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Love Commander and Pulsar Skate were now side by side, only a couple of hundred meters separating them, and the two X-wings were a few kilometers out in advance. In the distance was the blip of a small capital ship, and as the distance closed a designation popped up for it on the screen: CEC CORVETTE 1177 SILABAN.

Lando winced out of sympathy for Leia. When she was just a teenage Senator for the planet of Alderaan, her chief transport had been a Corellian corvette, the Tantive IV. Long and narrow, with a bow like a sledgehammer head turned sideways and a rectangular stern that was little more than stacked banks of thrusters, the Tantive IV had held a special place in her affections, and it had to be upsetting to have a near-identical vessel trying to shoot her down now.

Myri’s countdown reached one. Lando opened his mouth to order Han to open fire, but Han opened up before he could speak. Lando saw the yacht’s lasers lance in on a distant target, joined by the Pulsar Skate’s, and saw the glow as the Silaban’s shields soaked up the laser barrage.

The two X-wings climbed relative to the plane of battle, performing evasive maneuvering in unison, so close that they registered as a single blip on the sensors.

Lando frowned over that. “What do they think they’re doing? They’re going to bump and then it’ll be all over for them.”

He’d forgotten his comm channel was still open. “Bump?” The voice was that of Mirax Horn. “Come over here, Lando, and I’ll bump you.”

“Calm down, calm down.” That was Iella. “This is why men should only be put in command of single-pilot fighters. On bigger craft, they have too much time on their hands, so they talk too much.”

“Hey,” Lando protested.

Love Commander rocked as beams from the corvette’s twin turbolaser cannons grazed her shields. Lando started to say something about more evasive maneuvering, but Leia abruptly put the yacht into such torturous dives and turns that Lando’s stomach flip-flopped. He clamped his mouth shut and concentrated on not losing his dinner.

Through the viewport, he could see the corvette’s bottom turbolasers firing on the Love Commander and Pulsar Skate, and the craft’s top-side turbolasers trying to target the X-wings. As they neared the corvette, the X-wings abruptly separated, both staying above the relative plane of battle but one arcing to port and the other to starboard. Both sets of turbolasers initially followed the same X-wing—Wedge’s, according to the sensor screen—then both switched to open up on Corran’s.

By this time both X-wings were past the stern of the corvette. Lando could see some bright spots at the stern of the Corellian ship, points where fire from the X-wings’ turbolasers had struck. Now both X-wings looped around to orient in on the engines, and the corvette commander, belatedly recognizing that the two snubfighters packed more firepower than the yachts still headed their way, tried to turn toward them and protect his engines.

But the X-wings came in firing, their angry red laserfire chipping away at the stern shields, concentrating on the same area of engines, and then penetrating. Lando saw red light suffuse the corvette’s stern, and an explosion lit the ocean below.

No, the corvette hadn’t exploded—only a portion of its engine compartment had been lost. But the vessel began to lose altitude and turned away from the conflict area. The X-wings turned back toward the space yachts.

And finally, because he had the ticket off this world and out of this system, Lando could take charge again. “Pulsar Skate,” he said, “and X-wing escorts, form up on Looooove Commander. We’re headed for orbit.”

“And then where?” Han asked.

Finally Wedge’s voice crackled over the comlink. “To a gathering of old friends,” he said.

CORUSCANT JEDI TEMPLE

Ben’s opponent wasn’t particularly impressive. The droid had a scrawny body, its four spindly legs just sturdy enough to allow it to walk around. Its two arms ended not in hands but in tubes about eight centimeters in diameter. And its head was huge, the size