Never one to waste his shots, Bevel paused, his breath stilled. Curiously, he sensed no flare of pain from his target even as the grav-loader—an amusingly easy target if there ever was one—veered off to the side. But then a heartbeat passed and, rather than plowing headlong into the storage rack, it swerved back on course, merely denting one of the girder's support struts with the back of its hull, and continued down the aisle.

Silently Bevel exhaled, his thoughts stained by melancholy. His beloved Aratech Quajolt-88 longblaster had been aboard the Havazo One when it was destroyed; if he'd had it now, he wouldn't have missed.

But in all of his life's occupations he'd had to make do with unexpected deprivations, employing one tool or skill when another failed. And so he called upon the Force anew, this time much more deeply. He surrendered all conscious consideration of his aim, of the shifting vector of fire between his blaster pistol and the occupants of the damaged grav-loader below, reducing the usual melding of muscle memory and instinctive calculations to the singularity of his desire, his craving for a successful end to the hunt.

Time seemed to slow. Offering an imminent kill to the Force, Bevel sensed its approving answer, felt it moving his aim, mentally foresaw the flash of his second shot—and heard the warning that brought the lightsaber to his free hand. Scarlet blade shining, it moved almost of its own accord to deflect an incoming laser away from Bevel's chest.

He was not perturbed. A challenge? Excellent.

Though his own aim was disrupted, the Force was flowing through him in a red tide; he shifted the strength of that surge to the blade that hummed in his off-hand, letting the dark power guide it now instead. With the Force, Bevel could aim a borrowed shot as well as one of his own. There was a second flicker of warning as the grav-loader's driver, aiming up through the destroyed windshield, readied to fire again.

Try it, thought Bevel, wild with anticipation. Just try it.

His lightsaber was moving to intercept the shots before they appeared, yet none were deflected because none were aimed anywhere near him. Instead, one by one they sizzled through the air half a meter beyond reach of Bevel's blade, tearing with splashes of sparks and flame into the wall above him. More specifically, into the support frame that kept one of the power conduit boxes secured to the wall.

Bevel threw himself through a storm of metal fragments, tumbling through space. The crash of the falling equipment against the catwalk popped his ears and curdled his blood. There were more screeches of metal as he reached the floor and fell into a crouch; though cushioned by the Force, he still landed hard enough to send a jolt from his heels up to his skull. Spots of red-hot pain stung his back where chunks of metal had nicked him like shrapnel. His right hand was empty, the wrist stinging as blood flowed down to his fingers.

A brief moment passed. Letting the pain goad him rather than weaken him, Bevel rose and found that the bay door at the end of the aisle had been battered down by a head-on collision from the grav-loader, which was parked sideways over the threshold, perhaps to hinder pursuit. A male Human—one of the two recorded by the seeker droid on Gulvitch—was on the other side. With a bag slung over one shoulder, he was half-dragging, half-carrying the sagging, wiry frame of a black-cloaked old woman, the so-called "Lady Crysenthia." Both of them pulsed with the Force—ragged and weary, but strong at their cores, stronger than Bevel had ever realized before.

Not that it would do them any good once he reached them.

Still stumbling off into the room beyond, the male Human pointed his blaster and fired repeatedly—not at Bevel, but at the fuel tank of the parked grav-loader, which ruptured and bloomed a curtain of hungry, spitting orange flame that spread over the vehicle and obscured most of the doorway.

Already moving at full sprint, Bevel didn't think of slowing down, his hunter's instinct giving way at last to true bloodlust. The fire felt like a searing, agonizing caress as a Force-powered leap carried him through it. Skidding to a stop on the other side, lightsaber raised before him, he found himself in a small hangar bay.

Ahead and slightly to the right, a white-and-blue freighter rested on its landing struts, filling the air with the whine of its engines and the reek of exhaust. The two fugitives were scrambling up its boarding ramp. Standing on the ramp's edge was a diminutive, ginger-haired girl who Bevel also recognized from Gulvitch.

He was about to move again when the Force gave him pause; an instant later a brilliant red bolt wider than his arm blazed in front of him, close enough to crisp his hair. His senses followed its path back to the source: an antipersonnel turret protruding from the belly of the freighter. The impact on the wall meters behind Bevel sent specks of superheated metal spraying past his shoulder.

Knowing that the shots were too large for his lightsaber to deflect, he flipped sideways through the air as the floor where he had been exploded. Wild blasts cratered the deck and walls at random, sending shockwaves and debris through the air.

A brief lull signaled a seconds-long recharge delay for the gunner. Landing and pressing himself almost prone to the floor, Bevel sent his lightsaber whirling in a boomerang arc that passed through the turret, shearing it free from the rest of the ship.

A shout of alarm in the Force drew Bevel's attention over to the loading ramp. The girl was still there, leveling a blaster pistol at him. Not a millisecond too soon, he telekinetically ripped it from her grasp—but to his surprise she reached out with the Force too, and the pistol hung in midair halfway between them, rotating slightly as though in freefall.

Bevel remembered then. This was the Jedi that Giran Faselli had been so eager to meet.

Pain at last tore at his concentration, slackening his Force grip even as the lightsaber landed back in his hand—and as the freighter finally rose up on its repulsorlifts. Abandoning her blaster, the girl clambered up the retracting ramp and disappeared inside. Bevel braced himself as the starship whipped around, and then it was its sublights' backwash that burned him as it pierced the hangar's particle field and made for deep space.