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Yassat glared, but didn’t respond.

“Where have you run into Lord Nyax?” Luke asked.

Yassat pointed northwest, precisely in the direction where Luke and the other Force-sensitives had felt the twinge. “That way. Near the old government center. It’s thick with Vong compared to here, but full of interesting salvage.”

“We need to look at that,” Luke said. He addressed Yassat: “Care to come with us? To guide us?”

Tenga shook her head. “Not unless you leave us this one,” she indicated Bhindi, “in trade.”

But Yassat shook his head. “Prowl around with a big, noisy party when there are Vong hunters about? No. Kill me now, instead. It’d be less painful.”

Luke shrugged. “We’ll be back, then.”

Yassat offered him a look of sympathy. “No, you won’t.”

Borleias

Jaina stood up, her bedsheet whirling away from her, and lurched to her closet without knowing why. The sun Pyria was just now climbing above the horizon, so she had been in bed for perhaps three hours.

The roaring in her ears resolved itself into an alarm. Yuuzhan Vong were coming. She heard the roar of thrusters from whichever squadrons were at the ready—it would be Blackmoon at this hour.

Jag was waiting for her in the hallway—the special, secured hall of the biotics building reserved for the pilots of Twin Suns Squadron. Other doors were sliding open. Piggy saBinring, struggling to fasten the seal of his pilot’s suit over his expansive Gamorrean stomach, emerged.

“What’s our objective?” Jaina asked. Jag held out a datapad for her to look at, but her eyes wouldn’t focus on it. She irritably waved it away.

“It looks like an assault on this location,” Jag synopsized. “Flying vehicles only, no sign of ground troops. Lusankya’s squadrons have some of the enemy forces engaged in orbit. More will be here in moments.”

There was an explosion, not far away, as incoming fire hit the shields that protected the biotics facility. All the transparisteel viewports on the west face of the building rattled.

“Correction,” Jag said. “They’ll be here now.”

“Let’s move.” Jaina led her half-dressed, half-awake squadron to their turbolift.

Corran Horn, pilot and Jedi Knight, flying as Rogue Nine, activated his repulsors and smoothly lifted off the ferrocrete of Rogue Squadron’s new docking bay, up through a gap where, moments before, the ceiling had been; the building’s roof was still cantilevering out of the way. The altitude gave him a better look at the conflict—Yuuzhan Vong coral ships, the equivalent of light cruisers, hovered in the distance both east and west, protected by screens of coralskippers, and launched barrages of plasma at the biotics building and its outbuildings. So far, the base’s shields, removed not that long before from faltering New Republic capital ships, were holding up well against the assault. “Come on, Leth.”

“Pick, pick, pick.” Leth Liav’s X-wing rose up beside Corran’s. Leth, a Sullustan female, had been a fighter pilot before being shot down and captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. Placed in an environment bubble and launched through space toward Borleias’s atmosphere in a show of Yuuzhan Vong cruelty, she and several of her fellows had been saved by some fancy flying on the part of Twin Suns Squadron. Corran doubted that, in better times, she would ever have qualified for the famed Rogue Squadron, but here, with attrition high and options few, she’d been welcomed.

“Leader to squad, less chatter, please.” Colonel Darklighter sounded as businesslike as ever. “Indicate readiness. Leader is ready. Two?”

“Two ready.”

“Three?”

As the roll call continued, the third member of Corran’s shield trio, Dakorse Teep, rose into position. “Rogue Seven, all green.”

Corran grimaced. In Teep’s case, green didn’t just refer to the condition of his engines. Teep was a teenager who should have been palling around on the playground with Corran’s son Valin, only a few years Teep’s junior. Corran heard Leth announce “Eight, four lit and ready,” then he said, “Nine, optimum.”

He was the last one to call in readiness. Rogue Squadron was reduced to nine members now, three shield