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Charat Kraal, commanding one of the squadrons racing toward the pipefighters and their heretical crystal, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. All they had to do was keep the enemy fighters in this region of space long enough for the support mines to reach this area, and the mines assigned to Jaina Solo’s X-wing would grab her, bring her into Charat Kraal’s grasp.

Her starfighter was among the cloud of oncoming craft. The specially engineered auxiliary dovin basal on his coralskipper could sense that craft’s specific gravitic signature, and it communicated its excitement to Charat Kraal as a continuous buzz through his cognition hood.

The oncoming starfighters had divided into squadron units and were mere moments from reaching maximum firing distance. Charat Kraal selected a target within Jaina’s squadron, the craft with the claw-shaped extensions.

Then all the oncoming craft vanished.

Charat Kraal blinked, then focused his attention on his second dovin basal. The question he asked it was wordless, but understood: Where is the vehicle?

But the dovin basal didn’t know.

The four vehicles that the infidels called pipefighters were still ahead in the distance, however. Shaken and confused, Charat Kraal oriented toward them and kept up the pursuit, as did the others of his mighty coralskipper force.

Soon, they pulled within firing range of the flying blasphemies. Charat Kraal’s contempt grew as the foremost coralskippers of his formation began firing. The pipefighters did not bother to maneuver. Perhaps their pilots were too inexperienced, too frightened.

Charat Kraal willed that thought away. It made no sense. Even the most inexperienced pilot could try to maneuver out of the line of fire, and these didn’t. One by one, the four vehicles detonated under the plasma cannons of their pursuers, the crystal-bearing vehicle last.

The thought came hard to Charat Kraal: Were they even occupied by the living? Or could they have been abominations controlled by other abominations?

Kasdakh Bhul looked inconvenienced at having to bring incomprehensible news to Czulkang Lah. “The coralskippers pursuing the lambent fighters report that all the infidels’ protective fighters have disappeared.”

“Disappeared. Fled?”

“No, it seemed to be an orderly jump into darkspace. And there is more.”

“Tell me.”

“The mataloks sent to destroy the red triangle ship are gone, as is the red triangle ship.”

“All destroyed? It put up an impressive battle for something so ill equipped.”

“Unknown. The matalok commanders did not report their target putting up a fierce struggle.”

Czulkang Lah scowled, but turned his anger away from Kasdakh Bhul. The warrior did not have much intelligence to offer, but it did require courage to deliver unhappy news to a senior officer.

And this was unhappy news. Mysteries were piling up. He didn’t like mysteries. They meant that he had not correctly interpreted every variable.

And that was one way to lose an engagement.

Once free of Borleias’s gravity well, Lusankya fired off her hyperdrive, a microjump that left her escort screen of starfighters behind. The jump took her halfway across the solar system before a dovin basal mine dragged her back into realspace.

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