Sacrifice

She was right. Unless someone happened to eyeball Five-Alpha or Mara had left a transponder or comlink active, the starfighter would simply vanish.

A visual search was all that was left—that, or finding Mara herself. Luke headed for the hangars, and Jaina followed.

"How do we recover StealthXs that ditch, then?" Luke asked, trying not to vent his frustration on hardworking ground crew.

The technician stepped back from the starfighter. "Rescue beacon or the Mark One pall of smoke and flame, sir," he said warily. "The GA asked Incom to make them very hard to detect, and they did."

"Okay, I'll stop harassing people with work to do and go out there myself." Luke reminded himself that Mara was hunting Lumiya, and so he had to expect her to use every trick in the book. That didn't stop him from worrying. "After all, I'm the one who shook Lumiya's hand, and not her throat. . ."

Then Mara was suddenly there, not just back in the Force but magnifying her presence, as if she wanted to be found. She was defiant, unafraid, and spoiling for a fight. She'd found Lumiya all right.

"Why's she doing that, though?" Jaina had her own hunt—for Alema.

Now she was keen to help find Mara. "It's like she's taunting her."

"Or she's in trouble and she wants me to find her."

"No." Jaina closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating. "Doesn't feel like a call for help. Feels like ... a fight."

Luke decided to warn Tenel Ka that he was on his way purely as a precaution. Eighteen-standard-hour transit. Given the number of planets in the Hapes Cluster, it would probably take even the Hapans a lot longer than that to find a StealthX, but the more eyes that were out looking out for