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Luke shook his head and did not reply; he reset his comm board to squadron frequency. On his sensor board, squadrons of incoming craft were clearly visible, arriving from two different vectors. Ahead, he could see the near edge of the city of Coronet…and, above it, the two units of incoming fighter craft that looked like Corellian attack fighters. He counted eighteen of them on his sensor board, and that just wasn’t enough to pose a serious threat to a squadron of ten Jedi pilots.

Then the incoming squadrons turned aside, one to starboard and one to port, at right angles to Hardpoint Squadron’s course.

Luke felt a trickle of alarm. “Roll out!” he shouted, and followed his own orders, snapping his X-wing into a port roll. He was aware of Mara keeping close to him, just behind and to starboard.

An explosion shook his snubfighter and rattled his teeth. R2-D2 howled but immediately began putting diagnostics up on Luke’s data screen.

Luke ended his roll a quick kilometer lower than his original position. Explosions continued to batter at his eardrums, but nothing as close as the first one. He glanced between his sensor board and the skies above.

The skies were filled with puffy gray clouds. They looked benign, but each was the lingering evidence of an explosion—results of a ground-based antispacecraft barrage.

Luke counted ten X-wings still flying. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then his breath caught. There should be eleven craft. “Chandrila Skies?” he asked.

“Took a direct hit,” Mara said. “She’s gone.”

The skies ahead of Hardpoint Squadron began to fill up with gray clouds, and beyond them two squadrons of Corellian attack fighers danced around, waiting.

“Three, inform Dodonna of our situation,” Luke told his communications specialist. “See if they have updated orders to offer. Meanwhile, we’re going in. If we can’t get another shuttle, we’ll bring our Jedi off Corellia if we have to land one by one and stuff them into our cargo hatches.”

“We have telemetry on CEC-One,” Fiav said to Klauskin, giving this operation’s designation for the nearest of the Corellian Engineering Corporation’s orbital shipyards. The course followed by Dodonna and the rest of her group would eventually bring her up on CEC-One. “It’s protected by a large number of starfighters and a handful of frigates. And there’s the likelihood that, as we approach, units from the main Corellian fleet will close.”

“Acknowledged,” Klauskin said. He kept his attention on space dead ahead, where, eventually, CEC-One would be close enough for him to make visual contact.

Fiav paused, as if waiting for a more comprehensive response, then continued. “Corellian starfighter squadrons are crowding our squadrons. They’re just jockeying around, but eventually somebody’s going to cut loose with a laser shot and it’s going to be a fight.”

Klauskin nodded briskly. “Understood.”

Fiav paused again, then finally said, “Luke Skywalker reports that his squadron has been fired on, and that their shuttle has been lost. They request an additional shuttle, but he also says he’ll extract his ground team individually in the X-wings if he has to.”

“Ah, good. I’m glad he has a plan.”

Fiav’s voice sounded pained. “Sir, do you have any order revisions?”

“Yes.” Klauskin was pleased with the decisiveness he could hear in his voice. “Bring the group down to half forward speed.”

“Yes, sir. Um, do we provide the Jedi with another shuttle?”

“Oh, no. Skywalker sounds like he has everything in hand.”

“Yes, sir.” The words hung there for long moments, then Fiav turned away to implement Klauskin’s orders.

Klauskin felt his brain revving like an overtuned thruster engine. Slowing the group to half speed would give him more time to decide, to think his way out of this dilemma.

He needed the time. He thought and thought, but nothing seemed to happen.

He had to turn the group toward space, batter his way through the Corellian screen if they decided to hinder his progress, and make it far enough out from