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emanations whatsoever. But there was no apparent combat damage, or anything else, to suggest it had been taken by pirates.
    Ben turned the sensors on the station itself and found it marginally less derelict. Its power core was active, but barely. A few warm areas suggested that at least some of its atmospheric seals remained intact. Approaching closer, he could see that three of the dark tubes attached to the upper cylinder had come loose at one end and were in danger of being launched away by centrifugal force. Whoever lived here—if anyone did—they were not much on maintenance.
    The
clack-clack
of boots-in-a-hurry echoed through the open hatchway at the rear of the flight deck, then suddenly stopped. Ben activated the canopy’s mirror panel and found his father standing behind the copilot’s chair, jaw hanging slack as he stared at the slowly spinning station ahead.
    “Remind you of anything?” Ben asked.
    Luke’s gaze remained fixed on the space station. “What do
you
think?” he asked. “It could be a miniature Centerpoint Station.”
    Centerpoint had been an ancient space station located in the stable zone between the Corellian worlds of Talus and Tralus. Its origins remained cloaked in mystery, but the station had once been the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, capable of destroying entire star systems from hundreds of light-years away. One of the few positive things to come of the recent civil war, in Ben’s opinion, had been the facility’s destruction. He was far from happy to discover another version hidden here, deep inside the Maw.
    “I was afraid you’d say that,” Ben said with a sigh. “What do we do now? Lob a baradium missile at it?”
    Luke’s voice grew disapproving. “Do we
have
a baradium missile?”
    Ben dropped his gaze. “Sorry. Uncle Han said it was always smart to keep one—”
    “Your uncle isn’t a Jedi,” Luke interrupted. “I wish you’d remember that.”
    “Sure,” Ben said. “But maybe this one time we should think about the way he would handle this. If this place was built by the same beingsthat designed Centerpoint Station, the smartest thing we can do is get rid of it.”
    “And maybe we will—
after
we unjam our vector plates and replenish our hydraulics.” Luke slipped into the copilot’s seat behind Ben. “In the meantime, try to avoid hitting anything. I’ll see if I can find a safe place to dock this bird.”

As hangar bays went, this one looked like a decades-old disaster zone. The main doors were jammed about halfway open, leaving the entire facility exposed to the dark vacuum of space. The decks were slowly revolving around the
Shadow
as the station rotated on its axis, and they were crammed with starcraft from a dozen different eras and classes, all facing the open exit for a quick departure. Hand tools lay scattered across hull tops, tank dollies were propped against landing struts, charging carts rested beneath retracted access panels. A film of pale dust covered everything, so thick on the older craft that it was sometimes difficult to determine the hull color. None of the vessels showed attack damage, but all those tools suggested they had needed some manner of repair, and many crews had not even bothered to raise the boarding ramp before abandoning their work.
    As his son struggled to accommodate the station’s rate of rotation, Luke extended his Force awareness toward the middle of the facility. On the journey in, he had sensed a concentration of life energy in thecentral sphere, a hazy cloud too large and diluted to be a single being, with no discernible focuses to suggest individual presences. It was still there, an area of heaviness and warmth in the faint fog of Force energy that permeated this part of the Maw. Luke could tell by the way it began to writhe up inside him that it had not only been monitoring their arrival, it had been
awaiting
them.
    Ben swung the
Shadow
around to face the hangar exit, then put down—somewhat