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Face managed to get his hands on the catwalk railing. As his feet went out from under him, he held on. He looked up, could see Kell holding on above him, could see the ceiling of this chamber split and collapse as one of its supporting walls gave way under the droid’s destructive exit.

Bodies began spilling through the split in the ceiling. Some were bodies of workers. Others were Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

Then there were the bodies of his Jedi friends.

As he felt his footing give way, Luke sprang, with the last bit of traction the flooring gave him, toward Mara and Tahiri. He hit them like an overly aggressive ballplayer, catching one in each arm.

The patch of floor they were heading toward opened, giving him nothing to land on. With the Force, he shoved at his own back, propelling him through the rent, toward the metal wall he saw before him, the wall and the catwalk there …

He saw that their arc was going to miss the catwalk. They would hit the wall and plummet. But in that instant, the left end of the catwalk broke free of its moorings and dropped, bringing it beneath their ballistic arc. A moment later, they hit the swaying thing, bending it down still farther, but Mara and Tahiri grabbed its trailing end and held on with their considerable strength.

Gasping for breath, Luke looked around. He and both of the others had switched off their lightsabers midleap. “Good instincts,” he said.

“Good teacher,” Tahiri said. She looked up, past Luke. “Hey, Face, is that you?”

“Hold on, hold on, I’ll get a line down to you.”

Face tied off the cord he’d once used to safeguard his passage across an elevated walkway. He dropped the other end down the swaying catwalk toward the Jedi. In moments, Luke, Mara, and Tahiri swarmed up to join them. The construction droid was only just pulling out onto the avenue beyond the building.

“Did you see Viqi Shesh?” Mara asked.

Kell jerked a thumb up toward the stairwell behind them. “She was still at the bottom of the steps when the big boom hit. She took off.”

Mara clambered up to the base of the stairs. “I’m going after her.”

“Mara, no.” Luke’s voice did not carry a plea; his tone conveyed simple truth. “Lord Nyax is more important. I can feel him moving up there. Moving away. We have to go after him, bring him down.”

Mara sighed, shut her eyes. After a moment, she nodded.

“I lost her, I’ll go after her,” Kell said.

Face pressed the locator into his hand. “No. You go after this, Mechanic Boy. It could be our ticket out of here.”

“You go after her, then.”

Face gestured toward the construction droid, which leaned at an alarming angle toward the next building over as it turned rightward onto the avenue. “I’m going after that. Nyax sent it off for a purpose. We need to know what that purpose is.”

Mara pounded her fist on the bottom step, then stood. “Let’s go,” she said.

Up on the half-collapsed floor above, Denua Ku hung, unable to climb, unable to descend.

A three-meter length of rebar emerged from his gut. It was slick with his blood. He knew that his lung had been punctured.

The pain was extraordinary. He did not mind pain, did not fear it, but it was beginning to fade in a way that suggested imminent death rather than recovery.

In the silence left by the infidel machine’s departure, he heard feet padding softly across the remaining floor. He looked up. Viqi Shesh, most of the way around the chamber toward the hole by which the pale monster had entered, her hands tied behind her back, paused and looked at him.

“Tell them I died well,” Denua Ku said.

“I’ll tell them,” she said. “I’ll tell them you died whining, that you died begging for infidel medicines, anything to alleviate the pain.”

Denua Ku snarled. He reached for his pouch, for his last remaining razorbugs.

Viqi laughed at him. Before he could bring out the weapons, she reached the corner and ducked through the hole there.

Lord Nyax led the three Jedi on a high-speed run through the ruins of Coruscant. He could travel