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The final ship was the Justice, flagship of the task force: a sleek, graceful Mon Cal cruiser, sister ship to the legendary Liberty. This twelve-hundred-meter work of art was almost literally the Liberty’s sister; constructed simultaneously, she resembled her famous sibling more than almost any two ships ever to come out of the fantastical imaginations of Mon Calamari designers. The Justice had been intended to complement the Liberty’s speed and sheer destructive potential with more powerful shielding, additional docking bays, and vastly expanded troop capacity, because the Mon Calamari designers worked hand-in-glove with their equally imaginative strategists, who knew that while blowing things up was all well and good, wars were actually won by boots on the ground. Lots of them.

Of the eighteen thousand Republic marines deployed with the RRTF, nearly eight thousand were on the Justice alone, and the additional hangar bays that made her look, as Luke Skywalker had remarked when he first saw her, “a little bit pregnant,” could carry ten full starfighter squadrons as well as a repair-and-refit shop deck more capable than most Republic stardocks.

The cruisers had taken up station in the centers of each face of the dipyramid marked off by the Slash-Es, and deployed two each of their starfighter squadrons. The Slash-Es were able to deploy a squadron apiece. With complete hyperspace interdiction and the sheer volume of firepower available to the cruisers and the twenty squadrons of starfighters, the marauders had been swiftly overwhelmed, and not a single Imperial craft had escaped the perimeter.

By the time the Justice had cruised majestically into a geostationary orbit above what clearly seemed to be the marauder base—it being the only installation on the planet defended by massive ground-based turbolaser batteries and eight planetary-defense ion cannons—the marauders’ surviving starfighters had retreated to underground hangars.

It was over.

The lone frown among the jubilant bridge crew of the Justice belonged to Luke Skywalker. “It’s not over.”

Admiral Kalback blinked. “It was a brilliant plan—”

“It was an obvious plan.”

“Yet it went precisely as you devised.”

“That’s the problem.”

“General?”

“When was the last time you heard of a battle that went exactly as planned?”

Kalback’s right eye swiveled independently to join his left, and the stately old officer leaned gently toward him. “When was the last time a battle was planned by a Jedi?”

“I couldn’t say,” Luke murmured. “But I bet it wasn’t this smooth. And since when does a Lord of the Empire worry about the lives of his men?”

The admiral flicked his left eye toward his rear and back again: a shrug. “We’ve cleared local space; his force is confined to the planet, which qualifies this as dirtside operations. That makes it your call, General.”

“Then we make the best of bad choices. Tell him to hold station and present his conditions. We can negotiate from here.”

“Prepare to transmit,” Kalback said.

When Tubrimi signaled his readiness, the admiral rose. “Lord Shadowspawn, I am Admiral Kalback.” The depth and dignity of his voice was more than equal to Shadowspawn’s. “This is not a Rebel cruiser, sir; there is no Rebellion any longer. This ship is the Justice, flagship of the New Republic’s Rapid Response Task Force. On behalf of the Joint Command, we are prepared to consider your offer of surrender. Hold your position, and transmit when ready.”

He signaled to Tubrimi to cut transmission. “Let’s give him time to think that over.”

“I’m the one who’s thinking it over.” Luke paced the deck, frowning at the various sensor readouts on the battle bridge. “I think it’s a trap.”

Kalback’s eyes twitched. “A trap? A trap for what? With what? We’ve crushed them.”

“It’s still a trap.”

“Is this some Jedi insight? Do you feel it in the Force?”

Luke shook his head. “Artoo, bring up a tactical display.”

R2-D2 whistled a cheerful assent and rolled away from Luke