Marr inhaled deeply and put a hand over his stomach. "I am nauseated. The ore does not affect you?"

"Not like it does you," Relin said, and left it at that. "I could screen you."

Marr shook his head, his face wrinkled with discomfort. "Do not waste your energy. I can bear it."

Relin recalled one of the first lessons taught to Force-sensitives by the Jedi. He remembered being taught it himself by Imar Deez, remembered teaching it to Drev. The words came out of his mouth without thought, a reflex, as Junker coasted through the cold of space toward Harbinger.

"Imagine in your mind a fortress of stone and steel, with crenellated walls. Within it stands a keep, itself walled."

Marr looked a question at him.

"Do as I say," Relin snapped. "It is a simple lesson and it will help."

"All right."

Relin mouthed the words spoken by generations of Jedi while his heart beat false in his chest, while the Lignan ate at his spirit. He was a liar and he did not care.

"Again, imagine a strong fortress, walled, unbreachable. Within it stands a keep, similarly fortified. Do you see it?"

"I have no training. I-"

"Do you see it?"

"I… can imagine it, yes."

"You are the keep, Marr. The Force is the fortress. Feel it."

"This-"

"Feel it. Open yourself to it." He had said the same words to Drev, once. Remembering his Padawan threw coal into the oven of his rage, but he kept it from his voice.

"Do not analyze it. Feel it."

Marr held Relin's eyes for a moment, then closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.

Relin walked him farther down the path, feeling each moment more of a hypocrite. "Imagine how you feel calculating a course through hyperspace. Focus on that feeling. Hold on to it."

It took almost no time, as Relin had known it would not. A Force-sensitive was usually habituated to drawing on the Force unconsciously. Marr did it every time he did mathematics. It usually took only a nudge to open up someone sensitive to simple uses of the Force. Through five thousand years it had remained just so.

Marr opened his eyes, the thickets of his eyebrows raised in wonder. "That is… surprising. This is what you do to keep it out?"

Relin hesitated, because he could not tell Marr that he no longer kept it out. Instead, he uttered another lie. "Yes."

Junker glided under the smooth metal of Harbinger's underside, past viewports, idle laser cannon turrets. Relin imagined that their sudden appearance under the ship had caused no small consternation among Harbinger's crew. They would be scrambling to respond.

The landing bay, illuminated with lights around its perimeter, yawned ahead of them, the mouth of a beast. In moments they would be swallowed.

"We are near enough to hit the deflectors," Marr said, his voice still filled with the wonder caused by his first conscious use of the Force.

As Marr steered Junker through the hole carved by the power crystal, Relin felt as if he were going down a drain.

Flotsam's belly hit the moon's upper atmosphere and the entire ship vibrated in the turbulence like shaken dice. Flames formed around the heat shield, licked up the sides, sheathing the ship in fire. Jaden could see nothing but orange out the cockpit window as the ship skidded through the atmosphere. In his mind, he heard the repetitious call of the beacon. He found himself staring at his fingertips, the fingertips on which his anger or fear sometimes formed Force lightning.

He did not trust himself anymore, he realized. Doubt was the fundamental core of his being. Relin had sensed it in him.

"Twenty seconds," Khedryn said. "Switching to repulsors."

Jaden leaned forward in his seat, wanting to see the surface the moment the fires dissipated, hoping that something on the moon would dispel his doubt, return him to certainty.

The orange gave way to a thick swirl of clouds. As they descended and the air thickened, the stresses on the ship changed from the steady, intense vibration of atmospheric entry into the irregular buffeting of powerful winds. Snow and ice streaked past the cockpit transparisteel, frosting its exterior.

Jaden recalled his Force vision, remembered the feel of the wind against his skin, the frost collecting in his beard, the surface under his feet.

"Winds upward of ninety kilometers per hour," Khedryn observed as gusts rocked Flotsam.

Jaden stared through the swirl, heart thumping madly. They broke through the clouds, but the blowing snow and the ice-covered surface allowed him to distinguish nothing. All he saw was a blur of white. There was no revelation in sight.

"Get a fix on the beacon," he said to Khedryn.

"Triangulating," Khedryn said. He tapped a button and the beacon sounded on the interior speakers, louder than ever.

Jaden leveled Flotsam off at 150 meters and slowed its speed. Topographic scans showed vast, frozen plateaus, oceans of ice, bordered by enormous mountains.

"Got it," Khedryn said, and the words put a flutter in Jaden's stomach. "South-southwest, a quarter hour out. Near the moon's equator."

When Khedryn had linked the location of the signal to the navicomp, Jaden adjusted course accordingly. He realized that he was sweating. He accelerated to full in-atmosphere speed, and Flotsam cut like a knife through the wind, ice, and snow.

"Like following bread crumbs," Khedryn said, nodding at the speaker through which the beacon's call carried.

Jaden nodded. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end. He felt as if he were being watched. Before he could trace the source of the feeling, Khedryn asked, "What do you hope to find here, Jaden?"

Jaden did not hesitate. "An answer."

He needed one. He could not continue as he had. He ran a sensor scan to ensure they were not being followed. Nothing.

Khedryn stared blankly out of the cockpit. "What is the question?"

Jaden smiled, thinking how close the words cut to his own thoughts.

When Jaden did not answer, Khedryn said, "I hope Marr and Relin are all right."

"The Force is with them both," Jaden said.

Khedryn nodded, absently reading the topographic scans, meteorological reports, atmospheric readouts.

"Trace elements in the atmosphere suggest volcanic activity here," he said.

Jaden imagined hot spots on the surface of the planet where heat and magma leaked up to turn ice into bathing water. He imagined, too, that the oceans under the ice could be thronged with life.

"Air is frigid but breathable," Khedryn said. "We'll still need envirosuits, though."

Jaden only partially heard Khedryn. The navicomp showed them closing on the coordinates from which the distress signal originated. He leaned forward in his seat, straining to see through the weather.

He could not breathe when it emerged from the static of the weather like a lost city.

Khedryn squinted, staring through the cockpit transparisteel. "What is that?"

Junker coasted, dark and cold, through the hole made by the power crystal.

Relin stared into the tunnel of the landing bay, remembering the last time he had entered it, five thousand years ago, riding the back of a shuttlecraft. Then, he'd had a comlink connection to Drev. Now he would enter it alone, unconnected to anyone, centered not in a sense of duty but in a sense of rage.

Content with that, he drank the power of the Lignan the way Junker's crew drank caf.

"We are through," Marr said, blowing out the words as if he had been holding his breath. "Powering up."

Light returned to the cockpit, and the instrumentation went live with an audible hum.

"Junker is live," Marr said.