Prologue

Hetzal, Inside the Occlusion Zone

Like all living things, Jedi Grand Master Pra-Tre Veter had known fear.

It was, after all, a natural, biological impulse, a reaction to external stimuli that governed the behavior of beings and animals across the entire galaxy. Fear was what kept people safe, a warning system that alerted you when you were in danger, an impulse that urged you to flee, to seek safe ground away from the predators that would do you harm.

But fear was also a tool. A weapon wielded by the misguided, an instrument of control. Fear could be applied, sometimes with delicacy and precision, sometimes with the might of a hammer striking stone. Fear could topple even the strongest of individuals and drive entire populations to misery and subservience.

Fear could bring down stars.

It was, though, the weapon of cowards. Fear could be overcome. It could be defeated. It could be turned into strength.

As a Padawan, as a Jedi Knight, Veter had learned to control his emotions, to contain them, understand them, and use them. It was not that he had stopped feeling or recognizing fear—more that he understood it for what it was and had learned to compartmentalize it. To him, as to most Jedi, fear was simply information—that warning system flaring—allowing him to acknowledge danger and then act accordingly. As a Jedi Council Grand Master, no longer did he allow his thoughts to become clouded by fear. Each and every decision he made was rational, considered.

In this way, Veter, like so many Jedi before him, had learned to face danger head-on. To put himself in harm’s way to protect others, and to do it calmly, logically, and with acceptance.

Which made his current predicament even more troubling.

It wasn’t that he was troubled by the absolute, tar-black darkness. Nor the walls and cold metal bars of his cell. Nor was he scared of the Nihil, of Marchion Ro and his lackeys, of death and transcendence into the Force.

But that thing, that creature that lurked out there, somewhere in the gloom far beyond his cell—that was something different. That was something made to eat away at who he was, to erode him. It was designed to bring fear, and it was a fear that he couldn’t shake, coiling in his guts like a cold compress. The Nameless were supposed to be creatures of myth, the inhabitants of stories designed to scare younglings. But Veter—like too many unfortunate Jedi before him—had learned to his cost that the monsters were very real indeed.

If he listened carefully, he could hear the thing pacing, somewhere off in the distant gloom, tracing the walls of its own prison; a caged predator waiting for the moment to strike, to be free. A starved beast that knew its prey was near.

Veter opened his eyes, but there was nothing to see. No stirrings in the depths, no hint of a light. Memories were his only solace now. Trapped here, with that nameless thing so close, he’d been unable to clear his mind, to focus, for days, weeks, months? He’d lost all track of time. But he was a Jedi still, and he had not yet lost himself. He was fortified by his recollections of his fellow Jedi—by the hope that they had once inspired, not just in him, but in the entire galaxy. Hope that they would rekindle.

He wasn’t scared. But he had known fear. And he would find the means to overcome it, just as he always had.

Veter reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, and hesitated, cursing himself as pain flared along the length of his forearm. His left hand was gone, reduced to an ashen stump. Traces of the strange calcification ran up the remainder of his forearm, like poisoned veins, marring his brown-black flesh. The calcification was still spreading, but slowly, agonizingly, consuming him a little more with every passing hour. He’d suffered other wounds—the Nihil had delighted in cutting away the horns that crested his head, trying to humiliate him, to make him lesser than the Tarnab he was. But he had never been proud. Those were scars he could live with, that didn’t alter who he was. But the strange calcification was something different, a creeping death, caused by his proximity to the creature.

It was the result of one of the Nihil’s experiments, carried out in a makeshift laboratory by a fervent, hammer-headed Ithorian who had muttered in his echoing native tongue throughout the entire process, providing a running commentary as Veter was brought slowly closer and closer to the creature held on an electrified chain leash on the other side of the room. Or so Veter believed—the creature had defied observation, its mere proximity warping his vision, driving hot spears of pain into his skull, causing terror to spike beyond all sense of reason as it began to feed on him, slowly leaching the living Force from his body.

That was the point Veter had lost control. The fear had overtaken him. His sanity had fled. He couldn’t quite remember what had happened next, but he knew he’d been dragged away before the creature could consume any more of him. He’d heard it howling, straining at its electrified leash to try to reach him, breaking its own bones in utter desperation and hunger as he was thrown back into his cell, slipping into a deep, disturbed unconsciousness.

When he woke again, he was surprised to be alive. His throat was raw from screaming, and his left hand was gone, reduced to a calcified stump where his wrist had once been.

He didn’t know how long had passed since that day. It might have been hours. It might have been days. But since that time, he’d been alone, with just a jug of tepid water left in the corner of the cell to sustain him. Whatever the Ithorian had done to him—Veter had noted the tracks of injection marks on his other arm, suggesting further experiments while he’d been unconscious—it seemed to have slowed the husking process.

A slower, more painful death.

How like the Nihil.

Veter sensed movement in the darkness.

The clang of a mechanical lock. The grating of hinges. And then a sudden flare of light, so harsh that it left him dizzy, as though reality had suddenly rushed in and burned a hole into his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, holding up his remaining hand as an imperfect shield against the light.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

For Light and Life.

Footsteps moved closer—the thud of heavy boots. They stopped outside the bars of his cell. Veter thought he heard a snort of disgust.

Slowly, he peeled open his eyes to discover that the light wasn’t as sharp and bright as he’d first thought. So accustomed had he become to the gloom that the merest glow—a familiar glow—seemed stark and painful to his dark-adapted eyes.

No, this was merely the yellow light of a stolen lightsaber, clutched in the fist of another. Veter felt the stirrings of indignation. A flash of his old spirit.

How dare he? How dare he use our own weapons, our own symbols against us?

How did we fall so far?

Like the beacon tumbling through the skies of Eiram, the Jedi had been brought low. But they would rise again. They would walk in the Light.

You’ve regained your spirit. The voice was cold, emotionless. I see it in your eyes. You’re resilient, I’ll give you that. The figure stepped closer, into the shimmering glow of the lightsaber. But that seed of hope that you cling to, that belief that the Jedi will rise above this, will bring an end to all that I have done…it is a fallacy. I shall crush it as I have crushed everything else you and your kind believe in. I shall watch you beg. The figure paused, then lowered his voice, adopting a reasonable, affable tone. But perhaps not today.

Veter glanced up. He fixed this being—this monster—with a defiant stare.

Here was the orchestrator of it all, the pain, the suffering, the chaos. Here was Marchion Ro, the Eye of the Nihil, the very center of the storm.

He looked resplendent in his crimson cloak, its fur-lined collar draped across his broad shoulders. And then there was the helm, its strange, swirling, cyclopean red eye peering down at Veter, where he sat in the dirt, like a penitent at the foot of his liege.

Just how Marchion Ro had devised it.

Determined not to give the Eye the satisfaction he so clearly craved, Veter levered himself up, trying hard to disguise the strain, the weakness that he felt deep down in his bones. He’d been starved, and tortured, and exposed to that thing, but he was still a Jedi. Still a member of the High Council.

He forced himself to his full height and took a step toward the bars, closer to his captor. The hum of the lightsaber was the only sound, save for Veter’s ragged breathing. Soon, he knew, he would be one with the Force.

He glowered defiantly at Ro, staring back at that stark, single eye in the center of the Evereni’s helm.

If he could only reach out and take the lightsaber back…

Veter reached for the Force. It was distant, faint, like an echo of what it had always been. The proximity of the creature was disrupting his connection to it, as if it were somehow siphoning away the living Force inside of him.

Veter had always felt the Force as a solid thing. Pliable and moldable, like clay. Something he could shape in new ways to express himself. But now it felt thin and loose, unable to take on the forms he tried to mold in his mind. The creature’s hunger gnawed at the edges of his concentration, distracting him, interfering with his every thought. A constant, ever-present needle, hot in the back of his skull, refusing him peace, preventing him from finding his center. And yet, as Master Yoda had once taught him, back when Veter was still a youngling: There is no trying, only doing. No matter the circumstances, no matter the pain.

Veter reached for the lightsaber, pulling it toward him. The hilt shifted slightly in Ro’s palm, twitching as if drawn toward Veter like the needle of a compass, but it was too much, and he took a staggering step backward, relinquishing his tenuous grip on the weapon.

Ro extinguished the lightsaber with a flick of his thumb, thrusting them back into the perpetual night of the brig. And then, without another word, Marchion Ro simply turned and walked away.

Chapter One

Coruscant

High above the soaring spires of Coruscant, the stars turned in their firmament as they always had, as they always would. Pinpricks of light denoting distant suns, distant worlds, distant peoples, mirrored by the glittering lights of the city far below.

It should have been beautiful.

Yet to Elzar Mann, the stars looked wrong. No matter how hard or how long he peered up at them from his vantage point on the grand balcony outside the chancellor’s office, they just seemed somehow off kilter, out of sorts. As if the galaxy had become kinked, twisted, changed. As if everything he’d once relied upon—every still point in a chaotic galaxy—had been suddenly yanked away, pulled out roughly from under him while he tried to remain standing.

It had been the same ever since the fall of Starlight Beacon and…

…and Stellan.

Elzar closed his eyes and allowed the breeze to ruffle his unkempt hair, as if hoping that the chill wind could somehow sweep away the memories, carry them off into the streaming lanes of traffic and away through the spires and domes until they were gone. He’d noticed that a few gray strands had appeared around his temples in recent months. He’d lost weight, too, and while he was still toned—he’d taken to practicing lightsaber drills late into the night, most nights—he’d grown thin. He’d tried to convince himself that it was a result of the work, of keeping himself so busy trying to figure out a solution to the Nihil problem, but he knew he was allowing things to worry away at him.

How Stellan would have laughed at him. Nudged him in the ribs and told him to cease dwelling on things that were done. To focus on the here and now. To do what needed to be done, and accept that the Force guided his hand, now as it always had.

But Stellan was gone. He was one with the Force. He had been for a year. Elzar knew that his old friend had found peace. And yet his absence was still marked. Not just a hole in the Jedi’s hearts and minds, but in their leadership, too. Especially now that the Nihil had won, had shattered Starlight Beacon and subsequently annexed dozens of worlds, an entire sector of the Outer Rim, from the rest of the galaxy. This area was being called the Nihil Occlusion Zone, and was separated by an invisible barrier that made it all possible.

The Stormwall: a vast web that disrupted hyperspace travel, causing any vessel that attempted to cross it to be wrenched violently back out of hyperspace, either destroying it immediately or causing it to disappear without a trace. There’d been much debate about what exactly happened to those missing ships, given that communication across the Stormwall was also impeded, but the assumption was that any ships that weren’t destroyed in the attempt were being corralled by Nihil patrols on the other side and deposited into so-called kill zones. Certainly, they were never heard from again.

Worse, the network of relays and buoys—or stormseeds—that powered the Stormwall was so large that traveling across it without lightspeed was equally out of the question. Any ship trying to breach such a vast gulf of space at sublight speeds would have to travel for a hundred years before reaching its destination. Not only that, but any attempt at sublight ingress was being met and destroyed by Nihil patrols or swarms of scavdroids, alerted by the automated systems that controlled the Stormwall technology. Patrols that could traverse the Stormwall and deliver a killing blow before the target was even aware it had happened.

It was ingenious, in its own way, and it had so far frustrated all Jedi or Republic attempts to bypass it, usually with disastrous results. Ships flown by droids. Electromagnetic pulses. Data slicing. Sustained attack on the well-shielded stormseeds. Nothing had worked. Nothing at all.

With the Stormwall, the Nihil had carved out their own domain, challenging the Republic at every turn. And with the Nameless—or Force Eaters, as they were also known—they had unleashed a weapon that even the Jedi could not stop. A weapon that targeted the very essence of who the Jedi were. A weapon designed to obliterate them.

Elzar exhaled.

This would all have been so much easier if Avar were by his side. Instead, she was somewhere deep in the Occlusion Zone, as distant to him as Stellan was.

They’d stood together on Eiram, watching the last vestiges of the Beacon slip beneath the cold, crushing waves, carrying all the Republic’s hopes and dreams down with it. It had been a symbol of strength and unity, of light in the dark, of hope. And the Nihil, led by Marchion Ro, had turned that symbol against them. Now it was a symbol of nothing but failure and loss.

Elzar had allowed Avar to take his hand in that moment, to lend him strength. He’d taken comfort from that; a shared understanding, a silent acknowledgment that they still had each other, despite everything. Despite the galaxy turning to chaos around them. But he cursed himself now that, lost in his own shock and grief, his own shame at what he had done, he had failed to ask Avar how she had felt. Had failed to offer her the comfort that she had offered him. And that pain she’d been carrying, that sense of loss and failure, had driven her away.

Unless it was him that had driven her away. That was the notion that haunted him, that plagued him with uncertainty and shame. He’d finally worked up the courage to confide in her about what had happened in the final moments of Starlight Beacon. How he’d acted without thought, murdering the Nihil woman, Chancey Yarrow, as she’d tried to save them all. He hadn’t known it at the time, of course. He’d assumed she was just another Nihil trying to sabotage the Jedi’s attempts to save the station. But the results were the same: He’d ended their last chance at saving Starlight, and in doing so had taken the life of someone who’d been trying to help.

Everything that had come afterward was now partly his fault. He had to make amends, to try to embody even a tiny sliver of the good that Stellan had gifted to the galaxy. To somehow try to fill the hole that Stellan had left behind. He’d told Avar all of this, the words spilling from his mouth on the shores of Eiram.

Avar had said all the right things, of course. All the platitudes and reassurances, repeating all the tenets of the Force and the reminders that everything happened for a reason, that he wasn’t to blame. That only the Nihil carried that weight upon their shoulders. She’d shown him all the mercy and understanding for which he’d hoped.

And yet…Elzar couldn’t help but wonder if it had also been part of the reason she’d gone, accepting a mission to try to get closer to the Nihil, to discover their intentions in the aftermath of their victory. Intentions that none of them could have anticipated.

Now she, too, was lost. Trapped behind the Stormwall, deep in Nihil space. He didn’t even know if she was still alive.

No, Elzar. You’d know. She’s still out there.

She has to be.

He would bring her back. Avar and the others who shared her fate. He would find a way. The threat of the Nihil would be ended. The Stormwall would fall, and peace would be returned to the galaxy.

There was no choice. He would do what Stellan would have done. No matter that they’d already tried everything they could think of. No matter that the Nihil had defeated them at every turn.

He would find a way.

He had to.

It was the only way to make things right.

Elzar turned at the sound of the balcony doors swooshing open behind him. A familiar droid trundled out on its rolling base, its upper, vaguely humanoid half turning to regard him. It fixed him with its blank, coppery visage. The droid he had gifted to Stellan, JJ-5145. A final tether to his old friend.

Supreme Chancellor Soh is almost ready to begin, Master Elzar, said the droid. Its chirpy, electronic tones seemed abrasive after the silence of Elzar’s contemplation. Abrasive, but a welcome distraction, nonetheless.

Thank you, Forfive. I’ll join you in just a moment.

The droid held his gaze for a moment. Your hesitation suggests uncertainty. If you would care to share your concerns, I can help to order your thoughts and prioritize your responses.

I’m fine, Forfive.

Hmmm, was the droid’s only response. It turned and trundled back through the sliding doors.

Elzar grinned. Trust Stellan’s droid to see through him better than he could see through himself. He’d given JJ-5145 to Stellan as a joke, but also as a way of reminding Stellan to ask for help, to lean on others when he needed to. And now JJ-5145 was reminding him of that very same lesson. Urging him to live in the here and now, to concentrate on the task before him.

Elzar smoothed the front of his temple robes and set out after the overly opinionated droid.

Chapter Two

Outer Rim

The Tractate slid through hyperspace like a tiny mote being swallowed by the very throat of the galaxy itself; insignificant and alone.

Unseen and uncharted, the Pacifier-class Republic ship carved a path across the Outer Rim, skirting the outer edges of the so-called Occlusion Zone, comm channels open and scanning the planetary systems on the borders of Nihil space for any hint of a distress call.

Jedi Knight Bell Zettifar stood in the command center at the prow of the ship, watching the blue smear of hyperspace. Worlds flitted past, many of them teeming with life; a cacophony of voices, each one a pinprick in the living Force. Bell could sense them, their hopes, and their fears, burning bright and strong.

For Light and Life.

That had always been the Jedi’s mantra. And no matter what had happened, Bell held on to those words as truth.

For every living being.

For peace.

That was why he was out there, now. To uphold those fundamental tenets. To ensure that all the terrible losses they’d suffered, all the pain and anguish they’d endured, hadn’t been for nothing.

Bell patted Ember gently on the head. Beside him, the charhound issued a low murmur, steam venting from her nostrils.

I know, Ember. Quiet, isn’t it?

Ember nudged his thigh gently in response, but he could tell she was picking up on his unsettled mood.

Bell tried to push his mounting anxiety to one side. He rolled his neck, trying to ease the knots of tension in his shoulders. He’d tried meditating, but he’d been unable to center himself, plagued by thoughts of the impending anniversary of Starlight Beacon’s fall, and of the beings—some of them friends—lost behind enemy lines.

People such as Avar Kriss, Porter Engle, Pra-Tre Veter, and so many others. He had no idea if any of them were even still alive, and the thought filled him with something dangerously close to anger. Especially as he’d been there when Veter had been taken two months earlier during a Nihil raid. The Jedi Grand Master—a Council member, no less—had volunteered to hold off a wave of Nihil while Bell and Burryaga evacuated a settlement, but somehow, the Nihil had managed to overwhelm him, taking him prisoner and dragging him back behind the Stormwall.

Veter hadn’t been heard from since. And the Nihil raids had continued.

At least out here, on the edge of the Occlusion Zone, Bell felt like he was doing something, fighting back. Resisting.

While Elzar Mann and the rest of the Jedi worked on the problem of bypassing the Stormwall, Bell had sought permission to focus on defending the needy who had suddenly found themselves on the outer edges of this militarized space. These worlds had become isolated, cut off from their former trade routes and subject to irregular raids by Nihil vessels that passed in and out of the Occlusion Zone with impunity, using the secret hyperspace lanes provided by their Path drives to bypass the Stormwall’s barrier. Where once they had nestled among neighboring systems in relative security, now entire cultures—entire civilizations—were at risk.

The Jedi Council had given him the latitude necessary to carry out this self-imposed mission, granting him an exception from the Guardian Protocols that had been insituted just a week after Starlight’s destruction, knowing full well that, if Bell and his small team were to prove successful in bringing down one of the Nihil raiding vessels, there was also a chance they could salvage the Path drive that gave it safe passage through the Stormwall, thus providing the Jedi with the access they so desperately sought.

For Bell, this was an important but secondary concern. More pressing was the need to save lives. While the Jedi were busy trying to figure out a way to stop the Nihil, someone had to focus on what they had always done best: help people in need. Defend those who couldn’t defend themselves. The Nihil left behind a river of spilled blood and misery after every raid. It was the Jedi’s job to stop them…no matter the risks involved.

And there were risks. Grave risks. Bell was only too aware.

The Nihil had caused so much pain. So much loss. And while the Jedi still didn’t quite understand the weapon the Nihil had deployed against them—despite over a year of trying to make sense of the creatures and how they disrupted or fed on the Jedi’s connection to the Force—Bell knew the Jedi couldn’t afford to take a back seat, to stand down in the fight against the Nihil. And so they fought on, despite the danger.

Images of Bell’s former master, Loden Greatstorm, flashed through his mind. The horrified, contorted expression on his ashen face. The gray flesh that had been reduced to nothing but an empty husk. Bell felt a pang of loss, still acute, still sharp. And the same thing had happened to others, too. Orla Jareni. Nib Assek. So many others, all of them friends, teachers. Each of them had left behind a void that was impossible to fill.

The Nihil had to be stopped.

So, while the rest of the Jedi turned their attention to breaching the Stormwall or finding a way to combat the Nameless, Bell, along with others like Mirro Lox and Amadeo Azzazzo, would continue trying to foil their raids and prevent them from hurting anyone else.

In this war—and it was a war to Bell—every single life mattered. Every death was a failure. What else did for Light and Life mean if not that?

Talk among the ship’s crew—consisting primarily of RDC soldiers—had inevitably turned to the impending anniversary of Starlight Beacon’s fall, and while they had been mindful to speak in hushed tones around their Jedi passengers, it had nevertheless put Bell in a reflective mood.

For a fleeting moment after the Beacon went down, Bell had thought he’d lost everything. But it had only been for a moment. For all that they had lost, the Jedi Order remained. And while they still stood—those survivors, all those Jedi back on Coruscant—they could still uphold the Light. They could still be the beacon in the dark.

Bell had never given up hope. He had never—

Rwwwaaaarrrwooo.

Grinning, Bell turned to see his friend Burryaga standing behind him. The Wookiee Jedi fixed him with an inquisitive stare, cocking his head slightly to one side, so that the thin braids of hair beneath his face dangled across his left shoulder.

Arroorrrooo, said Bell, gruffly. He’d spent much of the last year studying Shyriiwook, but forming some of the words and expressions still hurt his throat.

Burryaga gave a barking laugh. Warrraa roowarr.

Bell shrugged, his face creasing in a broad smile as he joined in with his friend’s teasing laughter. "Well, at least I tried. He smoothed the front of his robes. And yes, I was feeling reflective, what with the anniversary and all."

Burry’s expression darkened. He glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck. Ember trotted over to brush against Burry’s leg, causing a small patch of the Wookiee’s fur to smolder. He patted it out.

I’m sorry, said Bell. I know it’s still hard. His breath caught in his throat, and he glanced away. He was still coming to terms with how close he’d come to losing another friend to the Nihil.

Burryaga had disappeared fighting a rathtar during the final minutes of Starlight Beacon’s fall and had failed to emerge after the station crashed into Eiram’s churning ocean. He’d been presumed dead, lost alongside Master Stellan, Maru, and all the others who had given their lives trying to prevent Starlight’s destruction or help with the desperate evacuation attempts.

But Bell had refused to acknowledge it. He’d been sure Burry would have found a way to cling on, to survive, despite the odds. And he’d been right. He’d found Burry deep under the Eiram ocean, trapped inside a cave system with a dwindling supply of oxygen. The Wookiee had survived against all odds. He’d managed to find a pocket of air inside a submerged cave, and had remained there for a month, desperately clinging to life, wondering whether any of his fellow Jedi had even considered he might still be alive.

And then Bell had found him, and Burry’s return to Coruscant had been a much-needed win for the Jedi, a boost to their flagging morale. In his darkest moments, though, Bell still wondered what might have happened if he’d listened to the other Jedi, returned to Coruscant, and assumed Burry was dead, down there in the black depths of the ocean.

The Force had guided him to Burry, despite everyone’s doubts. He understood that the High Council had decisions to make, that the threat of the Nihil was bigger than any single life, but all the same he’d learned a valuable lesson about trusting his own instincts, even if those instincts sometimes seemed at odds with those around him. It was why he was out there now. He was where he was supposed to be. He could feel it.

His friendship with the Wookiee had grown closer during the months that followed Burry’s rescue, and they had been Knighted together, snipping off their Padawan braids to become full Jedi Knights, their efforts during the fall of Starlight being recognized by the Jedi Council as trial enough to prove any Padawan worthy of elevation to Knighthood.

They had supported each other on several missions to the galaxy’s new frontier—the edge of the Occlusion Zone—and had fought side by side to protect a settlement against marauding Nihil on the moon of Saltear, where they had first encountered the Nihil raiding ship Cacophony and its dangerous, white-haired captain, Melis Shryke. The same Nihil warlord who’d been responsible for the abduction of Grand Master Veter.

When Bell had petitioned the Council to allow him to undertake this mission, Burry had been by his side, steadfast and resolute. He believed wholeheartedly in Bell’s calling, sharing his friend’s desire to defend those who could not defend themselves. So it was that they were here, now, on the prow of a Republic ship, working with the small detachment of RDC soldiers as they tried to anticipate the locations of future Nihil raids.

It seemed to Bell that the raids were opportunistic, striking at settlements just outside the Occlusion Zone, targeting those who were too weak or too scared to fight back. The work of cowards.

They’d tried tracking the Nihil ships, but all communications within the Occlusion Zone, including the signals broadcast by tracking devices, were down, or were controlled by the Nihil. As soon as a Nihil vessel passed back through the Stormwall it effectively disappeared, and there was no way of knowing where it might emerge next. All they’d been able to do was remain close to the most vulnerable systems and…wait.

And waiting didn’t suit Bell. Not when lives were on the line.

He glanced around the sparse bridge of the Tractate. Any word from Master Elzar? asked Bell, turning back to Burryaga.

The Wookiee shook his head.

The lack of progress was troubling. With all the combined resources of the Jedi and the Republic, it was surely only a matter of time before they found a way to bypass the Stormwall. Yet it seemed the Nihil had been efficient in turning the Republic’s own technology against itself, and so far they’d lost several ships—and their pilots—trying to force a breach. Some had been dragged out of hyperspace as mangled wrecks, while others had simply disappeared, never to be heard from again, and presumed dead.

And now there was talk about trying to negotiate peace.

Bell was in favor of any solution that eschewed violence, but the truth was, he didn’t trust, for even a minute, that peace was what the Nihil wanted.

They’d all heard Marchion Ro’s speech in the aftermath of Starlight’s fall. The mocking, bragging tones of the Eye of the Storm. In fact, back on Coruscant, Bell had been part of the team that had tried to analyze the broadcast for clues, playing it over and over until the Evereni’s words were burned like furrows into his memory.

There is no hope in this part of the galaxy. There is only despair.

It was a lie. A blatant, terrible lie.

But Bell wondered how many people inside the Occlusion Zone had been persuaded to believe it was true, especially after an entire year of knowing nothing else but the terror of Nihil rule.

Burryaga brought Bell back from his reverie with a low, concerned whine.

"Yes, I know. You’re right. I should take some time out to meditate. But what if—?"

A shrill klaxon sounded, rending the air throughout the ship. Close by, Ember barked, alerted by the sudden noise.

Saved by the alarm, said Bell, with a sideways glance at Burry. He crossed to where the Tractate’s captain, Amaryl Pel, was hurriedly issuing orders for the pilot to drop the ship out of hyperspace.

Another raid? asked Bell.

The woman glanced briefly at Bell, and then shrugged. Unknown distress signal, originating on the planet Ribento.

But is it the Nihil? pressed Bell.

Does it matter? said Pel, failing to hide her irritation. People need our help.

Bell nodded. Of course. He looked up, meeting Burry’s gaze. You ready?

Wrrraaw.

Yeah, I thought so, said Bell.

Chapter Three

Coruscant

Supreme Chancellor Lina Soh was sitting behind her desk, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed over a datapad. She was flanked by her idling targons Matari and Voru, two huge felines with soft, downy fur, four eyes, and pronounced, tusklike fangs. They served as both pets and guardians, and the chancellor was rarely without them. They both glanced up at Elzar as he entered the room, eyeing him judgmentally. Or sizing him up. He was never entirely sure.

The chancellor looked contemplative, her brow furrowed in deep concentration, and Elzar couldn’t