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Ignoring the pain in his shattered limb, Shryne began to propel himself in a backward crawl toward the opening through which he and Vader had entered the wroshyr’s trunk, a hot wind howling at him, whipping his long hair about.

The balcony was gone. Fallen.

There was nothing between Shryne and the ground but gritty air filled with burning leaves. Far below, Wookiees were being herded onto the landing platform. The forests were in flames …

Vader approached, drawing and igniting his Sith blade.

Shryne blinked blood from his eyes; lifted his lightsaber hand only to realize that he had lost the sword during his fall. Slumping back, he loosed a ragged, resigned exhalation.

“I owe you a debt,” he told Vader. “It took you to bring me back to the Force.”

“And you to firm my faith in the power of the dark side, Master Shryne.”

Shryne swallowed hard. “Then tell me. Were you trained by Dooku? By Sidious?”

Vader came to a halt. “Not by Dooku. Not yet by Sidious.”

“Not yet,” Shryne said, as if to himself. “Then you’re his apprentice?” His eyes darted right and left, searching for some means of escape. “Is Sidious also in league with Emperor Palpatine?”

Vader fell silent for a moment, making up his mind about something. “Lord Sidious is the Emperor.”

Shryne gaped at Vader, trying to make sense of what he had said. “The order to kill the Jedi—”

“Order Sixty-Six,” Vader said.

“Sidious issued it.” Pieces to the puzzle Shryne had been grappling with for weeks assembled themselves. “The military buildup, the war itself … It was all part of a plan to eliminate the Jedi order.”

Vader nodded. “All about this.” He gestured to Shryne. “About you and me, you could say.”

Shryne’s stomach convulsed, and he coughed blood. The fall hadn’t only broken his bones, but ruptured a vital organ. He was dying. Backing farther out the opening, he gazed into the night sky, then at Vader.

“Did Sidious turn you into the monstrosity you’ve become?”

“No, Shryne,” Vader said in a flat voice. “I did this to myself—with some help from Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Shryne stared. “You knew Obi-Wan?”

Vader regarded him. “Haven’t you guessed by now? I was a Jedi for a time.”

Shryne let his bafflement show. “You’re one of the Lost Twenty. Like Dooku.”

“I am the twenty-first, Master Shryne. Surely you’ve heard of Anakin Skywalker. The Chosen One.”

The Commerce Guild ship Starstone and the others had chosen to infiltrate grew larger in the transport’s cockpit viewports. Just over a thousand meters in length and bristling with electromagnetic sensor antennas and point-defense laser cannons, the Recusant-class support destroyer had taken a turbolaser bruising during the Battle of Kashyyyk, but its principal cannons and trio of aft thrust nozzles appeared to be undamaged.

Elsewhere local space was dotted with Imperial landers and troop transports, along with hundreds of freighters that had fled the surface of the tormented planet. Central to the latter craft, and a good distance from the support destroyer, floated the Interdictor cruiser that was preventing the traders’ ships from jumping to hyperspace.

Those trapped ships are the reason I was spared, Starstone thought.

The reason she had been rescued by Shryne …

“Any response from the droid brain?” she asked over Filli’s shoulder.

“Well, we’re chatting,” the slicer said from the cockpit’s comm suite. “It recognized the code we used to activate the facility at Jaguada, but it refuses to accept any remote commands. My guess is that it was rudely shut down during the battle, and wants to run a systems check before bringing the destroyer fully online.”

“Be best if we can keep from announcing ourselves,” Cudgel said from the copilot’s chair. “You think you can keep the brain from lighting up the entire ship?”

Chewbacca woofed in agreement.

“Not initially,” Filli said. “The brain will probably restore universal power gradually as part of its diagnostic analysis. Once that’s over and done with, I can task it to kill all the running lights, except for