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Han jerked the control stick back, then forward, whipping the ship over the top of the rim. But this time, just short of the hub, he juked hard to starboard and dived, racing under one of the radiating spokes, then curved around to port, lifting the shuttle’s nose to climb over the top of the next one. While the skip pilots tried to follow—losing another of their teammates in the process—Han threw the shuttle into an inverted dive and, reversing his course, made a figure eight of the maneuver.

Emerging out from under the rim, however, Han and his copilot found themselves back where they had started, twining their way through clusters of closely anchored ships.

“Any sign of those skips?” Han asked when he could.

The Ryn studied the display screens. “Only two left. But they’re sticking with us.”

Han coaxed the shuttle through a tight turn while the Ryn kept the retrothrusters from stalling. They were aimed back toward the ring when a lavender-and-red TaggeCo luxury yacht suddenly blasted from one of the launch bays, not only making straight for the shuttle but opening fire to boot, intent on clearing a path.

Han howled and twisted the ship up on end, narrowly avoiding laser beams and what would have been a sure collision. Lifting his eyes as the yacht tore past them, he caught a quick glimpse of the occupants of the cockpit and slammed his fist on the console.

“I’ll bet anything that was Big Bunji’s ship!”

“What are friends for,” the Ryn remarked.

But just then, one of the pursuing coralskippers took a laser bolt from the yacht and exploded. “Well, there you go,” Han said, shaking his head in wonderment.

“That still leaves one,” the Ryn reminded.

“Wanna bet?”

The shuttle leapt toward the Wheel, but Han didn’t trust that he could outfly the surviving Yuuzhan Vong pilot with more over-and-under maneuvers. Instead he angled for the uncompleted portion of the outer rim, where construction gantries, hover platforms, and a scattering of inert drone ships created a kind of obstacle course.

Clasping both hands around the control stick, he threw the shuttle into a vertical swoop to dodge a platform, then rolled out to port to bring the shuttle beneath the longest of the open-framework gantries. Halfway along, however, a plasma discharge from the coralskipper slagged the gantry, forcing Han to veer sharply for the hub. Along the way, he came close to losing a wing to a rectenna projecting from the underside of one of the spokes, but the real problem was the enemy pilot himself, who was as accurate with his weapons as he was skillful with his craft.

With console indicators screaming and flashing, Han powered the shuttle through a circle concentric to the hub, cheating the turn tighter and tighter yet, then vectored outward, accelerating back toward the skeletal arc of the outer rim.

Tugging himself upright, the Ryn leaned toward the viewport in obvious misgiving. “You can’t be serious!” he stammered.

Han studied the skinless rim, and the exposed ribs and structural members through which he planned to steer the shuttle. “There’s no skin on the far side, either,” he said in the most reassuring tone he could muster. “I checked.”

“You checked? When?”

“Earlier,” Han said nonchalantly. “Trust me, there’s clear space on the other side. Just hang on.”

The shuttle’s instruments went into a panic, screeching and blinking warnings of impending doom, but Han did his best to ignore them. With the coralskipper pasted to the shuttle’s tail, he increased speed. Then, just short of the rim, he feinted a climb by goosing the forward attitude adjustment jets. The skip pilot took the bait and soared upward. Realizing his error, the Yuuzhan Vong tried to increase the angle of his ascent and execute a backward loop, but he was too close to the rim. The skip clipped girder after girder, losing pieces of itself with each impact, then careened off to one side and smashed into a curve of unyielding hull where spoke and rim met.

Five degrees to port, committed to his original plan, Han took the