Jora Malli strode into the Ataraxia’s primary hangar, Sskeer at her side. She held a comlink in one hand.

“Avar, we’re going to take out the Vector squadron. The Republic pilots need our help shutting the Nihil down before things get any worse out there. Can you establish your link to all of us, to help to make that task simpler?”

“I can,” Avar Kriss responded. “I’m already hearing the song.”

Jora knew that Avar interpreted the Force as music. She didn’t see it that way. To her, the Force was…a force. But you couldn’t deny the effectiveness of what Master Kriss could do.

All around her, Jedi ran toward waiting Vectors, the Ataraxia’s non-Jedi crew fueling and prepping the delicate ships for flight. She saw Elzar Mann and his friend Stellan Gios, Nib Assek and her Wookiee Padawan Burryaga, the Ithorian Mikkel Sutmani who had been part of the ill-fated mission during which the Order lost Te’Ami…all strong pilots. They’d need to be. She had reviewed the tactical data from the battle, and the Nihil ships seemed willing to go to any lengths to hurt or destroy their enemies.

“You ready, old friend?” she said to Sskeer as they approached their own Vectors.

“You should be on the Starlight Beacon,” the Trandoshan Jedi hissed back. “You’re supposed to be dealing with supply requisitions and unruly younglings, not leading an assault on a bunch of pirates. Let me go by myself—there’s no need for you to fly.”

“You can die in bed just as easily as in battle, Sskeer,” she said, climbing into her ship’s cockpit.

“That is certainly untrue,” Sskeer called over, putting an oxygen mask over his broad snout and settling into his pilot’s seat. “What if we both just agree not to die?”

“Deal,” she said as the canopy closed.

Jora took her lightsaber—a golden cylinder with curved platinum guards swooping back down toward the hilt like wings—and placed it against the weapons activation panel on her Vector’s console. The targeting systems lit up bright white, the color of her saber blade. She had retrieved its kyber crystal, then a bright blood-red, from an ancient Sith lightspear and healed it, purging the rage and pain instilled in it by its original owner. She performed the ritual mainly as an intellectual exercise, to see how it was done, but once the process was complete she found herself tightly bound to the crystal, and now used it as the core of her primary weapon.

She pushed her control sticks forward and shot out of the hangar into open space.

All around her, Vectors materialized, flashing out from the Ataraxia.

“On me, Jedi,” Jora Malli said, and the ships came up around her, creating the tight formation that only the Jedi ships could achieve.

It was a Drift, perfectly composed, and the only thing more beautiful than seeing one was being part of one.

The battle lay ahead, and they would turn the tide.

[...]

Sskeer flew as part of the Drift, the connection to the Jedi all around him strengthened by whatever Avar Kriss was doing back on the Ataraxia. And the strongest connection of all was to Jora Malli, her ship just off to starboard, so close that their wingtips almost touched.


Star Wars The High Republic Light of the Jedi Chapter 38