"You blew the doors? Cut through them?"

Jaden's voice gained volume, as if he feared he would not be heard. "I activated the air lock and spaced all of them."

For a moment, Khedryn thought he might have misheard.

"You spaced them?"

Jaden nodded, his eyes narrowed, fixed on some distant point in his past where his guilt lived.

"Most were Confederation soldiers," Jaden said. "But there were noncombatants there, too. Engineers. Women. But I could not take the time to dig them out or negotiate a surrender. Leave none behind me. Those were my orders. From a fellow Jedi. I followed them."

Khedryn watched Jaden's jaw and fists clench and unclench, his tracheal lump rise and fall in his throat like a heartbeat.

"Stang," Khedryn said, the word pathetically unsuited to the job of articulating the mix of emotions he felt.

Jaden's eyes refocused on the present.

"So, Khedryn, when it comes to knowing right from wrong, I do not profess to knowing anything. Not anymore."

Khedryn searched his mind for some words that might offer solace. "It was war, Jaden. People die in war. What difference does it make if it's by blaster, lightsaber, or the vacuum?"

Jaden inhaled deeply and looked past Khedryn. "It makes a difference."

Khedryn thought about that. Finally he nodded. "I suppose it does."

Jaden wore a pained, self-conscious smile behind his beard. "You have sins you want to confess, Captain? Now seems to be the time. Something about this cockpit, maybe."

Khedryn laughed, and it dispelled some of the mood. "If I started confessing my sins, Jedi, we'd never get this party started. You ready?"

Jaden looked out the glass at the churn of the rings, the gas giant. "Engaging ion engines," he reported to Junker.

"Confirmed," responded Relin.

"At this speed it will take us an hour to get around the planet and be ready to go," Khedryn said over the comm.

"One standard hour, seventeen minutes, and thirty-six seconds," Marr answered, eliciting a smile from Khedryn.

"Mark," he said, and marked the in-ship chrono to count down the timeline.

They would navigate slowly through the rings-an easy task at low velocity-come around the gas giant's dark side, and try to come at the moon from the opposite side, undetected by Harbinger's sensors, while Junker burst out of the rings and flew right down the cruiser's throat.

Relin felt his body failing, his cells popping under the weight of the radiation poisoning. Fatigue and emotional exhaustion made his vision blur from time to time. Sweat dampened the tunic and trousers under his robes, pasted them to his flesh. He sought comfort in his connection to the Force, but it, too, was under assault, popping under the weight of his anger.

He found it difficult to maintain a passive screen against the Lignan's ambient energy. It leaked through his defenses in dribs and drabs, though it no longer caused him the same degree of discomfort it had previously. He had become inured to its worst effects. The radiation had polluted his body. The Lignan had polluted his spirit. He was failing all over.

Marr had Junker's controls. Even if Relin had not lost a hand, the unfamiliar instrumentation would have made it difficult for him to fly. The chrono in the HUD counted down the time line as they moved into position.

He flashed back to the past, his past, recalled sitting beside Drev in the Infiltrator, countless times, recalled his Padawan's laughter, his joy. It seemed long ago, yet to Relin it had been only a day. The wound of his grief still bled freely, unscabbed, unscarred.

"You are thoughtful," Marr said, adjusting course.

"I was thinking of my Padawan."

"I see," Marr said.

Hunks of rock and ice floated past the cockpit window. Marr did a fine job of steering them through the debris. No doubt he was an excellent pilot.

Just like Drev.

"Before our assault on Harbinger, Drev piloted our ship through an asteroid belt not unlike this."

"At speed?"

"Yes, using the Force." Relin remembered Drev's smile and tried to answer it with one of his own, but he simply could not summon it. His lips twisted into something he imagined looked more like a bared snarl than a smile.

"He must have been an extraordinary pilot," Marr said. "I have never seen anything like what Jaden Korr did with Junker. You must have been an exemplary teacher."

Relin appreciated what Marr was trying to do but it brought him no comfort. He shook his head. He had lost one Padawan to the dark side and another to battle. "I was a poor teacher, I fear."

To that, Marr said nothing.

"You have not consulted the navigation computer," Relin said. "You do all of the computations in your head?"

Marr nodded.

"I have never seen so narrowly focused a gift from the Force. I suspect it has a purpose you do not yet see."

Marr smiled, Relin noticing his chipped tooth. "Perhaps this moment is its purpose."

"Perhaps," Relin said, liking Marr despite himself.

Moving at one-eighth power while watching the HUD chrono, Marr maneuvered them through the rings until they neared the edge.

"Far enough," Relin said. He did not want them hanging out there too far, visible to Harbinger's passive scans. The debris in the rings would give them cover until Flotsam got into position. Meanwhile, they could gather some situational intelligence.

Through the debris field they could see the milky glow of the gas giant's moon.

"I will magnify on the HUD," Marr said.

The moon, filling a section of the cockpit window, grew larger with each press of a button-larger, larger, until it filled about half the window. Rock and ice floated before them and blocked a clear view, but Marr could see it well enough to note the long, dark form silhouetted against the moon's glow.

"The cruiser has moved into orbit around the moon," he said.

"That is more distance that we'll need to close," Relin said. "Harbinger will have more time to respond to our approach."

Marr tapped a few keys on his console. "Two hundred eighty-one thousand three hundred two kilometers from here to there."

Relin estimated the math in his head. "How fast does Junker fly at sublight?"

"We can cover that distance in about a minute."

"A minute," Relin said, thinking. "Too long. The high-alert Blades will scramble."

Marr licked his lips. "Alternatively, we can attempt to jump right under Harbinger."

Relin's thoughts collided with Marr's suggestion. "Jump? We are still in the planet's gravity well, as is Harbinger. And there's the moon's well, too."

"We are at the outside of the gas giant's well, and the moon's is weak. I can account for all of that in such a short jump." He paused, cocked his head. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Relin looked at the HUD. Debris from the rings blocked the moon and Harbinger from view. "You are talking about using the hyperdrive to jump between a planet and its moon. A second in hyperspace, maybe less."

"I do not see an alternative. Do you?"

Relin did not. "I have never heard of this being done."

"Nor I," said Marr. "But maybe now we see the actual purpose to which my talent is to be put."

Relin decided that he would have to trust in Marr's gift, have to trust in the Force. Hypocrisy stabbed at him.

"Do it," he said. He looked at the chrono, counting down the time. "You have less than an hour to get the calculations done."

Marr leaned forward in his seat and started to turn off the magnified HUD display. Junker had shifted some, and he could once more see the moon and Harbinger.

"Leave it up," Relin said.

As Marr began his work, Relin sat in his seat and gazed at Saes's ship, letting memories put a spark to the kindling of his anger. Staring at the dreadnought, he recalled the black scar of twisted metal, all that remained of its primary bridge, all that remained of Drev.