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“How fast?” Corran asked. His voice was maddeningly calm now. Did he think this was her fault?

“Only about sixty klicks a minute,” she said.

“That’s fast, when you don’t have anything to damp inertia, which I’m guessing we don’t right now. If we hit something at this speed …”

“Like another predator?”

“I’m thinking more along the lines of a full stop,” Corran said, punching at the datapad. “This tunnel is going to split eventually, and again, and again—little rivers flowing into the big one, streams into the rivers, sewers into the streams—eventually we’re going to hit tubes too small to go through.”

“That was going to happen anyway,” she pointed out. “You must have had some plan for us to exit this thing in the first place.”

“That sort of assumed we were going to be under power,” Corran said wryly.

“We may have some power. I’m starting to feel something in the dovin basal.”

“It’s coming back on-line?”

“It’s a living thing. It can’t go on- and off-line.”

“Fine. It’s coming around?”

“Somewhat. I might be able to nudge it into responding, but it won’t be able to keep it up for long, so I’ll need to pick my moment. Or moments—I think short bursts of power would be okay.”

Corran frowned down at his chart. “Originally, there was a nexus up here where six smaller tubes branch off. It’s probably coming up fast. If you can take the third from your left, do it.”

Almost as he said it, they burst into a flattened sphere full of water. Something black with a lot of tentacles went whipping by them, furiously fighting the current. Tahiri bit her lip, trying to interpret the ship’s failing senses through the murk.

“One, two, three—it might be four,” she muttered. “There’s not time for a better count.”

She sent a gentle command to the dovin basal, which quivered and then reached out. It didn’t take much—just enough to divert them into the right stream.

“I think I did it,” she said.

“Good,” Corran said, “now—”

“No!” Tahiri yelped. The rim of the tube loomed.

A sudden shock nearly tore them from their crash couches, and an unholy shriek of impact filled the cabin. A series of lesser shocks followed as the ship rattled down the smaller tube, turning end over end.

Tahiri’s stomach churned, and her last meal made a good try at escaping its intended fate.

“Sorry about that,” she managed.

“Can you get this tumble under control?” Corran asked.

“I could,” she said, “but I really like tumbling.” Didn’t he think she was trying? “What’s our next turn?” she asked.

“The next node, we take the second from the right.”

The dovin basal was starting to come out of its funk, though Tahiri could tell it was very weak. They couldn’t fight the current, but her control of their forward motion improved. They made the next turn without clipping anything, and the next. The tube had narrowed so much that they had only a few meters’ clearance.

“This is almost it,” Corran said. “The next intersection used to be a cooling tower. We should be able to go up into the water jacket. We can park the ship there and go the rest of the way on foot.”

“Let’s just hope they haven’t replaced the cooling tower with, I don’t know, a lorqh membrane,” Tahiri said.

“Don’t tell me what that is, okay?” Corran said.

A few moments later, the ship bobbed to the surface in a large, open area. Tahiri made out a flat, sturdy-looking surface a tier above, and gently coaxed the ship up to it.

“Well done,” Corran said.

“Thank you. Are we where you thought we were?”

Corran studied the chart. “Yep. From here, we can find access tunnels to the place we were supposed to meet this Prophet. All we have to do now is find him, bring him back here, and do all that in reverse.”

Tahiri sighed. “And find another ship. I don’t think we can even make orbit in this one, much less a hyperspace jump.”

Corran’s jaw clamped, then he shrugged. “Well, we’ve stolen ships before. We can do it again.”

But she could tell he was worried. The quipping was to set her at ease, because he still thought she was