Han proffered his blaster to Page.

"No one here'll think any the less of you."

Page shook his head.

"I know how important we were to Shimrra, and Malik Carr's going to show up on Coruscant empty-handed." He grinned. "He'll get his due from his own kind-unless, of course, he kills himself in dishonor beforehand."

A strike troop officer hurried into the hold.

"Enemy reinforcements coming out of hypers.p.a.ce. We need to move!"

The colonel looked baffled.

"So soon?"

"The Vong must have gotten off a distress call, sir."

"Have the transports docked?"

"One or two."

Han stepped forward.

"We can cram eighty or so aboard the Falcon." He looked at the colonel. "Can you take the rest?"

"We'll have to."

"Captain Page," Malik Carr called out. "I'll live to see you on a sacrificial pyre before Yuuzhan'tar completes a quarter orbit around its star."

Page approached him once more.

"On the off chance we do meet again, keep this thought tucked into that warped brain of yours: fifty of my people died because of you, and the next time I won't be nearly as charitable with you as I was here."

In a mad dance, Jaina circled the stricken Yuuzhan Vong carrier, dueling coralskippers with each dive and traverse. The battle roles had been reversed. Now starfighter squadrons were the defenders and skips the aggressors, surging forward to harry and engage at every opportunity.

Harona's Scimitar and Wes Janson's Yellow Aces were similarly deployed around carrier one. With several of the Peace Brigade freighters incapacitated by Alliance gunships, Blackmoon and the Dozen were flying escort for the rescue transports. Millennium Falcon had followed a strike troop gunship into the docking bay of the freighter tethered to carrier two, but almost an hour had pa.s.sed and neither ship had emerged.

A transport was on its way to docking, but had suddenly stopped, adding to Jaina's vague sense of unrest. She reached out for her mother, but all she felt in return was rushed activity and deep concern. In conversation with veterans of protracted wars, Jaina had been advised to accept that the final stage of any conflict was often the worst. More dislocating than the initial periods of surprise and chaos, and more dispiriting than the intermediate periods, after the deaths had begun to mount up and it could seem as if the killing might go on forever. But it was the end stage that was most dangerous-a period of improbable alliances and unexpected reversals, some owing to overconfidence, others born of fear and desperation.

Jaina gave scant attention to any of this, except during the lulls in battle, when her thoughts sought escape from the tableaux of fiery explosions and crippled ships. As the mynock flew, Bilbringi was almost a neighbor of Selvaris, and the recent battle there was almost emblematic of the odd pairings and reversals Jaina had been warned to expect. The operation had been the first since Esfandia that combined Alliance and Imperial elements, and the disabling of the HoloNet had been one of the war's biggest surprises yet. Now, with Luke, Mara, Jacen, and other Jedi incommunicado, she was waiting for the other boot to drop. She thought about her parents, and returned her gaze to the docking bay of the freighter.

There was still no sign of the Falcon. She was about to comm mission control for an update when the X-wing's tactical screens came alive with enemy blips.

"Heads up!" she said over the battle channel. "Vessels decanting from hypers.p.a.ce."

That was why the transports had stopped, Jaina told herself.

Everyone had been expecting reinforcements to show up, but not so soon.

She waited for the authenticators to display data on what the sensors had picked up.

"They appear to be coralskippers," Harona said. "Approaching from starward of Selvaris. I make it three stacked triangles of six skips."

Jaina shook her head. Coralskippers lacked the ability to travel through hypers.p.a.ce una.s.sisted.

"Scimitar Leader, that can't be right."

"Twin Suns One," Wes Janson said. "These blips don't match anything in the battle log."

"Taanab One, my instruments agree," Jaina commed. "We should have visual in a matter of seconds..."

What the long-range scanners showed made her sit up straighter in the X-wing's contoured seat. The fighters-if indeed that was what they were-were made up of three yorik coral triangles, joined apex to base.

The leading two triangles showed mica-like canopies, while the third and largest was flared at the rear and sported a long upcurving tail, perhaps to augment dovin basal impulsion, which in a coralskipper was often located in the nose. From the forward segments of the scaled fuselage sprouted six legs, three pairs to each side, veined in blue and tipped with launcher ports for plasma missiles. Twin Suns Three whistled in surprise.

"They look like Azuran stingcrawlers."

More like voxyn! Jaina thought.

"Close ranks and form up on me," she said quickly. "Anyone short on firepower to the center. Stick with your wingmates until we see what these things are capable of."

"Enemy is breaking formation," Harona announced. "Here they come!"

The formations of snarling skips surged forward with incredible speed, their s.e.xtets of launchers disgorging plasma in steady streams.

Deliberately, Jaina placed herself in the path of one projectile and was immediately sorry she had. Cappie shrieked in distress, and the X-wing's shields fell to 50 percent. She tumbled away from second and third projectiles, allowing time for the shields to recharge.

"All pilots, keep clear of these things. They pack a wallop!"

The warning did not come soon enough. The battle net grew frantic with exclamations.

"Twin Six and Seven are down!"

"Scimitar reporting four casualties!"

"Taanab Ten, pull out! Divert power to your shields!"

Jaina glanced over her right shoulder and saw Twin Suns Two fly apart. This can't be happening, she thought.

"Stingcrawlers have broken through our lines," Twin Suns Six said.

"They're going directly for the transports."

Jaina pulled hard on the yoke, climbing back toward carrier one at maximum boost.

"Twin Suns, disengage and regroup. Screen formation on my mark!"

She issued the command, and the remaining starfighters formed up once again. They chased the coralskippers flat out, wending through continuous volleys of incandescent fire.

"Scimitar is calling for backup at carrier one."

"Enemy fighters are taking up positions around our transports. We can't fire without risking collateral damage."

"All pilots, weapons on number one carrier are active! Repeat-"

The rest of Scimitar Three's words were erased by an agonized scream. Jaina hurtled into the fray, thumb pressed on the trigger, only to watch her stutterfire bursts disappear into the yawning mouths of enormous gravity wells fashioned by the skips' dovin basals.

Was the convoy a cleverly engineered ruse? she asked herself.

Disinformation to lure the Alliance into a trap? But that couldn't be. If so, the Yuuzhan Vong would have capital ships and a yammosk vessel. They would have struck before any of the prisoners had been rescued and transferred to the transports-Lowbacca growled a warning. Four blazing missiles had Jaina's name on them. She slalomed successfully through the first three, but the fourth nicked the port stabilizer and sent the X-wing into a rapid spin. She calmed herself and regained control, emerging from the spin in time to see a transport explode directly in front of her.

Sudden anguish kept her stunned for a moment; then she swerved away from the fragment cloud and went searching for the guilty skip. Kyp and Alema Rar sent a sudden alert to her through the Force. She rolled the X-wing onto its back. The Falcon had launched from the freighter's docking bay and was making fast for clear s.p.a.ce, a Galactic Alliance gunship right behind. Twisting free of engagements, four enemy fighters converged on the Falcon. Jaina tried to establish contact with her parents, but the battle channel was screeching with static.

Mom! The Falcon was jarred by missiles her parents either hadn't seen coming or were unable to avoid. In her mind's eye, Jaina could see Han taking the ship though a repertoire of evasive maneuvers. And yet the enemy pilots of the stingcrawler skips were clearly antic.i.p.ating the Falcon's every move.

Jaina, Alema, and Twin Eleven and Twelve flew to the freighter's rescue, battering the skips from behind, but the Yuuzhan Vong fighters refused to be distracted from their target. In a moment of blind rage, Jaina dropped her guard and was struck from starboard. Slewing helplessly, she watched Eleven and Twelve shatter. The enemy was on a killing spree.

"All flights, go to proton torpedoes!"

Brilliant orbs of energy streaked forward and disappeared. The stingcrawler skips' singularities were swallowing four times what a normal skip was capable of dealing with. Jaina flinched with each magma missile that hit the Falcon. The freighter's shields were holding, but the Falcon was literally rattling around inside them. Three skips accelerated, determined to overtake their quarry. Quad lasers spraying fire in all direction, the Falcon tipped up on her starboard side, only to take a devastating blow to the belly. One skip s ustained a broadside hit and went careening into a Peace Brigade ship, opening a ragged breach and sending the ship into a dizzying rollover.

The Falcon and the gunship were almost clear enough to go to hypers.p.a.ce. Jaina imagined herself in the outrigger c.o.c.kpit, throwing switches and actuators, pushing the hypers.p.a.ce lever forward. The sometimes unreliable navicomputer counting down before the ship could make the jump to lightspeed...

Hurry, she said to herself. Hurry!

The detonation nearly threw Leia out of her seat harness. Han's hands were white-knuckled on the yoke. Cinched into the c.o.c.kpit's high-backed rear chairs, Cracken and Page extended their arms to keep themselves upright. The other rescued officers were packed into the forward cabin and wherever else they could fit.

"How much more of this can the Falcon take?" Page asked.

"As much as she needs to," Han growled, without meaning to.

Leia thought she heard uncertainty beneath the bl.u.s.ter. Han adjusted his headset mike.

"Cakhmaim, Meewalh, don't ease up on those guns! I don't care if they are overheating! Right now they're the only things keeping those skips away from us!"

Han sent the Falcon on edge to evade a trio of enemy ships, escaping with only a bone-rattling hit to the freighter's midsection.

Streaking past the wraparound viewport flew two dual-piloted coralskippers. Han's jaw dropped slightly and he looked over his shoulder at Cracken.

"Pash, what kind of skips are those? I've never seen anything like them. Have you guys seen anything like them?"

Cracken shook his head.

"Never too late in the game for surprise, is it?" Page said.

Han blew out his breath.

"Guess not."

The m.u.f.fled report of an explosion reached the c.o.c.kpit from aft.

"That didn't sound good," Leia said.

Han's eyes darted to the display screens, then widened.

"It's worse than it sounded. But we're not done yet."

He reached forward to toggle switches, reallocating power to the rear shields.

"Can we make lightspeed?" Cracken asked.

"While I have a breath in me."

Away to starboard, punched by an enemy fighter, a Peace Brigade freighter cracked open, belching fire, atmosphere, and a whirlwind of debris. Han pounded the console with his fist.

"Nice shooting, Cakhmaim." He paused, then said, "All right, all right, the kill's yours, Meewalh."

He pivoted in his chair and smiled lopsidedly.

"They think this is some kind of-"

The c.o.c.kpit turned blinding white. Han's words swirled to nothingness, and time slowed for an indeterminate period. A second explosion of intense light followed. A wave of concussive sound barreled into the c.o.c.kpit through the sliding hatch, and Leia's ears popped. C-3PO let out a wail from somewhere aft.

"Shields are down to forty percent," she said when she could.

Han could scarcely hear her. He reached over his left shoulder, his hand knowing precisely where to go, like that of a musician at a keyboard. Finished with whatever adjustments he had made, he smiled for show. Leia heard him mumble, "Come on, baby, hold together just twenty seconds more..." He caught her watching him. "Don't worry."

She shrugged.

"Who's worrying?"

The Falcon took her worst hit yet. A tangle of blue energy danced over the navicomputer. A single rivulet of sweat coursed from Han's hairline to his set jaw. Leia faced forward, staring straight ahead.

"Now I'm worried."

Without looking at her, Han counted down.

"Ten, nine, eight..."

"... seven, six, five, four-"

Three was on the tip of Jaina's tongue when the Falcon was. .h.i.t hard from behind, the force of the enemy projectiles practically kicking the freighter forward. The ion drives failed for an instant and pieces flew from the stern, one of them streaking across the nose of Jaina's X-wing.

Her mother's distress was palpable. Then the Falcon was gone, propelled into hypers.p.a.ce, but with four enemy skips following suit. As the Yuuzhan Vong had first demonstrated at the Eclipse base, years earlier, they were capable of tracking ships through hypers.p.a.ce by means of a self-heating, vacuum-hardened fungus that forced tachyons from a ship in faster-than-light transit.

"All pilots, did anyone get a bearing on the Falcon?"

"Negative, Twin One," came a chorus of replies.