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Behind him, the proton torpedoes didn’t fare as well. They tried to turn after him, of course. Two didn’t make it, and continued plunging moonward. The other two skipped along wildly different courses than Anakin and would never find him again before running out of fuel.

“Nice try,” Anakin said grimly. Now he was climbing uphill, out of the gravity well, his lasers pumping a steady rhythm. He took another hit from the enemy’s more powerful gun, and for an instant the lights dimmed in the cockpit. Then they flared back to life as Fiver rerouted, and Anakin took a hammer to the transport. Their shields faltered, and he slagged their primary generator. Looping around them nose to tail, he drilled laser turrets, torpedo ports, and engines.

Then he tried the comm again. “Ready to talk now?” he asked.

“Why not?” the voice from the other end replied. “You can still surrender if you want.”

“That’s—” Anakin began, but Fiver interrupted.

HYPERSPACE JUMP DETECTED. 12 VESSELS HAVE ARRIVED, DISTANCE 100,000 KILOMETERS.

“Sith spit!” Anakin muttered, bringing his sensors to bear.

They weren’t Yuuzhan Vong ships, he saw that immediately, just a motley collection of E-wings, transports, and corvettes.

They were hailing him. He opened the link.

“Unidentified vessel, this is the Peace Brigade,” a voice crackled. “Stand down and surrender, and you won’t be harmed.”

They were too far away to hit him. Soon they wouldn’t be. Anakin closed his S-foils, rolled, opened the throttle, and raced toward the distant viridian of Yavin 4.

Anakin vaulted from the cockpit of the X-wing into silent near darkness. A twilight line of illumination in the distance was the entrance he had flown through into what had once been a part of an ancient Massassi temple complex, much later the central hangar for the Rebel fleet, and which now saw little use at all, since most ships landing at the academy set down outside.

Anakin’s flight boots scuffed the ancient stone surface, and the sound grew around him into the hushed beating of enormous wings. He smelled stone and lubricant and more faintly the musky jungle outside.

Someone was watching Anakin from the darkness.

“Who is that?” a voice asked, each word stretching to fill the abyss.

“It’s me, Kam. Anakin.”

A faint glow appeared, and then a bank of light panels came on. Some ten meters away Kam Solusar stood, hooking his lightsaber back into his belt.

“I thought it felt like you,” Kam said. “But there’s been an unknown ship in orbit for several standard days now. We’ve been trying to keep them confused.”

“Peace Brigade,” Anakin explained. “And the one ship has friends now, about twelve of them. And they aren’t confused anymore.”

He’d been walking toward Kam while he spoke, and suddenly his old teacher swept forward, clasping his arm. “It’s good to see you, Anakin. And you? You’re alone?”

Anakin nodded. “Talon Karrde is on the way with a flotilla. He’s supposed to evacuate you and the students. Uncle Luke wasn’t expecting the Peace Brigade to show up so soon, I guess.”

Kam’s eyes narrowed. “But you were, weren’t you? You came here without permission.”

“I came against orders, actually,” Anakin corrected. “That’s not important now. Getting the students to safety, that is.”

“Of course,” Kam agreed. “How long before the Peace Brigade can land?”

“An hour? Not long.”

“And Karrde?”

“He could be days.”

Kam grimaced. “We can’t hold out here that long.”

“We might. We’re all Jedi.”

Kam snorted. “You need a sense of your limitations. I have a sense of mine. We might do very well, but we’ll lose kids. I have to think of them first.”

They were approaching the turbolift when the door hissed open and ejected a blond-and-orange blur. The blur smacked Anakin at chest height, and he suddenly found surprisingly strong arms wrapped around him in a fierce embrace. Bright green eyes danced centimeters from his own.

He felt his face go warm.

“Hi, Tahiri,” he said.

She pushed back from him. “Hi, yourself, great hero-from-the-stars who’s too good to keep in touch with his best friend.”

“I’ve—”

“Been