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As they hurtled down from the stratosphere above the Korunnal Highland, the guns on all the Republic ships fell silent.

Droid starfighters swarmed over them, weapons blazing.

As his lander was pounded from all sides by multiple cannon hits, CRC-09,

'571 noticed an odd thing on his command-scan screen: some of the gunships below seemed to be firing on other gunships.

To be precise: sixty-seven of the gunships below seemed to be firing on the two that were in the lead.

These two did not return fire. They streaked at full power in a steep climb, scissoring side-to-side, heading straight for the mass dogfight so that the cannonfire which missed them-nearly all of it-blasted upward into the cloud of DSFs. Most of it passed harmlessly through, of course, not being aimed at the small agile craft, but several DSFs took blasts squarely, and exploded.

CRC-09,'571 frowned. He had a good feeling about this.

Not far below, in the open cockpit of one of the two gunships that were the targets of those behind, Mace Windu said, "All right, Nick. Light them up. "

"Yes, sir!"

Nick Rostu flipped a single switch, and the droid brains of twenty-six different droid starfighters-one for each of the missiles remaining in the Turbostorm's launchers-felt the sudden internal alarm-buzz of sensors detecting a missile lock.

Coming from a friendly ship.

The droid brains found this puzzling, but not overly distressing; they were still focused on their primary mission, which was to destroy any and all Republic craft attempting to orbit or land on Haruun Kal. But they were programmed to monitor possible hazards, and each of them set some of their spare capacity to searching memory banks for any response programs that might be indicated in the event of missile-locks from friendly craft.

There weren't any.

This, the droid brains did find distressing.

And there was the issue of those laser blasts...

Only one second later, thirty-two additional droid brains among the swarm of starfighters had exactly the same experience.

Because all four of the Krupx MG3 mini missile launchers on Depa's gunship were fully loaded.

As the two gunships penetrated the perimeter of the sprawling dogfight, Mace said, "Fire."

A Krupx MG3 tube could fire one missile every standard second; each MG3

had two tubes, which carried magazines of four mini-missiles apiece. The Sienar Turbostorm close-assault gunship had four Krupx MG3s: two forward and two aft. On Mace's command, both ships emptied their magazines. The gunships blossomed with fire and rocket exhaust.

Sixteen missiles per second roared twisting through the sky.

The dogfight became a tangled web of vapor trails.

In the gunship's open cockpit, Nick watched his widescan, whistling.

"Wow. Those starfighters are quick."

Mace said, "Yes."

"Two thirds of our missiles are gonna miss altogether. No: three quarters. More. Damn, they're fast."

"It doesn't matter."

"What do you mean, it doesn't matter? It's just our butts, that's all!

Not to mention those poor ruskakks in the landers."

Mace Windu said, "Watch."

Nick's estimate proved to be overly optimistic: of the fifty-nine missiles fired, only six found their targets. Three more were accidentally intercepted by DSFs which they were not locked onto. The rest were destroyed by the droids' inhumanly precise counterfire, or were simply evaded by the nimble craft; dozens flashed away into the sky until their propellant was exhausted and they began the long slow tumble to the surface.

However-as Mace had pointed out, down in the battered cavern base-droids were stupid.

That was not to say that they could not adapt to changing circumstances.

They could, and did: often with a speed and decisiveness that no organic brain could match. These droids had comprehended they were under attack by "friendly" vessels before the initial flight of sixteen missiles had fully engaged their engines. An attack from a single friendly vessel