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Threepio said, with genuine interest, “How very kind of him,” but Artoo, quicker on the uptake, made a nervous attempt to back away, thwarted by the restraining bolt that Daala’s Sergeant-at-Arms had taken the precaution of installing on both droids before bringing them into her presence. Daala checked over the various interfaces and cables added by poor Captain Bortrek and finally hooked her own coax into one of the ports he had space-taped to Artoo’s side.

She flipped a switch on the analysis kit; Artoo quivered and gave a faint, protesting wail.

“Now,” said Daala, her green eyes narrowing. “Tell me what’s happening in the Meridian sector.”

“What the blazes are those things?” Lando flipped through half a dozen data sectors, then cut back immediately to another screen of scan field to check on the next pass of the vicious, needlelike attackers. “And how much damage did that one do?”

Chewbacca yowled something through the comm from the rapidly freezing rear quarter, where he was floating near the ceiling to fix burned-out wiring through hissing masses of emergency foam. “Those things are the things that’re gonna appear on our headstones, pal,” said Han.

“The most I can figure is they’re some kind of CCIR technology, like synthdroids,” said Lando, brown hands flicking and scrambling over the shield controls while Han whipped and pivoted the Millennium Falcon through the desperate series of zigzags and loop the loops that was the only possible defensive strategy against the things. “The Antemeridian fleet isn’t anywhere near us, they can’t possibly be guiding them in the usual sense of the word.”

Around them, the Courane and the Fire-eater—and the light explorer Sundance, in which Kyp Durron had shown up to assist—were doing the same, snaking and weaving in a desperate attempt to remain in position near Nam Chorios until the actual invading fleet showed up to fight. Only the fact that they’d made orbit before the arrival of the gnatlike attackers, with barely forty minutes to spare, let them hold any kind of position at all.

“Are you kidding?” said Han. “You know what a synthdroid costs? That’s crazy!”

“I know synthdroid technology is based on a kind of programmable crystal, and that’s what kicks up the price … Blast!” he added, as there was a jarring flash and more red lights went up on the board. “Chewie, we’ve got another hit, starboard shield—yeah, I know about the hole in the port shield!”

Stars whirled and flashed past the viewport as Han put the vessel through another series of evasions. He wondered as he scratched past another line of laser light, perilously close to the main shields on the ship’s spine, how long he could keep up this pitch of alertness and activity, not to mention how much more of this kind of activity the power supplies could take. Though everything was a spangled flash of stars and blackness, he had seen, in a rare moment of pause, the Fire-eater drifting helpless and being cut to pieces by the Needles at their leisure. He could only pray that the crew was already dead or at least unconscious from anoxia.

Lando, who could never leave an explanation unfinished, added, “If somebody’s synthesized those crystals, or found a way to get them cheap, there’s no problem.”

“There’s a problem for us!” yelled Han. How did you fight things like that? After long concentration and plenty of practice he’d managed to hit two of them, but with so many wasted shots it wasn’t worth it. They could only evade, until the toll of the speed and hyperquick reactions wore them down.

The Needles, as far as he could tell, were tireless.

“One thing’s for sure,” yelled Lando, “they sure want that rock. You got any ideas how we’re gonna deal with the main fleet when they show up?”

“I’ll think of something.”

There was a jarring concussion from somewhere in the ship, and more red lights went on.

“Moff Getelles.”

Daala sat back from the primary readout screen, letting it go black. The lesser screens still held the record of Artoo’s long, persistent