Her tone was respectful, but also a little curious. His master didn’t understand why he had brought this child to her—after all, nearly everyone on the viewdeck had a sad story to tell.

“Serj accessed the bridge systems on the Legacy Run just before the accident,” Burryaga said. “He was playing a prank, nothing serious, but as part of that he sliced into its screens, and when he did, he got a glimpse of whatever it was they ran into out there that caused the ship to disintegrate.”

“That’s fascinating,” Nib said, purposely avoiding looking at Serj so as not to spook him. She could sense his state as well as Burryaga could—well, perhaps not as easily as he could, emotions were his particular strength in the Force—but the boy’s tension and confusion blazed out like a burning tree at night. A youngling on his first day at the Temple would be able to sense Serj’s turmoil.

After a moment’s thought, she turned to the boy, going down on one knee, putting herself at his level.

“Burryaga tells me you’re very brave,” she said.

Serj didn’t answer.

“He also tells me you saw something when you sliced into the Legacy Run’s systems, just before the disaster began. We’re trying to do everything we can to stop the Emergences, and prevent something like this from ever happening again. I know it has to be a painful memory, but can you tell me what you saw, Serj? Can you explain it to me?”

Serj looked at the Jedi, his eyes gone hollow and distant again.

“Lightning,” he said. “It looked like three strikes of lightning.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

“We’re going to be all right,” Erika said, looking her children in the eye as she said it—first little Bee, then Ronn.

Ronn was older, just a few years from being ready to go off on his own, but at that moment they both just looked like babies, terrified and desperate for reassurance from their parents.

The Nihil with them in the cart snorted.

“Yeah,” she said, “just fine.”

She wore a mask, like the others, but Erika knew she was Trandoshan from the look of her arms—long in comparison to the torso, gray pebbled skin gleaming in the sun, ending in hooked white claws. A single line of jagged blue paint bisected her mask from forehead to chin. She held a rifle, and had a holstered blaster and the galaxy only knew what other weapons.

Erika and her family weren’t going to overpower this woman, even if all four of them managed to free themselves from the plasticuffs pinning their arms behind their backs. They were two miners and their kids, and Ottoh was barely conscious; he’d taken a nasty punch to the head when the Nihil finally pulled them out of their house.

No, they weren’t going to be all right.