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He fired the repulsors. The freighter rose bare centimeters into the air.

“Sir, what do you want me to do?” C-3PO pleaded.

“Cover the comlink.” Jaina had sent coordinates for the tunnel’s nearest exit point. As soon as she signaled again, he’d have to move.

Jacen tried not to jolt Leia as he leapt one more fallen warrior. The physical world seemed foggy, less real to him than his invisible struggle to save his mother.

“This way.” Jaina gripped her lightsaber in one hand. She led off the bottom flight of stairs into the storeroom and flung open the tunnel door.

A rush of foul-smelling water cascaded out. Jacen turned sideways and let the first flood wash past him, then waded forward. Leia’s head slumped against his shoulder. She seemed unbelievably light.

Water would wash away any chance for blood clotting. He couldn’t worry about saving her legs anymore. Only her life. With the Force still flowing through him, he virtually stopped the blood flow into her major arteries. The garrote creature, its masters’ unintelligent servant, clung tightly, blocking surface bleeding.

He struggled past the gushing water source. At least the flood would push them and their scent downstream, so the Yuuzhan Vong couldn’t send tracking creatures after them.

Ahead, Jaina’s lightsaber gave off a soft violet glimmer.

Jaina eyed her datapad map. Where this tunnel joined the old mines, the map showed a major drain hole, a vertical shaft. They were traveling toward it with this flow. It would suck them down unless she established an anchor point.

“I’m going ahead,” she told Jacen. “Watch for me.”

Then she extinguished her lightsaber, hooked it to her belt, and plunged into foul, icy water. It tugged at her mask and made a sickening taste on her lips. She took strong strokes, barely sensing the walls that rushed by. Reaching ahead with the Force, she sensed the deadly tug from ahead as waters poured down the shaft.

She turned about and thrust her feet forward. Then she thrust them down, bouncing herself sideways, out of the strongest current. Each bounce took her just a little farther left. She couldn’t see at all, but she’d learned to navigate half-blind. Her Force sense told her when she’d nearly reached the tunnel wall.

Giving one more powerful bounce, she flung herself up and almost out of the water. She scrabbled for a finger-hold on the rock, fell back into the water—and went under. Fear coiled around her, colder and deadlier than the flood.

She fought it aside, got her head up, gasped for air, then bounced herself clear again.

This time, she caught hold of a scratchy outcropping. She unhooked and lit her lightsaber, and saw that she’d missed the deadly shaft by only two meters. She jammed her lightsaber’s pommel into a crack in the wall, like a lantern in a sconce, then yanked off the utility belt she’d scammed from the Jade Shadow.

Mara had taken Shadow on a long sweep out, watching for new hostiles, so she saw them first.

She slapped her transmitter. “Jade Shadow to Duro Defense Force,” she called. “Big coral at four-five mark oh-six. Look out, Poesy.”

A Yuuzhan Vong fighter-carrier had appeared at roughly forty-five degrees south, plainly targeting the Mon Cal cruiser. Waves of coralskippers flew off the big carrier’s arms. Larger objects followed—maybe attack craft, maybe creatures—not that it mattered anymore.

Mara swooped back toward Bburru, searching her tactical display for Luke’s and Anakin’s X-wings. E-wings and Dagger-Ds poured back off Bburru and the other cities around Duro’s inhabited ring. This time, shields went up on all the orbital cities except Orr-Om. Several explosions had shaken it while Mara patrolled. Its lights had gone dark. It had drifted down almost to blue-line. Or brown-line, in Duro’s case.

She’d lost all sense of Leia.

Another Yuuzhan Vong battle group appeared out of hyperspace near Duro’s north pole. This group split into four squadrons. Mara’s sensors showed each squad with twenty or so coralskippers out front, followed by … something bigger, unidentifiable