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Tycho grinned and extended his hand. “May the Force be with you, Wedge.”

Wedge shook it. “If it was, how would I ever know?”

Kasdakh Bhul said, “Lusankya is leaving orbit. We have reports that fighters are leaving her belly and escorting her.”

Czulkang Lah frowned. “Did you not tell me earlier that all her fighters were at ground level, defending the infidel base?”

“Yes, Czulkang Lah.”

“Well?”

“It was our Peace Brigade advisers who told us this, based on their listening to the talk between their fighters and their triangle ships.”

“So there was lying in that talk.”

“That is my opinion.”

“Have those advisers stand by on one of our ships. Kill one of them for this mistake. Every time a new mistake of this sort costs us lives, kill another.”

“It shall be done.” Kasdakh Bhul returned to studying the blaze bug niche and listening to the villips on the wall. He then turned back to the commander. “The red triangle ship is now breaking from orbit.”

“Good. That will be easy prey; she carries few weapons.” Czulkang Lah gestured to get the attention of his fleet commander. “Dispatch two mataloks to eliminate that atrocity.”

“It shall be done.”

Lusankya turned with a slow awkwardness that no Star Destroyer commander would have tolerated from a chief pilot. Her maneuver was too great, in fact, and once her gradual port-side turn was completed, her nose drifted a few degrees back to starboard before the mammoth vessel was correctly lined up.

Then her thrusters engaged and she began a ponderous acceleration straight toward the Domain Hul worldship.

“Confirmed count, two hundred and ten coralskippers,” Danni said. “A couple of those gravitic anomalies in their wake. Time to interception, three minutes.”

Luke said, “All squadrons, all squadrons, reverse course. Head back toward our pursuit and initiate Stage Two on a one-minute countdown.” He put his X-wing into a tight loop. “Beginning countdown …” His finger hovered over the transmit button. “Now.”

The two Yuuzhan Vong cruiser analogs approached the Errant Venture from opposite angles.

The Errant Venture, built as an Imperial Star Destroyer, captured by smuggler Booster Terrik, and converted into his own private gambling parlor and mobile hotel, was, unlike other ships of her class, painted a screaming red from bow to stern. The color was alleviated only by lingering signs of battle damage and running lights. Recently the home of the Jedi children, she was known to be an easy mark; the Yuuzhan Vong had not bothered with her much because she posed them no threat, spent much of her recent time running missions out of the Pyria system, and was in general a far less significant target than the biotics base or the other New Republic capital ships.

But now her time had come, and as the mataloks closed on her, the pitifully few defensive batteries she had opened up, peppering the enemy vessels with insignificant spikes of pain.

The Yuuzhan Vong commanders returned fire, but paced their plasma cannons, waiting for a distance that would allow them to unleash true pain on the offensive red triangle. Then, in the moment before they reached the optimum distance, Errant Venture’s other weapons opened up. As the Imperial Star Destroyer rotated to bring each matalok within sight of the greatest possible number of weapons, thirty turbolaser batteries fired at each target, turning the hull of each cruiser analog into a superheated, explosive ruin.

In a matter of seconds, the two mataloks were gone, an expanding cloud of gas and rubble the only sign they had ever been there. Their commanders would never know the deception performed against them—how, as Lusankya suffered more and more battle damage, many of her undamaged turbolasers and ion cannons were transferred to the other capital ships in the fleet, making Lusankya a little-armed shell of a Destroyer, keeping the others at full destructive power.

Errant Venture continued on her course until the gravity well of Borleias no longer gripped her with any significant