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Sannah reddened. “No,” she said.

“Valin?”

“No,” the boy said. “I guess not.”

“There are times to use the Force in self-defense, Valin, and there are times when defense means attack. And if I have to squeeze Vehn’s brain to learn what we need to rescue Tahiri, I might even do that. But torture for the sake of torture—never.”

Valin nodded and sat down. To Anakin’s surprise Valin didn’t look so much sullen as reflective. In fact, like a flash, for an instant, he looked almost impossibly like his father, Corran. It was so bright and true that Anakin wondered if it was a real vision of an older Valin or just a striking resemblance.

He cleared his throat. “Let’s just get to work, shall we? The engines aren’t as bad as they could be. I think with parts salvaged from the other ships we can get it limping, and that’s all I need—a way to orbit. At the very least we can get the comm unit fixed.”

Anakin actually had his doubts about this, but it would give them something to do while he figured out how he was going to get halfway around the moon to find Tahiri. If they were occupied, they wouldn’t worry as much. Meanwhile, Talon Karrde must have arrived by now.

And Tahiri—she was still here, and he was pretty sure she was even still on Yavin 4, not in orbit.

Still, it galled him. It made his very bones ache not to set off on foot, though in his head he knew that it would take him months to cross the wilderness separating him from the Great Temple. Maybe he needed the work as much as Valin and Sannah.

With a sigh, he went to see what the power cell couplings looked like.

Something beeped and whistled. His hand was already on his lightsaber before he realized the sound was coming from his wrist comm. He was being hailed.

He stared at the comm for a moment. It could be a trick by the Peace Brigade, an attempt to triangulate his location. It might be Talon Karrde, trying to find them.

Reluctantly, he acknowledged, and words began to scroll across the display.

PURSUIT EVADED. X-WING BADLY DAMAGED. AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

“Fiver!”

AFFIRMATIVE.

“Fiver, lock on this signal and come straight here. Where are you?”

252.6 KILOMETERS FROM YOUR PRESENT POSITION.

“Great. How long will it take you to get here?”

20 STANDARD HOURS.

“What? Why?”

REPULSORLIFT MOTIVATION ONLY. SHIP BADLY DAMAGED.

“But you’re okay?”

OPERATIONAL.

“Good. Good going, Fiver. Get here as soon as you can. We need you.”

AFFIRMATIVE, ANAKIN.

“Anakin?” Despite everything, Anakin grinned. The astromech hadn’t been memory-wiped lately. He was starting to develop a few quirks. Flying the X5 X-wing alone—a task Fiver wasn’t really built for—had probably contributed. In fact, Anakin couldn’t believe the little droid had really done it. He’d thought he was sacrificing his ship and Fiver as a diversion. Finding that it hadn’t worked out that way was an unexpected break. He now not only had more parts to work with, but an astromech droid to help with repairs.

Things weren’t exactly looking up, Anakin thought, but maybe he could take his eyes off his feet, at least.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Darkness wrapped around Anakin like a cloak and whispered to him like a mother. It promised him a face of durasteel and a heart of ferrocrete. It offered him supernovas of power and the unflinching will to use it.

He had been to this place before, often. It was his oldest dream, perhaps dreamed for the first time when the clone of the Emperor Palpatine touched him through his mother’s womb. And when he learned about his namesake, his grandfather Vader, the dreams grew stronger, more detailed. He saw futures in which he was grown, his blue eyes gone as gray as hull plating. He saw himself in Darth Vader’s mask, the Knight of Darkness reborn.

He had made a sort of peace with his dreams in the cave on Dagobah, the same cave where his uncle Luke had faced his own dark side and failed. But peace did not mean silence, and here, on a moon as deeply stained by the dark side as the Sith themselves, the dreams were particularly troubling.

But now, something broke, a dam