Strapped tight to the wall of the escape pod, Kyra found herself wishing, quite desperately, that she had a better view. The pod's cylindrical passenger section was a mere three meters in diameter, enough for ten beings to cram into the circular couch shoulder-to-shoulder. Dead ahead of her was a Corellian sharpshooter named Nellis, who hadn't been good-looking even before receiving the burn scar that colored the right side of his jaw and twisted his lip in a permanent sneer. From her angle she could barely even see Karraschakkuk; the big Wookiee was two seats over and the snout of a Bothan named Gresk blocked most of his bulk.

When Kyra tilted her gaze back- hard to do with the headrest directly behind her- she could peek through the escape pod's porthole window and see the blur of hyperspace.

The pod was still attached to its ship, or more accurately to the unpiloted drone that carried them through hyperspace. The second pod was locked snug in its berth right next to theirs, and when she reached out with the Force Kyra could faintly sense Ganner and Asaak as anxious as her.

They'd gone over the plan for insertion into Selvaris in detail, but nobody was totally confident in it. The reconnaissance ships they'd inserted over the planet had reported no orbital defenses and only one satellite hanging in geosynchronous orbit directly above the prison complex on the southern hemisphere. The satellite would surely detect an incoming starship, which was why they'd devised this nerve-wracking entry.

The drone that carried them through hyperspace was programmed to drop to sublight speed beyond Selvaris orbit. From there inertia would carry it into the atmosphere on a preprogrammed vector that would take them roughly above the prison complex. At that point the drone would explode, simulating a mere asteroid burning up in atmosphere, having ejected both pods seconds beforehand. If all went according to plan, the pods would fall to the surface and land undetected within fifty kilometers of the prison, at which point Kyra and the others would initiate a long march through Selvaris' jungles to the site.

It wasn't easily said and it would be even harder to do. Yet when the pod jerked out of hyperspace and stars winked through the porthole window, Kyra felt everyone tense with anticipation. They'd all agreed to this mission knowing full well what might happen to them. They'd been strapped in these crash seats for hours and were ready to get the job started.

Kyra was as restless as them, but she knew landing would be the easy part. The Federation had built a maximum-security jail on Selvaris specifically because it was so inhospitable. A hundred-some years ago the Yuuzhan Vong had occupied the world and used it, appropriately enough, as a prison camp. They'd initiated their terraforming projects, only to abandon the planet with the project half-done, leaving the local and invasive ecosystems to battle it out on their own terms. When the Jedi had put together the Ossus Project they hadn't bothered to try and fix Selvaris. The world was, simply, irrelevant.

It would become a lot more relevant if they could free Stazi. Saarai had passed them schematics of the prison, which would help a lot, but first they had to reach it. The jungle trek sounded like the most perilous part, and the pod's undercarriage contained a full supply of wilderness survival gear. Ganner and Asaak's pod, meanwhile, contained weapons and the portable communications device they'd need to call for extraction.

But first things first. Kyra strained her neck back and watched the porthole. After long minutes of drifting through space she finally spotted Selvaris' green disc slip into view.

Nellis, who'd been looking for the same thing, give a whistle and muttered, "Heads up, boys and girls. We're almost here."

Kyra tensed and waited as they continued the approach to Selvaris. The carrying drone had been programmed to skirt the edge of the planet's orbit and then fall in, like a meteorite pulled off-course by gravity. The planet slipped out of sight but Kyra knew they were getting closer.

The collective tension was thick in the Force. A thick-bodied, dark-completed human woman named Alasett grunted, "Want to place bets on who lands closer to the prison?"

"You know it'll be us," Gresk said with mock bravado.

"I don't know," said Selos, the furry Jenet on Kyra's left. "Some of the boys on the other pod have crazy luck."

"I wouldn't mind landing further, actually," said Nellis. "No fun waiting around for the others to catch up."

"There aren't woods you wanna trek through," said Alasett.

"I'm not scared of some Vong plants. Are you?"

The woman scoffed. "I ain't scared of nothing."

"That's the spirit." Nellis' lips peeled for a toothy smile.

It was all nervous chatter. Kyra was officially the leader of this mission but she let them talk. Some of these people probably wouldn't make it out of the job alive. Kyra just hoped that they got killed by the enemy, not by the planet itself. They deserved that dignity at least.

The pod's inertial dampened strained as the drone began falling in toward the planet. As Kyra's stomach surged against her chest, Nellis muttered, "Here we go."

She looked back through the porthole and saw it filled with Selvaris' green. The pod began to tremble and so did the view. When she focused on the narrow band of vision she made out not just jungle, but the blue speck of lakes and broad streaks of clouds. They looked dark with rain. She hoped they wouldn't have to land in a storm, but rough weather might help camouflage their landing from the observation satellite above.

The drone was set to drop them and blow and second now. Kyra's heart beat faster and she squeezed the straps of her restraints hard. Everyone else tensed too, waiting, praying they wouldn't get pointlessly blown up by their own ride. Each second lasted forever.

Alasett whispered, "Where the hell is it?"

And then they dropped. The whole pod rattled violently. Even in her restraints, Kyra's shoulders jostled painfully against Gresk's and Selos' and she couldn't knock her head back to look through the porthole. She could only fall.

She tried to reach out with the Force. Squeezing her eyes tight, blacking out Nellis' ugly mug, she felt the lives packed around her. She felt Ganner and Asaak in the other pod, falling farther away from theirs by the second but seemingly undamaged. And when she reached further she felt the forest itself. Whereas the sentients beside her could be felt as individual minds, the jungle was just a broad swell of existence, every inch containing life and death and regeneration. It was a dizzying thing, all the more because it was coming at them so fast, like it might swallow them whole.

Kyra's eyes burst open at the sound of alarms. Somebody swore; she couldn't tell who. As the pod kept rattling, she shouted, "Neiro! Report!"

The stocky Skrilling commando was seated closest to the pod control panel. Twisting to check the readout, he said, "Landing jet B's gone out."

"Jet B?"

"Bottom-port side," he confirmed.

Kyra felt fear boiling out of everyone, even Karrashchakkuk. Escape pods like this were programmed to compensate if one of the four direction jets malfunctioned, but there was nothing comforting in those alarms.

She knew what she had to do. She pushed the alarms away, and the boiling panic too. She focused on the pod itself. Bottom port. Jet B. It would be the one beneath Assett's seat. Pumping smooth regular breaths through her body, Kyra cleared her mind, called on the Force, and took control. When the other three landing jets fired the whole pod jerked. Kyra grabbed jet B and pushed it hard, imitating the expulsion of jets from the other three jets. The pod, off-balance and starting to spin, righted itself.

She felt it fall further, and the jungle grow closer. It was almost on them. She expanded her awareness to grasp hold of the entire pod and wrapped the whole cylinder in an invisible embrace she pulled it skyward, slowing its fall.

Then they crashed into the treetops. Everything shook too hard to concentrate. She held on to her restrains and was jostled around like everyone else, but the violence of landing lasted only ten seconds. Then, suddenly, they stopped.

The warning alarm stopped wailing. Lights shuddered on. A single pleasant chime sounded, marking successful landing.

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Gresk observed, "It seems we're not dead."

A few laughed with released tension. Kyra said, "Okay, people, let's start deployment. First ones out, be careful."

That meant Selos and Alasett. The Jenet smacked the controls for the door and it hissed open. Warm damp air rushed the cabin; it smelled like scorched foliage, and which meant the falling pod had burned a hot streak through the jungle on the way down.

Everyone unstrapped from the crash seats and filed out of the pod in order. Once she got outside Kyra saw what she'd expected: a capsule half-lodged in muddy earth, and a line of black devastation trailing behind them. Thankfully the pod had landed as-planned, with the cargo section facing skyward, and team members clambered over the still-hot metal hull, opened it up, and began removing gear.

Karrash trilled something about the sky and Kyra looked up. There were indeed clouds overhead, thick, tinted faintly violet. The air smelled like rain but the surrounding plant-leaves were dry. She hoped good weather held.

As he slung his pack over his back, Nellis eyes Kyra cautiously. He asked, "Were you the one who righted our landing, ma'am?"

It felt strange being called ma'am by a guy twice her age. "I helped," she said.

"Well I am sure as hells glad you're on our side," he said, then went to check on the cargo.

Karrash added, in a soft moan, they were all glad to have her. Kyra flushed at the compliment, but she appreciated it too. There was no point in having these Force powers if she couldn't be useful. She'd protected the team thus far as only she could; right now she felt confident she could continue to.

Next they had to meet up with Ganner's team. She hoped their landing had been smoother.

-{}-

Their pod had landed in a deluge. As soon as Asaak opened the hatch, muddy earth poured inside and rainwater spilled into Ganner's face, quickly soaking his shirt. He shouted at Asaak until the Togruta managed to close the hatch most of the way, though enough mud had clogged the hatch's frame to prevent a full seal.

"Well, this is lovely," spat Cev'mor from his spot next to Asaak. "I'm glad we're getting off to a great start."

Ganner didn't begrudge the foul mood. The Ishi Tib had barely escaped the Praxal VII mission with his life. He'd been brave to volunteer for the follow-up and deserved a smoother job.

"Well, look at it this way," said Asaak, "Their satellite definitely didn't see our landing. Consider this a successful infiltration."

"It'll be successful if our equipment doesn't get soaked," groused Lazaar, the young human in charge of the communications array.

"What do we do now?" Cev'mor asked Ganner.

As leader of the team, it was his call. Compared to other decisions he might have to make, this one was simple. "We wait out the storm," he told them. "And then we figure out where the hell we are."

Nobody objected. They listened to rain pound the hatch for another ten minutes before it receded to a drizzle. Then they ventured outside. The pod had come in to land next to the base of a large tree whose roots prevented it from sinking into the mud, but the earth around them was still a mess and within a minute outside, Ganner's legs were entirely coated in mud. Several team members helped Lazaar remove the transmitter and affix it to the man's backpack, while Cev'mor and a few others took out the weapons cases.

As for Ganner and Asaak, they tried to get the locator working. Because there were no friendly satellites to ping for telemetry, they would have to find their location on maps recorded by the recon drone flights several days ago. They'd have to explore the terrain first to do that but the ground wasn't even solid right now. So instead he took out a simple compass and checked the readings. If they'd landed anyplace near where they were supposed to land, the prison complex was under fifty kilometers south-south west.

That gave them a direction to start in. So did the tracker Asaak took out. It was the size and shape of a normal datapad, but he pulled out an antenna that sent out a transmission burst and waited for a reply from Kyra's group.

Ganner waited and felt tense as no reply came. There was no telling whether the other team had landed successfully. Their audio transmitters had very limited range to avoid detection and the Force, of course, no longer worked. Not for him and Asaak.

He distracted himself by giving orders to the others, though they knew perfectly well on their own how to strip all equipment from the pod and prepare the trek through the jungle. Some of the most rugged veterans in the resistance had joined this mission. A few had served with Stazi for all of his seven-year solo war against Krayt, and they were palpably eager to rescue their old leader.

Ganner just wanted a victory.

He got a small one when Asaak's tracker pinged. He looked up from his datapad, grinned, and said, "It's them. North-west-west, looks like twenty-five to thirty kilometers."

The pods were supposed to have landed closer, and the audio transmitters would only work within a ten-kilometer radius. But at least everyone was alive, and as Asaak had said, they'd surely landed undetected thanks to this storm.

The plan had been to rendezvous first, then head for the prison. There was no reason that didn't still hold. It would be a long trek, but that would give them plenty of time to chart the terrain and sync with the recon drones' maps.

Within minutes, the clouds started breaking. Golden light lit up the thick air and started drying the mud. Falling into one single-file line, they began their long journey through the jungle.