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"Stop right there!" The feeble command came from a thin, wispy Kaminoan in the entryway of the docking bay. He wobbled on spindly legs and clenched a thin, tattered lab coat around his shivering body. "You're supposed to be dead! I told those Imperials to take care of you!" he shouted, raising a blaster. "I won't let you destroy my experiment!"

"No one wants to destroy your experiment!" Div shouted. "We just want to leave here!" He ducked as the Kaminoan fired a burst of laserfire at him. The shot went wild, and the scientist stumbled backward with the unexpected recoil. The laserfire ricocheted off Div's ship, scoring a shallow gash to the hull. "I don't want to kill you," Div said, drawing his own weapon. "But I'm not going to let you damage this ship."

The scientist was insane; that was obvious. But he was a madman with a blaster. Div aimed his own weapon. It was useless, but the Kaminoan didn't know that. He had the scientist in his sights. "Back off," he called out. "Let me take off, and I'll leave you here in peace."

This is risky, Div thought. Too risky. Normally, he would have shot him. It would have been the smart move. But that wasn't an option this time. "I'm just going to get on the ship now," he said as he backed toward the Howlrunner, his eyes never leaving the crazed Kaminoan. "And you just—"

Another stream of laserfire shot toward him, this time hitting closer to the mark.

Luke's and Han's ships lifted off the ground. If he didn't move soon, he'd be left behind. "Enough!" he shouted, and squeezed the trigger, purely on instinct. To his surprise, blue-green laserfire spurted from the blaster and slammed into the wall just over the Kaminoan's head. A chunk of duracrete slammed into his shoulder, knocking him to the ground, Div lunged for his ship. Within seconds, he had powered it up and lifted off the ground.

I missed, he told himself. Maybe the weapon was still faulty after all. It happens.

But it never happened, not to Div. He'd missed on purpose, saving the life of an enemy. He'd tried hard to rid himself of weakness, of the remaining shreds of mercy and doubt that made life so dangerous. Once again, he'd failed.

Div piloted the ship through the exit of the docking bay. The sky swarmed with TIE

fighters. Laserfire blasted by, shattering against the Howlrunner's defensive shields. The ship could take a few seconds of this kind of pummeling, but no more. He had to make it into open air if he wanted to fight back. Div accelerated, pushing the ship as fast as it could go. Behind him, there was a thunderous crash, as if the sky had split open. He glanced back, just in time to see the research station erupt in flame. The Kaminoan scientist and all evidence of his precious experiment were gone forever.

Div forced his attention away from the ground and up to the sky. He was going to have to fight his way past the TIE fighters and out of the atmosphere, or he'd end up just like the scientist: blasted into oblivion.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Pull up.

Pull up.

PULL UP!

The thought began as a dim echo in the back of Luke's brain, but within seconds it swelled to a roar. He obeyed the instinct, yanking the controls back hard. The Howlrunner rose in a precarious climb through dense clouds. A TIE fighter screamed past, bare meters beneath him. Flying nearly blind in the storm, Luke hadn't even seen it coming. If something hadn't inspired his change in direction, the two ships would have collided.

Luke let out a thin, shuddering sigh, forcing himself to concentrate. TIE fighters darted in and out of the clouds, sparking the frequent bolts of lightning. The electrical storm was disrupting his radar and jamming the comms. He could only hope the Empire's pilots were similarly disoriented.

Rain slapped at the ship. Winds buffeted him from side to side. The Howlrunner was an Imperial ship, and unlike the X-wings, it had a fixed-wing design, along with laser cannons that were weaker than what he was used to. On the plus side, he could push it faster than an