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“I don’t know what that means.”

“That way!” Corran pointed, feeling an entirely appropriate déjà vu.

“Do not order me.”

“Look, I’m a pilot. You certainly aren’t. Anyone knows a hyperspace jump this near a singularity is suicide.”

She ignored the comment. “There are ships that way, too,” she reported.

“Yeah, I see them. Does this thing have any guns?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Well—fly fast. And figure out how to plot a jump.”

A coralskipper came up on their tail and started to fire. The first few shots missed, but the next connected, and the ship shuddered slightly. It almost seemed to cry faintly, as if remembering its earlier trauma from such weapons. That shook Corran a bit—was the ship sentient? And if so, why did he hear it when Nen Yim was the one under the cognition hood?

But then he understood. The ship existed in the Force.

He’d assumed from its obvious organic nature that this was a new model of Yuuzhan Vong ship. Now he didn’t know what it was.

The coralskipper unloaded again.

“Jink!” Corran said. “Jink!”

“I’ve no idea what you mean by that,” Nen Yim said.

Corran felt like strangling something—possibly himself, for letting such a relatively simple mission get so far out of control. “Why can’t any of these stinking ships have normal controls?” he muttered.

“You mean controls of metal and plasteel?” the shaper asked.

“Yes. Yes!”

“It does,” she replied. “This ship is a grafting of machine and biotechnology. The original controls were—I could not understand them.”

A grafting of machine and bio—later. “You took them out?”

“No, they’re beneath that screen, covered by a lamina. The sight of them offended me.”

“Oh, I see,” Corran said, as he staggered toward the place she had indicated. “You’re completely insane. You’ve appointed yourself pilot, you’ve no idea what you’re doing, and you don’t mention to the only qualified pilot that there are controls—” He ripped off the lamina, revealing an entirely familiar set of instruments.

“I can fly this,” Corran grunted. “I can fly this! Get back there and help Tahiri!”

“I don’t—”

“—know what you’re doing,” he repeated. “We’ll all be killed, here, now, and you’ll never see your mystery planet.”

“Very well,” Nen Yim said. She removed the cognition hood and started back toward Tahiri.

“If she doesn’t live,” Corran called back to her, “the whole deal is off.”

“Then she will live,” Nen Yim shot back.

Corran threw the ship into a scissor-roll, dodging a fresh barrage of plasma bursts. One scorched along the hull, and he felt the ship’s cry of pain.

Then he felt the wound close, itch, and heal.

Interesting.

The controls were on the old-fashioned side, but the ship itself handled like nothing he’d ever flown. And despite what Nen Yim had said, he found controls for lasers and—something else.

Well, let’s see if they work. He veered hard port and up, making the turn in half the time a ship this size ought to, and came in above one of the pursuing skips. Hopefully, he squeezed off a few shots.

The console said he had four forward lasers. Only one fired. The beam scorched out—and was swallowed by the skip’s void.

Corran wisped by the skip, feeling rather than seeing the other two on his tail, and then pulled up, hard, and grinned when the fire from the two pursuing skips struck the one he’d just shot at.

“I guess they don’t have their war coordinator on-line yet,” he said.

“It’s being jammed,” Nen Yim’s voice floated up from the back. “I’ve seen to it.”

Useful, this shaper. Annoying and incredibly dangerous, but useful. “How is Tahiri?”

“I told you. She will live.”

A wave of relief swept through him, and he turned his full attention back to the problem at hand.

Ships were everywhere now, and not just in the direction he was leaving, and not all just skips. He began working out a jump, but not knowing the engine capabilities made that tricky—he’d have to get it right, not almost right. There wasn’t going to be time …

“Hello,” Corran murmured to