Tyria jumped into the driver's seat and fired up the engine. Immediately the cart rose a meter into the air. It held a load of large windows, her only protection. She threw the cart into reverse and backed straight at the droid.

It fired at her, the blasts stopping against her transparisteel cargo.

Then the cart hit the probot, the great ma.s.s of vehicle and cargo pushing it backward. Tyria kept the thrust at full until the cart slammed into the wall; then she held the thrust, pinning the droid in place. It struggled to wriggle free and fired blast after blast into the transparisteel windows. The windows darkened and began to melt under the barrage.

Wedge made a complete circuit of the manufacturing chamber, running along the maintenance alley behind the banks of control consoles. He varied his pace so the probot couldn't time his pa.s.sage and take an accurate shot at him as he crossed the gaps between banks. It followed him throughout his circuit, staying on the other side of the consoles. Its accuracy was high and two near misses had charred his clothes - and slightly burned the skin beneath - at shoulder and thigh. He pa.s.sed Kell where the demolitions expert crouched. Just before the next gap between consoles, Wedge skidded to a stop. The droid fired, a pattern of three blaster shots flashing between the consoles and melting holes in the wall.

From the corner of his eye, Wedge saw Kell's attack. Kell rose in a smooth motion, his height and long legs enabling him to step up on the high console counter, and threw himself atop the probe droid.

He bounced off immediately and hit the floor rolling. The probe droid grabbed at him with a claw, missed, and brought a blaster into line, but Kell was already behind the room's bulky master control console.

Wedge suppressed a groan. "Don't tell me I have to do the whole thing again!"

"Get behind cover!"

Wedge ducked down fully behind the console just as the droid's top hemisphere erupted like a volcano. The blast shat - tered console gauges all across the room and smashed the probe droid into the floor, crushing its trailing armatures.

Wedge rose. "Pretty slick. I didn't see you plant the charge."

Kell returned to pick up his bag. He cupped a hand behind his ear and mouthed something.

Wedge realized there was a ringing in his ears. "What?"

He dimly heard Kell's reply: "What?"

Tyria struggled with the cart's controls, desperately aware that she was losing the battle to keep the probot pinned.

Phanan continued firing at the probe droid. Bit by bit, his shots were chewing away at the droid's armor. At this rate, he'd have the thing dead in a couple of days.

There was an explosion from the main fab chamber. Tyria froze, momentarily frightened that Kell's demolitions were going off prematurely... but there was only the one blast. She hoped Kell was well clear of it.

A ma.s.s of transparisteel goods slid into place against the wall beside the probe droid. Tyria looked up to see Runt, weaving like a sailor just back from a night of tavern crawling, his flat nose streaming blood, finish positioning the cart and then lock down the parking brake. Runt waved drunkenly at her and ran, with a weaving gait she didn't imagine he'd be able to duplicate when unhurt, to grab the maneuvering handle of another cart.

He'd just slammed that one home on the other side of the droid and locked it down, blocking Phanan from firing further, when Wedge and Kell emerged from the fab chamber.

Kell shouted, "We're omega!" He waved the commandos toward the turbolift shaft. Grinder and Jesmin followed Phanan out of the op center and all scrambled into the turbolift shaft.

"What happens when that probe droid gets free?" Tyria asked.

"What?" said Kell.

"What?" said Wedge. He cupped a hand behind his ear.

She shouted, "Probe droid! Will get free!"

Kell shook his head and pulled a timer charge from his bag. "No. Get clear."

"What if there are more?"

Grinder said, "They're mine. Trust me."

Kell shouted, "Six, open up the doors to the fourth and second levels as you go!"

Runt, pressing his sleeve against his nose to stop the flow of blood, nodded.

"Why have him open those doors?" Tyria asked. Realiz - ing that Kell and Wedge were having trouble hearing, she repeated the question, shouting this time.

"Still have to plant charges on the support beams," Kell answered, unnecessarily shouting. "Hold the top floor. If I'm not out in seven minutes, finish the evacuation."

"If we're not back," Wedge corrected, also shouting. "You still need someone to guard your back."

"Obviously so." Kell grinned. He skidded the charge under the blockade of hauling carts. Its timer was already counting down from ten.

They ran.

Kell wasted no time. On the fourth bas.e.m.e.nt level and then the second, he ran from support pillar to support pillar, slapping his explosives in place, keying in the countdown, and activating the charges, all at a record pace.

Wedge kept alert for more probe droids, but none appeared. He thought he might have glimpsed something rising through the turbolift shaft, but it was gone before he could sight in on it.

Probe Droid Al rose into place, hovering in the shaft at ground level, then floated forward through the door.

Grinder, his back to the wall just beside the turbolift, hit the b.u.t.ton on the wall.

The turbolift door, its safety governors disabled, slammed down atop the probe droid, crushing its spherical body nearly flat. Lights dimmed in its sensor eyes. Sparks shot out of new tears and rents in its surface.

Grinder raised the turbolift door and smashed it down twice more, then raised and locked it. He stared in satisfaction at the damage he had done. "Do I get to paint a probe droid silhouette?"

Phanan snorted. "Sure, on your datapad."

"Quiet," Jesmin said. "Nine and Eleven report we have new arrivals. A flatbed skimmer full of troops and two TIE fighters just landed on the pad outside."

Outside, just beside the hangar door, Janson lay perfectly still and whispered into his comlink. "I count thirty or thirty-five troops. Some of them are deploying around toward the front; I a.s.sume they'll be hitting us from two sides. The TIE fighters are oriented so they can fire in through the hangar door, but the troops back here aren't approaching yet. I think they're waiting for the others to get in position. When I give you the go, I want you to open the hangar door just wide enough for me to get in."

"Acknowledged," said Jesmin.

Donos did not call in with unnecessary queries about what he should be doing. Janson was sure he would not announce his presence unless ordered to or circ.u.mstances meant he had to fire to save a fellow Wraith. In the meantime, he'd provide additional intelligence information when needed.

A minute later, one of the infantry commanders waved forward. He and a half-dozen men, armed with rifles and wearing helmets and breastplates that looked like cast-off stormtrooper scout armor, advanced in a half crouch.

Janson shot the commander in the faceplate. The man dropped, dead before he knew he was. .h.i.t. The half-dozen men looked at him for a moment. Janson shot a second man in the chest. Then, as the survivors began to drop to the ground, he hit another faceplate and said, "Open up."

The hangar door began to grind open as the stormtroopers opened fire.

Laser blasts. .h.i.t the door and bunker wall above and around him. Janson grimaced. With that caliber of marksmanship, there was little chance any of the attackers could hit him deliberately, but there was always the possibility that someone firing blind or a ricochet could hit him.

Janson scrambled sideways toward the opening in the door. He fired three more times, scored two hits that he was sure of.

Then someone grabbed his ankles and hauled. He was suddenly inside the hangar, looking at metal floor.

He turned to look up. "Thanks, Twelve."

"You're welcome."

He wriggled back up so that he could see through the partially open doorway. The troopers had not yet begun to advance again. He continued firing steadily, scoring hits against several targets; the others began to withdraw toward the comparative safety of the vehicles on the landing pad.

Grinder, looking over his datapad, plugged by standard interface into a communications interlock on the wall, said, "They're in the building.

Through the east doors."

Janson asked, "Is the corridor with the freight turbolift the only approach to us?"

"Yes."

"Who's there?"

"Six and Ten."

Janson frowned. Neither Runt nor Tyria was a true marksman. Then again, the approach to the freight corridor, from what he'd seen of Face's tape, was open and the corridor was short. It would become a killing ground if the enemy charged.

Kell and Wedge emerged from the turbolift shaft a full minute under Kell's margin.

To their left was one set of doors out of the corridor. A cargo hauler was parked before them; on either side of it were Runt and Tyria, firing through fresh laser blast holes in the doors.

To their right, the doors into the hangar were locked open; on the far wall, the big door leading outside showed a gap and a little night sky.

Janson and Piggy were there, firing at intervals. The door shuddered and moaned as return fire from outside hit it.

Grinder and Jesmin were both plugged into communications interlocks on the wall. "Are you all right?" Jesmin shouted.

"We can hear again," Kell said, "no need to shout. Is everyone accounted for?"

"Yes. But there are troops and TIE fighters on the ground outside."

Wedge and Kell moved into the hangar. Falynn was at the aft end of the cargo skiff; the bubble top was up and she was lounging on the control couch, fiddling with the controls. Kell said, "Three, can you reenable any of these other vehicles? In seconds, I mean, not minutes?"

She said, "Yes. Which ones do you want?"

"Any landspeeder that can be flown off autopilot or remote. Or even off a datacard plug-in."

She pulled her datapad from a pocket and pointed it at a flat-bodied XP-38 Landspeeder, so new its paint still gleamed. She hit a b.u.t.ton and the skimmer's console lit up; it rose a meter in the air and hovered, waiting. "Consider it reenabled."

"Brilliant. Twelve, move that over near the door. Program it to move straight out ten meters, turn ninety degrees to starboard, and run as fast as it can."

Piggy nodded. He jumped into the skimmer's pa.s.senger seat.

"What's the plan?" asked Wedge.

"Send out the skimmer as a lure. I expect the troopers and TIE fighters to fire on it. That'll draw their aim off the doors for a few seconds. We shoot out in the skiff and we can overrun one of the TIE fighters. That reduces the effective odds against us by nearly half. Then we only have to worry about the other TIE fighter."

Wedge smiled. "If we're fast enough that's not a worry. We're in a cargo skiff, remember?"

"Uh-huh?"

"With a cargo skiff's load lifters?"

Kell laughed.

"Six, Ten, fall back!" Kell waved them toward him.

Everyone but Runt. Tyria, and Piggy were already in the floating skiff.

Runt and Tyria abandoned the riddled door they were guarding. When they reached the skiff, the others hauled them over the rails.

"Hit it, Twelve."

The Gamorrean pilot slapped the control against the wall. The hangar door began to grind farther open, screeching where its now-deformed surface dragged across the adjacent wall. He ran to the floating skimmer, tapped a control on its console, then leaped up on the skiff and was aided over the rail.

The troopers outside began firing on the skimmer before it began moving, before the door was completely open. Two blasts. .h.i.t it, slagging the windscreen. Then Piggy's timer ran down. The skimmer moved forward onto the ferrocrete landing pad, executed an abrupt right turn, and accelerated.

Almost immediately the Wraiths heard the distinctive sound of TIE fighter lasers joining the barrage of hand-laser fire. Kell called, "There, go!"

Falynn put the skiff into motion, slewing at the last moment to bring the craft into the proper orientation to leave the hangar. The Wraiths knelt, each gripping the rail hard with one hand, keeping a blaster pistol ready with the other.

Outside, fifty meters away, two TIE fighters were on the ground flanking a parked personnel skimmer. Men all over the ground and both starfighters were firing away at the ruins of the landskimmer. Some of the infantry noticed the skiff's appearance, shouted, began firing on the Wraiths.

Falynn sent the skiff in a straight course toward the port-side TIE fighter. The Wraiths opened fire at the ground troops, keeping the troops pinned down.

The first TIE pilot apparently did not notice the skiff bearing down on him; the starfighter did not budge.

The skiff's bow hit it just above the forward viewport. The impact rolled the starfighter backward on its solar wing arrays, and Falynn brought the skiff's nose down as much as she could so the hull stayed in contact with the TIE's bulb-shaped c.o.c.kpit as the skiff pa.s.sed over. The skiff shuddered from the contact, and a moment later the Wraiths looked back past the stern to see the still-rolling TIE bouncing along behind them.

Falynn banked to starboard, a move that slewed the skiff's keel and nearly threw the port-side Wraiths over the rail. She brought the skiff in line with the second TIE.

This TIE fighter was already in motion, repulsorlifts kicking it up into the air, wheeling so it could bring its guns to bear on the skiff. Falynn gained alt.i.tude and kept the skiff's turn tight, not approaching the TIE fighter head-on, angling to pa.s.s it port side to port side.

The TIE fighter fired, a snap-shot that pa.s.sed the port rail and ignited some treetops forty meters away. Then the two vehicles were abreast, pa.s.sing less than a meter apart.

Wedge, on the port side, activated the skiff's port cargo loader and swung its armature out. The huge electromagnet hit the TIE fighter's port solar array and snagged it, yanking the starfighter along beside the skiff. The skiff shuddered but did not slow.

Falynn dropped a few meters' alt.i.tude and the TIE's solar arrays. .h.i.t the ferrocrete below, jarring the starfighter so that it looked to the Wraiths as though it were vibrating. Wedge could only imagine what was happening to the pilot within.

Falynn banked again, headed back toward the other TIE fighter. It lay on its back, one of the solar arrays bent so that it half covered the forward viewport. She glanced at Wedge.

"It still has repulsorlifts!" he shouted. "Take it!"

She nodded and came up alongside it, keeping to port of the half-wrecked fighter. Kell, on the starboard cargo loader, swung out his armature and grabbed the second TIE as they pa.s.sed.

Falynn kept her alt.i.tude down-dragging the twin fighters so they jerked and vibrated from continued contact with the landing pad-and headed straight for the verge of trees due south. When the skiff's prow was within twenty meters, she shouted, "Go go go," then gained alt.i.tude and banked to starboard.