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“Blackmoon Leader copies.” Luke checked his sensor and comm boards. The Blackmoons were in pretty bad shape, down to about half strength, though most of his losses were from damage to and withdrawal of starfighters rather than their destruction. He also read that the mysterious Blackmoon Eleven was off Borleias and engaged with what looked like an entire squad of coralskippers.

He couldn’t let that be his problem right now. “I’m your spotter,” he said. “Two, assume control of the squadron.”

Mara said, “Negative on that. I’m your wing.”

He sighed, but knew better than to waste time by arguing. “Correction, Blackmoon Ten, take command.”

“Ten copies.”

“Leader’s away.” Luke kicked in his thrusters and roared straight toward the Yuuzhan Vong worldship, away from his reinforcements, away from everyone but Mara.

Charat Kraal sped along in Jaina Solo’s wake, leaving his other pilots behind through sheer piloting skill. Kilometer by kilometer he gained on her and knew, at last, that he was a better pilot than this infidel.

All he had to do was get in range, disable her abomination-craft, and wait for a capture ship to assist him.

The tiny gleam he could only see in his cognition hood, the one that indicated Jaina Solo’s position, grew to a size indicating that he should be able to make out some details of the X-wing. But he could not; he could only see thruster emission from one engine. Yet it could not be moving so fast with three-quarters of its power gone.

His coralskipper’s gravitic sensors created the illusion that space itself was rippling in the distance ahead of Jaina Solo, the visual image of a dovin basal mine. She seemed to be aimed almost directly at it.

Charat Kraal smiled. Her intention was clear—take a close pass by the mine, using its gravitational attraction to sling her around and accelerate her beyond Charat Kraal’s ability to overtake.

But it would not work that way. The mine would detect her specific graviational signature, recognize her as a most-wanted target, and reach out to strip her shields, perhaps annihilating her engines in the process.

He had her. He had won.

Her vehicle whipped around the dovin basal mine and came straight back at him. The turn was so abrupt that no living thing could have survived it, so unexpected that Charat Kraal sat stunned for a long, deadly moment.

His surprise communicated itself to the coralskipper, which waited for instructions—dodge? Defend with voids? Open fire?

And when Charat Kraal finally saw his target, made it out for what it was—a missile, unarmed, faster than any starfighter or coralskipper when it chose to be—he was only two-tenths of a second from impact.

Harrar’s pilot turned to the priest. “Jaina Solo is destroyed. It appears that Charat Kraal rammed her.”

Harrar shook his head. “You must be mistaken.”

“I think not. I witnessed the two images merge. There was energy released. Both images are gone.” The pilot pulled his cognition hood back on … and then stiffened.

“Well?”

“You … were correct. Jaina Solo is not where I thought she was. Not in the minefield at all. She is in the vicinity of the worldship.”

“And Charat Kraal?”

“Still dead.”

Eldo Davip sat alone at the control console of Lusankya, sweat dripping from his face despite the efforts of the chamber’s cooling system to keep him comfortable.

He wasn’t on the Super Star Destroyer’s bridge. That chamber, once brilliantly clean and huge enough for snub-fighters to land in, was destroyed; he’d seen the holocam image of a dying coralskipper corkscrewing its way into the front viewports, crashing through, annihilating everything there.

But no one had been there, no officers, no droids. It had been left lit as bait, though no ship’s controls operated there.

All ship’s controls were routed here, to an auxiliary bridge deep in the vessel’s stern, a place where the command crew could operate if the stern were gone or the vessel somehow captured. Even this small chamber seemed empty and strange now; Davip was the only person left. Everywhere