Waiting was the worst part, even worse than the helplessness of being stuck in a room with no way out. Tamar tried to calm her thoughts and focus on something else, anything else. One of the Force skills her ba'buir had taught her involved dropping into a meditative trance that allowed the body to mend. After the beating Gevern Auchs had given her she'd needed it, and before even trying to get up off the floor she'd closed her eyes and tried to find that gift her grandfather had given her.

Maybe it worked, or maybe the pain just dulled, but eventually she got up and staggered over to a chair. She spent a long time sitting, staring at the blank wall, the locked door, the cuffs around her wrists. There was no way to mark the passage of time here, but she was starting to get hungry. She was getting weak. Savyar's people could open that door at any time and drag her off to her death; she would have fallen asleep except for that uncertainty. After a while she lay back down on the floor and closed her eyes as if sleeping. She tried to find the Force again. She tried to forget her aching body and by forgetting mend it, while at the same time she tried to sense the other men and women aboard Waystation Grek. With time- how much time she'd never know- she began to sense the flow of consciousness through the station's corridors and rooms. She could feel the sole guard standing watch outside her door most acutely.

When Savyar or her people arrived, Tamar would get a little warning. That was something, but she couldn't tell if that made it better or worse.

She sensed it when a new, unfamiliar presence walked up to her door and opened it. She sat upright on the floor as her guard and one more Mandalorian walked inside. The guard picked the toppled table off the floor and placed it aright. The newcomer set down a tray of food. They both left without a word.

Tamar hauled herself to the table and sat down again. If they were bothering to feed her it must have meant Savyar was keeping them waiting. Again, she didn't know if it was bad or good. Her meal consisted of a bowl of steaming soup, a roll of bread, and a cup of water. As emptied as her stomach was, she doubted she had room for anything else. She drank some water and realized how parched she'd been. Then she started on the soup. They hadn't given her utensils, no surprise, so she picked up the bowl with both cuffed hands, brought it to her lips, and began to sip.

She only got in one hot mouthful when something hard poked her upper lip. She tipped back the bowl and tried to see anything in the red broth. The she placed it on the tray, stuck one gloved finger in, and swirled it around until she found it.

She pulled it out with two fingers: a metal keycard as big as her thumb, the kind they used to unlock a set of stun cuffs. Dorn, it had to be. Unless it was a trick. She'd looked for cameras before and hadn't spotted any. She looked again. Nothing. She sat back down and stilled her fast-beating heart. If they were feeding her it meant they expected a wait. It meant she had time.

Because she needed strength she began gnawing at the bread. She reached out with the Force again. The guard was still there, but only him. She reached further. She sensed activity like before, but less so. She had no way of knowing how long she'd been locked up; she didn't even remember what time it had been when she arrived. Sooner or later, the station would go into sleep-cycle. The corridors would grow emptier still.

She waited. She finished the bread and drank more water. She even finished the soup. When the Force told her that people in the station were starting to settle down and rest, she went over to the access panel by the door. It was locked, of course, but the chip she could pry off the panel and get to the wires beneath. She didn't need a wide range of motion for this, so she kept her stun cuffs on and slipped the chip into a pocket. She worked slowly and quietly so as not to alarm the guard, and all the while she kept herself open to the Force. She'd at least get a warning if someone new was coming.

When she was certain she could bypass the lock on the door she paused. She closed her eyes, leaned slack against the wall, and sunk as deep into the Force as she could. She could feel the guard on the other side of the bulkhead and a few more minds stirring further away. The rest of the station was asleep. She was certain of it.

That meant now was as good a time to act as she'd get. Tamar took out the keycard and slid it through the reader on her left cuff. The clasp opened. She let the cuffs dangle from her right wrist, then prepared the wiring for the door. She took a deep breath and opened it.

The hiss of it sliding jerked the sleepy guard awake. By the time he knew what was happening, Tamar was behind him, kneed stabbed up into the small of his back, forcing his body forward while she snapped her wrists on either side of his neck and choked him with the band of her stun cuffs. She could hear him gag inside his helmet, and she squeezed his neck just long enough for him to pass out.

He was heavy with his armor on and it took all her strength to drag him into her cell. She lay him down on the floor and pulled off his helmet. A young one. She rolled him onto his stomach, pinned his hands behind his back, and clasped them together with the stun cuffs. She thought a moment, then slipped off one of his gloves, rolled him onto his back again, and stuffed the glove into his mouth. She wished he'd had a second set of cuffs so she could bind his feet; she settled with sliding off his belt and wrapping it around his ankles. If she wasn't gone by the time he woke up there's be a problem, but it didn't hurt to do things right. His gold-and-brown helmet wouldn't match the rest of her outfit but she knew it was better to have her face covered so she put it on. From the whiff of it, he liked to smoke things.

Finally, she took his blaster. A BlasTech DL-64 carbine, not a bad choice. They'd taken her belt and she pondered borrowing her prisoner's, then decided to leave it around his legs. Then she rose, made sure the hall outside was clear, and opened the door again.

She stepped out and looked around. Nobody. She remembered the way back to the hangar and walked as quickly and casually as she could. She kept on reaching out with the Force, sensing every hallway before every turn to make sure it was safe to progress.

She almost got the whole way to the hangar before she felt the two minds. They were standing right by the entrance. She felt weariness, mild amusement, the hallmarks of a casual conversation.

She couldn't wait around the corner forever. She steeled herself and walked on. Sure enough, there were two Mandalorians in faceless armor, leaning against opposite walls. The exit was right past them. She walked without looking at either of them. She felt their curiosity pique, felt them watch her back as she passed.

Then she was in the hangar and neither of them followed. She breathed out inside the stink-smelling helmet and began walking for Krux's ship, right where she'd left it. She'd closed it tight before leaving but ramp was down anyway. They'd been inside, poking around the thing, but at this point it didn't matter. As long as she could fly it out of here she'd be fine. She scanned the ship with the Force, found it empty, and hurried toward it.

That was when someone from the utility catwalks overhead shouted for her to halt. Stupid, she thought, and broke into a sprint. Laser blasts stung the floor at her feet; one shot panged into her beskar-plated shoulder, spinning her off-balance. She could see two Mandos up on the catwalk, firing at her. There'd be more coming fast.

She charged up into Krux's ship, rushed the cockpit, and dropped herself into the pilot's chair. She closed the landing ramp first, then began warming the engines. Somebody had hauled out the computer from Savyar's freighter, but she'd copied all the data to this ship's memory core before landing. All the pre-flight presets she'd programmed into the computer were intact, which meant the data stores probably were too.

She could give those to the Jedi. She had no one else to run to except Arlen Fel, which was something she could let sink in when she wasn't running for her life.

Tamar kicked in the repulsors and rose from the deck just as five more Mandalorians rushed into the hangar. Their small arms fire was useless against the armor on Krux's ship, so she spun it around to face the hangar mouth and gunned the engines.

She soared out of the station and toward the lights and gases of the Shroud, but that didn't mean she was safe yet. She wouldn't be safe until she was outside the Shroud entirely, and the Mandos in the hangar were already rushing for their Beskads. She gave herself three, four minutes tops to get into hyperspace.

Waystation Grek was located in a pocket of clear space in which there was only one good way in or out. That meant there was only one communications buoy located near the hyperspace jump point. She found the thing on her scanners and warmed the ship's weapons, two surprisingly powerful laser cannons. Her first instinct was to blow the damn thing up and keep them from calling reinforcements to trap her.

Then a thought flicked through her mind. She'd had to repair one of those comm buoys once when they were setting up their bases in the Shroud. Those things had computer cores that retained logs of everything that passed in or out, a list of where each message went through the maze until it reached its destination.

Gevern Auchs had commed Savyar at least once recently. Savyar was almost certainly on that worldship of hers. If she got a copy of the buoy's transmission logs and overlaid them on the map of the Shroud she'd retrieved from the dead freighter, it would lead her right to Savyar.

If that didn't impress that Jedi, nothing would.

It was also an incredible risk. She checked behind her: no Beskads yet, but they'd be out in under a minute, she was sure. If she was smart he'd have raked that hangar with her cannons on her way out, but after all this was she was still Mandalorian and she wasn't going to kill her own. It wasn't her comrades' fault Gevern Auchs had dragged them into some Sith's schemes.

Krux's ship had no tractor beam so she edged it close to the buoy until the proximity alarms went off. She used directional repulsors to keep the thing steady and ran out to the airlock. When it opened she saw the buoy almost ten meters away, far longer than it should have been. She glanced back at Waystation Grek and saw tiny engine-flares of departing Beskads. No more time. She jumped.

Back in Broken Moon, Arlen Fel had thrown them through the airless void using the Force like it was nothing. Tamar had nothing close to his skill but she had the right trajectory and she used all her concentration to speed herself toward the buoy, then slow right before impact. The hit still sent pain arching through her legs, knees, and hips. She activated the magnetic clamps on her boots and half-walked, half-crawled over to the utility hatch. She tugged it open and stared at the inside of the buoy's computer core. She found the memory pane where it was supposed to be, pulled it out, and immediately pushed herself back toward the ship with the slab of hardware under his arm.

The Beskads were getting close. She could see their engine-flares but not their laser-blasts. Maybe they'd hesitate when they saw she was right by the buoy. She hoped it would buy her just a few seconds.

She hit the ship's hull and nearly lost her cargo as she flailed for purchase. She scrambled for the airlock, threw herself in, and closed it behind her. She pulled off the smoke-smelling helmet as the pressure equalized, and when the door opened she was sprinting to the cockpit.

She got their right before the first laser hit, a glancing blow against the shuttle's dorsal fin. Alarms wailed. Tamar fell into the pilot's chair and slammed the shields on. Amazingly, they worked. She fired off two shots at the approaching Beskads, swung her nose around, gave her navcomp a second to calculate the next jump, the pounded the hyperdrive on.

She was safe in hyperspace but not for long. She found herself panting in her seat and wondering at not only escaping but surviving. Her head rolled to one side and she saw her own blue-and-black T-visor helmet sitting on the deck in the corner of the cabin, like a bodyless head staring back at her. Giddily, stupidly, she laughed.

Then she dropped out of hyperspace. She still had four more jumps to go and each time she needed to recalibrate for the next one. This was where the Beskads could catch up with her, but she'd already noticed that Krux's ship could realign itself and re-jump faster than most. Four starfighters from Waystation Grek reverted to realspace behind her, but by then she was ready to jump. She escaped before they could open fire.

On the second and third jumps they didn't even catch up before she moved on. After the fourth jump, the jump that took her to the edge of the Shroud entirely, she'd decided there was one thing she liked about Mordran Krux after all.

When she reverted to realspace, four Beskads were waiting for her.

They didn't bother hailing. They just opened fire. Tamar swore and wrestled with the ship's engines. Its shields were good and its guns packed a punch but it was nowhere near as nimble as a Mando starfighter. Her first volley of shots were able to punch through the forward shields of the nearest Beskad and turn it into a blossom of fire. Then they were on her, pounding her shields, taking her from all sides. They swarmed constantly, cutting off any escape route. Through a litany of swears she tried to wrestle her ship through their gauntlet. If she got a clear shot she could micro-jump away from here and then she'd be free, but the Beskads were determined to deny her any escape route. She kept firing her guns dead ahead and tried to clear a path that way. For a second there was nothing but blackness and stars ahead, and she glanced at her scanners to see all three ships seemed to have fallen behind.

Close enough. Her navcomp calculated a micro-jump, just four light-years, enough to get her clear. She hit the throttle, the hyperdrives groaned to life, the starlines stretched out-

-and her ship collided with a Beskad.

The starlines briefly flared to hyperspace anyway, then immediately became swirl of pinpoint-light against blackness. Klaxons blared and she did her best to wrest the ship under control. The impact had collapsed the starboard side of her ship. Engines were dead. Shields were gone too, but they were surely the only thing that had saved her from being vaporized the second she hit the Beskad. Readings showed dozens of minute hull-breaches but nothing immediately fatal.

Just slowly fatal. Outside scanners showed nothing. She was three light-years from the edge of the Shroud, and not at the angle she'd jumped into. Maybe the Mandalorians thought she'd been destroyed. Maybe they'd search. Maybe they'd even find her, and if they did, she'd be helpless. She knew that, just like she knew she couldn't be a Mandalorian any more, not after what she'd stolen from them, not after the pilots she'd killed.

It still didn't seem real, not when she was as good as dead anyway. Her thoughts went back to the Jedi. She checked the communications system: still alive, at least for now. Power interruptions were cascading through her systems. Life support wouldn't last long but if she acted fast to seal the hull breaches, then dropped into a meditative trance, she might survive a few days, a week at most. Assuming her people- her former people- didn't find her first.

She steadied herself, and then she made the call. It was short, simple, and to the point. When she was done, when the signal went, she slumped back in her chair and the fullness of it finally struck her. She was stranded in hostile territory, drifting in a broken ship, soon to run out of air, more helpless and alone than she'd ever been in her life.

It had never been that way, could never be that way. She'd been Mandalorian and Clan Skirata. She'd always known where she belonged and someone had always had her back.

Tamar belonged to nothing now, was nothing. It was all she could do to rise from her chair, fix her broken ship, and get ready to die slowly. She felt like she'd already started.

-{}-

Chance Calrissian's home servant droid cooked a surprisingly good Tanaab nerf steak, but Arlen wasn't in the mood to enjoy it. From his expression on the opposite side of the kitchen table, neither was Chance.

"So how long did you spend talking to the judicial people?" he asked.

"Three hours, maybe four. It was yesterday morning, before the senate session."

"Were you there for that?"

He shook his head. "I watched with my parents from Admiral Antilles' apartment."

"Allana gave a good speech. Tenel Ka too."

"Fat lot of good it did them."

"Yeah," Chance sighed and slumped in his seat. "Well, what now?"

"I don't know. Lew enforcement doesn't seem to think we've given them a smoking gun to prosecute Savyar."

"You mean I risked my life for nothing?" Chance said dryly.

"You risked it to help stop a maniac Sith from breaking the Alliance apart and murdering billions of people."

"So basically to save the galaxy."

"More or less."

He sighed again. "I should have stayed home. I was gone for weeks. Do you know what kind of backlog piles up when you're the head of an interstellar business conglomerate and you're gone for weeks?"

"How would I?"

"Right, you're monastic, I forgot."

"Not monastic, just-" The comlink in Arlen's trouser pocket started buzzing. He recognized the pattern; not his parents or Allana but the automated relay from Starlight Champion. "Hold on I have to get this."

Chance went back to finishing his nerf steak without a word. Arlen stepped out of the kitchen and into the living room, where the servant droid was now clearing dust. He tapped the comlink and heard Champ's computer voice said, "You have one new message. Would you like to play?"

He tapped again and listened. The transmission was riddled with static and first he thought it was nothing but that. Then he heard a voice break through, higher-pitched, female. Familiar.

"-don't have long," Tamar Skirata was panting. "Coordinates should go along with this transmission. If not, I'm… three-lightyears outside the Shroud. Closest major system is… Anstares, I think. Engines down, shields down, it's all down. I'm gonna try one of your Force trances, see if I can hold out. I've got what you need jeti. I know where the glitstim comes from and I know how to find Savyar. Come and get it jeti and I'll call off your debt… So come… Please… Help..."

By the time the transmission ended Arlen had already rushed back into the kitchen. "It's her," he said to Chance's blank stare. "She's got it."

"Who's got what?" Chance gaped.

"Tamar Skirata. She knows where Savyar is but her ship is damaged." Arlen dashed into Chance's guest bedroom and immediately began throwing clothes into his case. "It'll take days to get out there. Can't waste a second. I'll tell Mom what's up when we're on the way."

"We? Dammit, I just got back here! I have a business to run!"

"What, you can't work remotely?"

"Why me? What about your parents or your Jedi friends?"

"No time. Allana's meeting with Sevash right now, Mom and Dad are with Admiral Antilles and the, uh, nevermind." Dragging the Yuuzhan Vong into this would confuse Chance even more. "And it sounds like we might be flying into some rough stuff, so I could definitely use a co-pilot."

"Damn it, how do you know this isn't a trap?"

Arlen froze over that one, standing over his half-filled case. Then he threw his jacket in and said "I just do, that's all. And if it is a trap- which it isn't- then I'll really need a co-pilot."

Chance rolled his eyes. "Do you trust her because the Force tells you to or because she's good looking?"

"She's not- I mean, she is, if you ignore the bad attitude. But-"

"Good looks plus bad attitude equals bad combination. C'mon, Arlen, basic math."

"Basic math says if she can give us Savyar and the worldship it's worth risking two lives to save billions."

"One life," Chance said stubbornly.

Arlen threw up his hands. "Fine, I'll go alone. If I don't come back, well, you'll just have to think how it could have gone."

He closed his case, slung it over his shoulder, and started for the door. He was almost there when Chance called his name. He turned just in time to catch the object tossed at him: a plain, battered silver cylinder. His lightsaber.

No. Tamar's lightsaber. Her grandfather's lightsaber. A long-dead Jedi's lightsaber.

Their eyes met across the room. Chance gave a labored sigh and said, "Give me five minutes. I can pack fast."

-{}-

"I can't pretend I'm doing Senate work this time," Allana said, "But I have to go."

She stood in front of the chief of state's desk; Sevash was in his seat and watched her without expression. She couldn't glean much from him in the Force aside from a grim weariness.

There was a lot of that lately.

"What do the Jedi know?" he asked.

"Not much yet. Arlen Fel says he has a lead on Savyar's location. Once we get it, we'll have to move fast. We can't be dawdling on Coruscant when it happens."

"I understand."

Allana felt her chest tighten as she said, "I'd like to request an official, temporary leave of absence from my duties as senator. I know that might be difficult to grant, given what I'm going to do, and how the senate just voted, but I have to do it."

"You have a duty as a Jedi," Sevash said.

"I do. If you believe my actions as a Jedi will still violate my role as a senator, I will resign my post immediately."

She waited; breath caught in her chest and blood pounded in her ears. She'd never even wanted to be a senator; the possibility had never crossed her mind as a child, a youth, or young adult. She'd only wanted to be a Jedi. Then Hapes had fallen to the usurpers. People she loved had died and more had been cast out from their homes. Now, after twelve years of representing those people as best she could, she stood poised to throw it all away and was shocked by how much it saddened her.

Sevash exhaled and said, "You are granted your leave of absence. The Alliance has always tried to accommodate the laws of Coruscant and the laws of its member people."

"Jedi aren't member peoples, sir."

"I consider that a technicality." A melancholy smile tugged his narrow mouth a little wider. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

"You couldn't control the vote, sir."

"No, I must abide by it. If I disregard the democratic will, I'll be no better than Admiral Daala or Jacen Solo."

He had no idea how much those words hurt her. She struggled for something to say. In the end she mumbled, "I understand, sir. Thank you for giving me what you could."

"The Yuuzhan Vong you brought with you," he said, "They've been fully debriefed by Admiral Antilles, haven't they?"

"That's right. The military knows everything we know about that worldship, or at least, everything we think we know. There's so much that's still uncertain."

"I understand. Tell them they have my thanks. Even if we are… inactive, we won't be ignorant."

They stared at each other across the desk in silence. Eventually Allana said, "I need to go see my mother and the rest. They'll be preparing to leave."

Sevash frowned slightly. "I must ask, Senator, are you planning to use your senatorial shuttle as part of your… mission?"

"Don't worry, sir, no Alliance equipment will be involved. We've got our own ride."

-{}-

Given the hundreds of thousands of ships that left and arrived on Coruscant on any day, almost any strange design could have slipped down to its surface and aroused little notice. An ignorant eye would have assumed the vessel on the pad next to Allana's shuttle had been crafted by some alien race that favored curved hulls and organic-looking designs; Mon Cal, say, or Geonosian. A closer look would reveal that the green-skinned, wide-winged flier had no visible thrusters, and that the viewport around its cockpit was made of something far different than transparisteel.

"The Sekotan flier is powered entirely by dovin basals," Kodra Val explained to those gathered around the ship. "They will propel us into darkspace and should, I believe, allow us to get close to the worldship without being detected."

"You believe?" Jagged asked as he stood beside his wife. He was trying not to sound skeptical but it wasn't working.

The shaper didn't seem to take offense. "Yuuzhan Vong ships have a way of masking themselves from sensors using dovin basals. Mandalorian tracking systems will be calibrated to target engine-trails and will be unable to lock onto us. Further, I suspect that the surface of most of the worldship is dead. It should not be difficult to reach."

"Getting aboard that worldship will be the easy part," Tenel Ka said. Gone were the regal robes or animal-hide clothes. She wore a black utility jumpsuit like Allana, Jaina, and Tanith Zel.

"What's waiting for us is going to be a lot harder," Jaina said.

"Will you meet up with Ben's team before you enter the Shroud?" Jag asked.

"That's touch-and-go," said his wife." But if possible I want to rendezvous with them. They'd picked up their own flier too, of course."

"What about Arlen and Chance? They'll still have Starlight Champion."

Jaina squeezed his arm. "It's okay, Jag. We'll figure out the details as they come."

She knew he'd never like that. The Chiss has raised him on the maxim that it was impossible to overplan something. As for Jaina, she was a Jedi and Han Solo's daughter besides. Intuition and winging it had been her specialties for over sixty years.

As Kodra Val went up into the ship where her Yuuzhan Vong waited, Jag pulled his wife into a firm hug. "I wish I could go with you, but I know I'd drag you down."

"It's okay, really."

"Watch out for Arlen. Watch out for your-" His voice cracked and he couldn't finish. He couldn't take it if he lost either his wife or his surviving son. Growing up he'd watched his siblings die one-by-one until only Wynssa was left. After he'd married Jaina it had felt like a bubble of security had been raised around his family at last. Now the bubble was gone and he hadn't been able to express to Jaina how much it had shaken him. He knew Jaina was hurting too but she did a much better job of hiding it; so good he was starting to wonder if some of her wasn't in denial.

"I'll keep them all safe." She squeezed him back. "This isn't my first Vong ship to storm. Or my first Sith to fight."

"That was all a long time ago."

"You think I've lost my edge?" She pulled back so he could see the twinkle in her dark eye. Other things about her had changed in the thirty years they'd been married, but not that.

"Of course not. Just come back to me."

"I promise." She rose up on her toes so they could kiss once, twice, a third time.

"You'll have plenty of time for that when we get back," Tanith called from the landing ramp.

"I'll hold you to that," Jaina called, then kissed Jag one more time and turned for the ship. The red-haired girl rolled her eyes and stalked up into the ship. Jaina climbed up after her. Jag watched until her boots disappeared; then he realized Tenel Ka was still standing on the deck.

They hadn't talked much since her return to Coruscant. Jagged hadn't know what to say. The woman put a hand on the rancor-tooth saber at her hip and said, "I'll watch her back, Jagged."

"I appreciate that. But I actually do believe Jaina can take care of herself."

"Fact. I was referred to Tanith, actually."

Jag sighed. "She does look like her mother, doesn't she? Acts like her too."

"Also a fact. But she has her share of Zekk inside as well."

That was good to know; good and sad. For so long Zekk had primarily been Jag's irritating rival for Jaina's affections. Once they'd gotten past that he'd become a good friend and his death on Hapes had hit Jag hard. It had hit Jaina harder still, harder than anything since she'd had to kill her brother, but for Tenel Ka it had been the worst.

"It's what we have to do now," Jag told Tenel Ka. "Protect the future."

"I understand that now. May the Force be with you, Jagged."

"You know, all these years, I think maybe it has. Even if I can't sense it."

Tenel Ka pulled him in for a short hug, then marched up the ramp. Jagged turned his back to the Sekotan ship and walked toward the edge of the landing pad, face down against the wind. When he turned to look at the organic vessel it had already retracted its landing gear and was rising slowly to the sky. Unlike repulsors or fiery thrust engines, dovin basals made no sound. The flier simply tipped its wide-winged body to the clouds and shot up into the air.

Jag stayed where he was, watching it until it disappeared. He felt empty again, empty and useless like he had on Bastion after Davek had died and everyone else was away. Eventually he'd gotten used to being in a family of mostly Force-users. Having Davek had helped. Now he was alone again.

But that wasn't true. Moping, he knew, would get him nowhere. He reached into his pocket, fished out his comlink, and made a call.

"Syal," he said, "When are you free? We need to talk."