This wasn't an unexpected turn of events. Her crew knew it would happen, though not precisely where. In terms of stellar distances, she was not far now from the Domain Hul worldship commanded by Czulkang Lah, but it was not likely that she would be able to make another jump to get closer; the space between this point and that was doubtless thick with dovin basal mines.

Her crew immediately transmitted a signal on the fleet frequency.

It said, in effect, I'm here.

Though she'd been built to carry a crew of more than a quarter million, not including ground troops, things had changed. There were no weapon batteries to operate. Life-support systems were shut down over most of the ship. Communications were restricted to a few comm channels.

Shields and a few other critical systems were largely governed now by droids taken apart and then reassembled straight into system relay points. No one monitored fuel expenditure, thruster heat conditions, stores, supplies.

She now carried a crew of one.

A minute later, the squadrons that had just abandoned the pipefighters appeared in her wake, yanked out of hyperspace by the same dovin basal mine. They turned, moving up and around Lusankya, a protective screen. And coralskipper squadrons began moving against them.

The Millennium Falcon was not among the vehicles protecting Lusankya. Instead, the transport dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of one of the thickest of the dovin basal minefields, the one on the primary arrival vector from Coruscant space.

"I don't read any coralskippers," Leia said.

"Good! Anyone for sabacc?"

Leia gave him a look.

"You know I'm kidding. Ready the grav decoys."

Leia flipped the series of switches on the weapons board before her. It had been a single concussion missile power-up sequence switch, but it had, in the last few days, been temporarily replaced. "Five live,"

she said.

"Fire one."

She returned the first switch to its down position. The Falcon rattled slightly as a missile launched from the concussion missile tube.

Leia watched it on the sensor board. It roared into the middle of the minefield, then slowly turned toward the distant engagement zone. It moved far more slowly than a missile should.

On the board, the wire-frame images indicating points in space where gravity was distorted remained constant. except in one area. The wire frame wrinkled there, and the distortion moved, at first slowly and then with increasing speed, in the missile's wake.

She smiled. "It's taking the bait."

The bait was an instrument package that used the Jaina Solo-developed technique of gravitic signature simulation. The missile she'd fired carried with it the exact gravitic signature of the Millennium Falcon as did the other four missiles the Falcon held ready.

"Fire two."

"You really like sounding military, don't you?"

Han grinned. "Only when I'm giving orders."

"Second missile is away."

SEVENTEEN.

Wedge watched on the monitors as Lusankya's star-fighters screamed back down into the atmosphere, then began escorting the last personnel transports up. With the transports was a small, private yacht, a converted blastboat that carried Wolam Tser, Tam Elgrin, and a boy named Tarc. Wedge wished them success in staying away from the Yuuzhan Vong-now, and forever.

Iella stood by the door, waiting. Other than Wedge, she was the last person in the biotics building's operations center. "You can't do much more here, Wedge. Time to go."

"Not quite yet. As long as there's a chance their Peace Brigade friends are 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 would 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.