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By Root 963 0

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 bay, 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 Mothma, Blackmoon Eleven to Mon 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