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Kratas scrambled to the navigation station himself. The Gorgon lurched as the sublight engines kicked in, spinning the enormous Star Destroyer about.

“We no longer have our navicomputer lock on Coruscant,” the navigation officer said. “When we turned to strike at the Sun Crusher, we lost our alignment.”

“Get us out of here now,” Daala said. “Any vector! Inform the Basilisk.”

The sublight engines powered up, blasting as they lumbered away from the center of the nebula, picking up speed. The hyperdrive engines were primed, gathering power. The Star Destroyers began to move away—

Then all the stars exploded.

Kyp Durron watched the Star Destroyers wheel about and flee like wounded banthas.

“You can’t get away fast enough.” He smiled. “Not fast enough.”

The Gorgon and the Basilisk began to heave themselves through the nebula at top speed, abandoning scores of TIE fighters. The small Imperial fighters veered off in a panic when their mother ships suddenly turned to run.

Kyp ignored the rest of the TIE fighters and punched his engines to twice the Sun Crusher’s maximum-rated capacity, shooting straight up and out the plane of the nebular cloud.

When the cluster of blue giants detonated, concentric shock waves of blinding light and searing radiation blasted outward like a cosmic hurricane.

The Gorgon had managed to pull two ship lengths ahead of the Basilisk.

Hauling on the controls, Kyp continued the Sun Crusher’s race upward, confident that the quantum armor would protect him from the worst. The incredible surge of energy from the supernovas darkened his viewports to near opacity.

Curtains of fire overtook the Basilisk, washing over the Star Destroyer and igniting it like another tiny nova erupting in the nebula, as the firestorm front swept on.

The viewscreen blackened, but where the Gorgon had been Kyp saw another flash—and then the firestorm obliterated all detail.

After his screens opaqued completely, Kyp used the onboard navicomputer to set a new course. This was just the beginning.

Leaving the galactic inferno behind him, and awed by the power of the Sun Crusher, Kyp moved off to seek out those remaining worlds that still swore allegiance to the Empire.

Now, without doubt, he had all the power he needed.

34

With the morning coolness of Yavin 4, Ambassador Cilghal rose in her austere quarters and basked in the shadowy dampness of the stone temple.

She had been at the Jedi praxeum for only a few days, but already she felt as if the whole universe had opened for her. Master Skywalker’s exercises in attuning her mind to the Force had shown her how to turn her gaze in a new direction, to see things in full view that she had previously only glimpsed out of the corners of her eyes. He had given her a nudge down a long, smooth slope of discovery; the more she learned, the easier it was to learn more.

She splashed tepid water across her face, moistening her rubbery skin, scrubbing the delicate tendrils that hung beneath her slit of a mouth. Though the air of the jungle moon was thick with humidity, she still felt more comfortable when she could keep her exposed skin moist.

Cilghal left her quarters and moved to join the dozen other Jedi candidates in the dining hall, where each would consume a small breakfast of fruits or meats compatible with his or her biochemistry.

Dorsk 81 sat at a table contemplating colored rectangles of processed nutrients. Because he had lived for so long on a self-contained, environmentally controlled world, the cloned Jedi trainee could not digest foods that had not been heavily processed.

The gaunt, hardened Jedi Kam Solusar attempted to talk to wild-haired Streen, who kept flicking his gaze from side to side as if distracted.

The rest of the Jedi trainees sat by themselves or in small groups, talking uneasily. Cilghal did not see Master Skywalker among them. He was usually the first to enter the dining hall, waiting for his students to join him. The other Jedi trainees seemed disconcerted by the change of routine.

Cilghal worked the food-processing unit