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“I’ll keep the margin down to two,” Octa said somberly.

The Q9 unit let out an indignant bleep. This drew a burst of genuine laughter—partly because Octa’s riposte broke the sudden tension, and partly because every pilot in the squadron recognized her humor as unintentional.

Most commanders Kyp knew wanted their pilots silent and focused as they approached battle. Kyp encouraged banter. It kept their minds occupied and allowed emotions to rise to the surface. He didn’t know of any pilots—not live ones, anyway—who thought their way through a battle. The speed and ferocity of ship-to-ship combat was a matter of instinct, reflex, and luck. No one would ever mistake Han Solo for a philosopher, and he’d been flying longer and better than anyone Kyp knew.

When it came right down to it, what was there to think about? The Yuuzhan Vong had to be stopped: it was that simple. After today’s fight was over, let the dithering old folks debate how the enemy had managed to move on Coruscant. He’d be off fighting the next battle.

Kyp glanced at the navigation panel and gave the order to go to lightspeed. Once the jump was complete, he settled down into the silence and darkness. With a discipline born partly of the Force, partly from long experience as a pilot, he willed himself to snatch a bit of sleep while he could.

He awakened abruptly as sensors announced the coming emergence from hyperspace. Stars flared into existence, and every light on his control panel came alive.

The Jedi glanced at the multitude of flashing icons on his display, each representing an enemy skip. “Trying to tell me something, Zero-One?”

EXPERIENTIAL DATA INDICATE THAT YOU DO NOT APPRECIATE SUBTLETY.

If anything, the droid had erred on the side of understatement. With a surge of dismay, Kyp realized he was leading his pilots into a maelstrom.

The skies over Coruscant strobed and burned. Ships of every size and description hurtled away from the doomed world. A vast Yuuzhan Vong fleet awaited them. A few escaped, aided more by the general chaos than any coordinated defense. There was no sign of the Jedi wing.

The Dozen swept in, holding their wedge-shaped formation. The only sign of their consternation was the silence coming from the open comm.

One of the Dozen, an early XJ prototype in pristine condition, dipped out of formation and started lagging behind like a distracted toddler.

Kyp frowned. “Five, acknowledge.”

The ship swiftly moved back into place. “Five here.”

The voice was ridiculously young—a boyish growl that had yet to achieve a genuine baritone. The pilot, Chem, was the son of a wealthy diplomat, a collector who’d filled a small warehouse with gleaming, never-flown ships. On his fourteenth birthday, Chem stole his mother’s favorite ship and set out to track down Kyp’s Dozen. He hadn’t asked for admission—just followed the squadron around from one mission to another. After several standard months, and the loss and replacement of more pilots than Kyp cared to count, he’d taken Chem on as a regular. Since then, the kid had vaped seven Vong coralskippers and squandered his inheritance on such frivolous things as new XJs, concussion missiles, and fuel.

“Keep focused, Five. I’d hate to see you get a scratch on that showpiece of yours,” Kyp admonished lightly.

“So would I, sir. Under those circumstances, I’d rather face the warmaster himself than the ship’s rightful owner.”

“Copy that,” Ian Rim broke in. “I used to keep company with Chem’s mother. You thought the Vong were mean and ugly?”

“She speaks well of you, too,” Chem retorted without missing a beat. “Or at least of your flying skills. Says if you’d stuck to it, you could have been the best nerf herder on Corellia.”

Kyp chuckled at the idea of the hotshot pilot sputtering along on a ponderous herding sled—an image that made nerf herder such a potent insult. The short exchange broke some of the tension he sensed in each of his pilots. All but one. A deep sense of unease remained in the youngest pilot.

He switched