He did not need a droid or crew member to point him to the containers containing the Lignan. It drew him like a lodestone drew iron shavings. With each step he took closer to the ore, his mind and spirit opened further until he could not contain a laugh. It was as though he had been drawing power from a nearly exhausted well, and now drew it from an ocean.

He was vaguely aware of his crew trailing after him as he followed the power back to its source, to the stack of rectangular storage containers that held mounds of the ore. He felt giddy, rapturous from its effects.

He drew on the power the ore offered, filled himself with it, sank ever more deeply into the Force. Power coursed through him. His crew backed away, eyes wide-all except the Massassi, who fell to one knee and bowed their heads.

The ship screamed outrage at the stresses of the misjump. With a minor exercise of will, Saes used his enhanced telekinetic power to throw open several of the storage containers holding the Lignan. Ore spilled out onto the deck, bounced around. Power spilled out into the air, collected around Saes. He reached deeper until he was nested fully in the Force, alight with the Lignan's power.

An impact jarred the ship. The hollow boom of an explosion told of some distant destruction to fore. The buck of the ship sent three of the shipping containers skidding along the deck toward him, toward the crew. The Lignan allowed him to use his telekinetic powers to stop them cold with minor effort.

He reached out with the Force, with his augmented power, until his consciousness encapsulated the entire ship. The task challenged him. Dark energy swirled around him. Force lightning shot in jagged lines from his curled fingers, from his eyes. His crew turned and ran, all except the Massassi. They remained, though uncertainty filled their bestial faces.

Grunting, Saes took mental hold of the dreadnought, the pieces of it floating in its wake. His mental fingers closed over the hull and reinforced it, then righted the ship's course.

As he exerted himself, the loose Lignan ore on the deck flared red, sizzled, and crumbled to dust. Apparently it could offer only so much before burning out. He burned through it like a wildfire through brush, like the mining cruisers through the crust of Phaegon III's moon.

He gritted his teeth, his entire body shaking with the challenge of keeping the ship intact. The effort squeezed more Force lightning from his hands, his eyes, his entire body, and soon he was sheathed in a swirling cyclone of the energy. He roared as his power alone kept the ship from shattering.

More and more Lignan burned out around him until he stood in a field of dull gray rock, miniatures of Phaegon III's moon. His heart pounded against his ribs, gonged in his ears. Corded veins and sinew made a topographic map of the exposed flesh of his forearms. The strain bore down on him, drove him to his knees. He was failing. He had to pull the ship out of its jump or they would all die.

He drew from the last well of his strength. The cargo hold lit up like a pyrotechnic display as more of the Lignan flashed and died. He held Harbinger in his mind's eye and felt the intermittent, flawed tunnel of hyperspace around it, felt the ship as a needle through the fabric of space and time, darning in and out of hyperspace and realspace.

Using the Force to time a moment when the ship moved into realspace, he tried to deactivate the damaged hyperdrive, but failed. The pitch of the damaged drive turned to a scream as it poured radiation into the ship and burned out as completely as the used Lignan.

Saes answered its scream with one of his own, straining to hold the ship together and jerk it back into realspace. With a roar of Force power, he changed its course and tore it from the grips of the misjump.

The ship was steady beneath him. The scream of strained metal was silent.

Exhausted, he sagged fully to the ground, his breath ragged but his mind exultant.

"Sir?" said one of the Massassi.

Saes inhaled and stood on wobbly legs. The Massassi moved to assist him but he waved them off. He gathered himself and walked across the cargo hold to a viewport.

Outside, he saw the calm of realspace, a distant blue planet, an orange sun. The stars in the background of space did not look familiar to him, though. He did not know where in the universe they were, but he knew he had saved the ship. The power of the dark side had saved the ship.

Jaden awoke to the metallic shriek of a thrown hatch lever. The door opened to reveal Marr's lined face and smooth gray hair. The Cerean's goatee was so precisely groomed that Jaden imagined Marr gave its angles and length as much attention as he did jump solutions.

"We will be there soon," Marr said.

"How long was I out?"

"Six standard hours and eleven minutes. There is caf in the galley."

Jaden stood, chuckling at the Cerean's precision. Marr turned to go, but Jaden halted him with a question.

"How did you and Khedryn meet, Marr? With your gifts, it seems as if… you might have done something else."

"My gifts," Marr said softly, and trailed off. He looked up. "Perhaps I did do something else."

"Of course. I meant no offense."

"I took none." He turned once more as if to go, but stopped himself and faced Jaden. "When I was young, I once spent a week calculating the probabilities that my life would take this or that turn." He smiled, and Jaden noticed for the first time that one of his front teeth was badly chipped. "I even deduced a small possibility that I would become a Jedi. Amusing, isn't it?"

Jaden chose his words carefully. "Perhaps you could have been."

Marr seemed not to hear him. His deep-set eyes floated in some sea of memory where he had experienced a loss. "I was wrong about all of it, of course. It was a silly exercise. Life does not follow a predictable path. There is no way to capture the infinite variables involved. I think it reflected more my view of myself, or maybe my hopes back then, than anything else."

"Life is not predictable," Jaden agreed, thinking of the course of his own life, thinking of an air lock activation switch he wished he'd never seen.

"Later I decided that I needed to live life, not think about living it, not mathematically model living it. Not long after that I met Captain Faal. He's a good man, you know."

"I see that. And so are you. Where did you receive your training in mathematics?"

Marr frowned. "Not at a university. I had a series of private tutors, but I am mostly self-taught. Born to it, I guess."

"It's intuitive," Jaden said, unsurprised.

"Yes."

Jaden nodded, considered the idea of telling Marr that he was Force-sensitive, but decided against it. Why burden him? Jaden had been happier using the Force in ignorance. "Come on, let's get to the cockpit. I need to see this moon."

They found Khedryn already in the cockpit, his feet up, relaxed in his chair. He nodded at the cerulean swirl visible through the window.

"Beautiful, isn't it? I've heard it can drive you mad to stare at it. I've been doing it for years, though."

"That may not support the claim you suppose it does," Marr said, smiling, and took his seat.

Khedryn grinned. "Six years I've put up with this, Jaden. Six years."

"Six standard years, four months, and nineteen days," Marr corrected.

"You see?" Khedryn said to Jaden, and Jaden could not help but smile. The camaraderie between the two was infectious. Long ago Jaden had felt similarly in the company of his fellow Jedi, but those feelings had vanished. In the company of two rogues on the fringe of space, he found himself feeling as light as he had in months.