“They’re steady.” Orla spoke with such confidence that Reath almost quit worrying about the idols himself. That flutter of darkness they inspired had gone mute, which was a relief. No more creepy warning visions, which was even better. It seemed their containment ritual had worked perfectly.

(Just one more advanced task he’d already accomplished and didn’t have to seek out on the frontier! Just one more thing that was important to study, and to write up for future generations of Jedi!)

Master Cohmac joined them only seconds before the announcement came. “We’re receiving a distress signal,” Leox called. “Traffic’s still shut down all over the place. Nobody else is going to reach them soon—”

“Go,” Master Cohmac commanded. “We’re ready to help.”

Reath readied himself. Was someone stranded, like they’d been not long before? That would be a fairly simple thing to fix, if so.

“We’re about to drop out of hyperspace!” Affie said. “Hang on!”

Reath grabbed his harness. Almost as soon as he’d closed his hands, the ship rocked once before settling into the familiar subluminous drag of realspace.

He unclipped his harness in the second before Leox muttered, “By the gods.”

“What?” Orla called. “What is it?”

“You’d better see this for yourselves.” He sounded breathless and yet somber. “I don’t have the words.”

The Jedi dashed to the bridge.

It wasn’t that unusual for a ship to run into trouble on its journey, to drop out of hyperspace to deal with whatever issue it was before continuing on. No doubt that was what had happened to strand a ship so deep in empty space, in the billion-kilometer stretch of nothing between various star systems.

What was unusual was to be almost arm’s reach from a ship on the point of destruction.

It appeared to be a personnel carrier, though it was hard to tell, crumpled and carbon-scored as its hull was. Not the carbon scoring that meant combat, with the streaks of weapon hits, but the more ominous kind, the expanding black blotches that indicated out-of-control fires within the ship. The upper areas of the ship, including the bridge, had already burned away. Probably that meant nobody was in charge of evacuations that needed to happen immediately. Reath couldn’t spot as much as one escape pod being fired.

He was preparing even before Orla said, “Okay, Leox, bring us to their airlock and prepare for docking.”

Affie gaped. “You want us to hook ourselves up to the ship on fire?”

“People inside are in trouble,” Reath said. “Nobody else is around. So it’s our job to get them out.”

Chapter Fourteen

The carrier Journeyman had left Cerea ferrying three hundred souls, through a hyperspace lane that had been thought to be clear. But it had been opened prematurely. Space debris crashed into the Journeyman, turning it from a comfortable passenger ship to a self-contained hell.