Eight Massassi warriors armed with blaster rifles and lanvaroks loitered in the large open room adjacent to the hyperdrive chamber. The quills, lumps, and scars that scored their red flesh made them look deformed.

Relin slowed only long enough to count their numbers and ensure there were no others. He did not bother to hide himself. They were too alert for that. They saw him, pointed, showed their teeth in a growl. Six pulled their blaster rifles to their shoulders to fire while another spoke into his comlink and the last headed for a wall-mounted alarm.

Without breaking stride, Relin held up a hand, took telekinetic hold of the blaster rifles aimed at him, ripped them from the Massassi's hands, and flung them across the large chamber. One fired when it hit the deck, and the shot blew the booted foot from one of the Massassi. He fell to the floor, cursing in his language, the ruins of his ankle leaking black fluid.

Relin fired his blaster and put a fist-sized hole in the back of the skull of the Massassi about to push the wall alarm. Black blood and brain matter splattered the wall as the body slid to the floor.

"Run," he said to the remaining Massassi.

The six still standing grinned mouthfuls of sharp teeth-the teeth of predators-and drew their lanvaroks, spun them with skill until they hummed. Relin knew what was coming next. He would have to take care that his suit did not get damaged.

As one, the Massassi jerked back on their lanvaroks. A shower of the sharpened disks attached to the haft, each a few centimeters across, sprayed at Relin. Ready for it, he used the Force to augment an upward leap over the projectiles and reached almost all the way to the ceiling, ten meters up. All but one of the disks flew harmlessly under him. The last scored his forearm, but it was little more than a scratch and did not seem to penetrate his suit.

He landed in a crouch, lightsaber blazing. "I said run."

The largest said, "We are six to your one, Jedi. With more coming."

Relin tilted his head, holstered his blaster, and took his lightsaber in both hands.

Through the large double doors behind the Massassi, Relin heard the hyperdrive hum with pre-jump preparation. Pressure built on his eardrums. The hairs on his arms stood on end. He had no time to waste.

"You will be fewer than six in a moment. Flee now. Final chance."

They lost their smiles but not their fire, and charged him in a loose arc, roaring. He charged them in silence, focused, the Force surging through his muscles.

When he'd closed to two paces, he bounded over them, flipping in midair and decapitating one as he landed behind their line. By the time they spun to face him, he'd put his lightsaber through a second.

Sidestepping the downward slash of a lanvarok from a third Massassi, he cut the metal weapon in half, ducked under a crosscut from another; and severed both legs of the nearest Massassi. He backflipped out of range, the screams of the dying loud in his ears.

The large Massassi put his lanvarok in the skull of the other whose legs Relin had severed, ending the screams, then all three remaining snarled and charged.

Relin threw his lightsaber at the first, impaling him through the neck. Surprise slowed the others a moment, and Relin took advantage of the reprieve to use the Force to pull his weapon back into his hands.

They licked their fangs, bounced on their feet, and charged anew.

He met their advance with his own, ducking, spinning, wheeling, slashing, killing. They could not match his speed, his skill, and within a five-count, pieces of the Massassi and their weapons dotted the bloody deck. All were dead but the one wounded on the foot by the blaster.

"You must gift me with death, too, Jedi," the wounded Massassi snarled. "This." He gestured at his wounded foot. "I will be as a child."

Relin stared at him with contempt. He knew the Massassi had been bred as warriors, but their carelessness with their own lives sickened him. "We all live with ourselves."

"Not like this! Kill me. I demand it."

The Massassi crawled toward a blaster rifle, leaving a line of smeared blood in his wake.

"As you'll have it, then," Relin said, and put a blaster shot in his skull.

Deactivating his lightsaber, still centered in the calm of the Force, he turned to the doors. Body and mind tingled with fatigue, but he endured. Behind the door, energy gathered around the hyperdrive. He could feel the change in the air. The dreadnoughts would jump soon. He would not be able to stop Omen, but at least he could stop Harbinger.

He slipped the overrider over the control panel and hoped it would work quickly. Lights and beeps signified the beginning of the cryptographic holo-chess match. Relin could do nothing but wait. Despite the urgency of the moment, he put his back to the door, sat cross-legged on the floor, stared out and over a chamber of dead Massassi, and held his calm.

Several corridors opened into the chamber, and Relin heard shouts down two of them. They were coming. The realization did nothing to disturb his calm. Taking comfort in his relationship to the Force, he held the hilt of his lightsaber in his hand, felt the coolness of its metal, studied its lines, recalled its making.

A long beep signaled the overrider's victory.

"Checkmate," Relin said, standing.

The hyperdrive chamber's doors parted. Dry, warm air swarmed out. The gathering energy in the chamber created extreme static electricity. Relin's hair stood on end. Insects seemed to crawl over his flesh. His robes clung to him as if trying to prevent him from entering.

The rectangular metal block of the hyperdrive hung in the center of the room from ceiling mounts and a series of power conduits as thick as Relin's arm. A large, disk-shaped concavity in the floor yawned underneath it, the open mouth into which the drive fed its power. Circuitry crisscrossed the hyperdrive's face, the circulatory system of interstellar travel.

A transparisteel window on the far side of the chamber opened onto an adjoining room. A pair of wide-eyed human engineers in the black uniforms of Sadow's forces pointed at him, shouted something, and reached frantically for communicators. Relin used a telekinetic blast to slam both men against the far wall and they slumped to the floor, out of sight.

Relin had seen a hyperdrive bisected once for engineers to study. The complexity of the circuitry, the odd geometry of its inner workings, had left him nauseous. And now that complexity, that geometry, began to do its work. Machinery clicked, connected, turned. The power conduits squirmed like snakes as more energy coursed through them. The hum increased in volume. Relin felt light-headed. Radiation filled the room, he knew. He would need treatment for radiation poisoning if he survived.

If.

He placed a hand on the hyperdrive. The metal felt warm, as slick as talc. It pulsed like a living thing, seeming to shift, to flow under his touch. A headache rooted in his left temple, intensified. His stomach flirted with nausea.

He removed three of his mag-grenades from the pocket of his flexsuit, attached two of them to the face of the hyperdrive, a third to the main power conduit connection. He checked his chrono to mark the time and rapidly set the timers.

The grenades began ticking away the remaining moments of Harbinger's existence.

He turned for the door, activating his communicator. "Charges are set. Heading out now, Drev."

"Understood. The Blades have cleared out. Perhaps I have frightened them."

Relin heard the beginning of a smile in his tone.

Drev went on: "I am alone out here. Well, except for the two hulking dreadnoughts bristling with weapons."