Sskeer flew as part of the Drift, the connection to the Jedi all around him strengthened by whatever Avar Kriss was doing back on the Ataraxia. And the strongest connection of all was to Jora Malli, her ship just off to starboard, so close that their wingtips almost touched.

The Vectors had not yet engaged the enemy. The Nihil were still ahead, embroiled in battles with Longbeams and Skywings. He sensed anticipation, all around him, Jedi preparing themselves for the test of combat.

His own cockpit was bathed in green light, the color of his lightsaber blade. Everything was ready. He would defend, he would protect, he would bring justice. He was a Jedi, and he—

Something happened.

The Nihil ships…moved. Shifted. All of them, at once, were in one place, and then they were in another. They didn’t move as one, but in separate jolts and lunges, disappearing and reappearing in varying distances from their original positions.

It happened again, and there was no reason to it, no pattern. The Nihil just dropped from one place and then—

A momentary impression of something large, solid, too close to avoid, appearing right in the middle of the Drift, and then an impact so gigantic he could not truly comprehend it. A huge flash of light, and his sense of many of the Jedi around him vanished. Then something slammed into the canopy of his cockpit, and through it, some sharp chunk of metal that speared directly into his shoulder, through his body and well into his pilot’s seat, severing his arm at the joint.

Through the shock, Sskeer thought he understood what had happened. Somehow, the Nihil were entering hyperspace, then dropping back out of it, impossibly short distances away. One had appeared from hyperspace directly in the middle of the Drift, and the ensuing collision had caused a spreading wave of destruction and chaos.

Sskeer howled, not so much at the pain or even the loss of his limb—he was Trandoshan, and so his arm would regrow in time—but at something worse.

One of the Jedi he could no longer sense…was Jora Malli.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Loden whipped his Vector up and away from the disabled Nihil ship, slamming his lightsaber against the control console, the weapons bank lighting up. He powered on his shields, knowing they wouldn’t last for more than a few hits from the armada that had somehow appeared from nowhere.

The trick, then, was not to get hit.

“Indeera!” he called, scanning both the threat display on his console and everything the Force was telling him about the endless array of Nihil ships surrounding him.