Thanks, Reath nearly replied, before deciding he really shouldn’t have to thank anyone for not blowing him to pieces. “Did you enjoy it? Pretending to be helpless?”

“It’s loathsome. I don’t intend to make a habit of it.”

“I can respect that.”

“You will respect us,” Nan said. “In time, you will bow before the Nihil.”

“And here I thought this station was as screwed up as it could possibly be before we even docked,” Leox muttered to himself as he stepped over smoldering wreckage from the explosion. Affie had done a number on the place, that was for sure.

The main thing was to make sure the Nihil didn’t do a number on her.

Sounds echoed from farther down the corridor—footsteps, something else. Leox figured that was the Nihil; the Jedi moved as quiet as tooka cats. Quickly he ducked behind the nearest large piece of debris—a couple of beams that formed a nice solid barrier between him and any marauding warriors. Always good to put something between yourself and negative energy, he thought. Especially armed negative energy.

Despite his lackadaisical habits and disheveled appearance, Leox Gyasi had a sharp mind when he cared to employ it. With near-eidetic precision, he called to mind the layout of the station as they’d previously mapped it, then overlaid Affie’s plan for scouting the code. From there it was relatively simple to figure out how far along in the upper rings she would’ve gone before the Jedi found themselves in trouble, and therefore where she would’ve headed back to after the explosion’s aftermath.

This, naturally, would require Leox to somehow get past both the Nihil and the idol-controlled area that contained the Drengir.

But he wouldn’t have had it any other way. How was he supposed to give Affie a proper guilt trip later if it wasn’t difficult as hell to get her out?

Grinning, Leox waited for his opening, then darted into the station’s inner darkness.

A voice rang through the station. “Nihil, you are summoned!”

Reath turned, startled; Nan bit her lower lip, then said, “If you want to walk away from this alive, I suggest you do so now. The others are coming. I owe you something, but they don’t.”

The Nihil wouldn’t consider themselves bound by a kindness to one of their own, he thought, filing that away for future reference. “Got it.”

He dashed for the nearest doorway, not bothering to glance behind him. If Nan hadn’t shot him in the face, she wouldn’t shoot him in the back.

As soon as Reath had made it to safe cover, however, he ducked and angled himself to see inside the central globe chamber as best he could. Nan stood exactly where he’d left her, but she wasn’t looking after him. Her attention was all for the other Nihil.