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brilliant from the explosion within. Kyp—his emotions open and raw from his own peculiar battle mode—felt the sharp surge of terror, and then the sudden sundering of every life on that ship.
    With a great effort of will, Kyp snapped his attention back to the big coralskipper. The Yuuzhan Vong had apparently taken note of the protection given the old corvette. The big coralskipper moved inexorably toward Danni Quee’s vessel. A stray laser beam struck one of the concussion missiles. It exploded: a white-fire blossom bursting from an eerie pink stem. The skip, however, had moved beyond the explosion’s range.
    But Kyp no longer needed this particular missile. He ordered Octa’s squadron to regroup in a defensive position around the Jedi scientist’s ship.
    “As the Master says, size matters not,” he murmured.
    He released his hold on the second missile, not caring that it was swallowed by one of the coralskipper’s stuttering singularities. Reaching deep into himself, he sought resources he had not used for many years.
    Once before, Kyp had seized a ship and dragged it out of the fierce heart of a gas giant. Now he reached out with the Force and took hold of the dead freighter.
    It shot forward with astonishing ease, moving steadily through the vacuum of space toward the shielded coralskipper.
    Ian Rim’s dark chuckle came through the comm. “Subtle as always, Kyp! Let’s not let this one get away, Dozen!” he shouted.
    The lieutenant spun off in a tight turn, his two surviving pilots following closely. They darted around the big coralskipper, cutting off its retreat, taking and returning fire from the other enemy skips. Their daringmaneuvers soon exacted a price—Ian’s ship got caught in a Yuuzhan Vong crossfire. The double blast of plasma proved too much for his shields, and the ship dissolved in a bright splatter of plasma and superheated metal.
    The pilots Ian had commanded doggedly held the course he’d plotted. The XJs continued to harry the big skip, forcing it to keep up its stuttering shields as the dead freighter closed in. At the last moment, the surviving X-wings shot away toward safety.
    The freighter never got close. One moment it was there; the next it simply disappeared into a void. What happened next was not exactly what Kyp had had in mind.
    He’d hoped for a physical impact, or, barring that, that the freighter might overwhelm the dovin basal’s capacity, leaving the big coralskipper vulnerable to attack. It had never occurred to him that the skip’s multiple singularities might merge into one and fold in on the Yuuzhan Vong ship like a glove turning inside out. But suddenly, the freighter was gone. So was the coralskipper.
    And so were the fleeing X-wings.
    Death came to the pilots with a speed that neither fear nor thought could match. Neither of them saw its approach. None of their final emotions came through to Kyp—only a sudden, almost deafening blast of silence.
    Grief and guilt rose in Kyp like a dark tide. He bore down, sternly crushing these emotions before they could alter his focus, his course. He would not do this. He would not give way to the uncertainty that had so crippled his fellow Jedi.
    Yet he could not deny that once again, he had undertaken a massive use of Force power and, in doing so, had inadvertently caused the death of those close to him.
    Kyp forced himself back into the battle. He quickly took stock of his situation. Only Octa remained, andtwo of her pilots. The four of them could still do some damage.
    He hailed his surviving Dozen and named a vector reasonably free of battle. “We’ll regroup in quartet formation under my command.”
    The ships responded at once, jinking a path through the Jedi ships.
    Suddenly a surge of grief came from Octa Ramis, and then a brief, anguished epiphany, and, finally, fury. Kyp was not very surprised to note that her anger was directed not at the Yuuzhan Vong, but at him.
    “Master Skywalker was right,” she said with