The Vector spiraled up and over the Nihil ship, spinning like a drill, avoiding desperate shots from the vessel’s cannons, and ending in a position where his own craft was nose-to-nose with the Nihil’s but flying backward, matching the much larger ship’s speed perfectly. He was close enough to the other ship that he was inside the effective range of its cannons, and as long as he stayed there, it couldn’t hit him.

But more important, he had a clear view inside its cockpit, where a rather alarmed woman was flying the ship. She was a Nihil, the first he’d seen with her mask off, and she looked like…a person. A youngish human woman with ragged hair cut short, reddish dirt on her face from the sprint across the surface of Elphrona, and two jagged stripes painted down one cheek in blue. A child of the Force, like any other.

But the Force did not make your decisions for you, and this particular person had done many terrible things, whether by necessity or choice.

Her reckoning had come due.

Loden lifted a hand from his control sticks. He moved it gently to one side, locking eyes with the Nihil woman, and spoke.

“You will slow your ship and open your outer air lock hatch.”

Through the transparisteel of the cockpit, he saw the woman mouth the words. Loden reserved the mind touch for times of extraordinary necessity—but this was that, if anything ever was. She didn’t need to hear what he had said, either—the technique was aptly named. Mind-to-mind, that’s all you needed.

Loden kept his eyes focused on the pilot, maintaining the connection in case he had to offer new instructions. He sensed the Nihil ship slowing, and then Indeera, pulling up and alongside it in her Vector. He knew she would have to leap through vacuum to get into the air lock—but it would be a matter of mere seconds, and the Jedi Order trained its members in techniques to withstand the harsh environment of space. These tricks only worked for a few moments—space was space, after all—but he knew Indeera could do what needed to be done.

In fact, his connection to the Force told him she had already begun.

A sense of great alarm from inside the ship, quickly quieted. He didn’t know if Indeera had also used the mind touch, or had been forced to kill the other Nihil inside—he knew several had survived the events on Elphrona.

This will be over soon, he thought.