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The ship rocked again, and several of the patches emitted a dull phosphorescence, which probably indicated damage to something-or-other.

“Okay,” Anakin said. “Maybe I can’t fly anything.”

Tahiri lifted a sort of loose bag from the acceleration couch. A thin creeper attached it to the console.

“Put this on your head,” she suggested.

“That’s right!” Anakin said, remembering. “Uncle Luke tried one of those on. It’s some sort of direct brain interface.” He looked at the thing dubiously, then tried it on. Immediately he heard a distant voice, murmuring something he couldn’t understand.

“The tyzowyrm isn’t translating,” he said. “I guess it’s being bypassed by the hood.”

He tried a few mental commands, with no result.

“This could be bad,” he muttered. “It must be like the lambent. Without attunement, our brains won’t interface directly with Vong technology.”

“Yuuzhan Vong,” Tahiri corrected absently.

“Right. Maybe it’s just the language barrier. Maybe … Tahiri, you try it.”

“Me? I’m no pilot.”

“I know. Try it anyway.”

Tahiri shrugged and placed the sack over her head.

It squirmed and shrank to fit.

“Oh!” she said. “Wait.”

The walls became transparent as another concussion set the ship quivering. Anakin could now see what was causing this; another ship, also grounded, was firing on them with one of its plasma weapons. The Yuuzhan Vong had cleared out a safe lane for the shots. Anakin reflected that they probably hoped to break through the hull—skin?—without seriously damaging the ship.

“Okay,” Tahiri murmured, her fingers caressing the various nerve nodes. “Let’s see what—yow!”

The ship jumped off the ground like a fleek eel from a hot pan. Anakin gasped and then whooped, slapping Tahiri on the back.

“We’ll do this yet!” he shouted. “Let’s burn out of here.”

“Which way?”

“Any way! Just go!”

“You’re the captain,” she said. The damutek suddenly blurred away beneath them.

“Not bad,” Anakin said. “Now, if you can figure out how the weapons work—”

Tahiri shrieked suddenly, clawing off the headgear.

“What’s wrong?” Anakin asked.

“It’s in my head! Telling me to turn back! In another second it would have had me!”

“This isn’t good,” Anakin said, watching the ground rush up. It seemed to him he had seen altogether too much of that lately. Gravity was highly overrated.

By the time they found the hatch and crawled out, Anakin could hear the drone of another Yuuzhan Vong ship approaching.

“Tahiri,” he said, “run for it. I’ll just slow you down with this leg.”

“No,” Tahiri said simply.

“Please. I came all this way to rescue you. It can’t have been for nothing.”

Tahiri brushed his cheek with her hand. “It wasn’t for nothing,” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know we used to be in everything together. I know if this is the end, there’s nobody I would rather be standing with. I know that we can still make them sorry they ever tried to mess with the two of us.” She took his hand.

Anakin gripped it back. “Okay,” he conceded. “Together.”

It didn’t take the ship long to find them; they hadn’t made it more than a kilometer beyond the river. This was no speeder analog, either, but something more corvette-sized.

Tahiri touched Anakin in the Force, tentatively, and for the first time he really felt what they had done to her—the pain and confusion, the sickening nightmare sense of unreality. He poured his sympathy and strength back into her, and the bond strengthened. And as she gripped his fingers tighter, as he finally surrendered the last of his barriers against her—against them—the Force blew through him like a hurricane.

Tahiri laughed. It was not a child’s laugh.

Together you are stronger than the sum of your parts, Ikrit had said.

Together.

They wrenched a thousand-year-old Massassi tree out of the ground and launched it straight up. By the time it struck the Yuuzhan Vong ship it was traveling as fast as a speeder. It smacked into the dovin basal and splintered, twisting the ship half-around. Another tree jerked out of the ground,