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The extent of the destruction was not as obvious from the outside. The commander of Pod 5 and his squad of assault troops saw flickering discharges through the open bay doors and scattered viewports, assessed the crushed hull plates at the impact points, noted the gun turrets going cold, spotted the darkening of the outer hull from spot fires within, marked the unbroken static on the command channels. Still, the ship seemed largely intact.

Then the tethers joining the ships suddenly parted close to the intruder’s hull, and the pod commander faced a quick and irreversible choice between following his last orders and returning to the cruiser. Loyalty weighed more heavily on him than obedience. As the enormous vessel began to move off, he turned the pod toward Gorath. There was one voice raised in protest, but the commander silenced the dissenter with a sharp look.

“The enemy vessel is badly wounded,” he said with a savage satisfaction. “See how slowly it moves. Tobay is nearby. We will help our brothers on Gorath, and then together we will hunt that demon down and destroy it.”

When the vagabond returned to realspace after the Prakith encounter, the rumbling entry growl seemed to Lando to have edged closer to a howl. He signaled to the others for silence and then listened attentively to the sounds the vessel was making.

“Is there a problem?” Threepio asked at last.

“I don’t know,” Lando said. “Get me the database on bioengineered structures and I’ll look it up. I don’t know if this ship’s even susceptible to the kind of fatigue that kills metal ships. Maybe that’s why the Qella built her this way—so she could go on forever, indestructible and self-repairing.”

“That seems like a reasonable inference,” Threepio said.

“Except the mechanisms that do the repairs are just as susceptible to failure, so you need mechanisms that repair the repair mechanisms, and so on. Is everything working as designed? I have no idea.”

“Perhaps it was damaged in the attack,” said Lobot. “That could account for the altered spectrum of the entry growl.”

“How would I know?” exclaimed Lando. “I don’t even know something as elementary as what makes her go, what energy source we’re tapping when we touch a trigger point. It takes fusion generators to drive a hyperspace engine for a capital vessel—everyone knows that, right? But the radmeter says there are no fusion generators aboard.” Lando shook his head. “I’m half ready to throw my hands up and just say it’s magic.”

“We should learn something in the next few moments,” Lobot said. “The last time the vessel jumped to escape capture, it changed course and jumped out less than fifteen minutes later. If the ship is under the direction of rule-based logic, as I believe it is, it should do so again.”

“Of course, we were goosing her with a cutting blaster at the time,” Lando said wryly. “Wait—quiet.”

Straining at first to do so, both men could pick out a buzzing whine that seemed to come from a point several compartments away. As the ship began to shudder rhythmically around them, the sound swiftly grew louder, drowning out the normal background noises of the vessel and acquiring a destructive-sounding rasp.

“What is that?” Lobot asked, the worry in his tone a reflection of the worry on Lando’s face. “It sounds like—”

“It sounds like we’re under fire again,” Lando said grimly.

“Could it be Colonel Pakkpekatt’s armada?”

“Not a chance in a billion,” Lando said. “Someone must have followed us out from Prakith. Lobot, seal up your suit, fast.”

“What about your missing glove?”

“Someone has to operate the portals,” Lando said. “That means bare skin. If we lose pressure, I’ll make another sample-bag mitten. But I need you functional in case I don’t have time or it won’t hold. Hurry!”

By the time Lobot had snapped his helmet in place, the chamber’s even glow was flickering. As Lando retrieved an unused sample bag from the depleted equipment sled, the chamber illumination failed entirely.

So had Threepio’s courage. He had been clinging to the equipment sled while Artoo scanned and cataloged