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He smiled at her. “Wait, where’s my traditional putdown? You’re going soft, Jade.”

“Sure I am.” She turned, smiled over her shoulder at him, and walked with a jaunty stride back to her X-wing.

Luke looked around at his pilots. “Hardpoint Squadron,” he said, “mount up.”

chapter nine

CORONET, CORELLIA

Kolir gestured down the avenue, then glanced at the chrono embedded at the snap closure of her bag. “Right on time,” she said.

The other Jedi turned to look. In the middle distance, approaching at a high rate of speed even for Corellian drivers, was a convoy of closed-canopy airspeeders. The two in front and two in back were CorSec vehicles painted in brown and burnt orange, and warning lights of the same color flashed atop their forward viewports. The middle vehicle was a somber crimson, its viewports tinted to prevent those outside from viewing whoever might be inside.

“Jedi,” Jaina said, “meet Aidel Saxan, Prime Minister of the Five Worlds. Aidel, meet your captors. Thann, alert Control that we’ve made visual contact. It’s on.”

The convoy, floating in from above the fluid streams of groundspeeder traffic, merged with the incoming stream and slowed to the groundspeeder travel rate as it neared the Jedi. Kolir stretched the carry-straps of her bag and then stepped into them, allowing them to shrink around her waist, transforming the bag into a pouch. She reached into it and, making no show of the motion, drew out her silvery lightsaber.

The convoy was now meters away and still closing, though it had slowed to make a left-hand turn over cross-traffic into the gate entrance to the residence compound. “Just like we practiced it,” Jaina said. “Three—two—one—Now!”

In unison, the four Jedi leapt up and over the cross-traffic, each arcing toward one of the speeders in the convoy.

Jaina whipped off her traveler’s robe as she leapt, leaving her dressed in a close-fitting black jumpsuit. Her lightsaber was at her belt when the robe flew away, in her hand before she cleared the lane of cross-traffic groundspeeders, and lit as she came down on the forward portion of the lead CorSec vehicle. She plunged its glowing blade into the metal surface beneath her and wrenched it around, cutting through the vehicle’s engine compartment. There was a pop, and the speeder immediately began to lose speed and altitude.

The next CorSec speeder in line angled upward and came on straight over Jaina’s speeder, trying for a close flyover that would hammer Jaina clean off and possibly kill her. She wrenched herself down, flat onto her speeder’s hood, and lashed up with her lightsaber as the pursuer passed overhead. Her blade sliced into its bottom armor, plowing through the engine compartment and dragging partway back into the passenger compartment, straight down the center. This speeder didn’t pop—it coughed, emitting a great cloud of blue-black smoke from the gash she’d made, and immediately pitched over to the left and dived straight down toward the street.

All four CorSec speeders were now shrilling an alarm, a high-pitched, rapid-pulsed tone that hammered Jaina’s ears and told Corellians for a kilometer around that there was trouble.

Jaina felt the blow as the speeder she rode hit the avenue. But the pilot was good, retaining control. The speeder bumped once, hard, slewed to port, slewed to starboard, and came to a skidding, shower-of-sparks stop not far from the Prime Minister’s residence gates. The other airspeeder she’d cut was mere meters ahead, still moving, rolling bow-to-stern toward traffic that angled frantically in all directions to get out of the way.

Two up, two down, Jaina thought. Then she felt the pulse of shock and alarm from Zekk.

Zekk came down atop the Prime Minister’s speeder and drove his lightsaber into the canopy over the passenger compartment. It was a shallow thrust, followed by the traditional circular swirl, and it was a slow maneuver. The airspeeder was heavily armored, and from the instant Zekk landed it began a series of swerves