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He just knew …

He could feel the Yuuzhan Vong swarming down the crater’s slopes, could feel them slogging through the thunderstorm in the crater’s center. He felt the sizzle of alien stress hormones coursing alien veins. He felt one’s shortness of breath as a warrior slipped around a blind corner that might hide a fugitive Jedi; he felt one’s black rage at the death of comrades in the Nursery, and his heart echoed with another’s savage lust for vengeance. He felt the shocking, nauseating nonpain that slammed up a leg from an ankle broken by an unlucky shift of rubble, and he felt the frustration of a warrior ordered to remain behind to tend some clumsy brenzlit’s broken ankle while he burned to leap forward, to hunt and find and slay. He felt them all.

Like he was all of them, and all of them were him. At the same time.

And more: he felt the crush of tender fronds under hard hot boot heels. He felt the primitive distress of moss when half a struggling colony was scraped off a broken door by the stumble of a warrior against it. He felt the blank terror of a small family of burrowing, roughly mammalian creatures, cringing at the groundborne impact vibrations of so many running feet.

Accepting the warriors’ feelings, opening himself to their emotions, their sensations, he no longer felt the cold: Yuuzhan Vong metabolism, faster and hotter than human, turned the icy rain into a refreshingly astringent shower. The sting of hail became harshly intoxicating, like scratching an inflamed rash. And he was no longer afraid—

Not that he was afraid to die. He’d left fear of death behind on the worldship at Myrkr—but in the blasting thunderstorm, his body had cringed and shook, twisting away from imagined slashes of amphistaffs, bracing against impacts of imagined thud bugs, a biological reflex that took no account of his courage. But now—

Now, all he felt was a fierce rise of predatory joy as a warrior raised his amphistaff and crept toward a small white-robed human shivering in a corner at the meeting of two broken walls, and only when a tall shadow loomed through the curtain of rain right in front of him did Jacen realize that the small white-robed human who was about to die was himself.

Lightning blasted overhead as he twisted, and the amphistaff blade only scored his ribs before stabbing deep into the duracrete of the wall at his back. In the ringing darkness that followed the flash he let the knapsack drop off his shoulders, catching one strap as it fell; while the warrior yanked his amphistaff free, Jacen swung the knapsack two-handed and slammed fifteen kilos of cans and equipment into the warrior’s face. The warrior staggered backward and Jacen pounced, swinging again, landing solidly, buckling the warrior’s knees.

Jacen spun the knapsack overhand to smash the warrior straight down to the ground, but the warrior lifted his blade to parry, slashing the knapsack in half, scattering protein bars and canned synthmilk, shearing the electrobinoculars neatly in half and stabbing into the electronic guts of the datapad—which exploded into blue-white sparks that lit up the rain and scaled the length of the amphistaff to scorch the warrior’s hands.

The warrior hacked a glottal curse as his hands spasmed involuntarily. Smoking, the amphistaff fell limp to the ground between them. Jacen grimaced as pain bit his own hands, chewing its way up his arms—but it wasn’t his pain.

This was pain from the warrior’s burns.

When the warrior leapt to attack unarmed, Jacen met his attack effortlessly, pivoting slightly so that the warrior’s spiked boot missed him by a centimeter. The warrior skidded, caught himself, then twisted and fired a lightning punch overhand toward Jacen’s temple. Jacen tilted his head a fraction, and the punch only ruffled his hair.

“If you don’t stop,” Jacen said, “I’ll have to hurt us.”

The warrior snarled and swung his knotted fists. Jacen flicked the first punch aside; the second, he parried with an open palm as he stepped forward, swinging