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“I was bending over the laser, trying to activate the repulsor sled—”

“Which you couldn’t do,” she interrupted. “I coded it to my voiceprint.”

“Ah-h.” He made it a long, sobbing sigh. “I am glad,” he said, “to have been able to tell you this. If no one else ever knows, and we go to our death together, at least I—”

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered.

She leaned back against the stone wall. Her left shoulder hit a power-cable conduit, and she shifted to get comfortable.

She couldn’t. The warmaster had told her he would destroy all the Duros’ cities, then drive on to Coruscant. Only one conclusion was possible: he had more forces on the way.

Bburru, and CorDuro Shipping, had consistently cheated the refugees they’d been contracted to aid. Evidently, though, it wasn’t the refugee population in imminent danger of being slaughtered, after all—but the Duros themselves!

She shut her eyes and reached out for her children.

She sensed Jaina’s subtle resonance at some distance. Jacen’s might be farther away, or closer—damped down. In the mines? she wondered. Or still in her secret tunnel?

She scratched her shoulder absently against the power conduit—then spun around, grasping it in one hand. It ran from the closet’s floor to its ceiling. She thought back, imagining the admin building in her mind: which rooms lay above her, which ones below. This conduit ran through the storeroom that opened into her tunnel.

She bent down and swept the floor with both hands.

“Is there some way I might help?” Randa asked.

“I want a pebble,” she snapped. “There are always pebbles falling out of our duracrete. The factory never quite got the formula right—”

“Here, Administrator.”

Something fell almost into her lap. She groped toward the noise it made, found the pebble, and seized it in one hand.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

She tapped out a distress signal in the old Mon Cal blink code. Naturally, no one answered.

She stood up, flattened her palms against the closet door, and gave it another push. It still didn’t budge.

“I tried that, too,” Randa offered. “But if you think my weight, added to yours, might—”

“No,” she said. Maybe he was sincerely repentant. For the moment.

Or just suitably scared of her.

She sat down again.

She had only one thing left to try, but she hesitated. If she called Jaina or Jacen back through the Force, they might endanger themselves.

Oh, right, her inner voice mocked. As if Luke doesn’t already know I’m in trouble. She’d sent Jacen and Jaina away, though—insisting they save themselves—and she’d meant it.

But if Luke already knew …

She sat down and relaxed deeply. Luke, she cried silently to her own twin. Luke, hear me …

She sensed no answer. Maybe he was in hiding, too.

Curled up on Jade Shadow’s pilot’s chair, Luke felt a tendril of energy brush against him. Alert for scanners from off-ship, he ducked down into the Force and let the probe pass over. As it faded, he touched it cautiously to confirm its electronic, impersonal nature.

Instead, he caught the faint sense of Leia, and danger, and warning.

Chagrined, he reached toward her. He instantly recognized the sensation of being trapped—and this time, she was in urgent peril. She wanted to make him understand even more, but the rest of it came through garbled. Battles—a warmaster—a threat to Coruscant.

He jumped off the chair and strode aft, toward his X-wing.

Halfway to the hold, he halted. Save his sister? Or stay on station, for the sake of his wife and child? Mara had told him to take off, if he had to.

He tried to get some guidance from the Force. Surprisingly, his clearest impression was that this wasn’t Leia’s moment at all. Her destiny was established, but within the next hour, Jacen must stand firm … or fall utterly.

Drawing down deep into the Force, Luke stretched out toward Jacen, and then to Leia. Was she doomed? He couldn’t tell. Jacen remained closed off to him, walled inside his own barricades. Luke’s shoulders slumped.

Jaina