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As he set a course to take him to a formation of allied starfighters, he tried to stop shaking.

But he couldn’t.

Coming around the far side of the worldship, Luke and Mara saw Lusankya dive into the worldship’s surface. It seemed to Luke that a ripple spread out from the point of impact, either a shock wave or an animal contraction of pain.

The Super Star Destroyer, her kinetic energy scarcely slowed by the impact, continued to plow into the worldship. Hundred-meter-long remnants of the ship’s superstructure sheared off from the solid core, but that core plunged inexorably deeper into the worldship.

In moments, as the orbit of the two Jedi brought them closer to the impact zone, Lusankya’s core was swallowed by the worldship, her superstructure scraped off and left behind, mountain-high, on the worldship’s surface.

Then the surface of the worldship shuddered. Luke knew what that meant. Eight or more kilometers below the surface, the spearpoint of the core had exploded. Then the next hundred-meter section behind it would detonate, then the one behind that, a chain of destruction reaching all the way back to what had once been Lusankya’s stern.

As they passed over the Super Star Destroyer’s wreckage, the mountain of scrap leapt skyward, propelled by a volcanolike eruption from beneath the surface as the last of Lusankya’s core sections detonated. The flash from the explosion was brilliant and the force of the explosion jetted into the sky, looking for one brief moment like a red-orange lightsaber blade kilometers in length.

The surface of the worldship heaved. Great jagged cracks flowing with a red-black substance Luke did not care to contemplate spread out from Lusankya’s impact point as the worldship began to die.

* * *

His ship protected by the remains of Charat Kraal’s special operations group, Harrar watched the crash and detonation. He could feel blood drain from his face, could feel the strength of his legs begin to fail. He sat heavily in the captain’s seat, wordless.

“The infidels appear to be grouping again,” his pilot said. “Shall we join these coralskippers in a counterattack?”

“What’s the point?” Harrar whispered. “Take us back to Coruscant. Take us back where we can look on victory instead of disaster.”

On his next spin, Wedge saw the squadron of skips turn back toward him. He aimed and fired after them, a final, defiant gesture, but his weapon failed to discharge.

On his next spin, he could see the incoming skips but, beyond them, witnessed the brilliant flash of light that heralded Lusankya’s demise. “I’m not exactly going to miss you,” he said.

The incoming coralskippers opened fire. At this range, only one of the plasma projectiles hit; Wedge felt it crash into and through the X-wing’s stern, and suddenly he was spinning even faster, watching the stars rotate by at bewildering speed.

Then things became more complicated. Unable to quite resolve the picture outside his canopy into a comprehensible one, growing dizzier by the minute, Wedge thought he saw red lasers flashing among the orange-red plasma balls. He was certain he saw one coralskipper detonate, then two.

There were E-wings and X-wings near him, the latter painted in the standard New Republic colors, and his comlink crackled to life—a woman’s voice, fading in and out: “Blackmoon Ten … Eleven. Are … with us?”

He activated his jury-rigged comm board. “Blackmoon Ten, this is Blackmoon Eleven. That’s a copy. Still here, but about to throw up.”

“Hold on … shuttle. It’ll be here … minutes.”

Then there was a new voice, stronger because the broadcasting X-wing hovered only fifty meters away. Wedge recognized the voice as Gavin Darklighter’s. “Blackmoon Eleven, what did you think you were doing going after an entire squadron?”

“My job.”

“That’s ‘My job, sir.’ ”

Wedge grinned. “My job, sir.”

“Son, if you develop piloting skills in proportion to your nerve, someday they’ll call you the greatest pilot of all time.”

Gavin, baffled, stared down at his comm board. “Blackmoon Eleven?