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“There, Captain Solo!” C-3PO pointed at the sensors. Far below, a lone figure waved something like a glimmering violet candle.

“I see her.” He feathered the main engines and swooped down.

“Oh, no,” C-3PO moaned. “Those must be coralskippers, coming in at four—”

“I see ’em, I see ’em.”

Han set the Falcon to hover and dropped the boarding ramp. To his satisfaction, a second figure followed Jaina, staggering out of the hillside tunnel entry.

Then he saw Leia in Jacen’s arms, and the blood staining their legs.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The planet was lost. Far below, its dirty brown clouds swallowed Orr-Om. A cruiser-sized, multicolored hunk of coral was closing fast with one of the unshielded cities. Oddly, it wasn’t launching its fighters.

Mara realized it just as Luke cried out over the comm unit, “It’s going to ram!” Mara vectored aside, keeping one eye on her sensors. The massive alien ship slammed into the top of the helpless city, which already was caught by the downward pull of the dovin basal launched into its heart.

The coral ship bounced away. Its smooth, lower surface showed no sign of stress, but the city lit it with a dazzling display of sparks and cascading gases. Mara’s sensors also showed an ominous, downward vector shift.

Urrdorf was pulling away, but not fast enough. Another flight of coralskippers vectored in. There seemed to be thousands of them.

Luke veered off, and she followed. Yet another battle group had appeared out of hyperspace, and this time, it came from the south, springing the trap on refugee ships that had fled the initial phase of this attack. Three cruiser-sized vessels, their broad red and green arms already deploying showers of coralskippers, were escorted by a dozen or more midsize craft that looked like gunships.

Luke pushed his X-wing back toward the smaller flurry that was Urrdorf’s remaining defense force. Mara couldn’t help watching behind, though. Urrdorf still had its shields. Coralskippers soared in, splashing it with plasma.

A Yuuzhan Vong force circled Bburru. The city hadn’t taken a dovin basal amidships yet, thanks to Admiral Wuht’s defenders. Mara’s practiced eye spotted another X-wing among them.

A gunship-sized object separated itself from the Vong attack force, coming in low, spraying the city with gouts of brilliant plasma.

“Breaking port,” she called. “My sensors show a civilian shuttle launch off Bburru. I’ll escort.”

Luke soared off toward Anakin. Mara skimmed the city’s surface, back toward the dock she’d left so unceremoniously. Someone had a lot of courage, launching this late in the show.

Three small shuttles took off simultaneously, holding together in a row.

“Shuttles,” Mara transmitted, “this is Jade Shadow. I’ll escort you to jump.”

“Negative, jump,” a voice crackled from her console. “We’re headed planetside.”

“That’s suicide,” Mara exclaimed. “They only want you for slaves, or sacrifices. Come around to—”

The shuttles’ pilots held to their course. Then Mara saw the triangular CorDuro Shipping insignia on the shuttles’ aft surfaces. It looked as if CorDuro, having done all it could to weaken Duro’s defenses, was defecting to the Yuuzhan Vong en masse.

In that case, they deserved what they had coming. Mara vectored aside, found herself facing a flight of coralskippers, and went to work.

* * *

Jacen bent over the Falcon’s narrow first-aid bunk. Though the deck bucked and tilted, Jaina applied a pair of Sluissi grav-press bandage cuffs to Leia’s legs, just above the knees, then connected them with the Falcon’s medical data bank.

“That should hold her until we can find a bacta tank. I don’t know about her legs, though—”

Leia’s eyes fluttered open. “Jaina,” she murmured. “Heard your voice. Thanks.”

Jaina tucked a thermal blanket around Leia’s shivering shoulders, then uncoiled a fluid drip and applied it to her bared arm. “Jacen did the hard part,” she said gruffly.

Jacen adjusted the bandage cuffs. Finely tuned micro-repulsor fields were already compressing the damaged arteries, even while they enhanced peripheral