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“Hey!” Davin felt anger and fear surge through him. “Sergeant, we’re being attacked!” The vessels thundered past the AT-AT, causing the giant war machine to sway slightly in the fighter’s turbulence. “What’s going on? Are we in the target area or something?”

Still not getting a reply, Davin nearly unbuckled to go look for the AT-AT instructor. What if something had happened to the man? The instructor would know what to do. This was crazy!

But when Davin saw the fighter craft swoop up again in front of him, he sat frozen in his seat. The four fighters were coming in for another strafing run. Davin forced himself to grab at the communicator. He flicked to the AT-AT Base frequency. “Distress, Distress—this is Landkiller One! Attention, Base, we’re under attack. There must be some kind of mistake. I say again, Distress!”

Only the sound of white noise came over the speaker; even the emergency holo did not function.

Bright pinpoints of light once again erupted from the head of the attacking fighter craft. Davin tensed himself as the AT-AT was rocked with the impact of a blaster cannon. A shrill alarm blasted above his head as the acrid smell of oily smoke rolled throughout the control room. “Sergeant—help me!” The warbling sound of another alarm pierced the air; synthetic voices announcing damage-control procedures came from the rear of the control room. Twenty things seemed to happen at once.

Throughout all the confusion, Davin spotted the four fighter craft rolling up from upon high and diving down to make another … and perhaps their last … strafing run.

Davin grew suddenly angry at all that had gone wrong. Throughout his short career as an Imperial military man, he had been drilled that the only way to survive was to follow procedures. But here was a situation that had not been covered in any textbook or testing sequence! He was out on his own, and as crazy as it seemed, somehow the Rebels must have found their way to the Imperial military training planet. How else could he explain the fighter vessels not showing up on radar?

Davin pushed all concern aside and armed the AT-AT fire controls. If he was going to be shot at, he wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The automated fire-control system was of no use since the enemy craft did not show up on any of his scanning instruments.

Slaving the blaster cannon controls to follow his line of sight, he let loose a salvo of high-energy laser blasts. The bundles of energy shot past the attacking ships. Although his shots missed the fighter craft, the attacking ships split up. Had they not expected him to fight back?

The fighters flew past him, again coming so close that the AT-AT shuddered because of the passing crafts’ shock wave. Davin slapped at the emergency beacon, sending out a continuous squawk over the airwaves. At the same time, he halted the AT-AT’s forward motion, slaving the AT-AT’s entire computer resources to fight the incoming attackers.

Since he had to rely on his eyesight and none of the instruments during the battle, Davin decided to put himself at the greatest advantage. He ordered the AT-AT to kneel, dropping as low to the ground as possible. Slowly, with jerky motions, the huge behemoth staggered to the ground.

Davin brought the war machine’s head down flat with the body until there remained no part of the AT-AT that the fighters could fly under. By the time the four fighter craft came back around for another attack, Davin’s AT-AT lay hunkered on the ground.

The fighters grouped together for a high-angle dive-bombing run. As they approached, Davin knew they could not fly under the AT-AT.

Davin forced them to make a suicide attempt on the control chamber.

Davin jammed his finger down on the firing control. The AT-AT rocked with the recoil from the laser cannon. An explosion burst across the screen as he hit two of the fighters; a third fighter tried to steer away from the flying debris, but his wing clipped the ground and cartwheeled into a rocky