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Less than five minutes to launch. Maybe a lot less.

Saba used the Force to press herself to the safety railing as she dropped. When the cold durasteel began to slide along her tail, she curled the tip and caught herself, and her momentum brought her swinging backward. She reached up and latched on to the catwalk with both hands, locking her talons through the middle of the grate, and she told herself that Hamner had not really intended to kill her—that had she not caught herself, he would have reached out with the Force and prevented a fellow Master from plummeting to her death.

Even when she heard Hamner’s boots ringing down the catwalk, five or six meters away, Saba refused to believe he had meant to kill her. A leadership challenge was one thing, but to actually slay a rival … no Jedi would do such a thing. Recalling how Hamner had used misdirection to ambush her early, Saba sissed at her foolishness.

“Good one, Kenth,” she said. “Very tricky.”

Saba extended herself under the catwalk, locking her talons around the opposite edge, then swung up on the other side, slipping under the rail and rolling to her feet in a fighting crouch.

Hamner was nowhere to be seen.

“Not funny,” she growled. “Not funny at all.”

Saba raced in the direction of the footfalls, but in the maze of dark steel she quickly lost track of Hamner’s route. She checked her chrono. Only four minutes to launch. On the hangar floor, the two squadrons she could see were sealed up tight. Their R9 units were strobing green, and the support crews were unhooking hoses and moving utility carts toward the deck perimeter.

Saba searched for Hamner in the Force. This time, the only presence she could feel along the catwalks was Cilghal’s, about a hundred meters away and moving cautiously but calmly as she searched the far side of the maze. Saba hissed in frustration, then started toward the front of the hangar. There were two doors and therefore two mag-lev generators, and Hamner would have to cut both power feeds if he wanted to trap the StealthXs. Otherwise, flight control would simply open one blast door, and the squadrons would stream out in single file instead of launching in formation.

So all Saba really needed to do was save one door. If the Force was with her, she would pick the right one and catch Hamner before he did any damage. If not, Daala and Starfighter Command would have three minutes instead of thirty seconds to react. The last squadron or two might find themselves fighting to escape Daala’s grasp. But even so, nearly fifty Jedi in StealthXs would escape to join Luke in the fight against Abeloth and the Sith.

Saba reached the front of the hangar with three minutes left before launch. The turadium blast doors were already riding on their mag-lev tracks, their lustrous surfaces shimmering with the reflections of colored signal lamps. A deep roar was building inside the hangar as the StealthXs ramped up their ion engines, preparing for a hot launch.

Saba leaned over the safety railing, peering down at the inside corner of the nearest blast door. From such a height, the mag-lev generator was not at all impressive, a danger-yellow drum about as tall as a Wookiee and surrounded by a transparisteel safety wall. The power feed was entirely nondescript, a gray plasteel conduit tube about as large as a male human’s arm that ran up the wall adjacent to the blast door and disappeared into a junction box in the ceiling.

Seeing no sign of Hamner anywhere near the first conduit, Saba reached out for Cilghal and found her back near the observation balcony. This puzzled her for a moment, until she remembered that the quickest way down from the catwalks was via that balcony. Had the Mon Calamari left it unguarded, it would have been a simple matter for their quarry to double back, drop down to the flight deck, and simply walk to the mag-lev generators.

Relieved that Cilghal had thought to cover that route, Saba turned to inspect the second power feed.