The Nova tore its way through the highest levels of Hetzal Prime’s atmosphere—no, not tore. Loden Greatstorm was too fine a pilot for that. Some Jedi used their Vectors that way, but not him. He wove the craft, sliding through the air currents, riding them down, letting the ship become just another part of the interplay of gravity and wind above the planet’s surface. The ship wanted to fall, and Greatstorm let it. It was exhilarating, deadly, unsurvivable, and the Vector was designed to transmit every last vibration and shimmy to the Jedi inside, so they could let the Force guide them to the best response. Bell clenched his hands into fists. His face stretched into a grin.

“Spectacular,” he said, without thinking. His master laughed.

“Nothing to it, Bell,” Loden said. “I just pointed us at the planet. Gravity’s handling the rest.”

A long, gliding curve, smooth like the bend of a river, and then the Nova straightened out, now close enough to the planet’s surface that Bell could make out buildings, vehicles, and other smaller features below. It looked so peaceful. No indication of the disaster-in-progress in the system. Nothing but the increasing number of ships launching from the surface.

“Where should we put down?” Bell said. “Did Master Kriss tell you?”

“It was left to our discretion,” Greatstorm replied, glancing to one side, his profile dark, craggy, mountainlike, his Twi’lek lekku sweeping back from his skull. His eyes tracked the drive trails from the ongoing planetary evacuation. “We help any way we can.”

“But it’s a whole planet. How will we know where to…”

“You tell me, kid,” Loden said. “Find me somewhere to go.”

“Training?” Bell asked.

“Training.”

Loden Greatstorm’s philosophy as a teacher was very simple: If Bell was theoretically capable of something, even if Loden could do it ten times as fast and a hundred times more skillfully, then Bell would end up doing that thing, not Loden. “If I do everything, no one learns anything,” his master was fond of saying.

Loden didn’t have to do everything, but Bell would have been fine if, occasionally, he did something. Being the apprentice to the great Greatstorm was an endless gauntlet of impossible tasks. He had been training at the Jedi Temple for fifteen of his eighteen years, and it had never been easy, but being Loden’s Padawan was on an entirely different level. Every day, without exception, pushed him to his limits. Any personal time Bell ever got was spent desperately collapsing into the deepest sleep of his life until it all began again. But…he was learning. He was better now than he was even six months ago, at everything.

Bell knew what his master wanted him to do. Another impossible task—but he was a Jedi, or getting there, and through the Force all things were possible.