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Now he activated the weapon. Its red blade crackled into life. He leaned forward and delicately severed the cable that ran from the distant town to Kandra’s datapad. Then he deactivated the weapon.

He gave the two of them a stern look. “We don’t much care for people spying on our activities. I think it’s time for you to get up and come with me.”

Kandra exchanged a look with her cam operator. “Yes, you were right. We should have left when the signal cut out.”

APPROACHING NAM CHORIOS

The image on the bridge’s main monitor abruptly changed from the whirling lights of hyperspace to a broad panorama of unappealing brownness—the surface of Nam Chorios, viewed at high magnification.

In the command chair, Gavar Khai glanced at a secondary monitor. It showed that all the Corporate Sector–built frigates of his flotilla had arrived safely and still in correct formation.

He looked at his communications officer. “Transmit stand-down code Shieldfall.”

“Yes, sir.” The comm officer bent to his task. “Receiving responses from the orbital NovaGun platforms.”

Khai allowed himself a slight smile. Even with the presence of Jedi throughout the galaxy, the armed forces and planetary governments of the Galactic Alliance had obviously never managed to organize real security against skilled Force-users. It had taken a few days to get his Sith operatives onto the NovaGun platforms and introduce programming that would allow him to stand them down. Now the orbital defense stations would not bring their weapons to bear on the Sith frigates. After hours of fumbling and testing and overriding, they should be able to regain full control of the stations … but the Sith would be long gone by then. Khai amused himself by imagining the stations’ commanders suddenly frantic with fear, barking futile orders, running around needlessly.

And the irony was that Khai had no intention of firing on them, or of taking military action against Nam Chorios. His objectives included the capture or destruction of Abeloth, the death of Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker, and the retrieval—and eventual extraction from her of the truth—of his daughter Vestara.

The comm officer’s next words were less reassuring. “One gun platform, designated Herkan Base, not replying to our query.”

Khai frowned. “Sensors, is that platform reacting to our arrival?”

The sensor operator shook her head. “No, sir. Its orientation will still bring its weapons to bear against targets in the atmosphere, and its weapons have not moved. Sir?”

“Yes?”

“It is the station covering the quadrant including the target, Crystal Valley.”

Khai frowned. He didn’t like coincidences. “Possibly just a program failure—something happened to the module that was supposed to reply to our query. But keep our weapons trained on it throughout the approach.” He looked to his comm officer again. “Reestablish contact with Tola Annax.”

“Yes, sir.” The man activated his headset, spoke urgently into it, consulted his control board. After a few moments, he turned to look at Khai. “Sir, we show that jamming has ceased in the Crystal Valley area, so they must have carried out that portion of the assignment. But they’re not responding.”

“Keep trying.” The most critical elements of the operation had been accomplished without a problem: locating Abeloth on this world; bringing the flotilla unseen into the Nam Chorios system; disabling the planetary defense platforms; and, finally, pinpointing Abeloth’s location onplanet. But little things were going wrong.

Little things, like mercury, tended to run together and become bigger things.

As his flotilla approached Nam Chorios and spread out to defend all exit paths Abeloth might take from the planet’s surface, he worried.

Khai’s communications officer kept trying, transmitting every couple of minutes for Tola Annax or any member of Operation Shieldfall.

As the flotilla reached high planetary orbit, Khai directed his sensor officer to bring up the area of Crystal Valley on extreme magnification. That image came to life on the main monitor,