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Harrar frowned. “I feel—” He snapped his head side to side. “No, nothing.”

“This ought to be the place,” Corran replied. “The ship certainly thinks it is.”

He checked his long-range sensors again. Whatever was orbiting the planet had moved behind the horizon now. He wasn’t sure, but the last read on it had looked suspiciously like an Imperial frigate.

Luke had been escorted by an Imperial frigate, or so Kenth had told him. If he could somehow make orbit a little lower and faster than the ship, they could eventually catch it.

And maybe get blasted out of space. Unless he could hang some sort of sign out declaring his peaceful intentions. The Imps still might shoot him down just for the fun of it.

Looking at his trajectory, he suddenly realized that he didn’t even have a choice.

“Ah, Sithspit,” he grumbled.

“What is it?” Tahiri asked.

“Remind me to never fly a ship that has a mind of its own, especially a homesick one,” Corran said. “It’s got us on a landing vector.”

“That is what we want, is it not?” the Prophet asked.

“Yes, but it would be nice to land near our friends,” Corran replied, “especially since I’ve a feeling we won’t be taking off again—not in this ship.”

“I suggest survival is our first priority,” Yu’shaa answered.

“Point. Okay, folks, we’re about to say a close hello to Zonama Sekot. I suggest you all strap back in. The slow part of this trip is over.”

He hit the atmosphere too steeply, and had to apply a hard push from the dovin basal to correct. The ship winced, but did its job, and they whistled down through the upper atmosphere. He felt the skin temperature climb, and again cut the engine in, trying to stay above terminal velocity. Burning up would be no better than crashing.

Water and jungle whipped by beneath, and Corran had to agree with Harrar—it looked like any of a hundred worlds. But it felt different. Tahiri was right—the Force was strong here, but strange, and put up a sort of white noise he couldn’t filter through. Now and then he thought he might feel Luke, but it was never more than a glimpse or a glimmer.

He had more important things to worry about. The treetops were coming up fast. It was time to brake for real.

He engaged the dovin basal and felt it falter almost immediately, and then kick back in. Their airspeed dropped, but not nearly quickly enough. He couldn’t push the engine any harder even if he wanted to, though. He’d diverted all its ability to cancel inertia in the cabin so he could use it to fly, and the g’s were already mounting to his own tolerance level, which was pretty high. He cut the angle harder, traveling closer and closer to horizontal to the ground, wishing the Sekotan craft had wings, so if the dovin basal failed entirely he would at least have a chance.

A hundred meters from the ground, he still wasn’t level. Fifty, almost there …

They mowed a swath through treetops and the dovin basal went suddenly off-line. Unpowered, the ship was a hollow rock thrown by a giant, and without an inertial compensator they were going to be pasted all over the inside of it.

There’s the unity we’re looking for, he thought grimly. Yuuzhan Vong and human, all mixed together in one nasty—

They hit something very hard, and then, desperately, he reached out through the Force, felt Tahiri reaching out too, and then—

Then he felt Sekot, immense, powerful, and indifferent. But something happened, a connection, and they were suddenly falling like a feather—

For just a second. Then free fall returned, and instants later they came to ground, hard.

“Interesting landing, Jeedai Horn,” Harrar remarked.

“How is everyone?” Corran turned painfully in his seat to survey his companions.

The return chorus assured him that everyone had made it through.

Everyone but the ship, that is. The glow was going out of it, and the little voice in his head was a whisper, fading.

Sorry, he sent through the Force. But you got us here. Thank you.

Then he felt it go.

He looked out through the viewport at a forested landscape.

“Well,” he told the others, “we seem to be here. I suggest