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So she usually reached out to him first.

“Yes,” she said, and it came out like a sigh. “Please.”

It came at the edge of her spirit, like a touch of white-hot light. It spread strength, and unwavering approval, and a love as deep and as strong as a Mon Calamari tide. She plunged into it, inhaled it, bathed in it. She reveled in the surge of renewal, and then she splashed it back at Luke as hard as she could.

When she opened her eyes, she was lying beside him, twining her arms and her body with his, and his lips were pressed tightly to hers.

She shut her eyes and drew him closer yet.

Jacen braced himself as Jaina jinked past commercial buildings. This part of the city’s layout just wasn’t complex enough for shaking off pursuers, and the hoverpod’s engine had no guts at all.

What did he expect a preacher to own? “Try to get out of their line of sight,” Jacen suggested. “Then put it on autopilot landing cycle, and we’ll bail.”

“Oh, great idea. Stellar.”

“Got a better one?”

She rounded a corner into a straightaway, poured on speed for several seconds, then ducked up a side alley.

“Nope,” she said, flicking levers. “Out.”

She popped the hatch on the pod, which was still streaking up the alley at an impressive speed, pushed one raised button, and jumped.

He followed, falling hard without his Jedi skills. At least he’d been trained to roll gracefully, absorbing most of the impact.

“This way,” he called.

Jaina pressed to her feet and followed him into a gap between buildings.

“Are you okay?” he demanded.

“I’m not the idiot who’s refusing to use the Force.”

They waited several minutes, but pursuit didn’t come.

He tried phrasing it differently. “How well can you really see?”

She straightened her mask. “I flew, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did. Pretty well.”

“All right,” Jaina said. “We’re going to be Duros for a while.”

She must’ve blurred their faces, because they had no trouble getting to a private dock, where she slid a hand across an ID reader, and they left on a small private shuttle.

Jacen buckled in. His conscience jabbed him. Besides piggybacking on Jaina’s Force use, this was stealing.

But he didn’t want to go the long way around, to get to the rattletrap shuttle he’d brought up from Gateway dome.

Jaina set a course that was little more than a braked fall from geosynchronous orbit.

“Look out below,” he murmured.

They were on final approach when the comm unit hissed. “Shuttle on approach vector,” a male voice said, “decelerate and identify yourself. This dome is on alert.”

“This is, um, NM-KO two eight,” Jacen said, frowning at Jaina as he read off an ID plate. “Decelerating now.” Then he added, “Is Administrator Organa Solo available? Mom, are you there?”

The next voice was his mother’s. “Jacen,” she exclaimed. “Are Jaina and Anakin with you?”

“Just Jaina.”

“I take it she’s flying,” Leia said. “Slow it down just a little more, Jaina. How many passengers could you squeeze into that shuttle? Is it hyperspace-capable?”

That sounded ominous, after what Jaina had told him. “Looks like …” Jacen eyed the control panel, then peered back over the seats. “Room for four or five, and there is a hyperdrive.”

“Good. Park it …” Leia gave landing instructions. To Jacen’s surprise, they were to head for the main entry. Gateway must’ve canceled the quarantine.

Jaina slipped the little craft under the edge of a fog-shrouded landing bay next to a blast crater. Figures in orange chem suits swarmed several freighters and haulers, cleaning Duro-crud off rectennae and viewports, scrambling in and out of access hatches. Jacen took one last breath of good air, then followed Jaina toward the nearest boarding tube.

At its inside end, he heard his mother give a curt order. He turned left, toward that voice. Inside a duracrete-block room that’d been off-limits during quarantine, three sloping consoles with holographic displays clustered under a small screen representing local space. The room smelled like someone had eaten a late dinner in here. His mom bent over one comm unit, wearing a white scarf wrapped around