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Every few moments, another shudder racked Lusankya and the lights momentarily dimmed. Red showed on the screens of every diagnostics terminal, indicating that the systems they monitored were destroyed or nonfunctional. The only exceptions were the systems Davip’s own terminal controlled: main thrusters, gravitic sensors, localized life support, localized power.

He spared a glance for the door at the back of the chamber. Newly installed, it was a crude plate of armor that would lift out of the way—once—and give him access to the starfighter that lay beyond. The starfighter was already pointed along the shaft that led to Lusankya’s stern. It was a way out for him … assuming that the damage the Star Destroyer was taking didn’t collapse the shaft, didn’t ruin the starfighter. If it did, he was dead.

Well, dead or alive, he was going to finish this fight with a bang. He returned his attention to the sensors, to the large signal that indicated the Yuuzhan Vong worldship ahead.

* * *

Wedge accelerated away from the Ammuud Swooper and toward the oncoming squadron of coralskippers. His sensors showed two eager skip pilots moving out in front of the others, the better to engage him first. He expected Ammuud Swooper to turn tail, dive back into the atmosphere, and try to find a safer exit vector, but the freighter came stolidly on in his wake. The reason why was soon evident: coralskippers from the vicinity of the biotics building site were now climbing after them.

There was nowhere to run.

In moments, the lead skips came into visual range. They separated and began launching plasma his way—all but daring him to fly between them, to try to persuade them to fire on one another by accident.

Wedge smiled mirthlessly. A novice pilot might try that very thing, but would find his shields stripped by a deft use of the coralskippers’ voids. Without shields, his X-wing would be easy pickings for the skips. Instead, he veered to starboard, passing on the outward side of the skip in that direction, firing stuttering lasers at that craft until his weapons could no longer depress to hit it. He saw his shields flare as a bit of plasma hit them and was deflected, but his diagnostics didn’t indicate a direct hit.

Then he was past the two lead coralskippers. They turned to follow. The oncoming ten also vectored as if to head him off, but they weren’t making the kind of speed the lead coralskippers were.

Ammuud Swooper maintained her original course, and none of the coralskippers remained directly in her path. Wedge frowned at the sensor board. Why?

He increased the angle of his starboard turn. The two coralskippers continued to accelerate in his wake. The other ten turned so that their course paralleled his, pacing him instead of intercepting him.

That was it. At least one of the lead skips had to be the squadron commander. He wanted a duel. His pilots wanted to watch. They figured the commander could finish Wedge off, then they could catch up to Ammuud Swooper before the freighter could get free of Borleias’s mass shadow.

Well, it wasn’t going to work that way.

Wedge veered toward the pacing coralskippers, maneuvering so unexpectedly that the skips on his tail took an extra moment to turn after him. The maneuver was harsh enough to cause Wedge’s sight to gray out just a little—he could see his vision contract, as though he were flying into a tunnel, but he shook his head as he straightened out his course and his vision returned to normal. He began firing into the midst of the ten skips, and, as he’d hoped, there was no immediate return fire: the squadron leader had doubtless instructed his pilots not to interfere, that Wedge was his alone to kill.

Wedge sprayed his stutterfire over the flank of one skip, then, as he gauged the speed with which its void intercepted the laser, switched to quad link for a harder punch. His shot, beautifully placed, dropped between the defensive voids and hulled the skip. It detonated into the small, grisly cloud characteristic of a dying coralskipper.