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He brought the swoop to a halt just long enough to clear the exhaust ports and fan housing. His swearing passenger might have been wearing a long white wig. Thorsh had his right hand back on the accelerator when a pained shriek erupted from the jungle, punctuating the cacophony of birdcalls. He heard a familiar roar, and not a moment later the second swoop bobbed into view, bearing only the pilot.

“The nets got him!” the Bith pilot shouted over the irregular throb of a choked engine. He twisted the accelerator to keep the swoop idling. “I’m going back for him!”

Thorsh spit web from his mouth and scowled. “Don’t be a fool.”

“He’s alive—”

“Better that you are,” Thorsh interrupted. He jerked his bearded chin to the west. “The estuary. Get going!”

Thorsh spurred the swoop through a quick circle and darted off into the trees, the Bith hanging on to what was left of the Jenet’s flight jacket. Punching through the dense jungle that grew along the shore of the island, they found themselves back in the blinding light of Selvaris’s double suns. Coaxing more speed from the rapidly failing engine, pilot and passenger leaned the swoop through a sweeping turn that carried them out over brackish water, inky with organics leached from the trees. They soared at top speed a few meters above the calm surface, racing past narrow, meandering channels of pellucid fresh water, bubbled up from the planet’s underground and teeming with brilliantly colored fish.

From the far shore came the urgent woofing and snarling of bissop hounds, galloping through swamps and across berms of scalpel grass. The harsh barks were accompanied by the war cries of Yuuzhan Vong chase teams, running behind the pack. Thorsh banked just in time to avoid a horde of thud and razor bugs that whirled out of the trees, passing within centimeters of the swoop and tearing into the opposite shoreline.

Drawn by the commotion, schools of sharp-toothed predators, showing multifinned backs and serrated tails, leapt from the water to gorge on the airborne weapon bugs. Wide-winged raptors with huge wingspans left the fungus-filled cavities of dying trees to glide down and grab whatever bugs the aquatic behemoths missed.

Thorsh pulled at the handgrips and sent the swoop into a steep climb. The saline water grew more agitated beneath them as the mouth of the estuary came into view, a line of white where curling waves broke against the marshy shore. Hundreds of white-cliffed islets, straight as towers and draped with vegetation, rose from out of the aquamarine ocean. On the horizon a volcano mounded from the water, great clouds of smoke billowing from its crater and bleeding a thick river of lava that turned part of the sea to steam.

Thorsh scanned the otherwise clear sky for signs of the coralskipper. A kilometer away to the east, the other swoop was paralleling him. Gaining altitude, the two machines sped out over the breaking waves, making for the narrow channel that separated the islets closest to shore.

“Heads up!” the Bith said into Thorsh’s right ear. His long-fingered hand shot out, indicating an object in the western sky.

Thorsh tracked it and nodded, muttering a curse.

The Yuuzhan Vong called it a tsik vai. Reminiscent of a seabird, it was an atmospheric search craft, its neck sac inflated and bright red as a signal to other craft in the area. Powered by a gravity-sensitive dovin basal, the monstrosity had a transparent blister cockpit, flexible wings, and gill analogs that made it whine in flight.

Thorsh threw his weight against the handgrips and leaned hard against the steering auxiliaries, slewing the swoop toward the closest island, intent on keeping as close to the white cliffs as he dared.

The tsik vai was not unnerved. It dived for its small prey, whining and releasing several thin, cablelike grasping tendrils.

Thorsh dropped back to the turbulent surface, swerved, and cut across the channel for the neighboring islet, running full out, a meter above