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He couldn’t see—not with the dials and gauges acting the way they were—but he could feel. He could con her by the seat of his pants. Whether or not they reached their destination was of secondary importance; survival came first.

A pair of fighters streaked by, spitting fire. The Falcon’s shields glowed and pulsed, absorbing the energy, feeding it into the reactors. There were limits to the amount that could be absorbed that way—in which case the reactor would come apart, taking the ship and everything within a thousand kilometers with it—but for now, each unsuccessful pass fed the Millennium Falcon’s engines.

And her guns.

Rolling to defeat another run by the fighters, he slapped the intercom switch. “Bassi Vobah, try and reach the starboard gun-blister! I need some help with the shooting!”

Silence.

Diving steeply, finishing up with a flip that left four fighters soaring helplessly past the freighter, Lando realized that Vuffi Raa, in a moment of demented frustration, had wrecked the intertalkie. He was on his own, for the first time since acquiring the little robot.

He wasn’t liking it much.

A pair of smaller weapons on the upper hull was controllable from the cockpit. Lando started keyboarding until he had established fire control through a pair of auxiliary pedals beneath the console. Then, turning sharply—and feeling for the first time the stresses of acceleration as it piled his blood up in odd parts of his body—he trod on the pedals, blasting away at three of the enemy as they passed.

They kept on passing. Either Lando had missed, distracted by maneuvering the ship, or he didn’t have the firepower to do the job. It was like a nightmare where you shoot the bad guy and he doesn’t fall down.

Half a dozen fighters overtook the Falcon from behind, their energy-cannon raking her. She shuddered, staggered. Lando brought her back under control, rode the shock waves out, and continued to pour fire at an enemy he saw—to no effect at all. He slewed the ship around, getting angry, and found he faced at least a dozen of the fast, vicious little craft, coming head on.

He picked out the leader, got it in the canopy cross-hairs, and stamped on both pedals. Every move the fellow made, he matched, keeping the fighter centered, keeping the guns going. The enemy’s nose cowling suddenly disintegrated, the small craft burst into flames, showering debris over the Falcon and his squadronmates. One of the companion vessels staggered suddenly and veered off, trailing sparks and rapidly dispersing smoke. Two with one—rather prolonged, Lando admitted to himself—shot.

The Falcon lurched, as if lifted suddenly from behind, then stabilized as Lando applied counterthrust. Something solid had smacked her in the underside vicinity of the boarding ramp, always a weak point. He skated her in a broad horizontal loop, gave her half a roll as she came around, and there it was: another fighter, its fuselage accordioned, its engines spouting flames.

Ramming? In this century? They must be pretty desperate.

And certainly not pirates, Lando thought as he fought the ship into a better attitude to fire from. No profit in ramming. The bombers, then? The man he’d killed on 6845 could have been a fighter pilot. What had he done to get an entire squadron of fighter pilots angry with him?

The Falcon jumped again. This time the instruments—if they could be relied upon—showed heavy fire being poured into the hull about where the fighter had rammed her. Sure enough, the shields, never at their strongest there, were steadily deteriorating. He rolled the ship, only to be attacked in the same place by another group of fighters. The battle was getting serious.

All right, then: he hadn’t anyone to help him, and a battle by attrition was a losing proposition. He only had one ship to lose. He’d taken the measure of the fighters. They were maneuverable and fast—more maneuverable than the freighter, that was only natural. But not as fast, either,