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By Root 1358 0

shot them. He fell into a one-two-three rhythm—first shot to draw out a gravitic anomaly, second shot just outside its event horizon. It would move to intercept, and he would fire even wider on the other side. Sometimes it managed to swallow all three shots, but often the coherent light blazed just far enough outside the singularity to merely bend around it. Once he got the timing right, he could land that crooked third shot where he wanted it.

But he couldn’t shoot them all. The transport bucked and complained as molten plasma did its damage. Ignoring the tremors, Anakin fought on in grim silence.

Vehn, too, kept his silence—the occasional curse aside. They were all beyond talking now.

An enemy shot got through Anakin’s barrage, glancing from the turret cockpit, leaving a molten streak on the transparisteel. Anakin traced after the offender, but it was gone. He whirled back to take one of three crisscrossing his field of vision and hit it solidly. It spun, then straightened.

Toward him. With quiet calm Anakin fired at it, watching it come closer. A singularity gulped his first shot, and the second bent wide. The third beam hit dead center. The skip flared out of existence, but the debris came on, smacking into the cockpit in a hundred meteoric shards.

Hairline fractures spidered everywhere.

One more hit, and I’m breathing vacuum, Anakin thought.

But he certainly couldn’t leave the turret. He checked to make certain the lock behind him was sealed, closed off from the rest of the ship. There was no need to take everyone with him.

He took out two more skips, but then three dropped into a wedge headed straight for him. He took a deep, calming breath and began firing, but he knew he wasn’t going to get them all.

In fact, he had fired only two shots before the damaged laser overheated and went into temporary shutdown. Anakin watched impassively as the skips approached. He reached out in the Force, hoping to find debris to throw at them.

He wondered what it was going to feel like when his blood started boiling.

He felt them in the Force at the same time the coralskippers vanished in a searing white haze, and two X-wings whipped around the expanding cloud of gas and molten coral. His comm crackled.

“Need a hand, little brother?”

“Jaina!”

“This is some mess you’ve gotten us into, Anakin,” a masculine voice replied.

“Jacen! Where … how …”

“Explanations later,” Jaina said. “Who’s flying that crate?”

“That’s me,” Vehn cut in.

“Get out of there, fast,” Jaina said. “We’ll keep these pups off you. Corran Horn’s out here, too. I almost pity the Vong.”

“But if I clear …”

“Believe me,” Jaina said, “you’ll want to be clear.”

Anakin breathed a sigh of relief as the turbolaser came back on-line. “I’ve got the back door,” he told his siblings. “You just clear a path. Vehn, better do what they want.”

“Whatever you say,” Vehn said sarcastically. And then he just gasped. Anakin didn’t see why until they were on the other side of the Errant Venture. By that time, the Yuuzhan Vong ship was blazing like a newborn star.

Anakin stared through the transparisteel and grinned wide enough to swallow a crescent moon.

Karrde wasn’t grinning, a standard day later, when the Yuuzhan Vong ships finally packed it in and jumped to hyperspace. He was watching the drifting ruins of ships, Yuuzhan Vong and otherwise, and grimly tallying his losses.

Yes, he was getting too old for this nonsense.

“Captain. Message for you, sir,” H’sishi said.

He considered ignoring it, but at this point—so soon after the battle—it could be something critical.

“Put it on, H’sishi,” he said.

A few seconds later a lean, middle-aged face appeared.

“Corran Horn,” Karrde said. “It’s good to see you. I assume you were on your father-in-law’s Star Destroyer?”

“When Jacen and Jaina found us, yes. I was one of the X-wings out there. I …” His face contorted very briefly, then returned to a neutral expression. “Karrde, I want to thank you for saving my son and the other children. I know what it cost you.”

No, you don’t, Karrde thought. “You’re welcome,” he told