Bell’s mouth had dropped open, and his Master’s amusement had grown.

The training remote was waiting for them, ready to duel, but so were more than a hundred identical drones hovering in front of the fifteen-year-old.

“You need to listen,” Loden had said. “Not just hear.”

“You said training remotes,” Bell had said, resisting the urge to draw his lightsaber. “Plural.”

“That’s right.”

Bell could sense there was another bombshell on the way.

“You’re going to make me wear a blindfold, aren’t you?”

In answer, Loden had pulled a long red sash from his robes, which he’d proceeded to wrap not only over Bell’s eyes but over his ears as well, robbing him of both sight and sound.

“Jedi must never rely on their senses alone,” he had said, his voice muffled by the cloth. “The Force will show the way.”

Bell tried to remember Loden’s words as he dropped his Vector into a barrel roll, laserfire streaking past the canopy. The Cloudship was too far out of range to return fire, but that would change soon enough. Indeera had told him not to glory in the death of his enemy, but there was no ignoring the sense of anticipation that burned in his belly, the longing to take revenge for Loden up here, where his Master had been lost. In the stars.

He forced himself to breathe.

“There is no emotion,” he muttered, still focused on the Nihil craft. “There is peace.”

The Jedi Code brought him comfort, keeping his focus on the here and now rather than the pain of the past or the dangerous lure of a vengeance-filled future.

“There is no passion, there is—”

His voice dropped away as a swarm of tiny bronze dots erupted from the Nihil cruiser. They were too small to be ships, each barely the size of Ember, but they were just as deadly.

“Scav droids,” he muttered as they streamed toward him, the explosions from the nearby battle reflected against their rust-colored bodies. Bell had seen the results of a scav swarm on Rekelos. They were a relatively new weapon in the Nihil’s armory, sent to mob ships or settlements, dismantling machinery with their grasping manipulator arms, the resulting loot stored in large crablike shells ready for pickup. He had never expected them to move so quickly or in such large numbers.

“Hold on,” Bell told Ember, gunning the engine as he searched for gaps in the tightly packed throng. “What do you think, girl? Any way to squeeze through?”

Ember whined a response.

“Yeah, I can’t see any, either, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. The Force will show the way.”