“You should be on the Starlight Beacon,” the Trandoshan Jedi hissed back. “You’re supposed to be dealing with supply requisitions and unruly younglings, not leading an assault on a bunch of pirates. Let me go by myself—there’s no need for you to fly.”

“You can die in bed just as easily as in battle, Sskeer,” she said, climbing into her ship’s cockpit.

“That is certainly untrue,” Sskeer called over, putting an oxygen mask over his broad snout and settling into his pilot’s seat. “What if we both just agree not to die?”

“Deal,” she said as the canopy closed.

Jora took her lightsaber—a golden cylinder with curved platinum guards swooping back down toward the hilt like wings—and placed it against the weapons activation panel on her Vector’s console. The targeting systems lit up bright white, the color of her saber blade. She had retrieved its kyber crystal, then a bright blood-red, from an ancient Sith lightspear and healed it, purging the rage and pain instilled in it by its original owner. She performed the ritual mainly as an intellectual exercise, to see how it was done, but once the process was complete she found herself tightly bound to the crystal, and now used it as the core of her primary weapon.

She pushed her control sticks forward and shot out of the hangar into open space.

All around her, Vectors materialized, flashing out from the Ataraxia.

“On me, Jedi,” Jora Malli said, and the ships came up around her, creating the tight formation that only the Jedi ships could achieve.

It was a Drift, perfectly composed, and the only thing more beautiful than seeing one was being part of one.

The battle lay ahead, and they would turn the tide.

The Eriaduan ships had advanced slow and steady, and were now in visual range, which meant they were in weapons range as well, but they hadn’t started firing. Kassav thought he knew why. The hunters wanted to terrify their prey before they killed it.

A battle was one thing, but this waiting. It was agonizing.

The ships were all long, thin, bladelike craft. They looked like swords, edge-on, and they were headed straight for him.

“Divert a third of our ships to the Eriaduan cruisers,” he ordered, shouting at Wet Bub. “We need them gone.”

“You got it, boss,” Bub said.

He sounded dubious. Not surprising. Kassav was dubious, too. They had killed their fair share of Longbeams and Skywings, but the Jedi had finally joined the fight, sending out those blasted little Vectors. Still, whatever. Jedi could die, just like anyone. No one ever said they were immortal.

But the Nihil were running out of tricks to play, and the Republic was getting smarter, letting the big guns on their cruisers do more of the work. It was time to go. What Kassav really needed was a Path, but the odds of that were—