“Not asking you to,” Joss said, rolling his eyes at Pikka, who grinned at him. “We have something aboard that might be able to slow it down, but it’s not easy to use. We’ll have to try to match velocity with the fragment, and we all know how fast it’s going. It’ll take every bit of engine power we have, and a lot of our fuel, just to accelerate to where we need to be.

“If you can slow it down even a little, even five percent, even one percent, it could make a big difference. At these speeds, even a minor downward shift in velocity would still mean a significant reduction in the resources we’d have to expend.”

“One moment,” Te’Ami said. The line went cold, and Joss figured she was probably talking to the other Jedi, seeing if they thought this would work.

The comm hissed back to life.

“We’ll do what we can,” the Jedi said.

“Excellent,” Joss said. Then a thought, and he leaned forward and spoke into the comm again.

“And, uh, if you could maybe try to hold the fragment together, too, when you slow it down?”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to hit it with these big metal clamp things, and we don’t know how fragile it is. We don’t even know what it is. Might cause it to just shatter. So if there’s anything you could do to, you know…prevent that…might be good.”

A very long pause.

“This is the best idea you have?”

“Only idea I have, Master Jedi. If we can connect to the thing, we can reverse engines, full power, but gradual, slow it down. We’re not seeing any drive signatures from it—it’s like a projectile from a slugthrower. Like someone whipped a rock real fast. If we could get some opposing force on it, should drain down the velocity pretty quick. If, uh, it doesn’t break apart. But that’s where you guys come in.”

The longest pause yet.

“As I said, Captain…we will do what we can.”

“Great,” Joss said.

He snapped off the comm and turned to Pikka.

“The space wizards don’t seem very excited about this,” she said.

“Eh,” he answered. “They’ll be excited when it works.”

“Is it going to work?” she asked. “Or will the thing break apart, or will the cables snap and whiplash us off into space, or will we just not be able to latch on no matter what we try?”

“Eh,” Joss said again.

He pushed the throttle all the way forward, and the Longbeam leapt into space, the engines roaring, every surface vibrating with power.

“Let’s find out.”

Chapter Eleven