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Hamner gave ground, struggling to regain the initiative, letting Saba in so close that soon the only weapon he had left was his head.

So he used that, slamming his brow into her armored throat.

Saba stumbled back, sissing not because the strange lump in her throat made it difficult to breathe—though it did—but because she could not believe what Hamner had just done.

“A head butt?” she gasped, grinning despite herself. “Are you joking?”

Apparently, Hamner was not. As Saba stumbled back, he pushed after her, following so close she could barely bring her elbows to bear. After two steps, she gave up and tried another tactic, bringing a knee up into her attacker’s groin so hard it lifted him off his feet.

And that was when Saba smelled something acrid and familiar. She glanced down to find the emitter nozzle of Hamner’s lightsaber pressed to her abdomen just below her rib cage, his thumb still on the activation switch and a gray column of vaporized keratin rising between their bodies.

“Stang,” Saba gasped. She tumbled backward, her insides exploding in fiery pain, her vision already starting to narrow. “Good one.”

When Hamner deactivated his lightsaber and tried to step free, Saba realized he still had time to sabotage the relay box. She tried to pull him down with her, but her strength was gone, and he pulled free effortlessly. So she took the only option available and helped him along, giving him the strongest Force shove she could manage.

Hamner went flying into the safety rail, both arms flailing and badly off-balance. Still, it looked like he would catch himself and recover—until his lightsaber touched the top rail and burned through in a bright flash. The durasteel did not bend far beneath his weight, only a few centimeters at most.

But it was enough.

Hamner lost his battle against momentum and gravity and tumbled over the rail, arms wheeling and mouth gaping in surprise. Saba was already rolling toward the edge of the catwalk, her insides burning like lava as she reached out with her hand and with the Force.

It was with the Force that she caught him, of course.

She could feel him about twenty meters below, his fear and surprise hanging in the Force like an ice fog, still and white and tranquil as the morning after the storm. Saba peered over the edge and saw him about twenty meters below, upside down and—like any good Jedi—still holding his lightsaber. She reached out to him in the Force, assuring him she would not let him drop, that whatever their differences they were still Jedi Masters and would one day soon return to being friends.

Hamner twisted around until he could look up and meet her gaze. There was no longer anger in his steely eyes, only sadness and forgiveness … and unyielding resolve. Saba’s heart started to climb toward her throat. With no hope of making herself heard above the roaring of the impatient StealthXs, she reached out in the Force, begging her lost friend to see that he was beaten, to surrender to the will of the other Masters and not make her choose between him and the Skywalkers—between his life and her duty.

But Jedi do not surrender, and they never give up. Hamner locked his lightsaber blade on, then looked away from Saba and sent it spinning up toward the relay box.

“No, Kenth!” Even Saba could not hear the pain—the anguish—in her voice. “No!”

Saba watched the lightsaber spin upward long enough to be certain it was being directed through the Force, then reluctantly reached for it in the Force—and found herself fighting for control. The struggle continued for a span of perhaps three heartbeats, then Hamner smashed into the deck below, and the lightsaber was hers. She sent it tumbling down into a turadium blast door, and finally the strobe light stopped blinking.

Launch.

WITH ITS DROOPING WINGS AND S-SHAPED LANDING STRUTS, THE CRAFT hanging above the rolling waters looked more like a seabird than a troop shuttle. It was coming in low and slow, swinging past the Fallanassi’s hidden island so tightly that it might have been a clargull returning to its nest