in the Force, he sensed the trajectory of the blasts, the line of their approach. His lightsaber spun through space, the Force-augmented motion stressing the hardsuit. The shots slammed into the yellow line of his blade, and he deflected them back at the ship’s cockpit. They split the space between them and knifed into the cockpit, which exploded into flame. The scout ship, bleeding smoke, streaked toward the pod.
“Port, Khedryn! Port!” Jaden shouted, watching the scout get closer and closer. The ship would slam into them both.
Straddling the pod, Jaden pushed with the Force against the oncoming ship, the pressure assisting the pod’s thrusters. He crouched low as the scout ship wheeled over and past them, so close he could have touched it with his fingertips. The ship continued its trajectory and velocity, not turning around, heading into the deep system. Perhaps the blasters had damaged its controls. Or perhaps killed the pilot.
“Khedryn,” Jaden said. “Are you all right?”
“Good,” Khedryn said. “I think.”
“Get us aboard, Marr,” Jaden said to the Cerean.
“Tractor beam has the pod,” Marr answered.
An alarm rang in Jaden’s suit, the sound surprisingly subdued given the urgency of its warning.
“I’m leaking,” he said.
“What?” Khedryn asked. “What did you say?”
Khedryn’s face appeared in the tiny viewport of the escape pod, his misaligned eyes fixing on Jaden’s faceplate. Worry twisted his bruised, bloody expression. He hit a button to activate the comm.
“Did you say you’re leaking?”
“Affirmative,” Jaden said.
Khedryn cursed.
“On my way,” Marr said.
Jaden deactivated his lightsaber and held out his arms, examining the hardsuit. It was venting air through a pinhole in the ankle seam and at the right elbow.
“I see them,” Khedryn said. “Two holes.”
Jaden did not comment. He wanted to preserve oxygen. His HUD told him he had twenty-nine seconds before the tanks emptied. Twenty-eight.
“I have twenty-seven seconds,” he said. “Twenty-six.”
“Hang in, Jaden,” Khedryn said. He put his palm on the glass of the viewport. “Hang in.”
Jaden nodded in his suit. He steadied heart and mind, trying to consume as little air as possible while watching Junker turn and blast toward him. Twenty seconds. Nineteen.
He was getting dizzy as his oxygen depleted. Junker’s tractor beam pulled the pod through space at a breakneck pace, even while Marr piloted the freighter toward them.
“I’m at twelve seconds,” Jaden said.
“Where the hell are you, Marr?” Khedryn asked.
“Ar-Six has the helm, Khedryn.”
“What?” Khedryn asked, indignant. “A droid is flying my ship?”
Spots formed before Jaden’s eyes. “Almost out,” he tried to say, but the words sounded garbled.
Marr’s voice echoed in his helmet. “Do you see the airlock, Master?”
Jaden tried to focus on Junker as it spun its side to the pod to show the hole of an open airlock. A form hovered there in the lighted box of the compartment: Marr in a hardsuit. His thruster flared and he shot toward Jaden. Jaden’s vision went in and out. He heard Khedryn’s voice in his head, but the words seemed far away, whispers he could not quite comprehend.
Marr appeared before him, his concerned face visible through the lit faceplate of the hardsuit. Jaden tried to speak but could not. Marr’s words cut through the clutter of his fading consciousness.
“I have you, Master.”
And then they were moving back toward Junker. Jaden stared at the open airlock, like a mouth in the side of the ship.
“It’s hungry,” he tried to say, smiling, but his lips would form neither words nor a smile, and a part of him recognized the ridiculousness of the observation.
Khedryn was barking over the comlink, but Jaden could not understand him, could not hold his eyes open.
* * *
The scout flyer shivered from an impact. An alarm screeched. In moments, Nyss smelled smoke.
“What happened?” he asked. “Syll, what happened?”
His sister did not respond. He hurried through the dim, close corridors of the flyer, the smell of smoke getting more acute. When he reached the cockpit and tried to push the door open, he found that something was blocking the door.
“Syll,” he called. “Syll!”
Nothing.
He muscled open the door and saw that it was his sister’s form that had obstructed it. Panic seized him; it sent his heart racing and stole his breath. He knelt at her side and turned her over so that he could see her face. Blood, warm and sticky, made her hair glisten. He probed her scalp for the wound, felt the indentation in her skull, and drew back as if she were hot.
“Syll,” he said.
She said nothing. Her eyes stared at him, empty, glassy, and he knew she was dead.