The charhound opened her jaws and a huge gout of yellow flame spat out, enveloping the Nihil before he could bring his blaster to bear. A strange, hollow scream emanated from the raider’s mask, and he rolled on the ground, trying to put out the fire that had consumed his body. Ember did not stop, just continued torching the Nihil until at first he stopped screaming, and then he stopped moving.

Then she closed her mouth and padded up to Porter Engle, who gingerly bent down and scratched her behind one ear. She felt hot, like his oven back at the outpost. He supposed that made perfect sense. She must have followed them all the way from the wrecked homestead, he and his fellow Jedi so focused on pursuing the Nihil they hadn’t thought to consider who might be pursuing them.

“Good girl,” he said. “Very good girl.”

Porter climbed aboard the steelee, and he was off, headed down the slope at a ready pace with Ember loping alongside, racing after Bell and Loden and the family they were trying to save.

Loden Greatstorm and Bell Zettifar had steadily gained ground on the Nihil they were chasing, but had not completely closed the distance. Now the kidnappers’ ships were visible, parked on the rust-colored sand just outside the no-fly zone. Two, looking like welded-together piles of cubes and spikes, and both marked with the three lines they’d seen on the door of the Blythe homestead. The Nihil had almost reached the vessels, along with their prisoners, still being pulled along in the little cart.

“We’ll never catch them in time,” Bell said.

“I know,” Loden said.

He removed his hands from the reins of his steelee, but the creature didn’t slow its strong gallop, sparks shooting up with every step. Bell assumed his master was steering his mount via his knees and a judicious application of the Force. In a single smooth motion, Loden swung the metal tube he had salvaged from the wrecked Vanguard around his body, placing it atop one shoulder. He pulled his lightsaber from his holster, slapped it against the flat plate connected to the tube’s electronic components, and the power unit on the far end lit up glowing gold, the same color as Loden’s blade.

Bell realized what Loden had taken from their vehicle—the Vanguard’s laser cannon, its kyber-keyed anti-ship weapon. He held his breath. He couldn’t believe this was about to happen.

Loden fired, and a bolt of golden light shot from the end of the tube, like a lightsaber blade but somehow denser, more there. The edges of a saber blade faded out into an intense whiteness—but this blast thickened, darkened, into an amber like the first rays of an autumn sunrise. And the sound—Bell heard it with his bones, not his ears. In the moment of the weapon firing, all other sounds ceased.