With all his might, he brought his lightsaber down on the other. They crashed together, sending a vibration through his hands and arms. His opponent stumbled backward. Through the rush of blood in his ears, Dez heard the Drengir laughing. He wanted that to stop, too.

For an instant he was able to focus on his opponent—someone young. Someone vaguely familiar. A voice called, “Dez, why are you doing this?”

It made no difference. The opponent had to die.

On her belly, Affie crawled between the layers of storage bins, in search of more of the code. She’d recorded a fair bit of it, but she felt like she needed absolutely everything written on the Amaxine station to prove her case.

And maybe, just maybe, she’d find something else about her family…even something her parents wrote themselves.…

She startled at more sounds below. This wasn’t the loud grinding from before—not nearly as thunderous as that—but still counted as what Leox would term “a ruckus.” Thuds from things or people hitting the floor, the hum of lightsabers, and for some reason a whole lot of rustling from the plants…

Affie grabbed her comlink. “Leox, come in.”

“Something the matter, Little Bit?”

She had bigger problems to deal with than that stupid nickname. “The Jedi are making a whole lot of noise down in the central chamber. No idea why, but they are. If I can hear it all the way up here, I guarantee you Nan and Hague can hear it, too.”

“Hang on just a sec, let me check something—” Leox went silent for a moment, then quietly muttered a rude word he’d never spoken near her before. “Yep, the Nihil know they’re not alone.”

Affie’s hand tightened around the comlink. “How can you tell?”

“I can tell because they’re no longer orbiting the station. The warship’s assumed a locked position. Which means we have to stop orbiting, too, or else they’re going to see us in about…two minutes.”

“Get out of here,” she said. Maybe it was wrong, making a decision like that without the Jedi’s input—but there was no time to waste, and the Jedi were the ones who had caused this problem in the first place. “You and Geode. Just go. Save yourselves.”

“Calm down. All we have to do is slam on the brakes. Maybe we can even link up to one of the airlocks, make ourselves available to help you guys if the situation gets worse.”

“Good,” Affie said. The crashing and yelling from below grew louder. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s going to.”