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One of the lieutenants slammed a palm against the hatch controls. With an impatient hiss the ramp drew in like a retracting serpent’s tongue. The doors clamped shut.

Wedge wasted no time securing himself into his seat before raising the transport off the landing pad. With a scream of acceleration the troop ship launched itself away from the dying Maw Installation.

The bootsteps of Commander Kratas sounded like hammers on sheet metal as he ran up to the bridge observation platform. Admiral Daala turned, anxiously awaiting a favorable report.

Kratas tried to regain his composure but did not succeed in wiping the idiotic grin from his lips. “Transfer successful, Admiral. Complete core dump of all the Maw’s backup computer files.” He lowered his voice. “You were correct. Director Sivron never bothered to change his password. He was still using the same one you obtained ten years ago.”

Daala snorted. “Sivron has been incompetent in everything else. Why should he change now?”

Most of her TIE fighters had been wiped out. None of her starboard turbolasers were functional. Engines operated at only 40 percent efficiency, and many systems were severely overheating.

She had never anticipated the battle would take this long. She had meant to obliterate the Rebel forces and then finish mop-up operations at her leisure. She didn’t understand why Sivron and his Death Star didn’t do anything. But finally something had gone right; she had retrieved the precious data from the Maw Installation computers.

Daala watched as troop transports fled the cluster of rocks below, but she deemed them insignificant targets.

“Installation shields are completely down,” the tactical lieutenant said.

“Good,” she snapped. “Wheel about. We’ll make a final attack run.”

“Excuse me, Admiral,” Kratas interrupted. “We’re getting anomalous readings from the reactor asteroid. It appears to have suffered severe damage and is highly unstable.”

Daala brightened. “Ah, excellent. We’ll target that. Perhaps the reactor can do most of the destructive work for us.”

She looked out the bridge tower and saw the ocean of screaming gases around the infinitely black pinpoints. The Gorgon turned about and headed toward Maw Installation.

“Full ahead,” Daala said, standing rigid at her station, gloved hands clasped behind her back. Her coppery hair flowed behind her like spraying lava. “Fire repeatedly, until the Installation is destroyed—or until our turbolaser banks are drained dry.”

The lumbering ship picked up momentum as the Gorgon accelerated forward on its final run.

Wedge flicked on the open communications unit to contact the New Republic fleet. He didn’t care about encryption at the moment—if the Imperial forces could decode his transmissions, they wouldn’t have time to take action anyway.

“All fighters, regroup and return to the Yavaris. Prepare to retreat. We are leaving the Maw. We have everything we came for.”

The huge frigate hung like a jagged weapon waiting to receive the fighter squadrons. X-wings and Y-wings looped around, disengaging from space dogfights and heading back to their primary ships. Wedge accelerated toward the Yavaris. The squarish opening of the frigate’s lower bays glowed with an atmosphere-containment field, like a welcoming open door.

Without warning four square-winged TIE fighters shot up from Wedge’s blind spot, mercilessly battering the front of the transport shuttle with laser bolts.

Before Wedge could react, an assault shuttle bearing Imperial markings flew in from the left, firing multiple beams from its forward heavy blaster cannons. The attack took the TIE pilots by surprise. They scrambled and scattered. Two careened into each other to get out of the way. Two others succumbed to the focused blasts, exploding into molten debris.

Wedge heard a loud Wookiee roar of triumph over the open comm channel, echoed by growls and shouts from the assault shuttle’s passenger compartment. The clipped metallic voice of See-Threepio interrupted, “Chewbacca, please do stop showing off! We need to get back