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Viqi writhed in time with the war cries of the Yuuzhan Vong and, one by one, she heard them die under the almost musical tones of the lightsabers.

Then there was only the sound of lightsabers cutting, and cutting, and cutting.

The emotional agony that had gripped Viqi lessened—only a little. She managed to roll over onto her stomach and slowly, painfully came upright.

She knew the beings on the other side of the chamber had just killed everything that had entered the chamber with her. She wanted nothing more than to charge at them, to rip them to pieces with her bare hands.

But as she stood, some faint instinct of self-preservation rose within her, and one thought made up of words emerged: Run, or die.

She turned toward the doorway, and lurched out toward the light.

As she reached the doorway, she put her hand out to steady herself against the metal door that had once protected the factory’s interior. It fell away from her grip, crashing down onto the duracrete with a tremendous clang.

The lightsabers in the distance switched off. Viqi froze. She waited, ears straining at the sudden silence.

Then she heard it, the padding of feet coming her way.

A noise like a sob escaped her and she ran, her speed enhanced by adrenaline and fear.

Luke came awake and rose in a single smooth motion.

He didn’t have to ask if Mara had felt it, too. She was awake, gripping her lightsaber, ready to ignite it.

Luke stepped out into the corridor. It was dimmed for sleeping, but Danni, too, was emerging, and Tahiri, who had been on guard in the corridor as the others slept, stared into one wall, through the wall, at something that was far away and toward the ground. “It’s there again,” she said, her voice faint.

Luke took a few deep breaths. He couldn’t remember what he had just been dreaming—only that, for a moment, he had been filled, even saturated, with a desire to rise and kill every living thing in his vicinity. Absurdly, he still felt loathing and contempt for his companions, for his wife, but as his mind and memory struggled to assert themselves, those emotions began to fade. “What did you feel?” he asked.

Tahiri shook her head, and Luke could finally see the lone tear flowing down her farther cheek. “Awfulness,” she said. “More awful than when I was coming out of my conditioning and started to figure out what I’d almost become. It was all through me, through the Force. It almost had control of me. I think maybe it could have had control, if it had known I was here.” The despair in her voice was heartbreaking.

None of the Wraiths had emerged from their new quarters. That made sense. This was a Force sending, a Force problem, and the Wraiths, largely oblivious to the Force, were not troubled.

Mara, dressed, moved down the corridor, rapping on doors. “Everyone up. Get into your armor. It’s time to hunt.”

Four stories up from the manufacturing chamber, Viqi came off a pedestrian ramp at a dead run. Her legs trembled from her flight but she could not afford to rest—she’d heard her pursuers crash through doors she’d dragged shut behind her.

She rounded a bend in the corridor and abruptly there was an arm in front of her, stretched at just under neck height. She hit it at full speed, her legs going out from under her, and suddenly she was on her back, looking into two human faces illuminated by dim glow rods, at two blaster pistols pointed at her face.

It was a man and a woman. The man had an ill-trimmed beard. The woman’s eyes were a startlingly pretty blue in eerie contrast to her unsympathetic expression. The two stank and seemed as thin as plasteel support beams.

“Look at you,” the man said.

“About fifty kilos, I’d guess,” the woman said. “Good eating, looks like.”

“How’d you stay so clean?”

“Never mind that. Just kill her.”

There was a distant noise, a low-pitched roar that raised the hair on Viqi’s arms and the nape of her neck. The man and woman hesitated, looking back the way Viqi had come.

Then it washed