• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Nice interceptor roll-out,” her opponent said. “I’d swear you learned that from Tycho Celchu.”

Again, Lysa froze. She had learned that maneuver from General Celchu, the celebrated officer who had flown an A-wing into and out of the second Death Star more than thirty years ago.

And she knew the voice of her opponent, even as altered as it was by the low-powered transmission and standard comm distortion. “Daddy?” she said.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

She rolled again, sending her in a steep descent toward the X-wing. But her course wouldn’t bring her up behind it in proper dogfighting fashion; instead, eyeballing it, she chose an intercept course…and switched her targeting computer completely off.

Her vector brought her in toward the X-wing’s top side. She adjusted her course so they were parallel, her Eta-5 interceptor immediately above the X-wing. Then she rolled her starfighter over so they cruised canopy-to-canopy, a mere four meters separating them.

And she looked up into the face of her father, Wedge Antilles.

Corellia’s second most famous pilot flashed her a toothy smile and he offered her a thumbs-up. He was wearing a standard X-wing pilot’s helmet—not his own battered helmet with the distinctive wedges on it, but another, this one decorated with an arc of triangles along the rim.

“Daddy, you’re retired. Get out of the skies.” Lysa was suddenly aware of, and embarrassed by, the adolescent wail in her voice. But the realization that she’d fired on her own father made her feel drained, light-headed.

“I’ll do that, sweetheart.” Wedge waved an admonishing finger at her. “Don’t get hurt.”

“I won’t, Daddy.”

Wedge adjusted his course and was suddenly dropping more steeply away from her.

Lysa rolled back up to a more natural orientation, putting the planet beneath her keel, and pulled back on her control yoke, sending her higher. Slowly, she looped around back toward her squadron’s last known position.

She’d really never before run up against the mythological depths of her father’s reputation. Oh, yes, she’d grown up knowing of his fame, and it was a desire to have a career well out of the shadow of Wedge Antilles that had caused her to take academy training under the name of Lysa Dunter rather than that of Syal Antilles. She’d even chosen to train most in the high-speed, low-armor fighters such as the Eta-5 interceptor rather than the sturdy old X-wings her father loved, all in order to avoid invidious comparisons with him.

She’d never been aware of his reputation as a thing of legend rather than historical fact. Yet now, meeting him under the most unlikely of circumstances, in a place and time where history was being made, unable to do him harm though she’d tried with all her skill and will to do so, she felt it.

She had fired on her father. She had killed fellow Corellians…her duty, laid down on her the moment she’d sworn an officer’s oath and not suddenly removed because her homeworld was now the enemy.

In just a few minutes, the universe had become an insane place.

She forced herself out of her reverie. She had enemies ahead, and daydreaming as she approached them would get her killed. “Focus,” her father said, out of her memory, not out of the comm board. “Focus, and your odds of survival are improved.”

She’d focus. She had promised him she would not be hurt.

Syal Antilles spotted enemy blips ahead, and her sensor board identified them as a pair of A-9 Vigilances. One was apparently shepherding the other, whose thrusters were spitting sparks. They swelled to occupy her whole mind, all other considerations forgotten, and she roared toward them.

chapter thirteen

CENTERPOINT STATION

Jacen sliced through the midsection of his last opponent’s blaster rifle and followed through with a spinning kick that catapulted the man over the walkway rail. With a wail of fright, the man dropped two stories’ distance to the metal floor—an impact that, Jacen calculated, would injure but probably not kill him.

Jacen turned to look back the few meters he’d just come. Eight of the CorSec agents lay on the walkway,