Kassav or even Pan Eyta might have tried, gotten into some sort of doomed last-stand situation, but she was smarter than either of them. When circumstances change, you run the odds, you run the options, and then you pick the best choice you’ve got. And here, there was only one.

“Plug in the Path to get us out of here,” she said. “We lost.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Ultident Margrona—just Dent since she was a teenager, she hated the name Ultident, thought it sounded prissy—yanked off her mask and let it fall to the floor of the cockpit. She didn’t care if the stupid miners saw her face. She needed to breathe, needed air.

“They’re on us, Dent!” Buggo said. “Comin’ up fast!”

Dent knew that. The Jedi had landed a glancing blaster shot on their engines, and about 80 percent of top speed was the best they could manage. They had a Path from Lourna Dee that would let them get out of the system, but her ship’s Path engine needed to calculate the jump from a specific region within Elphrona’s gravity well—and that area was too far away to reach before the Jedi caught up. She’d heard stories about what these Vectors could do. They might look spindly, but those ships could take them apart, shot by shot. It wouldn’t even be a contest. They’d end up with their engines completely gone, floating in the void, and then it’d be a hostage scenario, and how would that work out?

You’re a Cloud, she told herself. You wouldn’t be a Cloud if you weren’t smart. You aren’t some stupid Strike. Think this through. Ride the storm.

If the Jedi disabled their ship, they could buy time by threatening to kill the two kids and the dad until…what? The Jedi wouldn’t let a band of Nihil kidnappers go. They’d board the ship eventually, and would probably kill Dent and her crew with their lightsabers right then and there, frontier justice. Maybe they’d get taken to prison on Elphrona instead.

Bad either way. Utter failure. Not very Nihil. She could just imagine what everyone would say. “You remember that gal Dent? Screwed up the easiest job ever—a snatch-and-grab on some nowhere planet. Got herself and all her Strikes killed. What an idiot.”

She spared half a thought for the two Strikes she’d left back down on the planet, the ones she’d already written off. She guessed it was possible Egga and Rel were still alive down on the planet somewhere, fighting the good fight, two loyal Strikes doing as their Cloud ordered.