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“Do they check out?”

“All codes and passwords are correct.”

“Grant it.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” The screen cleared, and Tebut switched back to her data.

Incoming fire from the Anakin Solo increased as the Rakehells neared the capital ship. The Anakin Solo’s gunners were good—laser and ion shots missed the Reveille by mere hundreds of meters but came increasingly close to the pursuing X-wings.

Pair by pair, the Rakehells peeled away, zooming to comparatively safe distances. Now only two wing pairs were left: Wedge and Sanola, Tycho and Syal.

Another near hit rattled Tycho’s cockpit. He ignored it, focusing on the shuttle before him and on the Anakin Solo, rapidly getting bigger.

The plan Luke, Wedge, and their committee of advisers had put together was deceptively simple, and based around the phrase Let the enemy do the work.

Was it going to be tough to smuggle a team of infiltrators aboard the Anakin Solo, especially because security had doubtless been tightened after the Love Commander’s recent mission? Of course. So the Jedi would just steal Tycho’s shuttle, with its valid authorizations, and chase it to safety aboard the Anakin Solo. Equally tough to get saboteurs aboard Centerpoint Station? They’d dress up as Galactic Alliance Guard and board in the wake of the Alliance’s genuine boarding action.

And destroying the station itself—Tycho shook his head. As half ambassador to, half captive of the Jedi, he hadn’t been told what method they planned to use to eliminate Centerpoint, but he assumed it followed the same philosophy. Let the enemy do the work. Use the enemy’s strength against them. Very Jedi-like.

Wedge’s voice sounded in his ear: “Break.” Wedge and Sanola banked abruptly to port, vanishing from Tycho’s vision but not from his sensor board.

Syal stayed behind Tycho.

He thumbed his personal comlink, the one not slaved or monitored by the Rakehells. “Now, Antilles.”

“Yes, sir.” There was pain in Syal’s voice. Then her X-wing, too, banked, following her father’s outbound course…leaving Tycho alone, staring into the scores of turbolaser batteries and ion cannons of the Anakin Solo.

He closed in on the Reveille’s tail, discouraging the Anakin Solo’s gunners from firing on him. It only discouraged the ones who were sensible, or who actually cared if the Reveille made it. The hotshots continued firing, their blasts coming ever closer, until Tycho could barely see through his canopy because of the bright flashes just beyond. His cockpit rattled constantly from energy scraping at the periphery of his shields.

But ahead was the Anakin Solo’s underside, the belly doors that led to its hangar bay open just wide enough for a shuttle to enter.

Suddenly the incoming fire ceased. He was too close for the gunners to target.

Ahead, the Reveille rose toward the hangar entrance and reduced speed. Tycho decelerated as well, but not as much, and overshot the shuttle, his X-wing’s underside missing the shuttle’s top hull by three meters or less.

Tycho hit the Anakin Solo’s atmosphere containment shield fast enough that the sudden return of friction set off heat warning alarms. He could feel the impact decelerate him further, and the atmosphere catching his S-foils nearly spun him out of control. He wrestled with his control yoke and arced over hundreds of meters of bare hangar floor.

At the end of a ballistic arc, he fired his repulsors and came down to a jarring landing that would, under other circumstances, have been mortifying. He popped his canopy and rose, turning to see the Reveille rise into the hangar, then descend toward its own landing.

Tycho keyed his personal comlink. “This is General Celchu. Put me through to the bridge.”

A high-pitched, musical Rodian’s voice answered, “Welcome aboard, General—”

“Be advised, I am not aboard the Reveille.” A half-squadron of Alliance security agents rushed toward his X-wing. He raised his hands and kept talking. “The Reveille is crewed by an intrusion team of