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“Loaning it for a good cause. Just don’t get her dinged up, understood?”

“Understood,” Jaina replied. “But if we don’t find Booster within a standard week—”

“We will find him,” Jacen interjected.

“Either way,” Jaina warned, “you won’t keep me away from Yavin Four. Not if I have to fly there on a repulsorsled.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Anakin sped over what might have been the billows and curls, thunderstorms and circlestorms of a vast sea of green clouds. The illusion was nearly perfect as the sun reddened, puddled, and shrank against the horizon like a fusion explosion going in slow reverse, condensing back into the bomb that had released it. The real clouds were orange-and-umber lace, and the gas giant was just slipping under the horizon as well. A rare true night was settling, the first in the three standard days since he’d left the crash site.

But the green clouds were an illusion, a potentially deadly one. They were really treetops, and if he passed through one at this speed, he wouldn’t experience the slight dampness and negligible turbulence that flying through a cloud produced; he would shatter his makeshift speeder and possibly his own bones against them.

And so he closed his eyes and used the Force, feeling the life below him, watching for it thrusting too high.

It was exhilarating to be flying again, so much so that for moments at a time Anakin nearly forgot what he was doing and where he was going. He kept reaching for the throttle, to really open her up, to feel the wind in his face turn into a fluid, cheek-biting sheet of speed.

But the throttle was already open; the “speeder” quite simply wasn’t. He’d tinkered with it as much as he could, but no amount of jury-rigging could transform a cannibalized A-wing repulsorlift welded to an awkward strut-work chassis into a fleet steed of the winds. The pilot seat from his X-wing perched atop the improbable cagelike thing, and before him were exactly four controls—an on-off switch, a throttle and lift control circuited to the repulsor, and a tiller that wagged a large aluminum rudder behind him. Not the most wieldy craft he’d ever flown, and his maximum speed was a poky ninety klicks an hour. Still, it would get him there faster than walking or waiting for the repairs on the transport.

He stretched out farther in the Force, touching Tahiri again. She was in a dark place and he felt pain, or the fading of pain. He couldn’t tell where.

Anakin.

That startled him. His name rang like an H’kig chime, nothing fuzzy about it.

“I’m coming, Tahiri,” he whispered.

Anakin … But the sense of words dissolved into emotion. Fear, grief, hope. Wordlessly, he reached for her, to give her the equivalent of a squeeze on the hand, and found himself instead in a tight, desperate embrace.

I’ll find you, he projected to her. Just hang on.

No! He couldn’t tell if she was warning him away or responding to the blade of pain that suddenly cut between them, tore her away from him, leaving him once more alone with the treetops.

He searched for her again, but found nothing, not even a faint presence.

“You’re okay, Tahiri,” he mumbled. “I know you are.”

He did sense someone else, however. It was like seeing a faint star, the faintest star in the sky.

“Jaina,” Anakin said. “Hello, Jaina.”

But he couldn’t tell if she felt him back.

Days passed, blurred and monotonous. The forest broke into narrow savannas and sparkling stretches of marsh and then ocean that shimmered like planished copper beneath Yavin and liquid gold by sunlight. He watched the crawling, V-shaped wakes of behemoths he had no names for and could make out only as shadows in the deep. He flew day and night, sleeping only in tiny naps, drawing on the Force to replenish himself. He ate the last of his rations after ten days, but even two days later did not feel hungry. He felt light and humming, like a flash of lightning given human form.

Water he did need, and stopped to distill it when his body required more. But mostly he flew, and lost himself in the life around him. He searched for Tahiri, trying