Saes glanced around to ensure that no one was listening. "How significant?"

"More than five thousand years."

The words settled like weights on Saes's mind, heavy with meaning. He put a hand on a nearby chair and locked his knees. The tingle creeping up his spine spread to his entire body. His legs felt weak under him but the chair kept him up. He turned and stared at the viewscreen, at the stars that looked the same to him as those he had left behind but were five millennia out of position.

"How?" he said.

"The most likely explanation is that the misjump resulted in Harbinger's never quite entering hyperspace. We had a hyperspace tunnel in front of us but never entered it. Instead, the ship accelerated to near lightspeed only. For us, only a short time passed. For the rest of the galaxy, five thousand years passed."

Five thousand years.

Thoughts bounced around in his mind, unconnected, inchoate. His mind felt unmoored.

Five thousand years.

He struggled to focus, to analyze the situation, but he knew nothing. He had no information with which to perform an analysis. He had no knowledge of the state of the galaxy. What of the Sith Empire? The war with the Jedi? His homeworld?

It occurred to him that he and his crew were artifacts, living fossils heaved from the strata of a misjump.

"Anything could have happened in five thousand years."

The droid said nothing, merely cocked its head as if intrigued by Saes's reaction.

Saes's connection to the Force began to ground him. Five thousand years had passed, but the Force remained constant. He fought down the panic.

"Say nothing of this to anyone," he said to 8L6. "I must think."

The droid nodded, its servos whirring, and turned back to its station.

"Blades are entering the rings in pursuit," Llerd said, the eagerness in his voice betraying a desire to see something die.

Saes realized that Relin would be as lost as he, two men of purpose suddenly left purposeless. Neither had an Order to which to report. The Battle of Kirrek was long over. Yet it suddenly seemed more important than ever that he kill Relin.

In the need for that act he found his purpose.

Meanwhile, he had a damaged but functioning dreadnought, a hold filled with Lignan, and a full crew of soldiers. He had little doubt he could make his presence felt. Once he understood the state of the galaxy, he could make contact with the current Sith Order, if it existed. He could use the Lignan as a way either to secure a place in the hierarchy or seize control of the Sith himself.

And if an Order no longer existed, he would remake it.

Finding his mental footing, he said to Llerd, "Do not monitor or scan local subspace channels. Understood?"

Llerd looked puzzled but acknowledged the order.

Saes did not want local comm chatter, should there be any, to prematurely indicate to the crew what had happened to Harbinger.

He turned his eyes back to the viewscreen, watching his Blades hunt his former Master through a storm of stone and ice.

He wondered, in passing, who else was aboard the ship with which Relin had docked. Not other Jedi, surely.

Kell had watched, his spirit aflame, as the damaged cruiser streaked out of the darkness toward Junker, as fighters of a kind Kell had never before seen launched from the belly of the cruiser and pursued Junker into the thick bands of rock and ice that caged the blue gas giant.

"Lines intersect and grow tangled here," he said. His heart was racing.

He needed only to unknot them and revelation awaited. This he knew. And he knew Jaden Korr to be the key.

He used a nose cam to take pictures of Junker, of the cruiser, of the fighters, and stored them in a holocrystal. He watched Junker dart toward the rings, watched the sleek fighters follow. He did not fear that Jaden would die in the rings. Jaden's destiny was to die while Kell fed on his soup.

He scanned all frequencies until he picked up the signal from the moon that had started it all, the signal that would, in the end, summon Kell to the altar of understanding.

He amplified it, let the heartbeat of its repeating cadence fill the cockpit. Having performed services for the Empire decades earlier, he recognized the signal as Imperial in origin. Predator possessed an advanced decryption package, and Kell loosed it upon the message. In moments he had it decrypted.

"Extreme danger," said a female voice. "Do not approach. Extreme danger. Do not approach."

Pelting through Junker's corridors, Khedryn led Relin to the tractor beam control compartment at the rear of the ship. A small, rectangular viewport provided a view outside the ship. They could see the fighters from Harbinger gaining on them, narrow slivers of black and silver metal hurtling through space toward Junker with ill intent. Khedryn noted the laser cannons mounted on each wing. The cruiser loomed behind the fighters, huge and dark.

"Lose the escape pod, Marr," Khedryn ordered over his comlink. "I don't want Jaden flying my girl with a sack on her back."

"Copy that," said Marr.

Seconds later they saw Relin's escape pod spinning through space in Junker's wake. One of the Blades fired its wing-mounted laser cannons, and green lines turned the pod into flame and scrap.

"Stang, those things are fast," said Khedryn.

"Blades are flying cannons," Relin said. "They have low-powered deflectors. One hit is all it takes."

"TIE fighters," Khedryn said. "Sith designs are the same no matter the time."

"Do you have deflectors?" Relin asked, strapping himself in at the console.

"Didn't I already say that this is a salvage ship?" Khedryn said, watching the Blades grow larger. "I have nothing that can even slow that kind of firepower."

Relin examined the controls. "Can the tractor beam be aimed with any precision?"

"Aimed, yes." Khedryn showed the Jedi the scan and lock display, the fire controls. "But precision? I use it for towing. It's not a weapon."

"It will be today. How do I communicate with the cockpit?"

Khedryn thought he knew what Relin intended. "Tell me you're not planning to do what I think you're planning to do? We'll be in the midst of the rings. The mass shifts alone-"

"If they follow us into the thick of the rings, we'll need to try something. The communicator, Captain."

Khedryn swallowed his protest. He activated the onboard intercom.

"Cockpit, do you read?"

"Clear, Captain," Marr answered. "Fighters are closing. We are in the outskirts of the rings."

In his mind's eye, Khedryn imagined the rings around the gas giant. Taken together, they were a storm of enormous size-five kilometers thick, more than a thousand kilometers wide, and riddled with chunks of rock and ice that varied in size from pieces less than a meter to mammoth hulks 150 meters in diameter. Junker's deflectors could handle the tiny particles, but if Jaden hit anything of size…

"Don't let that Jedi ruin my ship, Marr," Khedryn said. "Increase power to the forward deflector-for whatever good it will do."

"Yes, Captain."

"You don't ruin my ship, either," Khedryn said to Relin.

Relin ignored him, inhaled, closed his eyes, and seemed to lose himself in meditation for a moment.

Through the viewport, Khedryn watched the Blades swoop in behind Junker. The slits of their cockpit covers looked like a cyclopean eye squinting to aim.

Laser cannons fired and green lines cut the space between the two ships. Jaden dived Junker so hard and fast that Khedryn's stomach waved a greeting to his throat.

"I told you not to ruin my ship!" he said into the intercom. He scrambled into a seat and strapped himself in as Jaden pulled hard on the stick and put Junker's nose up.