Outbound Flight

Chapter 22

. . Or be destroyed."

Lorana looked across the weapons blister at Ma'Ning, at the tight set to his mouth. The first voice from the unknown ships had definitely not been human. This one just as definitely was.

And the human had been speaking Basic, as well. This wasn't good. "A captive from the Republic?" she suggested.

"Or a traitor," Ma'Ning said grimly. "Either way, it's going to make this that much trickier."

"Not at all," C'baoth's voice came from the comm speaker. "There's nothing even a traitor could have told them that will have prepared them for the kind of coordinated defense a Jedi meld can offer."

"With a hundred or more warships at their disposal I can't see them worrying overly much about how tight our defense is," Ma'Ning countered.

"Patience, Master Ma'Ning," C'baoth said, his voice glacially calm. "Trust in the Force."

"They're moving forward," Captain Pakmillu's voice cut in. "All weapons stations stand ready."

Lorana took a deep breath as she stretched out to the Force for strength and calm. This was it: the first genuine test of the Jedi control system C'baoth had spent so much of his time teaching the rest of them.

"What in the name-?" Abruptly, Ma'Ning hunched closer to his sensor displays. "Master C'baoth?"

"I see them," C'baoth said. "So this is the sort of enemy we face."

"What is it?" Lorana asked, swiveling her chair to her own displays.

"Look at the warships," Ma'Ning said. "See all those plastic bubbles on the hulls?"

Lorana felt her chest tighten. "There arepeople in there!"

"Living shields," C'baoth confirmed, his voice thick with contempt. "The most evil and cowardly defense concept ever created."

"What do we do?" Lorana asked, a sudden trembling in her voice. "We can't just slaughter them."

"Courage, Jedi Jinzler," C'baoth said. "We'll simply shootbetween the hostages."

"Impossible," Ma'Ning insisted. "Not even with Jedi gunners. Turbolasers simply aren't accurate enough."

"Do you assume me to be a fool, Master Ma'Ning?" C'baoth demanded scathingly. "Of course we won't fire until we're close enough for the necessary accuracy."

"And meanwhile we just sit here and taketheir fire?" Ma'Ning countered.

"Hardly," C'baoth said, an edge of malicious anticipation creeping into his voice. "The Vagaari have a surprise in store for them. All Jedi: prepare to meld. Stretch out to the Force. . and then, to the Vagaari."

"They make no answer," the Miskara said accusingly, as if Outbound Flight's silence was Car'das's fault.

"Perhaps they're still consulting among themselves, Your Eminence," Car'das suggested, shifting his eyes back and firth across the sky. The Vagaari ships had started to close the gap between themselves and Outbound Flight, moving together into groups of tight-formation clusters that would provide them the protection of overlapping forward shields.

They were preparing to attack.

And still nothing from Outbound Flight. Or from Thrawn, for that matter. His ships had to be around here somewhere. But where?

"You will give them a new message," the Miskara ordered. " 'The time for discussion is ended. You will surrender now or-' "

And in the middle of the sentence, his voice abruptly dissolved into a confused burbling.

Car'das frowned, pressing the comlink to his ear. The whole bridge seemed to have collapsed into the same helpless babbling, as if the entire crew had had a mass mental attack.

Which was, he suspected, exactly what had happened.

He looked out again at Outbound Flight, an unpleasant shiver running through him. He'd heard the stories about all the ways Jedi could use their mind control tricks to confuse attackers, everything from creating false noises in their ears to making them unable to properly focus on controls or weapons systems. But while the stories also claimed that a group of them together could use that power on this massive a scale, he'd never heard of something like that actually happening.

Until now.

And with that, he knew, it was all over. The final card had come up double-down-nine, and the rest was as fixed and inevitable as a planetary orbit.

With the comlink still pressed to his ear, he settled down to wait for the end.

"So your tales were correct," Mitth'raw'nuruodo murmured. "Your Jedi have reached across the distance to the Vagaari and numbed or destroyed their minds."

"So it would seem," Doriana agreed, feeling a little numb himself. Even if it was just the Vagaari commanders and gunners who'd been affected, and even given the fact that the aliens would have had no forewarning of what was coming, it was still a terrifying feat.

And it was being performed by a relative handful of Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights.

Predictably, it was Kav who broke the awed silence first. "And our part is to sit by and do nothing?" he prompted.

"Our part is to do that for which we have come," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. Reaching to his board, he keyed a switch. "It is time for the Vagaari to die."

"TheVagaari? " Kav echoed. "No! You were given my starfighters for use against Outbound Flight."

"I was notgiven the starfighters at all," Mitth'raw'nuruodo corrected him coolly. Ahead, the droid starfighters were rising in waves now from their asteroid staging area, heading at full speed toward the clusters of Vagaari warships. "Iwill choose how to use them."

Kav snarled something in his own language. "You will not get away with this," he bit out.

"Walk cautiously, Vicelord," Mitth'raw'nuruodo warned, his glowing eyes flashing at the Neimoidian. "Don't forget that the starfighters aren't the only Neimoidian technology I've taken from you."

Doriana felt a sudden tingling on the back of his neck. He spun around, expecting to find the two droidekas Mitth'raw'nuruodo had taken from the Darleveme standing behind them in full combat stance.

But there was nothing there. "No, Commander, the combat droids are not here," Mitth'raw'nuruodo assured him. "They're where they can be of far more useful service."

"And where is that?" Doriana asked.

"Where else?" Mitth'raw'nuruodo said, smiling tightly. "On the bridge of the Vagaari flagship."

The sudden multiple stutter of blasterfire in his ear sent Car'das twitching to the side, and he banged his elbow against the edge of the bubble as he hastily moved the comlink farther away. His head was still ringing as the rhythmic fire of the droidekas was joined by the more deliberate shots from the four battle droids' rifles. Apparently, Thrawn had had a secondary control pattern laid in beneath the program Car'das had set up earlier for the Miskara. The sounds of shooting shifted subtly as the six droids began to move across the bridge, mowing down the helpless gunners and commanders.

And as they systematically chopped off the head of the Vagaari leadership hierarchy, the droid starfighters arrived.

The first and second waves flashed overhead without slowing, skimming the hull barely five meters from Car'das's face as they drove toward the clusters of Vagaari ships in the distance. The third wave arrived in full combat mode, their laser cannons raking the flagship with a brilliant sheet of fire. Car'das flinched back, but almost before he had time to be frightened they, too, were past, leaving torn pieces of shattered hull material and white jets of escaping air in their wake. Blinking against the multiple purple afterimages, he peered through the dissipating gases at the other bubbles around him, half afraid of what he would see.

But the starfighters had pulled it off. In every single one of the bubbles within his view, the Geroon hostages were still alive-terrified, certainly, some of them clawing mindlessly at the plastic as if trying to tunnel their way out. But they were alive. With Outbound Flight's Jedi preventing the Vagaari gunners from defending their ships, and with the sharp-edged precision the droids' electronic targeting systems and close-approach attack had permitted, the starfighters had sliced their way neatly through the warship's hull between the Vagaari's living shields.

And not just aboard the flagship. All around him, Car'das could see clouds of debris and escaping air enveloping the other nearby Vagaari warships, the haze scintillating with the fiery glow of the starfighters' drives as they finished each set of targets and moved on to the next. Already in this first attack, he estimated Thrawn's assault had taken out over a quarter of the alien warships.

And still with no response from the remainder. The question now, he knew, was whether the Jedi control of the aliens would last long enough for the starfighters to finish the job. Switching on his macrobinoculars, listening with half an ear to the one-sided carnage still going on beneath him on the bridge, he focused on Outbound Flight.

It was like nothing Lorana had ever felt before. Like nothing she had ever dreamed she would ever feel, or need to prepare herself for. Even as she submerged herself in the Jedi meld, allowing C'baoth to guide her and the others as they spread confusion across the Vagaari commanders and gunners, the alien minds she was wrapped around suddenly began exploding into death.

Not just a few deaths, either, small ripples of sensation that might have throbbed painfully but controllably against her consciousness. These deaths came in a thunderstorm torrent, wave after wave of fear and agony and rage that hammered against her already overstretched and vulnerable mind. She could feel herself staggering, her hands clutching blindly for something to hold on to as her body reacted to her disorientation. There was a sharp pain in her shoulder and head; distantly, she realized she had fallen out of her chair onto the deck. She could feel herself twitching uncontrollably; could sense the others' reactions flowing through the meld, feeding into her weakness even as her own pain fed into theirs. A thousand alien voices shrieked through her brain as their life forces were snuffed out, with a thousand more waiting behind them..

Beside Doriana, Mitth'raw'nuruodo took a deep breath. "Ch'tra," he ordered.

And moving as a single unit, the Chiss fleet surged forward. "Time to join the party?" Doriana asked, still watching in grim amazement as the waves of droid starfighters methodically cut their way across the Vagaari ships.

"No," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Time to start one of our own."

And it was only then that Doriana saw that theSpringhawk and the rest of the Chiss ships were heading for Outbound Flight. He closed his hands into fists, waiting tensely for the Dreadnaughts' gunners to spot this new threat and open fire.

But nothing happened. TheSpringhawk flew completely through the turbolasers' effective combat range, passed unchallenged through the point-defense zone, and with only minor turbulence passed through the shields near the bow of the nearest Dreadnaught. The other Chiss ships broke from theSpringhawk 's flanks, spreading out toward the other Dreadnaughts as theSpringhawk curved from its intercept vector to fly low across its chosen Dreadnaught's hull.

And opened fire.

They hit the weapons blisters first, the brilliant blue fire of the Chiss lasers tearing through armor and capacitors and charging equipment and digging deeply into the blisters themselves. The shield generators were next, theSpringhawk zigzagging along the Dreadnaught's hull as it targeted and destroyed each in turn. All done with the utmost efficiency, a small detached part of Doriana's mind noted, without a single wasted movement. Clearly, Mitth'raw'nuruodo had made good use of the technical readouts he'd provided.

And then, to his surprise, theSpringhawk made a sharp turn away from the hull and headed again for deep space. Beyond the expanding cloud of destruction, he could see the other Chiss ships doing the same. "What's wrong?" he asked, his eyes flicking across the sky for some new danger that might have caused Mitth'raw'nuruodo to break off his attack.

"Nothing is wrong," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said, sounding puzzled. "Why?"

"But you have ceased the attack," Kav said, clearly as bewildered as Doriana. "Yet they lie helpless before you."

"Which is precisely why I've stopped," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Jedi Master C'baoth; leaders of Outbound Flight. Your vessel has been disarmed, its ability to defend itself destroyed. I offer you this one final chance to surrender and return to the Republic."

"What?" Kav yelped, his eyes widening. "But you were todestroy them."

"If and when you should command again, Vicelord Kav, such decisions will be yours," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said coolly. "But not now. Outbound Flight, I await your decision."

Through the echoing haze of dying minds still screaming at her, through the smoke and debris and distant moans of the injured, Lorana realized she was dying.

Probably from suffocation, she decided as she noticed that her lungs were straining but that little or no air was reaching them. She tried to move, but her legs seemed pinned somehow to the deck. She tried to stretch out to the Force, but with the death agonies of the Vagaari now joined by the much closer deaths of her own shipmates she couldn't seem to bring her thoughts into focus.

Something cold and metallic closed around her wrist.

She opened her eyes to find a maintenance droid tugging at her arm. "What are you doing?" she croaked. It was a matter of mild surprise to discover that she had enough air even to speak. Experimentally, she tried to take a deep breath.

And felt a welcome coolness as air flowed into her lungs.

She blinked away some of the fog hazing her eyes and peered through the swirling debris. There was a long jagged slash through the ceiling above her, undoubtedly the source of the weapons blister's sudden decompression. Stretched across the gash were a dozen sheets of twisted metal that appeared to have been blown or pulled away from the walls. Half a dozen small metalwork droids were climbing across them, filling the room with clouds of sparks as they hastily welded the sheets into place over the gash.

Lying on the deck halfway across the room, his arms stretching toward the ceiling as he used the Force to hold the still unwelded sheets in place, was Ma'Ning.

Lorana couldn't see very much of his body with the wreckage of the control room scattered across her line of sight. But she could see enough to turn her stomach. He must have caught the full brunt of one of the laser blasts, taking both the agony of the shot itself as well as the impact of the shards of shattered metal it had created. "Master Ma'Ning," she gasped, trying to get up. But her legs still refused to work.

"No, don't," Ma'Ning said. His voice was strained but still carried the full authority of a Jedi Master. "It's too late for me."

"For-" Lorana broke off, a sudden edge of horror cutting through her. With the attack and her own near suffocation, she'd completely lost her connection to the Jedi meld that had so successfully blocked the Vagaari attack.

Now, as she tried to stretch out to it again, she found that it had all but vanished.

"No," she whispered to herself But there was no mistake. When their attackers had targeted the weapons blisters, they had knowingly or unknowingly targeted the Jedi as well.

And with only one or two dazed and stunned exceptions, they were dead.

All of them.

"I should have. . tried stop. . him sooner," Ma'Ning murmured, his voice weakening as he rapidly lost strength. "But he was… Jedi Master. . JediMaster. ."

With an effort, Lorana pushed back the paralyzing horror. "Don't talk," she said, trying again to move. "Let me help you."

"No," Ma'Ning said. "Too late. . for me. But not. . for others." One of his outstretched hands twitched toward her, and a bent section of girder pinning her legs to the deck lifted a few millimeters and clattered away. "You can. . help them."

"But I can't just leave you," Lorana protested. Again she tried to get up, and this time she succeeded.

"I am far. . beyond your help," Ma'Ning said, a deep sadness in his voice. "Go. Help those. . who can still. . be helped."

"But-"

"No!" Ma'Ning bit out, his face convulsing with a sudden spasm. "You're. . Jedi. Taken. . oath. . serve others. Go.. go.

Lorana swallowed. "Yes, Master. I-" She trailed off, searching for the right words. But there weren't any.

Perhaps Ma'Ning couldn't find any, either. "Good-bye.. Jedi Jinzler," he simply said, a ghostly smile touching his lips. "Good-bye, Master Ma'Ning."

Ma'Ning's smile vanished, and he lifted his eyes again to the repair droids and their work. Turning away, Lorana picked her way through the wreckage toward the door.

She knew she would never see him again.

The door, when she reached it, was jammed shut. Stretching out as best she could to the Force, she managed to work it open far enough to slip through. The corridor outside was nearly as bad as the blister itself, with buckled walls and chunks of ceiling littering the deck. But here at least the attackers hadn't managed to cut completely through the hull and open it to space.

The blast doors ten meters down the corridor in either direction had closed when the blister had decompressed, sealing away this section from the rest of the ship. But with the breach now scaled and the emergency oxygen supplies repressurizing the area, the forward blast door opened for Lorana without protest.

In the distance she could hear shouting and screams, and could sense the fear and panic behind them. But for the moment, those people weren't her immediate concern. The Dreadnaughts were well equipped with escape pods, where the survivors could take refuge while the droids repaired the hull.

But there was one group of people who wouldn't have that chance: the fifty-seven so-called conspirators C'baoth had ordered locked away in the storage core.

The peopleshe had locked away in the storage core.

Her legs were starting to throb now where the girder had landed on her. Stretching out to the Force to suppress the pain, she headed in a limping run toward the nearest pylon turbolift.

"We made a bargain!" Kav snarled. "You were to destroy Outbound Flight for us!"

"I never made any such bargain," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "I agreed only to do what I deemed necessary to eliminate the threat posed by the expedition."

"That wasnot what we wanted," Kav insisted.

"You were in no position to make demands," Mitth'raw'nuruodo reminded him. "Nor are you now."

There was a sudden hiss from the comm. "So," an almost unrecognizable voice ground out. "You think you have won, alien?" The display came alive. . and a cold shiver ran up Doriaria's back.

It was Jorus C'baoth, pale and disheveled, his clothing torn and blood-spattered, one side of his face badly burned. But his eyes blazed with the same arrogant fire that Doriana had seen that day long ago in Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's office.

He groped for Mitth'raw'nuruodo's sleeve. "Kav is right-you have to destroy them," he hissed urgently. "If you don't, we're dead."

Mitth'raw'nuruodo's eyes flicked to him, then back to the comm. "I have indeed won," he told C'baoth. "I have only to give a single order-" His hand shifted slightly on his control board, his fingertips coming to rest on a covered switch edged in red. "-and you and all your people will die. Is your pride worth so much to you?"

"A Jedi does not yield to pride," C'baoth spat. "Nor does he yield to empty threats. He follows only the dictates of his own destiny."

"Then choose your destiny," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "I'm told the role of the Jedi is to serve and defend."

"You were told wrongly," C'baoth countered. "The role of the Jedi is to lead and guide, and to destroy all threats." The unburned corner of his lip twisted upward in a bitter smile.

And without warning, Thrawn's head jerked back, his whole body pressing back against his seat. His hand darted to his throat, clutching uselessly at it.

"Commander!" Doriana snapped, grabbing reflexively for Mitth'raw'nuruodo's collar.

But it was no use. The invisible power that was choking the life out of him wasn't something physical that Doriana might be able to push aside. C'baoth was using the Force. . and there was nothing Doriana or anyone else could do to stop him.

In a handful of minutes, Mitth'raw'nuruodo would be dead.

Lorana was in a turbolift car heading down the forward pylon when she felt C'baoth's attack echoing through her mind like the sound of a distant hammer. For a minute she puzzled at it, sensing his anger and frustration and pride, wondering what in the worlds he was doing.

And then, abruptly, the horrifying truth sliced through her like the blade of a lightsaber. "No!" she shouted reflexively toward the turbolift car ceiling. "Master C'baoth-no!"

But it was too late. In his single-minded thirst for revenge, Jorus C'baoth, Jedi Master, had gone over to the dark side.

A wave of pain and revulsion swept over Lorana, as agonizing as salt in an open wound. She had never seen a Jedi fall before. She'd known it could happen, and that it had in fact happened many times throughout history. But it had always seemed something comfortably distant, something that could never happen to anyone she knew.

Now it had. . and following close behind the wave of pain came an even more powerful wave of guilt.

Because she'd been his Padawan, the person who'd spent the most time with him. The one person, Master Ma'Ning had once suggested, whom he might have actually listened to.

Could she have prevented this? Should she have stood up to him earlier, with or without the support of Ma'Ning or the others, when he first began to gather power and authority to himself? Certainly she'd tried talking to him in private on more than one occasion. But each time he'd brushed off her concerns, assuring her that all was well. Should she have pressed him more strongly? Forced him-somehow-to listen?

But she hadn't. And now it was too late.

Or was it? "We don't have to kill anyone," she murmured, focusing her mind toward D-1, trying desperately to send the thought or at least the sense to him. She fumbled for her comlink, only to discover that she'd lost it in the attack on the weapons blister. "We don't have to kill them," she continued, pleading with him. "We can just go home. All they want is for us to gohome."

But there was no reply. C'baoth could undoubtedly sense her protest, but all she could sense in return was his indifference to her anguish, and his determination to continue along the path he'd now set himself upon. It was indeed too late.

Perhaps, a small voice whispered inside her, it had always been too late.

The turbolift came to a halt and the door opened into the storage core. For a long minute she stood in the doorway, wondering if she should leave the prisoners where they were for now and try to get to D-1.

But she would never make it in time. And even if she did, it would do her no good. She could sense the rigid set of C'baoth's mind, and she knew from long experience that even if she were standing at his side there was nothing she could say or do now to stop him. He would continue his attack until he had killed Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo, then more, until he had killed all the rest of the Chiss out there.

Her heart aching, she stepped out into the storage core and limped toward the trapped crew members and their families. Even a Jedi, she thought bitterly, could do only so much.

But what she could do, she would.

The bridge crew was on it in a matter of seconds, shoving Doriana roughly aside and clustering around Mitth'raw'nuruodo as they fought to free him from the unseen attack that was killing him. But their efforts were as useless as Doriana's had been.

Standing at the edge of the frantic activity, Doriana looked at the comm display and tried desperately to think. If the Chiss attack had weakened C'baoth enough. . but there was no sign of weakness in the eyes blazing from that ruined face. Could Doriana shut off the display, then, and at least rob the Jedi of his view of his victim? But Doriana had no idea where that control was, and he didn't speak any language the rest of the bridge crew understood. Besides, he wasn't sure that cutting off the display would do any good anyway.

And then, his gazed dropped from C'baoth's face to Thrawn's control board. The board, and the red-rimmed switch.

It might be nothing. But it was all he had. Pushing past the crewers who stood in his way, he flipped back the cover and pressed the switch.

And then, even as they continued to pound mercilessly against the Vagaari warships, the droid starfighters abruptly turned from their attack and fled.

Car'das frowned, pressing the macrobinoculars tighter against his face. A sizable percentage of the Vagaari fleet was still untouched, the surviving ships scrambling madly for the edge of Thrawn's gravity projector field. Yet all of the starfighters were leaving. Had they drained their solid-fuel engines already?

He caught his breath. No; the starfighters weren't runningaway from the Vagaari. They were runningtoward Outbound Flight.

He was still staring in disbelief when the first wave hit.

Not simplyattacking, blasting away with laser cannons and energy torpedoes. They literallyhit the Dreadnaughts, slamming at full speed into their hulls and vaporizing in brilliant flashes with the force of their impacts. The second wave did the same, this group striking different sections of the Dreadnaughts' hulls. Through the smoke and debris came the third and fourth waves, these groups pouring laser cannon fire and energy torpedoes into the damaged weapons blisters and shield generators.

And with a sudden chill, Car'das understood. The first two waves of starfighters hadn't been trying to breach the Dreadnaughts' thick armor plating. Their goal had merely been to create dents in the hulls at very specific points.

The points where the interior blast doors were positioned.

And now, with those doors disabled or warped enough to prevent a proper air seal, the rest of the starfighters were opening the Dreadnaughts to space.

More clouds of debris were blowing away from Outbound Flight's flanks as the starfighters blasted their way through the hulls, sweeping new waves of sudden death through the outer areas of the Dreadnaughts.

But for all the effect the attack had on him, C'baoth might not even have noticed it. His face remained as hard as anvilstone, his eyes burning unblinkingly across theSpringhawk 's bridge.

And Mitth'raw'nuruodo was still dying.

Doriana curled his hands into helpless fists. So it was finally over. If this second assault had failed to kill C'baoth, it was because he'd hidden himself well away from the vacuum that had now snuffed out all life in the Dreadnaughts' outer sections. Even given the thinner bulkheads and blast doors of the ships' interior sections, there was no way even droid starfighters could clear out the maze of decks and compartments in time.

An odd formation caught his eve as it shot into view outside the canopy: a pair of starfighters flying in close formation with a fat cylinder tucked between them. Not just one pair, Doriana saw now, but ten of them, heading at full speed toward Outbound Flight.

He remembered Kav mentioning this particular project of Mitth'raw'nuruodo's, and the vicelord's contemptuous dismissal of the cylinders as some sort of useless fuel tanks. Frowning, he watched as, in ones and twos, the starfighter pairs drove through the newly blasted holes in the Dreadnaughts' hulls and disappeared inside.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, abruptly, a haze of pale blue burst outward from the openings, nearly invisible amid the floating clouds of wreckage.

And with a sudden gasp of air, Mitth'raw'nuruodo collapsed forward against his board.

"Commander?" Doriana called, trying to get past the circle of crewers.

"I'm. . all right," the other panted, rubbing his throat with one hand as he waved off assistance with the other.

"I think you got him," Doriana said, looking over at the comm display. C'baoth was no longer in sight. "I think C'baoth's dead."

"Yes," Mitth'raw'nuruodo confirmed, his voice quiet. "All of them. . are dead."

A strange sensation crept up Doriana's back. "That's impossible," he said. "You only had one or two of those bombs in each Dreadnaught."

"One was all that was necessary," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said with a sadness that Doriana had never heard in him before. "They're a very special sort of weapon. A very terrible sort. Once inside the protective barrier of a war vessel's outer armor, they explode into a killing wave of radiation. The wave passes through floors and walls and ceilings, destroying all life."

Doriana swallowed. "And you had them all ready to go," he heard himself say.

Mitth'raw'nuruodo's eyes bored into his. "They were not meant for Outbound Flight," he said, and there was an expression on his face that made Doriana take an involuntary step backward. "They were intended for use against the largest of the Vagaari war vessels."

Doriana grimaced. "I see."

"No, you donot see," Mitth'raw'nuruodo retorted. "Because now, instead, we'll need to destroy the Vagaari remnant aboard the disabled vessels in shipboard face-to-face combat." He pointed out the canopy. "Worse, some of the war vessels and civilian craft have now escaped to deep space, where they'll have time to rebuild and perhaps one day will again pose a threat to this region of space."

"I understand," Doriana said. "I'm sorry."

To his surprise, he realized he meant it.

For a long moment Mitth'raw'nuruodo gazed at him in silence. Then, slowly, some of the tension lines faded from his face. "No warrior ever has the full depth of control that he would like," he said, his voice calmer but still troubled. "But I wish here that it might have been otherwise."

Doriana looked at Kav. For a wonder, the Neimoidian had the sense to keep his mouth shut. "What happens now?"

"As I said, we board the Vagaari war vessels," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Once they've been secured, we'll free the Geroons from their prisons."

Doriana nodded. And so that was it. Outbound Flight was destroyed, its Jedi-especially C'baoth-all dead. It was over.

All, that is, except one small loose end. No matter what the outcome, Kav's warning echoed through his mind, in the end this Mitthrawdo will have to die.

And in the swirling chaos of a shipboard assault, accidents inevitably happened. "I wonder if I might have permission to accompany the attack force," he said. "I'd like to observe Chiss soldiers in action."

Mitth'raw'nuruodo inclined his head slightly. "As you wish, Commander Stratis. I think you'll find it most instructive."

"Yes," Doriana agreed softly. "I'm sure I will."

The vibrations from the Dreadnaughts above, transmitted faintly through the metal of the connecting pylons, finally came to an end. "Is it over?" Jorad Pressor asked timidly.

Carefully, Lorana let her hand drop from the bulkhead where she'd been steadying herself. The sudden, awful flood of death from above had finally ended as well, leaving nothing behind.

Nothing.

"Yes," she said, trying hard to give the boy an encouraging smile. "It's all over."

"So we can go back up?"

Lorana lifted her eves to Jorad's father, and the tight set of his mouth. The children might not understand, but the adults did. "Not quite yet," she told Jorad. "There's probably a lot of cleaning up they're having to do. We'd just be in the way."

"And would have to hold our breath," someone muttered from the back of the group.

Someone else made a shushing noise. "Anyway, there's no point in hanging around here," one of the older men spoke up, trying to sound casual. "Might as well go back to the Jedi school where we can at least be a little more comfortable."

"And where we'll be properly locked in?" Uliar added sourly.

"No, of course not," Lorana said, trying to get her brain back on track. "There's plenty of spare building material crated up in the storage areas. I'll cut a section of girder and prop open the door. Come on-everyone back."

The crowd turned and shuffled back the way they'd come, some of the children still murmuring anxiously to their parents, the parents in turn trying to comfort them. Lorana started to follow, paused as Uliar touched her arm. "So what's thereal damage?" he asked softly.

She sighed. "I don't sense any life up there. None at all."

"Could you be wrong?"

"It's possible," she admitted. "But I don't think so."

He was silent for a moment. "We'll need to make sure," he said. "There may be survivors who are just too weak for you to sense."

"I know," she said. "But we can't get up there yet. The fact that the turbolift cars won't come implies the pylons are open to vacuum somewhere. We'll have to wait until the droids get them patched up."

Uliar hissed between his teeth. "That could take hours."

"It can't be helped," Lorana said. "We'll just have to wait."