“This way,” he told Ember, heading toward a metal door as the sounds of battle filtered through the gaping hole above his head. Trails of vapor were drifting across Valo’s sky. If he could jump back up, out of the ship’s belly, he might be able to reach the stern from outside before the vessel sank beneath the water. He prepared to make the jump, gathering Ember into his arms, the Force charging his already tired muscles with the energy needed to make such a superhuman leap, when the charhound barked, wriggling from his grip. She landed in the water, yapping at the closed door in front of them.

“What is it, girl?” he asked, casting his mind beyond the metal to be rewarded by a sudden surge of fear. There were people on the other side.

“Good dog,” Bell told the faithful charhound, striking the button that should have sent the door sliding back into the bulkhead. It didn’t budge. He flipped open an access panel, uncovering a gleaming control port. An astromech would override the lock in seconds, but Bell didn’t have an astromech. He had something better. He had a lightsaber.

Ember jumped back from the molten metal that splashed from the door as Bell cut a near-perfect circle, leaping through the freshly carved gap as soon as he was done. Bell followed the hound, finding himself in a sloped corridor illuminated by strobing bulbs.

“Help us,” came a frightened female voice. “Can you help us please?”

Halfway down the corridor, a female Pantoran was hunched over a human attendant trapped beneath a pile of jagged metal. A section of the ceiling had collapsed, bringing most of the next deck down with it on the man who was screaming in agony.

Bell and Ember rushed over, the charhound instinctively nuzzling her nose against the trapped man’s cheek as Bell slipped his lightsaber back into its holster.

“I can’t get him out,” the Pantoran said, her light-blue skin splattered with the attendant’s blood. “It’s too heavy.”

Bell tested the weight of the metal. It shifted with the effort, and the human cried out again, more out of fear than any increased pain as far as Bell could tell.

“It’s going to crush me.”