Affie went cold, as though the coaxium regulator had been dropped back into her arms. “In hyperspace?”

“Yeah, I know—and don’t even start, Geode. Thing is, we gotta drop out of hyperspace as fast as possible. We can’t do that and get where we’re going. So now we’re going someplace else. Hopefully someplace safe.”

She braced herself as preset coordinates began scrolling down the nav screen. Whatever preset would get them into realspace fastest was their new destination. She’d have to trust that the Vessel wouldn’t be preprogrammed with coordinates that led to, say, the center of a dwarf star.

The final preset clicked in. Leox said, “Kid monk back in his jump seat?”

“If not,” Affie said, “it’s on him. By the way, he’s actually a wizard.”

Leox raised his eyebrows as though to say, Not bad. “Hang on!” he called out over the intercom, and then—

They were in realspace. No bounce, no jostling, as sweet a reentry as anybody could hope for. Affie and Leox shared a grin as she called, “Good pick, Geode.”

“Now we can figure out what the hell went wrong out there,” Leox said, “and then we can get on our way.”

Relief washed over Affie as she looked out at the largely empty sector of space surrounding them. They weren’t facing hostile ships, or intruding into a war zone, or anywhere near the heart of a star. They were…pretty much nowhere.

Despite the giddiness of their escape, she couldn’t help wondering, Why would the ship be programmed to take us here?

“What happened?” Orla Jareni whispered. Her white face had gone even paler. “The voices crying out—”

“Many have died,” Master Cohmac said. “You felt it, too, Reath?”

Reath had sensed something was terribly wrong far beyond the Vessel itself—and that it was tied to the disaster—but he felt nothing like the kind of shock reflected in both Orla and Master Cohmac’s expressions. It occurred to him for the first time that there might be certain advantages to not being as acutely Force-sensitive as the average Jedi. “Can you tell what happened exactly?”

Unsurprisingly, Master Cohmac pulled himself together first. “No. We should contact Starlight Beacon immediately. We need more information, and we wouldn’t want our delay to cause alarm.”

Reath agreed. Well, mostly he agreed. A small, unworthy part of him wanted Master Jora to feel a little alarm—just enough to make her say, You know, the frontier’s a needlessly dangerous place for us to be. We should return to Coruscant right away.

Still, he rose and went with Master Cohmac to the Vessel’s comm station. It was unlikely that Cohmac would need help sending their messages, but it was the role of the Padawan to be prepared to offer assistance to any Jedi, at any moment.