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It was time to spring Gunray from the trap he had fashioned for him.

“Launch tri-fighters to assist the shuttle,” Grievous instructed the gunners. “Target and destroy the Republic starfighters outright.”

Deployed from the cruiser, a wing of the new red-eyed droid fighters was soon visible from the bridge viewports.

Alerted to the approaching tri-droids, the Republic pilots had sense enough to realize that they were severely outnumbered. Disengaging from the last of the Vulture fighters, they began to make for free space, the nearest habitable planets, wherever their sublight ion drives could deliver them, since their means of jumping to lightspeed had already been destroyed.

Two of the starfighters were slower than the rest to disengage. Calling for magnification of the shuttle pursuit, Grievous saw that the stragglers were newly minted ARC-170s, copiloted crafts equipped with powerful laser cannons at the tips of their outstretched wings and multiple torpedo launchers. He was eager to see what they were capable of.

“Instruct three squadrons of the tri-fighter wing to shield the shuttle and escort it to our docking bay. Set the rest against the fleeing starfighters, except for the ARC-one-seventies. The ARC-one-seventies should be lured into engagement, without disintegration—even if some of the tri-droids are forced to succumb to enemy fire.”

Grievous sharpened his gaze.

The tri-fighters had split into two groups, the larger forming up around Gunray’s impaired shuttle and pouncing on the retreating V-wings, while the diverted squadron began to tease the pair of ARC-170s into duels and sallies.

What impressed Grievous was how quickly the pilots came to each other’s assistance. Combat camaraderie hadn’t been bred into them by the Kaminoan cloners, or been something they had learned from the Jedi. It had come from the Mandalorian bounty hunter. Fett would have denied it, of course, would have insisted that he was out only for himself. But that was not the way of his warrior brethren, and that was not the way of the clone pilots now. Exaggerating the value of each life, as if the clones were uncontrived humans.

Was the Republic so shorthanded it couldn’t afford losses?

Something to bear in mind. Something that could be exploited at some point.

Without glancing at the bridge gunners, Grievous said: “Finish them off.”

Then, turning to a droid at the communications suite, he added: “See to it that the Neimoidians are ushered directly to the briefing room. Inform the others that I am on my way.”

Still shaken from the ordeal of transiting from the core ship to the Invisible Hand, Nute Gunray sat restively in the cabin space to which he and Haako been shown immediately on disembarking. He had expected that a few Republic starfighters might pursue the core ship from Cato Neimoidia—as they no doubt had other Trade Federation vessels launched to equally distant star systems in the Outer Rim. And he had hoped that the appearance of those starfighters would convey the impression that he had been chased from the Neimoidian purse world. But the scenario hadn’t unfolded as planned. What should have been a quick, effortless crossing had ended up a flight for life, with the shuttle left seriously damaged and more than a squadron of Vulture fighters destroyed.

It was almost beyond explanation until the shuttle pilot confirmed that most of the Vultures had been atomized by fire from the cruiser’s turbolaser batteries.

Grievous!

Castigating him for arriving late.

Gunray would have liked nothing more than to inform Dooku of the general’s actions, but he feared that the Sith would stand with Grievous.

Every bit as shaken, Rune Haako sat alongside Gunray at the cabin’s gleaming table. Other members of the Separatist Council occupied the choice seats: the almost two-dimensionally thin San Hill, Muun chairman of the InterGalactic Banking Clan; the Skakoan foreman of the Techno Union, Wat Tambor, encased in the cumbersome pressure