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Corran gestured for the two younger Jedi to touch helmets with him.

“Someone will show up to check the hull breach soon,” he told them. “We need to be ready.”

“I’m ready,” Tahiri said. “Really ready. This is a lot better than sitting on some old rock, waiting for them to find us.”

Anakin sensed a bit of annoyance from the older Jedi as Corran went on with his analysis. “I’m guessing this section, whatever it is, is sealed off, else there would still be air whistling through. We need to find the lock.”

“Too late for that,” Anakin said as his lambent lisped a faint warning. “We’ve already got company coming. Close.”

“How can you tell?”

“I feel them.”

Corran nodded. “May the Force be with you,” he told them. Then he moved off to crouch near one of the pillars.

Light appeared toward the far end of the chamber: six lambents like the one in Anakin’s sword. In their light he saw six shadowed bipeds stepping through a typical Yuuzhan Vong dilating lock. He took deep breaths, relaxing his muscles one by one, preparing for the fight.

Closer, he saw they wore rust-colored formfitting suits—creatures really, of course, probably some vacuum-hardy variant of the ooglith cloaker. Their faces were visible, however, through transparent masks. To Anakin’s surprise, only two of them revealed the facial scars of warriors. Two others had the more delicate tattoos he had come to associate with shapers. Indeed, their cloakers bulged conspicuously around their heads, doubtless due to the tendril-bearing creatures they wore as headdresses. The remaining pair had the look of workers or perhaps slaves.

The two warriors set themselves in guard stances while the shapers examined the hole.

Anakin felt rather than saw Corran creep forward, not toward the group of Yuuzhan Vong, but toward the door they had entered through.

Moving carefully but as quickly as he could, Anakin followed, tapping Tahiri on the shoulder to get her attention.

Come on, he suggested in the Force, hoping she got the sense of it.

She did. The three crept through the darkness behind the repair party. In the vacuum, their feet made no sound at all.

They had almost reached the lock when Anakin felt the tingle of approach behind him. He turned in time to see a warrior loom up silently, amphistaff arcing toward Anakin’s head.

Anakin leapt back at the last instant, nearly letting the weapon graze him. He flicked his lightsaber on, and it blazed to life. The warrior’s eyes went wide with surprise.

He didn’t know what he was facing, Anakin guessed.

Whatever his feelings, the warrior didn’t hesitate long. He renewed his attack, spearing with the sharp end of the weapon. When Anakin caught the attack in a circular parry and pressed to bind, the staff suddenly went limp, escaping his net of light. It came flicking in an arc toward his face, now semirigid.

Anakin launched himself forward and under the attack. As he passed by the warrior’s right side, he lifted his weapon parallel to the floor in a cut across his opponent’s face. The energy blade sliced through the mask, and the warrior fell back, flailing, air and blood mingling and freezing in a mass around the cut.

The other warrior was battling Corran, while Tahiri tried to work the lock.

Corran’s dual-phase weapon moved in tightly controlled arcs, always where it needed to be. That fight was nearing its end, too. Corran had stripped a long patch of cloaker from his enemy’s arm. It was already healing, but vacuum and frostbite had done their damage; the arm hung uselessly. Corran parried a flurry of increasingly wilder and more desperate attacks. Taking the last in a parry that pushed his opponent’s staff high above their heads, he then turned his point down and drove it into the warrior’s exposed armpit. The blade sank deep, but the warrior still brought his weapon down, cracking solidly against Corran’s head. Both men fell away, Corran with his hands to his helmet, the Yuuzhan Vong writhing in death throes.

Anakin spun to face their remaining enemies, but none was moving toward them. Not warriors,