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Jacen raced after her.

RELLIDIR, TRALUS

More missiles poured into the downtown area that had surrounded the Center for the Performing Arts. The spotter droids on the ground didn’t direct them to the crater that had been the Galactic Alliance beachhead. Instead, they sent the missiles toward enemies in the skies—the starfighters of the Galactic Alliance.

Han rose toward one of them, the X-wing whose transponder signaled TRAGOF1103, Tralus Ground Occupation Forces Number 1103, on frequency 22NF07.

His progress was not easy, fast, or safe. The skies were still cluttered with Galactic Alliance starfighters, and a surprising number of them seemed intent on shooting him down. They dived at him and rose toward him, firing lasers; a vengeful interceptor pilot even tried to ram him, a tactic that would have constituted suicide had Han not side-slipped and allowed the tiny, high-speed fighter to roar through the space he had just occupied.

Han’s intent was simple: get close enough to his daughter that missiles chasing her would abort, would turn away to find new targets.

In the few moments he had to watch her, moments when he wasn’t ducking incoming laserfire, he saw that she was doing pretty well on her own. Her X-wing, moving higher and higher in the sky, dipped and fluttered, firing its own lasers at Corellian attack fighters and Vigilance Interceptors. Those starfighters tended to veer away, smoking, or detonate, leaving oddly peaceful and colorful clouds in the sky.

Missiles roared toward her from the front; she side-slipped and they missed, or fired her lasers and they detonated, eliminating the missiles around them in an explosive act of fratricide. Missiles roared toward her from the side, the back; she eluded them, now rising, now dipping, an indestructible leaf caught in a speed-of-sound wind, and the missiles shot past.

Sometimes another X-wing rode at her wing, supporting her tactics with movements that were eerie in their instantaneous adjustment, in their perfect complementarities.

Once a trio of missiles roaring toward her from the starboard side detonated two hundred meters from her X-wing for no reason Han could see. Had they hit shrapnel? Had Jaina destroyed them with a flip of her hand and a Force technique? Han didn’t know.

He did realize two things. The first was that as fast as he climbed, as fast as he could afford to climb while being pestered by enemy pilots, she was rising faster. The second was a more painful realization, which settled on him like a weighted net wrapping itself around a tired swimmer:

She didn’t need him.

She was a brilliant pilot with a brilliant wingman. She was older than Han had been when he’d pitted the Millennium Falcon against pilots from the first Death Star, and was more experienced. Part Han, part Leia, and all herself, she dominated the air around her.

Mixed in his heart were pride and pain in the discovery that she had outgrown him.

Green laserfire flashed from the vicinity of his starboard hull and an incoming Howlrunner exploded. Snapped back to the here and now, Han looked to starboard and port, realized that he was flanked by two attack fighters on either side, and almost jumped out of his seat.

But they were green on his sensor board—friendlies.

Wedge’s voice was in his ears and Han realized it had been there for some time. “What was that, uh, One?”

“We have escorts out of the combat zone,” Wedge said. “You should be picking yours up now.”

“They’re here.”

“We have to leave the zone, Two. The enemy still has numerical superiority, and we’re not in fighters. Also, I think the really nimble X-wing up top is your daughter. It would be a karking shame to be shot down by your own daughter, wouldn’t it?”

Han laughed. It was a brittle noise. “It sure would. All right, lead me out of here. Speaking of daughters, I need to talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

“Later, back at base.”

“Whatever you say.”

Across long minutes, the battle over Rellidir moved farther and farther away from downtown. The incoming missiles were spent against the Center for the Performing