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“The controls are yours if you want them.”

The controls, of course, consisted of a cognition hood that fit on Tahiri’s head. She guided the ship by becoming a part of it. A non–Yuuzhan Vong could fly one—Jaina had proven that—but it helped to have the language and the instincts.

And her instincts told her she couldn’t wait any longer or Corran really was going to have cause for complaint. She cut in the dovin basals, pushing them away from the planet, killing their velocity. She nudged the applied force up quickly, so quickly that the living gravitic drives couldn’t also fully compensate for the g’s they were pulling. She felt her weight double, then triple, and the blood in her brain started looking for a way out of her toes.

Hang on, she thought. Hang on.

Blotches of darkness filled her vision, and her chest felt like a bantha was sitting on it. She saw the blips coming into range, entering—

Then the lozenge-shaped craft hit the water and skipped like a stone. Everything went crazy for a moment. She didn’t quite black out, but the ship’s pain jammed through her own thoroughly confused senses. She growled, then howled.

When it all made sense again she saw green.

They were sinking.

“Well,” Corran said. “That was—interesting. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Now let’s see if it was worth it.”

The blips—or, rather, the projected symbols that represented the approaching craft—continued to get closer.

Something in the ship creaked as they continued to sink.

“I wonder how deep it is here,” Corran mused.

“Not too deep, I hope,” Tahiri said. “If I use the drive with them this close, they’ll notice. The hull should be able to take a good bit of pressure.”

The blips were right overhead, now, and they suddenly broke their pattern.

“Not good,” Corran said.

“Khapet,” Tahiri snarled. She’d screwed up. Now they would have to fight, run, and hope to make it to a safe place to jump to hyperspace before they were overwhelmed. Nice going, Tahiri. Prove to Corran you really are the stupid little girl he remembers.

“They’re going,” Corran breathed. “They must have just been investigating the splash. Or the burn trail.” He nodded. “Good call. I don’t want to do it again anytime soon, but …”

“That’s two of us,” Tahiri said, sighing and watching the fliers continue on their patrol.

Somewhere, something cracked. It sounded like ceramic breaking.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just ease us up a little.”

“Do that,” Corran said, “but don’t surface—wait, how well can this thing work underwater?”

“Well enough. Unless I have to use voids.”

“Yes, let’s not do that,” Corran said. “Can you disable the function?”

“Sure. But why?”

Corran tapped his datapad and pulled up a chart.

“The Western Sea is like any sea—it’s fed by rivers. But because Coruscant is Coruscant, the rivers are artificial. Big pipes, to be exact. If we take this one”—he indicated a spot on the chart—“it will get us pretty close to where we’re going.”

“Assuming the tubes are still there,” Tahiri said. “Yuuzhan’ tar isn’t Coruscant.”

“It’s worth a look,” Corran said. “Anything that will keep us below the level of detection—and between what Jacen and our best intelligence tells us, they don’t have very secure control of a lot of the old underground. That’s why our Prophet is there, presumably.”

“It’s not the way he told us to come.”

“No, it isn’t,” Corran said. “Which gives it another mark, as far as I’m concerned.”

Tahiri nodded and changed her heading. “I hope we don’t bump into anything,” she said. “I can only see ten meters or so.”

“Just go slowly. We’re not in a hurry anymore—the rendezvous is hours away.”

They found the river, a mammoth tube whose diameter the ship’s radar analog suggested was a hundred meters or so. Tahiri kept them centered in it, and worked her way slowly up its length.

“That’s funny,” she said, after a few minutes.

“Funny ha-ha or funny we’re about to die?”

“Odd. What were these tubes made of?”

“Duracrete, mostly. Why?”

“That’s what the sensor signature was like when we