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One hard turn to starboard put them squarely in Luke’s sights. His X-wing pounded the lead skip. The second broke off. Mara jinked hard, came back, and put the torp right where she wanted it. Multicolored coral sprayed in all directions.

Luke had taken up position on another skip’s tail. The coralskipper decelerated hard, a maneuver guaranteed to make an inexperienced pilot overshoot, putting him precisely in the enemy’s sights.

That X-wing pilot was anything but inexperienced. “Cut speed, Artoo,” Mara heard on the private frequency, and the X-wing came to a relative standstill, still in killing position behind the coralskipper. His lasers showered it with deadly firepower.

Mara vaped it with a second missile.

At that instant, her threat board went red. Coralskippers’ weapons didn’t set off torpedo-lock alarms, so she had only a moment’s warning. She slammed the throttle forward, pushed down on her stick, and danced on the rudders.

“Got him,” Luke announced.

And Mara came about as the last coralskipper was jetting off toward open space.

“How’d you do that?” she demanded.

“He must’ve been chasing you on full power. That would distract a dovin basal just as badly as projecting full shields. I think,” he added. “Where did they come from?”

“I was headed for Gateway. Hoping to give Leia time to get some more evac ships headed out.”

“Leia’s gone into hiding,” Luke told her. “We can’t do her any more good, here … yet. She needs time to get people on board.”

“Ask her if it’d help if we keep the landing party looking up, instead of searching for her.”

While she waited, another voice gargled out of her comm unit. “All forces, this is Admiral Wuht. You have been ordered to disengage and withdraw. Noncompliance will result in immediate disciplinary action.”

She’d set her transceiver to listen broadband, even though she was transmitting only on private frequency. That order confirmed what Duros squadron leaders had been calling.

“They’re out of their minds,” she growled.

“No,” Luke came back. “I mean, yes, you’re right. But Leia wants us to hold back a little longer. She thinks she’s got a better chance of getting her refugees away if the Yuuzhan Vong don’t know we’re still hanging around.”

“All that through the Force, Luke?” she challenged him. “Not with words, exactly. I’m interpreting a little.”

“Still sounds reasonable.”

Their furball with the coralskippers had set her on a vector toward Orr-Om. The monstrous Yuuzhan Vong creature had attached itself to one docking area. As Mara watched, it appeared to break off another vast hunk of superstructure with its wedge-shaped head. It shook that vigorously, let go, and then darted back and forth, gobbling up whatever it had flung into space.

She keyed her sensors for a tight-beam view. “Looks like the creature’s got some kind of pouch clinging to its dorsal area,” she said. “Maybe life-support, over a blowhole.”

“All forces,” the static-charged voice repeated, “stand down. We have been threatened with a second strike if we do not disengage.”

“Stang,” Mara whispered.

Luke murmured back, “Wuht swallowed it—the threat of further attack, the promise that they only want the planet. He’s going to settle for a stalemate. I’m reading a deactivation order on everything that gets docked.”

Mara felt her eyes widen. Full deactivation would drain off the ships’ power and send their pilots and even their crews home. “They’re not even going to try to help Gateway evacuate, and now our people are prisoners down there.” She pushed the Shadow’s sharp nose back down.

Then she changed her mind. Gateway’s fragile dome protected several thousand refugees from corrosive atmosphere, and she’d seen the invaders’ biotechnical breathing apparatuses. One ill-planned attack—even by three Jedi, coordinating their strike through the Force—and the refugees would suffer, while their captors were only inconvenienced.

She’d had a run of unbreakable situations lately! She’d never been so frustrated.

And