"Not even Jedi are immune to Time. It wears us down as individuals and as a collective. One of our greatest tragedies is that the origins of our Order are obscured by time and distance and, most sadly, by strife within ourselves. Legends speak of our birth on the world of Tython, our exodus to wider stars, and our eventual establishment of a new home on the world of Ossus, but how did this come to be? The answers are lost, and I fear some essential truth of the Force may be lost with them." Jedi Master Odan-Urr, Reflections on a Thousand Years, 4,137 BBY

Year 18 of Xim's reign

526 LE

11,341 TYA

They stood on the hilltop, facing one another as afternoon light turned the sky and desert the same warm tone. Brittle scrub darkened the surrounding troughs, but on the hill's bald crest their shadows stretched violet across gold dust.

They began. Each sprang forward on powerful legs, three-clawed feet leaving marks in the earth as they pushed off. Their weapons collided: two blades of pure energy, one gold and one green, sparked together against the setting sun. Each combatant pushed against the other, trying to overcome through raw physical strength.

But it would take more than that. Shen backstepped and took a deep breath. Quoll opponent shifted her stance slightly, lowering her blade, leaving herself open for an attack. Shen did not take so obvious a bait; instead he stepped carefully sideways. His eyes were on her at all times, marking the position of her legs, the crook of her elbow, the twitch of her wrists. When she attacked next he repelled easily. She parried his counterattack with the same ease and jabbed upward. He felt the heat of her lightsaber so close to his cheek.

It was a necessary reminder that, though they were merely sparring, their weapons were deadly. Long ago, it was said, their people had wielded energy blades powered by concentrations of the Force itself. That ability was beyond them now; the Force had long deserted their people, their once-illustrious civilization had collapsed, but they'd at least fashioned makeshift replacements for the revered weapons, these ones powered by Adegan crystals to create a blade just as dangerous as the Forcesabers of old.

Though Shen craved to win this match, he would not risk harming his opponent. He struck at her center and she blocked it easily, but he withdrew his blade and jabbed at her legs, forcing her to hop back. He continued his attack, aiming to push her off the hill's dusty top and into the scrub. That would suffice to end the match.

Quoll was more than twice his age, but no weaker for it. She pushed back, twisted onto Shen's flank, then swept out with her foot. Shen jumped back but not quite in time; one long claw cut through the green-blue skin of his foreleg, drawing a bead of blood.

The pain was minor. Shen fought on but Quoll was tireless in defense. She risked no more attacks moves against him, merely deflected blow after blow.

Which was, of course, the point. This was a test, and she was expecting him to summon an attack she could not parry. Yet if he dawdled too long, if he hesitated, she would strike at him in punishment for his weakness. For that reason Shen could never let his guard down.

It was an adage among their kind, passed down from the age of lost glory, that the parent was often the hardest teacher.

Shen had to find a way, even under strain. He stepped back from Quoll and brought his saber to a defensive position, ready to absorb one or two counter-attacks while he mustered the strength within him. His mother did not disappoint; she slammed his blade hard with her own, forcing him back. Another blow forced him to dig the claws of the left feet into the soil.

But by that time he'd found what he needed. His eyes marked the small boulder at the edge of the clearing and he reached out to it, not with the hands grasping his saber but with his mind. With the power inside him.

He lifted the rock and threw it in the air. Quoll buckled under the impact and trembled again under Shen's heavy vertical saber-blow, but still she did not collapse. Instead of charging again Shen kicked up dust; some stung as it clung to the bleeding cut in his left but it also crackled against Quoll's lightsaber and got in her eyes. A dirty trick, but his mother had said to win using anything available.

In the split-second while Quoll blinked the dust from her eyes, Shen found that power again. With hands that were not hands he pressed against the sternum of his mother's chest and pushed her as hard as she could.

She went flying. His invisible blow knocked her off her feet and sent her through the air. She landed in the brambles beyond the hilltop and rolled downslope, dropping her lightsaber as she hit the ground. Shen, shocked by his own strength, nearly dropped his weapon as he raced after her.

When he found her she was stunned but awake, lying on her back. The crushed bush around her stabbed into her clothes but did not pierce her skin. When his shadow fell over her a hiss escaped her sharp teeth.

"Are you all right?" asked Shen.

"I am… undamaged," she replied.

"I didn't mean to hit you so hard. I… I still cannot control myself as well as I should."

He offered a hand. She took it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. As she brushed off her dirty clothes Quoll said, "You must learn to master that power above all else, if you are to realize your destiny."

He'd never liked that word. It made his chest tighten and his heart heavy. For centuries his people had hidden from hostile aliens, hostile empires. Detached from their race's past, rejected by the Force, all they had were passed-down memories of greatness. It left them melancholy and backward-looking. Even the youths seemed like old men and women whose best days were far behind.

But for Shen it was different. The Force had deserted their people, but not him.

There was no explanation for how or why. Quoll and the other Elders of their village had discussed it endlessly, but from the beginning it had been clear something was different about Shen. He saw things other children did not and anticipated events not even adults could expect. The Elders had poured over their records of the past age for lessons on how to raise a youth to use the Force. So much of the old knowledge was lost to time, but it had been some good fortune that Shen's mother was the tribe's chief Elder and most learned lore-keeper.

Quoll stalked through the shrub until she found her lightsaber and picked it up. "That is enough for today," she said. "We will practice again tomorrow."

He nodded but said, "I'd like to do more studying too."

"You will," she assured him. "There is a time for contemplation, but to know the Force you must act upon it."

She said it with a tiny of melancholy. Despite all her learning most of their race's history was lost, and she had no direct experience of the Force itself. They both knew that for her to train him was the blind leading the seeing, yet it was the best they could do. Shen was learning bit by bit. Still, to call his fumbling a destiny was ludicrous.

"I would like to spend more time with archives in the Sanctuary," he told her. "I want to learn all you have."

"To do that you will have to learn the old tongues. Not even we Elders can read everything collected in the Sanctuary. I am still struggling to teach myself the language of the Scourge."

Many centuries ago, when their civilization had been strong, they'd encountered a people unlike any they'd met before. These ones were unexpectedly powerful in the Force, and their rise marked the beginning of the end for Shen's people. They lingered in the clan's history as ghastly legends, though tucked within the Sanctuary was some of their writing. He would like to learn from this so-called Scourge, but his mother was right; he had to grasp the basics of the Force first.

"By understanding the Scourge, perhaps we can see where our ancestors went wrong. Perhaps you can be all the stronger for it." Quoll gave a melancholy sigh. "But enough of that. It will be dark soon, and time to eat."

Shen looked to the reddening sky, then swept his gaze across the rolling hills until he marked the huts of their village. Made from sewn-together animal hides, the canvas domes of their huts were the exact same color as the dry earth that spread from horizon to horizon, and some were decorated with patches of the same brittle scrub. At the center of the huts was the oval hill of the Sanctuary, its topside entrance a square metal portal camouflaged by piles of dirt. This was all done to disguise themselves from aerial view, though it had been months since anything passed through their sky except avians. His people had migrated from world to world over the years in search of somewhere desolate enough to grant them the privacy they required, and here they seemed to have found it.

So Shen was thinking, at any rate, when he spotted a red light streaking through the eastern sky. He pivoted to watch it as it continued to burn across the atmosphere. "Mother," he called, "Do you see that?"

Of course she did. Quoll had already dug into the pack at her waist and drew out a looking-glass. She telescoped it to full length, held it to her right eye and tracked the burning object as it fell into the earth. Shen wasn't keen enough to judge the distance, but he spotted a geyser of dirt thrown up by the impact and a low tremor rattled their hill. Then he saw the first plume of smoke rise into the darkening sky.

"What is it?" he asked his mother. "A comet?"

Quoll shook her head. "No. It was something artificial."

"A starship?"

"Perhaps." She lowered the glass.

Shen wondered if he hadn't brought some curse down on them by using the Force. But no, he chided himself. That object would already have been falling from the upper atmosphere, perhaps even from space itself.

"What should we do?" he asked.

Quoll's face tightened in a scowl. "Return to the village. Gather a search party to investigate. And pray that no one comes chasing the trail of that… thing."

Because if someone did, their people would lose their placid lives on Endregaad, and perhaps much more.

-{}-

The fighting had stopped, but Erakas could not bring himself to lower his sword. Instead he floated in the airless space beside one of the intruders. Judging by the voice she was a young woman but her face and body were obscured by her vacuum-proof suit, which was even more bulky than his own.

That woman was not the problem. The problem was the person in the other suit, the one who'd attacked him first, then knocked Essan into the power control relay station they'd been trying to access before encountering these strangers. From Erakas's brief look inside the helmet, that one was a green-skinned, horn-faced nonhuman the likes of which he'd never seen, not on Tython, nor on his long journey halfway across the galaxy.

Essan and the other nonhuman remained by the control node. Their brief struggle had ceased and now their bodies lingered a few meters apart, as though in indecision. Erakas tried to peer through his helmet at the woman beside him, and he thought he saw the jaw of her profile moving through the tinted glass.

Essan's voice sounded in his helmet. "What has happened?" she asked. "Why have they stopped?"

"I think they realize we're not a threat," Erakas said hopefully, but he didn't lower his own sword; not until he could be certain they were no threat either. "What happened when you hit the console?"

"I don't know," Essan growled in frustration. Reluctantly she turned her back on the intruder and bent over the controls, working buttons with her thick, glove-encased fingers. He heard her hiss a Sith curse. "They've ejected the ship's data core."

"They've what?"

"You heard me."

They'd been planning to launch it anyway, but not like this. When they'd set out from Tython they'd known little about the ancient generation ship they'd be set to chase. It had been one of the very first cryogenic arks to leave the Tythan system and had been crossing the stars at near-light speed for nearly ten thousand years. They'd come aboard with scant technological information on those earliest ships retrieved from archives on Ska Gora, not knowing if that data would even be useful.

It had been grim but not surprising to find the ark was an abattoir. Yet according to the schematics, these generation ships contained computer cores that recorded a history of all shipboard functions. If the ark was destroyed, the core was programmed to eject and set course back to Tython. When they found the ship drifting in a state of near-death, and they'd hoped to discover the cause by manually ejecting the core so that Master Talyak could retrieve it in their ship.

But these damned newcomers had messed it all up.

Erakas finally thought to call Talyak. He opened his comm channel to their ship and said, "Master, do you read me? Can you hear me?"

Static had been marring their conversations since coming aboard. Right now nothing got through. He cursed and tried to reach out with the Force, to sense the Talid Master and tell him what words and faulty comm systems could not. If it were Master Sohr aboard he could have done it; their bond in the Force was old and deep enough he could convey even complex information across the distance. But after a year of traveling Master Talyak was still too inscrutable to him. Their bond was too weak. He couldn't do it.

"Essan," he called, hoping she could do better.

But before the Sith woman could reply, another voice said: "Can you hear me? We all need to get out of here, now."

It took him an extra moment to parse those words. For the past four months, he and his fellow Jedi had laid low in this region of space, chasing rumors about the ghost ship they'd finally caught. As the only human of the three, he was the only one who'd ventured out regularly into ports to resupply and search for information, and even then they'd stuck to small, out-of-the-way outposts so as not to draw attention to their exotic spacecraft.

The past four months had been a hard immersion in the region's trade language. Erakas had gotten a lot better at Tionese, but it was hard to parse in moments of stress and even harder to speak.

He managed to say, "Explain? What happened?"

The woman said, "A ship just showed up, an Imperial polyreme. They're coming to interdict the ark, which means we need to get out of here. Vaatus?"

"I'm coming," said the green-skinned man. He pushed off the bulkhead next to Essan and drifted toward Erakas and the woman.

Essan asked, in their shared Tythan tongue, "Did she say a ship is coming?"

"She says it's Imperial."

Another Sith curse, then suspicion. "How do we know she'd telling the truth? They might want to flush us away."

"I don't know. I can't hail Master Talyak on comms. Can you reach him with the Force?"

She exhaled hard. "…I can try."

"Do it," he said, then forced himself to switch over to Tionese. "Wait, moment, please… Who are you people?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," huffed the green-skinned man.

"We're just salvagers," interjected the woman. "We were checking the ship out but now we're going. And you should be too if you know what's good for you."

With that she grabbed her partner's sleeve and tried to steer both of them for the door. At the same moment Essan said, "I can feel Talyak. He's stressed. Something's gone wrong."

"Then I suggest we make like those two and get out of here." Erakas watched two bodies drift through the portal, into the corridor beyond. "What about the pod?"

"I don't know," Essan admitted, then turned back to the console. "I want to try one more thing."

"What do you mean?"

Instead of responding she hunched over the control panel and worked it as quickly as her thick gloves allowed. Before being so suddenly interrupted they'd used the access node to run initial diagnostics on the ship's systems, check the status of the computer core, and begun re-activating a power generator which had gone dormant without dying entirely. They still understood so little about this ship, most of all why all its thousands of passengers had died in their berths, but they might have learned its secrets in time. Now it seemed like they'd have to abandon the object of their year-long cross-galaxy search with nothing gained.

He didn't blame Essan for being frustrated; he could feel the anger boiling off her in the Force, the indignation. He badly wanted to stay on this ship too, but in doing so they'd doom themselves. He'd heard from many different Tionese what befell those who defied the Empire of Xim.

Suddenly a few more lights flicked on in this chamber. Though there was no sound in the airless void, he could see groaning vibrations run through the central support and power conduit. When he braced himself against the outer bulkhead he felt shudders run through it; then the wall swung toward him and he found himself pinned by inertia to its broad curve. His first thought that was that she'd somehow gotten the tubular arc spinning again, but this wasn't simulated gravity. This was the pull of acceleration.

"What did you do?" he yelled to Essan, whose magnetized boots held her firmly before the console.

"I bought us time," she said. "I think we're going to need it."

-{}-

This, Kroller thought, just kept getting more out of hand. First the appearance of that Imperial ship, then the sudden and still-inexplicable ejection of some kind of pod. Through a static-marred transmission, Reina had reported she and Vaatus had encountered other salvagers (that explained the weird ship clamped to the hull) and were falling back to the Gravity Scorned.

But as soon as that call ended, the generation ship came to life.

Still in his pilot's seat, peering through the cockpit porthole at the ark's stern, Kroller had an excellent view of its engines as they burned to life. First they stuttered, like a giant clearing its throat, but then they burned bright. The ship began to push away from Endregaad, breaking orbit slowly but with inexorable force.

Ordinarily, the Gravity Scorned could have stayed attached to the ark's surface via the magnetized docking tube or fitted clamps. But with this ancient vessel, the best they'd been able to do was hook themselves via reinforced cable to the misshaped airlock portal.

And against the ark's sudden acceleration, that just wasn't good enough.

Kroller realized what would happen a split-second before it did. There was no time to do anything except curse and hold tight to the control yoke as the Gravity snapped clear of its host and began tumbling through space. Swearing still, he punched his console and warmed up engines, but it would take another minute before they were ready to burn. Meanwhile the ark was accelerating and leaving him fast behind.

The same could not be said of the Imperial polyreme. He's been watching that thing on his sensors since it first dropped into the system and he saw that it was speeding up to catch the fleeing generation ship. At the same time it had dispatched a ship of its own; the computer marked it as an Argaian hemiolia, inbound for the planet, which probably meant it was going after the ejected pod.

Nobody had come after Kroller yet. Maybe they didn't even notice him or dismissed his little ship as a piece of worthless metal cast-off from the bigger prize, which pretty much true.

When engines were finally ready, he used directional thrusters to flip his nose at the ark's retreating thruster-glare, then accelerated hard. He was pinned back to his seat by the g-force but clung to the control yoke with one hand and used his other to bring his comm system back online.

With static and distance in the way, the odds were low that his children could hear him, but he had to try. Kroller called, "Dammit, do you hear me? Reina! Vaatus! I just got thrown clear of the ship! Repeat, I've lost the connection! I'm trying to catch up now, just hold on!"

Through panic he was dimly aware that, even if he caught up with the ship, there was little he could do. The Gravity Scorned had barely managed to latch onto the generation ship when it was fully crewed; it would be impossible to connect with it now. Vaatus and Reeina's best shot at escape might by to fling themselves out an airlock and pray their father could recover them from the vacuum.

But Kroller had to try. They were the only family he had left. Desperate, on the verge of mindless, he plunged after the generation ship, just as the Imperial warship closed the chase.

-{}-

They moved quickly through the gathering dark, a single-file line snaking through the troughs of hills and scraping through patches of brush. The eastern sky had become a wash of dark violet, but the thin trail of smoke rising from the crash site was darker still. A dozen of them charged after it, and though the footing was treacherous they could not help glancing skyward for signs of more intruders.

There were none, not yet, but Shen had a sinking feeling they were one their way. The problem with his feelings was that it was nigh-impossible to tell which of them came from within, and which came from the Force.

"We're almost there," Kaim said from directly behind him. "I can see a few licks of flame."

"I can't see anything," groused Vosh from behind Kaim.

"There's something, I can see it," Shen affirmed, because of course they had put him in the lead. In times of shock and crisis, everyone automatically looked to him for guidance, especially his peers.

Children were a rarity among their clan. Shen had been born within the same cycle as Vosh, Kaim, and Rone who brought up the rear of the line. As children the four had been taught together, played together, read together, even ate and slept together. They'd been inseparable and were, to outside eyes, inseparable still.

But the realization that the Force was with Shen had changed everything. He had a destiny that they did not, and while they tried to pretend it changed nothing, it clearly had. Vosh had become reticent around him, as though afraid, while Rone became competitive, even adversarial. Only Kaim seemed unchanged, but that, Shen suspected, was because he'd not decided how he felt about his friend.

At the moment, however, their attentions were firmly on the mystery ahead. Kaim sprinted to the peak of the nearest hill to get a better view, and he called, "Just a hundred more meters! Keep going!"

"What does it look like?" asked Vosh as he hopped back down.

"One big object, one pit of fire," Kaim explained.

"But is the object intact?" asked Shen.

"I don't know what it even is, but I think so."

Shen got to see it with his own eyes a minute later. The impact had made a crater that still smoke and flared, though he saw that most of the flame came from the desert scrub which had been set alight. The object itself lay partially buried in the soil: a metal orb about four meters long and three wide, its hull scorched black by hard atmospheric entry, the cup of its single thrust engine pointing toward the sky from which it had fallen.

"It must be an escape pod," reasoned Kaim, though she'd spent nearly all her life on Endregaad and never seen one herself.

Rone caught up with them and stood beside her on the cusp of the smoking crater. "I doubt it," he said. "It's too small. It may be some kind of messenger pod, or it may have supplies."

"What do you think?" Vosh looked to Shen.

Her wording was vague, but they all knew what she asked. The Force should let him sense living beings inside that pod, but if there were any, the Force wasn't telling him.

Shen shook his head. "We can try to open it, but it's got to be very hot."

"Then it's a good thing we have these." Rone pulled out the cylinder of his lightsaber and tapped it on. A red-white blade extended into the twilight gloom.

Kaim snorted. "And how do you plan to get close to it without burning your toes off?"

Leave those two free and they'd always end up bickering. Shen said, "We can use sand to smother the flames. All of you, come on!"

Because he commanded, they followed. All twelve of them began shoveling handfuls of dust and sand into the pit. They concentrated their efforts on one side of the crater and gradually began to create a passage down a slope of shattered rock and black ash. At the same time, the sky above them grew even darker. Stars filled the sky over the plain and a cool wind blew, granting them some relief from laboring near open flame.

When it looked like they'd finally made a path, Rone declared, "I'm going down there."

Part of Shen wanted to let him have the dangerous task of opening the pod, but he knew he was best-suited to the job. He also knew Rone would get angry if his friend tried to overrule him, so he said instead, "I'll go with you. We'll open it together."

Shen sensed a flicker of annoyance, but nothing more. They stepped lightly over the still-warm ash, and when they drew close to the pod they would feel more heat radiating off of it. Without touching the thing they scoured its blackened hull for some kind of entry hatch.

"There it is," Rone declared. He re-ignited his lightsaber and jabbed it at the underside of the pod. Part of the hatch was buried in the dirt, but there seemed to be enough exposed to cut it open.

As to whatever lay inside, the Force still gave no hints, so the only option was to see with their eyes.

Shen turned on his own lightsaber and said, "You take the high end. I will take the low one."

"Agreed," said Rone. He crouched on his forward claws and began to make precise slices into the hull.

Shen did the same. Heat radiated from the pod and he could feel his skin going dry. Nonetheless, he labored until he'd cut through two portions of the hull. Rone completed his cuts next, and together they'd made a square of burned-black on the pod's exterior, but the door did not open.

There were, of course, other ways. "Step back," Shen said, and Rone, understanding, retreated to the crater's edge without complaint.

Shen stepped back as well, but only halfway up the slope. Then he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He was painfully aware that eleven sets of eyes were only on him; eleven minds tense with anticipation of seeing his Force powers. There was nothing worse than having to perform under pressure, but his invisible grip took hold of the cut-through portion of the hull. He jerked it roughly, then wrenched it aside, leaving an open portal into the heart of the pod.

For a moment everything stared at the black gap, wondering what could be inside. Then they found out: an oblong metal object, as large as one of their bodies, fell halfway out the hole and lodged itself in the ash. It was some piece of machinery, clearly, though none of them could fathom what. While they were not ignorant of sophisticated technology, the kind used in their Sanctuary was derived from that of their distant ancestors. The humans who now ruled this part of the galaxy had their own technology, and it bore only a brief resemblance to what they knew.

Everyone stared at the slumping machine and nobody knew what to do with it. Not even Rone had suggestions. Vosh asked, "Should we try and take it back to the Sanctuary?"

"It will be heavy," Kaim muttered.

"We can carry it if we have to," Shen said, and he was getting one of those ineffable feelings that they should. This strange machine had literally fallen from the sky and, of all the places on Endregaad, it had landed just a few miles from their village. The Force did not allow that kind of coincidence; at least, he didn't think it did.

He went back to the pod, crouched down, and did his best to peer up into its interior, using his lightsaber for illumination. It was still difficult to see, but it looked like the pod's interior walls were heavily padded, perhaps to protect this cargo, whatever it was. He also saw the device now halfway through the hatch was still attached to the pod's inside by an umbilical collection of cables. He saw no lights inside the pod, nor on the device itself, which implied they were devoid of activity.

But there was no way to be sure of anyway. It would be relatively easy to cut this object free and haul it back to the Sanctuary, but he didn't want to risk damaging it—whatever it was. He felt trapped by indecision, and all the more frustrated for those eleven sets of eyes which were boring into his back, awaiting his command.

That was when the sky broke. The thundering boom of an object breaking the sound barrier spread over the desert. Shen stood upright and stared at the sky, as did the others. First all he saw was star-studded black from horizon to horizon. Then a set of stars moved. One pair of lights detached from a tight-packed cluster and that pair fell, grew brighter, grew louder with the roar of turbojets.

Shen had never seen a human airship before, but from the records in the Sanctuary he knew that they could be deployed either from the ground or from spacecraft deployed into the upper atmosphere. Endregaad had no human base, which meant their enemy would fall on them from high above.

And this would be their enemy. Of that there was no doubt; these humans were just as dangerous as the Scourge who'd brought down their ancestors centuries ago. It occurred to Shen that his comrades might, just might, be able to race back to the Sanctuary and smother all its lights, if the Elders hadn't done so already. They might be able to hide in the desert night and the intruders would pass over them. Yet in running, they would surrender the object that had fallen from the sky and he was not prepared to do that.

His indecision didn't matter. The human aircraft cut across the sky as fast as any missile. Before they could scatter it was upon them. It slowed to a halt and hovered over the crash site on a pair of whirring turbofans, and dual spotlights from the aircraft's blunt nose swept across the crater, forcing those below to cover their eyes.

Then Shen heard the squeal of an opening door, the black of metal. Shadowing his face with both hands he peered up through the light sand saw a long-barreled, rapid-fire turret cannon drop from the aircraft's belly.

"Scatter!" he screamed, just before the humans unleashed a hell of lethal bullets.

-{}-

When the generation ship accelerated around them, Reina and Vaatus were still in the long straight corridor which they'd descended to find the other salvagers. They were thrown immediately and hard into the wall, then found themselves slipping backward. Motion turned the corridor into a deep shaft down which they were falling uncontrollably. Their boots failed to magnetize against this strange metal and the walls were so smooth their thick-gloves hands gained to purchase.

Reina screamed in mortal panic. She couldn't help it. Their vac-suits were insulated and structured to absorb impact, but when they hit the end of the corridor—the bottom of this deep shaft—they'd be crushed.

Such a random, stupid way to die, she thought through her fear. Just like her mother's.

And then, suddenly, they stopped falling. She and Vaatus found themselves hovering in the middle of the corridor, suited bodies pressed together, no longer moving, just hanging in the airless space, as though the ship had instantly stopped accelerating. But that couldn't be so; it would be impossible for the ship to stop moving so suddenly.

Then, far above them, far ahead, two bodies clambered through a portal and started walking toward them. Their boots, somehow, stuck just fine on the corridor's floor, and they moved as swiftly as their bulky suits would allow.

"What happened?" Vaatus's voice rasped in her helmet. "What did they do?"

"I don't know." She fumbled around the exterior of her suit, wondering if they'd something attached a cable to her or hooked her some way, but she and her brother were simply suspended with no explanation.

Then she heard the weirdly-accented voice she'd heard before. "You need to get back to your ship," the young man said. "Go now."

"The ship," Vaatus rasped. "Hold on… Father, can you hear us? Father? Father?"

Nothing. Reina worked the controls on her wrist and tried to summon a connection with the Gravity Scorned but she could get nothing, not even a tenuous link.

"He's not there." Her voice was dry. "Vaatus, I can't get anything."

"The Gravity was barely tethered on. It must have been thrown clear," the Nikto reasoned, but his voice was tense.

"He must be trying to catch up. He'll get back, he'll reconnect..."

"How? He can't magnetize, there's no clamps."

The suited strangers were drawing close. Despite the lights that had come on in this corridor, she could see nothing through the tinted glass bulbs of their helmets. Waving at them she said, "We've lost our ship. We need help."

"Reina!" snapped Vaatus.

"What, you have a better idea?" Again she waved. "Please, we can't get off on our own."

There was no immediate reply. Stuck at the mercy of two faceless strangers, Reina and Vaatus continued to hang in the middle of the corridor. The strangers angled to face each other slightly; and though she heard nothing Reina got the clear impression of two people having an argument.

But it didn't last long. The lead figure, the one with that metal sword clipped improbably to his waist, came up to her and extended a hook-tipped cable from the back of its suit. The man's voice told her, "We will take you to our ship. Hold on."

"Got it." Reina took the hook and attached it to the front of her suit, while also holding the cable with both hands. She looked sideways and saw the second figure had approached Vaatus, but her brother was reluctant to take it.

"You have to," she told him. "Once we get off this ship, we can rendezvous with Dad."

"You really think we can trust these people?"

"I think we don't have a choice."

Vaatus breathed an invocation to his Nikto god, something he only did under the worst stress. Then he took the cable and attached it to his suit.

"Come on," the foreign man said, "We'll take to our ship. Hold tight."

Reina and Vaatus cleared the way as best they could and allowed the strangers to move past them. They continued their magnetic-boot march down the hall, as quickly as possible, and Reina and Vaatus trailed after them like tethered balloons. Holding onto her cable with one hand, Reina worked her control pad with the other and tried again to make contact with her father.

Static reigned, but then she got something. Despite the distortion the voice was undeniably her father's. "Dammit, do you…. thrown clear…. lost the…. catch up now, just hold on…"

"Did you hear that?" she asked her brother.

"I heard it," Vaatus growled, then tried to reply. "Father, do you hear us? We're trying to get off on the other ship! Repeat, the other ship! We'll meet with you once we're clear!"

There was no way to tell if their words go through; nothing more came from their father. They could also wait as they were dragged helplessly down this corridor, around a bend, through a portal, down another. Soon the ship's inertia pressed all four of them hard against the wall to their right and they pushed along with hands and feet. Then they made one more turn, and at the end of this long tunnel was the heavy metal-framed portal Reina recognized as an airlock.

She braced herself for anything as they drew close. She was right about these strangers being their best bet to survive, but Vaatus was right too: there was no reason at all to trust these people. When they reached the airlock portal, the man to whom Reina was tethered took the lead. He twisted the handle on the metal door and pushed it open. At the same time he told her, "You can unhook now."

Reina did, Vaatus a moment after her. They both braced themselves against the side of the corridor as the generation ship continued to shudder with acceleration. She wondered where they could possibly be going, whether they'd aimed for a destination or were just trying to outrun the Imperial warship.

She'd find out soon. The other stranger unlocked the second metal door, then waved everyone inside. As soon as they were through the inner-later door closed and air began to rush into the chamber. They were aboard the foreigners' ship now, but this chamber at least looked like every other airlock vestibule Reina had ever seen.

The first one to remove his helmet was the man beside her. He unsealed its rim and pulled the shaded bulb off with two hands. The face that appeared was indeed human; he had tanned skin and black hair pulled into a bun at the back of his head. He was young too, probably not much older than her. As he began removing the rest of the vac suit he began speaking words loudly, perhaps to the ship's comm system. It was in no language she recognized, and she recognized a lot.

She and Vaatus began getting out of their vac suits as well, though she could tell her brother was reluctant to expose himself in any way to these people. Reina just wanted to get out of the sweaty, claustrophobic, all-too-cumbersome suit, so she took off her helmet first, shook loose her matted hair, then began sliding out of the bulky layered fabric. She felt the chamber shudder around them and heard the scrape of metal, but her feet remained planted on the chamber's deck, which meant they must still be under the artificial g-force of the accelerating ark ship.

It was only as she snaked out of her suit that Reina saw the second stranger strip free. From behind it was clearly a woman, almost as tall as the man, and she had long black hair which fell down halfway down her back in waves. Then she turned, revealing a profile of strikingly red skin, with small horns jutting out from above hairless brows and framing her chin. Her eyes were narrowed as she took in Reina, then Vaatus.

"Come," said the young man. "We are going. Now!"

With that he opened the door that led deeper into the ship. The scarlet woman followed. Reina looked to Vaatus, shrugged, and did the same.

All four of them moved down corridors that were cramped but sleek, clean and clear of all the stray equipment that cluttered the Gravity's halls. And they moved easily across its deck, so easily Reina would have thought she was trotting on the floor of gravity-standard planet instead of pinned by the g-force of a rushing generation ship.

It was the cockpit that really staggered her. The front window was so broad it stretched nearly from wall to wall without any support braces, something that shouldn't have been possible even with multi-layered glass. Three seats all faced forward; each had a broad back and high headrest, and Reina only noticed a person sitting in the central one by the shoulders jutting out from either side. A deep voice spoke in that same inscrutable language; the red woman replied and dropped herself into the seat on its left. The young man hung off the back of the central chair and spoke too, gesticulating toward the viewport, then at the two hangers-on who stood pressed against the back wall.

The figure in the center seat twisted to look at them. The face was almost equine, with small eyes and a long snout with a blunt tip and not one but two sets of nostrils. Shaggy gray-gold hair dangled off that face and fell thick around the neck, obscuring the collar of what looked like folded brown robes. Then her eyes flicked down at that control panel, and Reina realized the alien was working with not two hands, but four.

The alien blinked, tilted its chin in what might have been a nod, then went back to its ship.

Vaatus clasped her shoulder and pointed. "Reina, look."

"What?" She stared out the viewport. Stars were spun, then panned as the ship reoriented itself in space.

"I mean look." He stomped the deck.

The deck on which they stood, with no problem whatsoever, even as the ship twisted in space.

That should have been impossible. It was impossible. She'd been on starships with artificial gravity before, but the amount of energy required to power such technology required massive generators, as big as this entire starship.

Who in the hells were these people?

Then she saw, through the window, the long body of the generation ship curving beneath them. Its engines were blaring bright, but beyond them she marked other lights. From the silhouette against its thruster-glow she knew the largest was an Imperial polyreme. The ones in position around it had to be hemioliae, fast attack ships coming to assist the capture. Those ones were spreading out into a pursuit formation, and they'd reach the target within minutes.

The young man pushed away from the four-armed pilot's seat and strode to the rear wall. He pulled down the cushions of crash seats which had been retracted into the bulkhead and pointed to them. "Sit, please," he said, and though his words were simple his eyes and voice ached with stress. "This may be… a bumpy ride."

-{}-

It was something the Elders of the clan had drilled into them since childhood: If you can run, run. If you cannot run, fight. And if you must fight, fight them to the death.

It was the code of a people alone in the universe, marooned by history on an island surrounded by enemies. They did what they must, and for that reason neither Shen nor his companions had any qualms about unleashing their most ferocious counterattacks on the enemy.

The aircraft still hovered on its turbofans some twenty meters above their heads, but they had scattered into the darkness, putting distance between them so that no two spotlights could encompass them all. That did not slow the enemy much. As soon as the crater was clear, doors swung open on either flank of the airship, repel lines dropped, and so did a dozen humans in black-armored shells, only the chins of their faces visible beneath their visored helms. As soon as their feet hit the sand they drew their long-barreled rifles and attempted to clear the area.

Twelve versus twelve; an exact match, if you ignored the airship with the repeating cannon. The humans had their guns, but Shen and his people had darkness, they had stealth, they had larger stronger bodies, they had claws on hands and feet. And a select few had luminous blades that could cut through any armor as though it were old cloth.

The lightsaber was both a gift and a curse. Shen came around two human soldiers from behind and cut them down with a single surprise sweep, but as soon as he did he found himself a target for the cannon overhead. He was forced to extinguish his blade and run from the sweeping searchlights, then look for more foes to attack.

The battle was like a lightning-storm in the desert; flashes of light, bursts of violence, sudden thunder, everyone always in motion. Shen cut down another soldier and barely escaped a hail of bullets. He watched from a helpless distance as one of his comrades, a man ten turnings older, was cut down by another aerial hail. He watched another woman's skull shatter under fire from one of the human soldiers, who himself was cut down seconds later (but all too late) by Vosh's lightsaber. And all the while that aircraft hung above them, turbofans whirring, spotlights swirling, cannon crackling.

Shen did what he could. He dashed about, avoiding lights and bullets, activating his lightsaber only long enough to cut down enemies. He tried to rely on the Force, tried to let it flow through him and direct him to help his most vulnerable comrade or slay the most lethal enemy.

According to his mother the Force was a gateway to other powers, ones which could have defeated these invaders in mere seconds, but those were beyond Shen for now, so he attacked with the skills he possessed.

He felt tugged in the direction of Vosh and pivoted to see her charging a pair of soldiers. Her lightsaber blazed in her hand, making her too easy of a target. The gunship above sprayed bullets; the spotlight swung onto her and geysers of sand kicked up around her. Then blood burst from the hole punched into her arm. She staggered. Shen, still too far away, punched her with the Force as he'd punched his mother earlier, knocking her to the ground, outside the spotlight-glow.

They were cutting down the soldiers but they needed to stop the gunship. Not destroy it; they lacked the weapons. Shen lacked the skill. But he could do something. He had to.

He sprinted through the darkness and stopped directly beneath the roaring machine. He stared at its swinging spotlights and swiveling turret gun. And he reached out with his mind again, willing damage, craving it. Unless he succeeded his comrades, his friends, would all die. He didn't know what destiny meant but if he couldn't even do this with the Force then he deserved no destiny at all.

He called on the Force as his mother had shown him: by drawing on all the desire inside him, the emotion, the desperation, the rage and the spite. All of it became his invisible hand and with that hand he punched the first spotlight.

He didn't hear the shattering of glass, but the light instantly winked out.

The other spotlight swung around frantically, as though in alarm. That was dangerous, but the real threat was the fun. Feeling empowered, feeling sure of himself for once, Shen reached out once more, felt his mind wrap around the long barrel of that repeating cannon, and with all his emotions channeled into this touchless grip he pulled once more.

That time he heard the shriek of metal bending and tearing. The last spotlight still swung around and when its glow glanced off the underside of the airship he could see the gun-barrel now twisted in the center, halves bent to form a right angle.

A few more guns sounded: repeating rifles from soldiers on the ground. Yet Shen's comrades realized the tide had turned, and more lightsabers blazed to life. He watched as Kaim leaped onto one armored soldiers, pinned him to the ground with both feet, and stabbed him straight through the chest. Shen's own heart leaped; against all odds, against the powers of human mechanical might, they had won.

Suddenly he was shoved to the ground. Thunder cracked close by and bullets whipped over his head. Another body rolled off his, and he recognized its ruddy hide as Rone's. As the same time, Vosh appeared from the darkness, and holding her lightsaber in her good hand she ran through the last soldier standing. The blade punched out from his sternum then slipped back as she pulled it from his chest and kicked his wavering corpse to the sand.

At that point, finally, the gunship beat its retreat. It rose fast into the dark sky and sailed up toward whatever high spacecraft had deployed it. A few of his comrades, Kaim included, pumped triumphant fists into the air.

Not Shen; he knew it was no victory. He called to the others, "How many have we lost?"

"Yone is dead," came a reply.

"We lost Ghal and Crune as well," said another.

Shen waited a breathless moment for more dead, but it was only three. Three was a catastrophe, but it could have been worse. He looked to Vosh and asked, "How badly are you injured?"

"I will live," she grunted, though her face was twisted in pain and blood spilled down her right arm.

Rone stared up at the stars and hissed. "We can't have beaten them completely. They will be back."

"I know," Shen admitted. "We must take our fallen back to the Sanctuary at once."

"Good," grunted Vosh, who looked back at the crater, still smoldering, at the foreign machine at its center. "I want to get away from that… thing."

But it could not be that easy. The Force was telling Shen that; he believed it now, for the Force was flowing through him like never before. Amazing what mortal terror could do. But, he believed, the Force was simply in accord with what he'd felt from the start.

"No. We take it with us," Shen growled, baring sharp teeth. "We must see if it's worth the cost in blood."