wounded and weak, and if she could just catch up to him, she might be able to finish him.

An urgent clatter began to build out in the forum as stormtroopers poured through the entrances they had just blasted open. Jaina rose and ignited her lightsaber, but before she could step back into the breach, she sensed a nervous insectoid presence studying her from the far end of the booth.

Jaina turned to look. The technician who had helped her earlier was poking his head through a melt hole in the rear wall.

“Jedi Solo, are you ready to depart?” the Verpine asked.

“Depart?” Jaina frowned; what a foolish idea. “Hardly. Caedus is still alive.”

The Verpine nodded. “Yes, my hive mates report that he is being rushed to the infirmary,” he said. “And your extraction team will meet you at SurfaceHatch TenCrater.”

“Can’t.” Jaina shook her head, then nearly lost it as she tried to peer out into the forum and drew a volley of blasterfire. She whirled around and looked back toward the Verpine, who was crouching just outside the melt hole, trembling. “Can you get me into the infirmary?”

“No!” the Verpine replied. “You are too damaged to fight. I am worried you can’t even make it to TenCrater on your own. I may have to carry you.”

Jaina waved him off. She couldn’t let Caedus regroup. She had already lost the advantage of surprise, and the one thing she knew for certain was that if she let him recover—

“Your extraction team is in a precarious position itself.” The Verpine was having to yell to make himself heard above the blasterfire. “They insist you come now.”

Jaina felt her mother reaching out to her in the Force, calling her back. She could sense not only the fear her mother felt for her, but also the teeth-grinding terror of combat—and a certain sense of demand that carried with it the hard edge of an order.

Jaina sighed. She had promised the Council to obey orders. “Okay, okay.” She made a dash—more of a stumble—for the exit. “Tell them we’re coming!”