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He smiled, then slipped the datapad into the pocket on the left thigh of his combat suit. “The Yuuzhan Vong hate machines. It’s not a living thing, but I don’t want to leave it for them.”

The Twi’lek smiled briefly. “Hadn’t thought of that. C’mon, Anakin, let’s go teach them the error of their ways.”

Anakin stalked after Daeshara’cor, slipping through a broad doorway and into a wide corridor. Planters mounted into the walls brimmed over with purple vines, while gold-leaf ivy ran along the ceiling. Daeshara’cor walked down the center of the passage, which, because it had been built for Ithorians, was sufficiently large to make her look almost childlike.

He wondered for a moment why she was walking down the middle of the corridor. He knew she wasn’t afraid of the vines, then he noticed he was doing it, too. Neither of us is slinking along. Approaching the coming battle boldly hardly made sense, since the Yuuzhan Vong were lethal. But to cower as we approach would give them a victory even before the battle is joined.

Irrational though he knew that explanation was, it felt right to him. Watching her, seeing the set of her shoulders and the straightness of her spine, he realized that to be truly brave took more than deciding you weren’t going to be scared. You had to allow yourself to believe you were brave, and you had to do all the things you could to promote that feeling. You have to give yourself the chance to be brave.

They reached the end of the corridor and crouched down. The corridor connected with the large series of forested plazas that ran down the belly of the herd ship about three levels above the greensward. The reptoids had spread out in little knots of six, moving along the walkways that edged the plazas. Anakin knew the Ithorians had not been taking tactics into account when they created the herd ship. Still, the fact that the walkways curved often and moved up and down, as if the path were on a hillside, meant that the Yuuzhan Vong troops could pretty much see only twenty meters in front of them, and that in the best case.

And the foliage choking the greensward made looking from one side of the herd ship to the other almost impossible. That mattered little to the Jedi. Though they could not sense the Yuuzhan Vong themselves, their client troops had a presence in the Force. Moreover, the Jedi could pick one another out within the city. While none of them had direct telepathic connections, having a sense of where someone was, and a comlink for talking to them, was almost as good as a brain-to-brain hookup.

Daeshara’cor keyed her comlink. “Team Twelve in place.”

“Copy, Twelve. Race starts in five.”

The Twi’lek nodded to Anakin. She brought her lightsaber to hand and covered the ignition button with her thumb. “Anakin, I just want to say thanks.”

He frowned. “What for?”

“I got myself lost before, and you found me.” Daeshara’cor smiled. “That’s a debt so huge I can’t repay it. If I had succeeded . . . I’d have hated myself forever.”

Anakin’s reply died amid the electronic squealing of an MSE-6 mouse droid rolling along the walkway as fast as it could. Guttural barks and hisses chased it. It paused just in front of the corridor where they waited, spun in a tight circle, then shot on down the walkway past them. Pursuing hotly came a half-dozen reptoids. So focused were they on the small droid that none of them even spared a glance at the corridor.

Anakin flicked his left hand at one of the middle reptoids and used the Force to boost it into the air. The Yuuzhan Vong slave caught its heels on the walkway balustrade, starting the creature somersaulting in flight. Screaming, it crashed through foliage and landed with a crunch below.

The surprised look on the second reptoid’s face died as Anakin slammed his lightsaber against the side of its head, then hit the ignition switch. The purple blade swept up through the top of the creature’s skull, then came around to parry an amphistaff strike from one of the two lead reptoids. With two hands on the hilt, Anakin