The weapon began to rotate, slowly, like the blade of a windmill. It made a sound as it moved through the air, a low, droning hum. Avar breathed—in, out—and the blade slowly sped up. The tone of its passage through the air changed, no longer a low drone but a higher pitch, a lovely round note. The lightsaber moved faster, its blade now too fast to see; a green circle of light with a shining metallic center.

It was beautiful, but Avar closed her eyes. She did not need to see. She needed to hear. Her lightsaber was not just a weapon. Here, now…it was an instrument.

The note of the blade rose, becoming a clear ringing, the normal crackling hum and whine of a lightsaber in combat replaced by a pure, glassine tone.

Her awareness was the song of the saber, and she tuned the speed of its rotation until the note it produced was precisely in sync with—

Yes, Avar Kriss thought. I hear it.

Her mind snapped outward, the sabersong chiming in harmony with the larger chorus of the Force, in a single instant becoming the entire system and everything within it, and more particularly every single Jedi, each connected to the Force in their own way.

What she heard as a song, Elzar Mann saw as a deep, endless, storm-tossed sea. The Wookiee Burryaga was a single leaf on a gigantic tree with deep-dug roots and sky-high limbs. Douglas Sunvale saw the Force as a huge, interlocked set of gears, made of an endless variety of materials from crystal to bone. Bell Zettifar danced with fire. Loden Greatstorm danced with wind.

This was not the simple network she had built earlier. This was deeper. All of the Jedi were the Force, and the Force was all of them. And she, Avar Kriss, could touch them all, no matter how they saw the Force.

Now, though, she had to find their target. The module of Tibanna racing toward the sun. It was difficult now, with so many Jedi singing in her mind, a chorus to the Force symphony blasting at full volume. So many people, so many beings, so much life. Every grain in the dimly sensed field around her piping like flutes.

Somewhere in all of that was the module of liquid Tibanna racing toward the sun to destroy them all. It did not sing a song of its own, but that was itself something to be sensed. A silence, a caesura, a fermata of precisely the correct duration and size.

There, she thought.

She had it, without a doubt. It was—gone. She’d lost it.

“Blast it!” she said out loud, and everything wavered and almost faded away.