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Sometimes he felt it would never end.

* * *

The A-wings emerged from hyperspace on the fringes of the asteroid belt, and suddenly it seemed that a giant invisible fist had hurled a handful of crushed rocks at him. The tracker on Durga’s ship had given them the exact location deep in the heart of the rubble-strewn danger zone, but it offered no safe path to follow.

Madine risked a burst of comm traffic tightly focused to the two craft paralleling him. “Trandia,” he said, “take the lead. Thread the needle. Find a way through these rocks so we can get to the construction site and see what’s going on there.”

“Yes, sir,” Trandia said, her voice bubbling with exuberance at being selected. He would let Korenn lead the flight back out.

Trandia’s A-wing shot through the clusters of asteroids, arcing in tight curves and accelerating through openings created by stony bodies drifting apart. Her rear engines glowed blue-white as she increased speed. Madine and Korenn kept pace with her, locked on and following her tortuous route.

Madine admired Trandia’s flying as her A-wing battered its way through the space-borne pebbles. Her forward shields glowed faintly as she increased power. Madine hated to break comm silence again, but he opened another channel. “Trandia, no need to impress me. Be careful.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” she said.

Before Madine could say anything else, though, Korenn suddenly jerked his A-wing and dropped back. “Sir,” his voice crackled with static, “I’ve been hit by a small piece of debris that penetrated my rear shields.”

“Trandia,” Madine snapped, “throttle down. Korenn, give me a status report. How much damage?”

“Partial engine loss,” the young pilot said, and as Madine looked through the cockpit window he saw sizzles of blue lightning around the engine banks of Korenn’s A-wing. More than minor damage: the core was breached.

“Korenn, listen to me—” Madine said, his heart pounding. The crippled A-wing slung to one side out of control and spun as the asteroids continued to hammer around them like a giant grinding machine.

“Loss of altitude control,” Korenn said in a rising voice. “I can’t stabilize!”

“Korenn!” Trandia shouted. Her A-wing swung around.

“Pull up, pull up!” Madine shouted.

Trandia zoomed toward her companion. Madine didn’t know what she expected to do, but before she could reach him, Korenn’s A-wing slammed into a jagged shard of rock. His engine core buckled. The ship erupted in an aftershower of fire.

Trandia cruised low over the still-smoldering wreckage on the surface of the large asteroid; the detonation had flung hull plating and slagged components into orbit.

“Checking for survivors, sir,” Trandia said, her voice strained close to the breaking point.

Though Madine knew it was hopeless, he allowed her a few moments to cruise over the spinning rock until she brought her ship close to his again.

“Nothing to report, sir,” she said. Her voice was bleak.

“I know,” Madine said. “But we have to proceed.”

“It’s my fault, sir,” Trandia said. She sounded as if she were begging.

“And it’s my fault for ordering you to take the lead,” Madine said. “And the Chief of State’s fault for ordering the mission in the first place, and the Hutts’ fault for building the weapon at all—and so on, and so on. We could spend a great deal of time assigning an endless chain of blame—but I’d rather accomplish our mission. Wouldn’t you?”

Trandia took a long moment to respond. “Yes, sir,” she said finally.

They continued slowly, nearing the heart of the asteroid belt. Edging forward with low engine power, their running lamps off, they came at last upon the spangle of lights at the construction site.

Madine set his course and transmitted a comparable trajectory to Trandia’s A-wing. Once locked into the appropriate path, they shut down their engines and drifted along, just like other hunks of space wreckage.

With dry eyes and an intent stare, Madine watched the construction site approach with infinite