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“Anakin Solo—” Something inside her cut her sentence off short.

“Did you feel that?” she asked in a hushed voice.

And at the moment, he did. Something in the Force. Fear, panic, resolution, resignation, all bound up together.

“It’s a Jedi,” he murmured.

“A Jedi in trouble. Bad trouble.” She uncoiled like a released spring. “Where are those shoes?”

“Tahiri, no. I’ll go. Someone has to stay with the ship.”

“You do it then. I’m going.” She stood up and went into the ship. Anakin followed. She found a pair of walking slippers in her locker and put them on.

“Just wait a second. Let me figure this out.”

“I don’t need you to figure anything out for me. One of us is in trouble. I’m going to help.”

She was already on her way out and down the landing ramp.

Repeating some of his father’s more inventive expletives, Anakin hurriedly sealed the ship and ran after her.

He caught up with her at the customs-and-immigration line. She breezed past everyone else, but was stopped at the force gate, where a gray-haired official frowned down at her.

“You have to go to the back of the line.”

“No, I don’t,” Tahiri said, passing her hand impatiently.

“You don’t,” the woman agreed. “But I need to see your identification.”

“You don’t care about that,” Tahiri insisted.

“Never mind; don’t bother,” the official replied. “What’s the purpose of your visit to Eriadu?”

“Nothing that would interest you. I have to get through, now!”

The woman shrugged. “Okay. Go on through.” She dropped the force barrier, and Tahiri dashed past.

“Next.”

“I’m with her,” Anakin informed her. “You need to let me through, right now,” he added.

“You need to be with her,” the official said, dropping the force gate again, long enough for Anakin to get through.

Behind him, he heard the next person in line say, “Why don’t you just let me through, as well?”

“Why would I do that?” the official wondered caustically.

Naturally, he’d lost sight of Tahiri, but he knew where she was going. The Jedi they were both feeling was in more distress than ever.

Anakin pushed his way through the rain-slickered portround crowd, through vendors and street performers, past long rows of cantinas and tapcafs and souvenir shops full of mostly fake lacy shellwork and grossly caricatured statuettes of Grand Moff Tarkin.

Three streets in, the crowd seemed to dissipate, and the grubby lanes were almost empty, except for the occasional six-legged rodent. Here the scent of hot metal was overpowering, though the streets were relatively cold and the rain had increased. And ahead of him somewhere, a Jedi’s feet were slowing.

Anakin turned into a long cul-de-sac formed on the left by a chrome-facade skyscraper and on the right by the ribbed-steel wall of a ten-story-high heat sink, steaming in the rain. The end of the alley was the back of another building faced in blackened duraplast. A crowd of vagabonds was gathered, watching a murder about to happen.

The victim was a Jedi, a Rodian. He stood against the heat sink, trying to keep his lightsaber up. Five beings faced him—two with blasters, three with stun batons. All had just turned to face Tahiri, who was about six meters from them, arriving at a dead run, her lightsaber swirling bright patterns over her head.

Anakin saw all of this from a distance of fifty meters or so. He tried to coax his feet to lightspeed.

Taking advantage of Tahiri’s distraction, the Rodian lurched forward. One of the men with a blaster shot him, and the descending screech of the bolt reverberated in the alley.

Tahiri’s blade sheared through a stun baton, nearly taking the hand of the thickset woman wielding it. Anakin winced; Kam had been working with Tahiri on her lightsaber technique, and she was a quick learner, but still a novice.

Novice or not, the thugs with the stun batons backpedaled, drawing blasters instead of taking up the fight hand to hand. Tahiri pressed on, catching one of them and snipping the end of his weapon off. The next man back fired at her and missed. They started to encircle her.

Finally, Anakin arrived.