"I'd close the gap between us and the shuttle, sir," Rumahn said, "and lay down a laser barrage to defend the ship while tak-ing the vessel inboard."

"And if Agent Devis weren't on board?"

Rumahn didn't blink. "I'd jump out of this sector right now, sir. We may be in no shape for a fight, and engaging isn't the best way to test the ship's readiness."

It was brutal and honest. It was correct procedure according to the Republic Fleet regs because a couple of thousand crew and a warship were at stake here. But it was also . . . wrong.

"The moment we don't make every effort to save every last crew member, every last trooper, that's the moment this navy, the Grand Army, everything starts to come apart," Pellaeon said. "Seps don't have prisoner-of-war camps as far as I know. And that's the best option for the shuttle crew. So, Commander Rumahn, we're going to close the gap as you suggested. Helm, take us in. Rex, General Skywalker, are you ready? Fast docking, then jump. Only engage if absolutely necessary. We can outrun Discord, and I estimate we've got a good few minutes on the other two ships."

"Wait one, sir. They know where we are now, so we might as well use the active scans." Derel pinged Discord instead of taking the pa.s.sive scan readings. It confirmed Leveler's course and speed to the enemy, but that was academic now. "Let's just make sure we know what we're dealing with ..."

Pellaeon leaned over the console to look down at the screen. It took a trained operator to interpret the readings accurately, but he had a good idea of what he was looking at.

"That's no light cruiser." The active sensors were picking up the signature of a much bigger, better-armed ship. "So unless Intel got it wrong again..."

"Maybe not, sir," Derel said. "Seems that two can play bogus transponder games. It's not Discord. It's a destroyer. Maybe forty turbolasers."

Stang. More firepower than Discord, and faster, too.

"Blast," Pellaeon said quietly.

He turned to the comm officer and indicated with a side-to-side cutting gesture across his throat that he wanted all external comms cut immediately.

The comm officer just nodded.

REPLENISHMENT SHUTTLE, INBOUND FOR LEVELER.

"So, no cavalry to the rescue except the General," CORIC muttered. "Leveler's on her own, and so are we. Fair enough. Can do."

"At least HQ didn't order us to fight to the last man." Ince leaned over the back of the copilot's seat to look at the sensors. He could have patched in via his HUD, but Rex understood that basic human need to physically take a look. "Let's face it, we're just as dead regardless of whether it's a cruiser or a destroyer, right, Sarge?"

Coric made a noncommittal grunt. "It's being so cheerful that keeps us going."

"You got a fix on Leveler yet?" Rex asked.

"If you mean am I aiming us at the bay doors, yes, sir." Coric was doing his best with basic piloting skills in a basic ship. He wasn't a fighter ace. "But if the Sep commander isn't going to vape us or Leveler, I can't guess what his next maneuver is going to be."

"He'll try to disable her," Rex said. "Drives first, then weapons. Easier said than done."

"What happened to the good old days of just firing broadsides until one side ran out of warships?"

"That was way back-last month."

Limited situational awareness.

That was what Rex didn't like about a s.p.a.cegoing navy. He liked to feel his boots on the ground, be able to look around with a bit of help from his helmet systems-or even just take the bucket off and use his own eyes, ears, and sense of smell.

He took off his helmet anyway. In a situation like this, he should have kept it on in case the hull was breached. But he had a feeling that an hour's grace before the reality of hard vacuum took him was going to be a moot point.

Through the limited field of a viewscreen, there was nothing to see but a narrow rectangle of black, star-speckled s.p.a.ce. It was impossible to see anything unless it was right in front of him, at the right angle to catch the light from Fath's star, and even then-s.p.a.ce was awfully big.

And sensors lied.

"At least Skywalker can find us," Rex said. "Handy things, Jedi." He glanced back over his shoulder. "No offense."

"Being useful is a virtue," Altis said. "Thank you."

Coric lowered his voice. "Even the general can't perform miracles, sir."

"Well, he can provide cover, and that's close enough for me." Rex glanced back at the crew bay again. Hallena Devis didn't look too bright now; that blow to the head was starting to take its toll. Don't go and die on us after all this. He fretted about subdural hemorrhage, delayed-onset coma, all the things that could still go wrong. Where's Skywalker? "Come on, close that gap."

"Whoa..." Coric stared at the screen for a moment. "Where'd he go?"

"What?"

"I don't want to worry you, but Leveler's just jumped."

"That's done a pretty good job on the worry front. Let me see."

Rex didn't believe it. He leaned over Coric's shoulder to check the screen for himself, and yes-Leveler's icon and track had vanished from the plot.

"He's probably just killed his transponder to spoof them." Can't see. Can't stanging well see. I hate this. "Pellaeon would never run, not without warning. Or maybe it's another tech problem."

There was an awkward silence. Rex glanced at Hallena just in time to see her lock her expression into neutral. But she couldn't fool a clone, not someone who relied on the smallest tics and tells to identify individuals in a sea of identical faces.

Yeah, she thinks he's not the man she thought he was . . . and she's looking for reasons to be wrong.

"Okay, Sergeant, kill all nonessential systems." Rex took a step back into the crew bay and tapped Boro on the top of his helmet. The lad's head was down as if he were looking at his datapad, which was centered in his HUD icon. But he needed to be distracted from what was really on his mind. They all did. "Work out how much oxygen we've got left, Trooper, and if we can make Kemla."

They all knew their chances of making Kemla Yard without being shot down were remote now, oxygen or not. But Rex took a guess that there wasn't one being on this craft who would give up and die that easily. Ahsoka looked him straight in the eye. Altis and his two Jedi seemed grimly resigned.

Boro didn't take long. He didn't look up from his datapad. "We've got twelve pairs of lungs and enough oxygen for roughly halfway, maybe closer if we reduce our oxygen consumption as far as we can."

Well, we all knew that. Lucky I'm not with a panicky bunch of folks.

"Okay." Rex braced both hands on the trunking that ran across the deckhead, looking down the length of the crew bay. "Stark choice time." When was it ever any other way? It just keeps happening. Over and over and over. . . "Hang around and hope, halve the number of lungs the hard way, or find the nearest sustainable source of oxygen, which is currently a hostile planet beneath us."

Hallena looked up at him. "I'm equipped for the lung-halving exercise. And seeing as this is all due to me, I'll volunteer . . . but I don't recommend being taken prisoner."

She trailed off, but her eyes didn't leave his.

"I wasn't planning to go quietly, either," Rex said. "I didn't enjoy captivity much last time."

Altis leaned forward, elbows on knees. "We-Jedi-can put ourselves into a deep enough trance to cut our oxygen con-sumption, but I'm not sure it'll be enough to get the rest of you through. I'm all for heading back and making a fight of it." He glanced at Callista and Geith, and they nodded. "See?"

"Me, too," said Ahsoka.

Rex looked to his troopers. He almost hoped they'd disagree, argue, anything but do what they'd been trained to do every day since they were old enough to walk: follow orders. But they were 501st, so they took the most decisive option.

"If I'm going to die sooner than planned," Hil said, "then I'd like to take a few more tinnies with me, sir."

Rex could have bet safely on that. "It's not going to save JanFathal, but it'll make us feel better, right?"

"Yes, sir," Boro said. "Works for me."

"And while we're down there, maybe we'll have a few ideas for getting off that rock eventually."

Coric turned the shuttle nearly a full 180 degrees, shut down all the systems except propulsion and life support, and headed back down to the surface.

"This is as stealthy as I can get, sir. Where to?"

"Athar." Rex opened his comlink and sent a brief coded message to Skywalker. The less time he spent on comms, the less chance they had of being traced. "Better the trouble you know than the trouble you don't."

V-19 TORRENT ECHO-97, JANFATHAL s.p.a.cE.

Anakin streaked into the path of the Destroyer and knew something had gone badly wrong.

It was way too late for stealth. He could feel the ship's vast presence as a disturbance in the Force, but all he could see was a large target on his sensors and a completely starless patch of s.p.a.ce where the vessel hung in darkness. It was only when he looped around that the blinding sun picked it out in stark relief.

And Leveler was gone. She'd jumped to hypers.p.a.ce.

"Rex?" Anakin checked the comm transmission again. Just a simple code: 0065, return to last known coordinates. It wouldn't have meant a thing to anyone intercepting it and decoding it. It could have been anything from an order to an ac-knowledgment. And only the recipient knew what those coordinates were.

The last location from which Rex's comlink had sent a signal was Athar.

"Okay, Rex, last time I said I'd come back for you-I didn't." Anakin couldn't detect the shuttle on his instruments at all, but he could certainly feel the Jedi. "This time's different."

The Sep destroyer could probably detect the Torrent even at this range, but Anakin sensed that the commander wasn't inter-ested in a solitary fighter. He was probably rea.s.sessing his task now that Leveler had vanished.

This wasn't Gilad Pellaeon's style.

Even a battle droid could have worked that out. But as to what his plan was-and why he'd jumped in complete silence- Anakin couldn't begin to guess. He headed for the planet, navigating by the kind of signature that no sensor could ever pick up, the distinctive trail of Jedi.

A couple of them felt very strong in the Force, quite distinct from Ahsoka. She felt almost obscured by them.

Altis. Yes, Qui-Gon must have bad some interesting friends.

"You're smart enough to guess what I'll do, aren't you, Rex?" Anakin muttered to himself. "You won't open fire if some unidentified fast-moving object blips your sensor, right on your tail . . ."

Anakin closed his eyes for a moment and followed the pull in the Force, like a sensation in his sinuses that eased when he aligned himself with its source. By the time he looked up again, a matter of moments, traveling at thousands of kilometers an hour, the disk of the planet filled most of his c.o.c.kpit viewscreen. And silhouetted against the wash of green sea and white cloud was the shuttle.

Any Sep ship must have picked up the fighter's thermal signature by now-if they were looking, anyway. Maybe they were preoccupied by working out if and where Leveler might reappear.

Unless she's got a major operational problem, of course. Not like Pellaeon to go totally silent...

Anakin came in over the top of the shuttle and tilted so that the Torrent's distinctive three-winged shape was instantly identi-fiable to the pilot. He rocked the Torrent side-to-side to indicate he'd lead the shuttle in. Comm silence was still the best option for the while. He kept a visual check on the shuttle from the reflection in the Torrent's c.o.c.kpit shield right up to the moment he hit the top of the atmosphere, and then everything vanished in a reentry haze of hot gas.

He was at fifteen thousand meters before his comlink came to life and Rex's voice said, "Do you know where you're going, sir, or shall we recommend somewhere picturesque?"

"It looked a lot nicer from farther out."

"You know there's nothing more you can do for us now, don't you? You should get out while you can."

"I can keep you company until transport arrives."

There was a brief pause. "Thank you, sir."

"Got a local chart?"

"Break right and loop around behind us. We know all the best derelict buildings," Rex said.

"Did you get any transmission from Leveler before she jumped?" Anakin asked.

"Nothing, sir. Pellaeon will have a plan, though. He always does."

It was a very casual conversation; no urgency, no strict voice procedure, nothing to indicate that the two vessels had deliber-ately flown back into what was now enemy territory in any sense of the word, and that they could neither escape nor fight a fleet. Anakin didn't think Rex was a resigned-to-fate kind of guy, but even with a group of Jedi- Okay. Got it.

"We've got five Jedi, a Rep Intel agent, and seven Five-oh-first troopers," Anakin said. "Applied intelligently, that's an army."

The trick was in looking at a situation from the right perspective. Overwhelming enemy forces, or a target-rich environment; enemy territory, or a rich source of weapons and transport.

"I feel better already," said Rex.

Chapter Nine.

We've lost Leveler completely, sir. Do you want us to hold this position in case it's a feint? If we allow the other hostiles to land on the planet, then we at least have hostages.

-CIS destroyer Reaper to Trade Federation command REPUBLIC a.s.sAULT SHIP LEVELER, SOMEWHERE IN THE OUTER RIM.

The fath system wasn't there, not even in the distance.

"Blast," said Pellaeon.

Derel and the officer of the deck-Baradis-were head-to-head over a bank of screens, physically checking calculations with a stylus and datapad. The moment Leveler had dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce, it was clear she wasn't where the navigator had planned to jump. The bridge watchkeeping team all wore the same expression, regardless of species: worried.

"Okay, why aren't we where we thought we'd be?" Pellaeon demanded. "Because if we can't even jump straight now, we're in serious trouble. It's a long way home at sublight."

And Rex is in trouble, too. I might have overplayed my hand this time.

"I think it's all the same problem, sir," Baradis said. "The sensor tracking, the nav computer-the galactic positioning software isn't talking to the systems, or at least it's not giving them consistent or current information."

They couldn't even comm Fleet HQ. It was clear to Pellaeon now that their encrypted channel had been compromised, and that the Seps knew not only which armaments Leveler had acquired at refit, but also how many systems were down. The ship really was on her own now.