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He snapped out another string of orders, and the surviving ships of the task force swung into formation for full assault. Remember Alderaan soared into orbit, with four battle cruisers fanning out to its flanks. Two hundred starfighters spread through the formation, then kicked wide to come at the flying volcano in a tightening noose that kept their guns toward the enemy and themselves clear of the capital ships’ field of fire. The three remaining Slash-Es split the difference, tugging gravity bombs as far from any ships as they could manage.

“Let’s not give them a chance to even guess we’re about to feed them their own weapons,” Lando said. He turned to his XO. “Fire.”

The entire task force rained destruction upon the flying volcano. With no shields of its own, without even armor, great chunks of the volcano flash-burned into clouds of supercharged plasma—a vast glowing shroud that swallowed turbolaser blasts and detonated proton torpedoes. But that was all right, Lando decided, because all that really mattered now was the flight of eight or ten gravity bombs heading right back where they came from.

Before the planet broke up and Taspan’s star storm consumed the task force, he would have the satisfaction of watching the flying volcano pulverized by its own weapon. He didn’t anticipate being especially comforted by that, but it was all he had left to look forward to. All any of them had left.

This is a lousy place to die, he thought. It’s a lousy place for the Republic to lose Luke and Han and Leia and Chewie. And the Rogues. And me.

At least we’re taking the bad guys with us.

He found himself contemplating, with a kind of awe, all the stories that would end here, in this little backwater system six jumps off the Hydian Way … He wondered briefly how the holothriller producers would tell this story. He had a feeling they’d try to make it into something grand and glorious—some legendary Last Stand of the Last Jedi, with a dash of the Romance of Doomed Lovers and a splash of Reformed Gambler Goes Out as a Hero … instead of what it really was.

We just got beat, he thought. They outplanned us. Suckered us in. And we went for it headfirst because we thought we were invincible. We thought the good guys always win.

Of all of them, Luke was the only one who had never suffered under that delusion. Well: not never. Han had told him once that something in Luke had changed after Bespin. Somehow Luke understood—in a way that Lando never had, that Han and Leia and Chewbacca had simply never grasped—just how dark a place the universe really was.

Lando guessed that was where Luke got his humility. His kindness. His gentle faith that people could change for the better. That must have been why he rarely smiled, and almost never made jokes. Because that goodness was all he really had. It was his lifeline. The rope to which he clung, dangling above the abyss.

And we all clung to him, Lando thought. He was our hope. As long as Luke Skywalker was alive, we always figured somehow everything would turn out okay.

That’s what the Republic was losing today.

Hope.

Given what was going on dirtside, Luke was probably already dead. And even if by some miracle he was still alive, what could he possibly do? Had there ever been a good reason to burden one man with the hope of the whole galaxy?

Though this question was both rhetorical and silent, he got an answer nonetheless, as the lieutenant at ComOps said, in a voice hushed and hoarse, “General Calrissian, I’m picking up a signal … a ship on intercept course … General! Transponder signature confirmed—it’s the Millennium Falcon!”

Lando felt as if the universe had shifted a couple of degrees to the right. “What?”

Was it possible?

“They’re broadcasting, sir. On all bands.”

“Put it on speaker.”

“… Skywalker. All Republic ships, disengage and withdraw. All Imperial forces: Group Captain CC-1000 is hereby promoted to air marshal. Air Marshal GC-1000: You are now in command of all Imperial forces in the Taspan system. You will order