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  trying to crack our comm traffic, them knowing that I'm still here could still

  cause them to wonder why." He gave her a conciliatory look. "I'll be along. I

  have a shuttle standing by."

  "Come on."

  "You go. Now. Don't force me to make an order of it."

  Married long enough to know where duty absolutely defined Wedge's actions,

  lella gave an exasperated shake of her head. She came over for one last kiss.

  "Don't get hurt."

  "You, either."

  "I want you to be able to retire again."

  "You, too."

  "I love you."

  He kissed her a second time. "I love you, too. And I plan to prove it over

  and over again." He smiled against the sick feeling that suddenly roiled within

  him, the fear that there would be no over and over again, that this was the last

  time she would see him. "Now go."

  She went.

  He returned to the sensor board and forced the conversation, the sensation

  out of his mind. Whether it was a valid premonition or just ordinary fear, he

  had a job to do.

  He watched as the biotics complex's starfighter defenses continued to

  crumble, as Yuuzhan Vong air and ground forces continued their approach.

  Charat Kraal led his squadron around toward Domain Hul. His villip had just

  told him that Lusankya was coming... and that Jaina Solo's squadron was among

  those escorting her.

  He was confused. He didn't like being confused. No Yuuzhan Vong warrior

  ever endured being confused.

  The only appropriate response was to kill something.

  The elite squadrons guarding Lusankya fought with tremendous skill.

  Czulkang Lah made sure that the patterns flown by the blaze bugs, showing the

  development of that conflict, would be seared into the memory of the worldship's

  brain. He knew he would enjoy watching it again and again.

  Coralskipper squadrons entering that combat zone emerged depleted,

  tattered... when they emerged at all.

  Reports of his sensor advisers indicated that the coral-skipper assaults

  were taking their roll. New Republic pilots were falling. And Lusankya was being

  taken to pieces. Despite the fact that an unusual amount of power was being

  directed into her shields, the ship's weapons batteries were silent, and great

  chunks of metal were said to be tearing free of the superstructure under the

  constant pounding from coralskippers and capital ships that ventured close

  enough to strike.

  Wedge charged out of the operations center. The bi-otics building shook

  with the pounding it received from distant plasma cannons, impacts so loud that

  he couldn't hear his own boots on the duracrete floor. Chunks of the ceiling

  rained down; he threw his arms over his head for protection, catching a blow on

  his right wrist from descending debris.

  He made it up the staircase to the ground level without seeing any other

  personnel. That gave him a grim satisfaction. No one had managed to outstubborn

  him, to defy his orders in order to make sure that Wedge had company on his

  escape. It was a little comforting, but the thought that he might be the last

  member of the New Republic standing on Borleias was oddly unsettling.

  Through the transparisteel in the doors at the end of the main hall he

  could see distant flashes, narrow red streaks heading one way at the speed of

  light, more wobbly orange-red streaks headed the other, clear evidence that

  Wedge's last forces were still fighting their delaying action. Then he slammed

  through the doors, emerging onto the kill zone, and could see that the

  engagement was continuing at every degree of the compass. The kill zone itself

  was full of craters and destroyed vehicles. Everything that had been fit to fly

  was up in space now; the vehicles too wrecked to lift off had been destroyed by

  Wedge's engineers, standard operating procedure, though the Yuuzhan Vong were

  not in the habit of studying captured technology. Some of them had been

  additionally hit by distant plasma cannon fire aimed at the biotics building.

  There were no functional vehicles to be seen.

  No functional vehicles. Where was his shuttle? Then he recognized it, a

  heap of burning metal whose shape suggested it had once been a Lambda-class

  shuttle. Wedge grimaced. A pilot had died waiting for him. It was another tally

  mark for the list-the list he'd once hoped he'd retired; the one he carried in

  his heart.

  He shoved the thought to one side. He'd join that list in a minute if he

  didn't act. Punctuating his thought, a plasma cannon projectile hit the biotics

  building far over his head, plowing through ferrocrete and transparisteel,

  sending sharp, lethal chunks down toward him.

  Wedge sprinted away from the building's face. There was no purpose in going

  into the main docking bay, except perhaps to hide; it was open, and he could see

  from here that nothing more useful than a small cargo lifter was left within it.

  The special operations docking bay was almost intact, though, and still

  closed. Wedge hoped they hadn't booby-trapped it. He reached the main door,

  tapped his authorization code into the keypad, and then flinched as he heard the

  biotics building take a hit from something big.

  The force of the explosion, though weakened by distance, pushed him into

  the door. He spun to look and watched as the building folded over like a fighter

  punched once too often in the midsection; the top portion at the center tumbled

  down onto the kill zone where he'd been standing just seconds before.

  The docking bay door ground open. He backed in and spun, eyes trying to

  pierce the darkness of the interior even as the overhead lights began to flicker

  on.

  The special operations crew had left behind a land-speeder that looked as

  though it had been slow-roasted for the eating pleasure of some alien giant.

  Nearby was a half-finished pipefighter, one they'd been assembling in case any

  of the others failed during their bogus tests. And then Wedge's heart soared-off

  to the right, near the still-opening door, where the lights were last to come to

  full brightness, was an X-wing, There was no astromech waiting beside it or

  tucked in place behind the cockpit, but otherwise it looked intact, its cockpit

  raised as if in greeting.

  The vehicle's surface was scratched and burned everywhere, but there were a

  dozen shiny patches in place on the hull, not yet painted to match the

  snubfighter's color scheme, and the canopy was gleaming, unmarred, obviously

  brand-new.

  Wedge raced to it and climbed up into the cockpit, adrenaline letting him

  move like a man half his age. He'd commenced the emergency power-start procedure

  before gravity had quite settled him into the pilot's couch, and brought up the

  vehicle's assignment and diagnostics before lowering the canopy and buckling in.

  The text board on his control panel swam into letters before it was even at

  full brightness:

  INCOM T65-J "X-WING" IDENTIFIER NUMBER 103430

  CURRENT PILOT: FLIGHT OFFICER KORIL BEKAM CURRENT DESIGNATION: BLACKMOON 11

  CURRENT ASTROMECH: R2-Z13 "PLUG"

  "Too bad you're not along for the ride, Plug." Without an astromech, Wedge

  wo
uld be able to perform only the most basic insystem navigation; he wouldn't be

  able to plot any interstellar routes. But if he could get up to his forces in

  this vehicle, accept a broadcast nav course or land aboard one of the capital

  ships, he'd be fine.

  He triggered a command on his datapad, sending an authorization code to the

  X-wing.

  CODE NOT RECOGNIZED. AUTHORIZATION FAILED.

  The diagnostics board was now up. Power, shield, weapon, and thruster

  systems seemed to be fine, but the board showed unrepaired damage to the

  snubfighter's computer and communications systems. Wedge swore. The time

  pressures that had forced the mechanics to abandon this vehicle before it was

  quite repaired might have doomed him. That point was accentuated by a new sound-

  the whumbf some large craft making an awkward landing near the special ops

  docking bay. No, it was adjacent to the docking bay-Wedge saw the back wall of

  the building, hardy sheet metal, bow in from the displaced air.

  Wedge scrolled down in his datapad to personnel records, called up the

  details of Flight Officer Koril Bekam, and transmitted his authorization code.

  AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED. Power-up of the remainder of vehicle systems

  commenced.

  The docking bay door was now fully open, spilling sunlight across Wedge and

  the X-wing. Wedge saw a detachment of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, twenty or more of

  them, pass by the bay, headed toward the biotics building.

  The data board indicated that two engines were up, three, four, then

  thrusters and repulsors reported ready. Lasers came online, and the bar

  indicating shield readiness struggled to become a solid green.

  A Yuuzhan Vong warrior skidded around the corner of the special ops docking

  bay and halted, facing the X-wing, his posture suggesting surprise. A moment

  later, nine or ten more raced up behind him and turned toward Wedge.

  Wedge gave them a smile-humorless, feral. He flicked his lasers over to

  stutterfire and sprayed the crowd of enemy warriors, saw some of them dive back

  the way they'd come, saw others caught in the beams.

  Even set on stutterfire, where each beam was fired at the lowest useful

  intensity available to an X-wing weapon, the lasers were meant for vehicles, not

  individuals. Striking the Yuuzhan Vong, the beams superheated flesh past the

  point of cooking, past the point of boiling, straight to the state of gas or

  even plasma. Warriors hit by the beams simply exploded, torsos reduced to

  nothingness, limbs hurled in all directions.

  Wedge grimaced, then fired up his repulsors and thrusters. In a smooth

  motion, his X-wing lifted, sideslipped out from under the docking bay roof, and

  turned the direction opposite that from which the warriors had come. He kicked

  his thrusters over to full and raced at maximum acceleration away from the

  docking bay and crumbling biotics building. Over his shoulder, he could see the

  Yuuzhan Vong troop carrier, an egg-shaped thing, towering over the docking hay,

  squadron after squadron of warriors emerging from it at a dead run. The troop

  carrier opened up on his X-wing, sending glowing plasma balls after him, but

  Wedge twitched the vehicle to port and the flood of burning material fell into

  the jungle beneath him.

  There wouldn't be time for a checklist, even an abbreviated one. He had to

  get up into space and rejoin his forces. He switched his X-wing comm unit over

  to command frequency. "Blackmoon Eleven to Mon Motbma, Rlackmoon Eleven to Mow

  Mothma come in."

  The unit came alive with comm traffic. Wedge recognized the voice of Tycho,

  directing starfighter squadrons, of Jaina issuing commands to the Twin Suns, of

  many other officers under his command. But no one responded. He put on a little

  altitude, preparatory to making the run to space. "Blackmoon Eleven to anyone.

  Please respond." Nothing.

  He growled. He'd have to rely on his own sensors and instincts to choose

  the best course offworld, and could easily blunder into squadrons of incoming

  coralskippers. Well, those were the breaks. He could either complain or prepare.

  He pulled back on his yoke-and then flashed past a small Corellian freighter, a

  scarred sky-blue YT-2400. He knew the ship, which was far newer than the similar

  Millennium Falcon, but still a rickety thing held together by wire and meanness.

  In the glimpse he had of it before leaving it behind, he thought that it

  looked mostly intact, despite smoke pouring out of one of the engine housings,

  and believed he'd seen people outside it, moving. He began to loop around.

  "Blackmoon Eleven, this is Ammuud Swooper. Come in, please."

  Wedge frowned. How did they know his designation? Then it made sense. He

  couldn't broadcast voice, but his transponder must still be working, must still

  be sending out this X-wing's identifier code for friend-or-foe sensor

  recognition. "Ammuud Swooper, you have Blackmoon Eleven. Go."

  "Blackmoon Eleven, come in. This is Ammuud Swooper. Please reply."

  Wedge passed over the downed freighter again, this time at reduced

  velocity. He could see men and women atop the freighter, illuminated by the

  sparks and glow of welding torches.

  At this range-he pulled his comlink out of his breast pocket and thumbed it

  on. "Ammuud Swooper, this is Blackmoon Eleven. Are you receiving me now?"

  "Barely, but we have you. We were downed by plasma cannon fire but we've

  almost got a patch ready on our engines. We can lift in a couple of minutes...

  but the unit that shot us down is pretty close, north-northwest. Can you hold

  them back for us?"

  "I'll give you your two minutes. Maybe more. My comm board is shot, so if I

  don't respond to further communications, don't take it personally. Blackmoon

  Eleven out."

  "Thanks, Eleven. Ammuud Swooper out."

  Wedge reduced his speed still further, then looped around to pass over the

  freighter on a north-northwest course. In seconds he saw the enemy unit Ammuud

  Swooper had spoken of, approaching through a patch of thick grasses surrounded

  by jungle; there were a dozen Yuuzhan Vong infantry, two dozen reptoid slave-

  warriors, one coralskipper, and what appeared to be an unwounded rakamat, this

  one tall and lean rather than mountainous, and with only half the armament of a

  full-sized version, but still plenty against a lightly armed freighter.

  Or an X-wing, for that matter.

  Even as he calculated their numbers, Wedge switched over to stutterfire and

  sprayed lasers across their position. Warriors and reptoids went down and grass

  ignited in front of the rakamat as he fired. Then he flashed over their

  position, plasma fire from the rakamat following, and saw on his sensor board as

  the coralskipper rose in pursuit. He put all discretionary vehicle power into

  his rear shields for a moment, heard thumps over his audio as his sensors

  informed him that plasma ejecta had hit the shields and been stopped.

  It had taken six X-wings and a hidden cache of explosives to kill the last

  rakamat they'd fought against. This one might be only half as powerful as the

  last, but Wedge was a third as powerful as the previous force. The odds were

  bad.

  On the other hand
, Han Solo had made a generation of people think that

  Corellians ignored the odds, no matter how long, and Wedge was as Corellian as

  Solo was.

  Then the idea hit him, and Wedge managed another humorless grin.

  The coralskipper hot on his tail, Wedge looped around until he was

  approaching the rakamat and its covering troops from a cross-angle to its path.

  He fired again, spraying lasers indiscriminately into the grasses to the left of

  the rakamat, scattering the Yuuzhan Vong warriors and reptoids there. From here,

  he could see the rakamat's legs as it moved stolidly toward the freighter, could

  time them in their steady, docile motions.

  Plasma rained toward him from the rakamat, from the coraiskipper behind.

  Wedge sideslipped and continued to fire into the grasses, setting them ablaze,

  kicking up gouts of dirt and steam. Now his vision was useless, but his sensors

  still showed the huge mass of the rakamat, distorted by the heat from the fire.

  Wedge dropped to grasstop level, heard scrapes and thumps as his lower hull

  was grazed by foliage-perhaps even by irregularities in the terrain. Ahead, he

  could see the very top of the rakamat, as its plasma cannons elevated, preparing

  to catch his underside as he popped up over them.

  He flipped an overhead switch and his S-foils closed from the X-shaped

  firing position to cruise position. And as he entered the zone where the grasses

  were blazing, he twitched his yoke down, then up.

  He had the barest flash of rakamat legs to his left and right, a looming

  shadow over him, and then he was

  For a bare moment, no plasma came streaking after him. In going under the

  rakamat, in emerging low from the wrong side, he'd thrown the creature into

  confusion. He switched his S-foils back into firing position as he climbed.

  In that moment, the pursuing coralskipper roared through the fire and saw

  the rakamat immediately before it. The pilot must have panicked. Over his

  shoulder, Wedge saw the bow of the coralskipper wobble as the pilot was torn

  between following Wedge under or bouncing over, and that moment of hesitation

  doomed him. The skip's bow rose and, at several hundred kilometers per hour, the

  skip plowed into the flank of the rakamat.