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By Root 1633 0

slid into the pilot’s seat and let herself join with the ship. Her fingers moved deftly over the organic console, confirming the sensory impulses that flowed to her through the hood. Yes, this was the hyperdrive analog. Here was the forward shield. The navigation center remained a mystery to her, but during their captivity Lowbacca had tinkered a bit with one of the worldship’s neural centers. The young Wookiee had a history of taking on impossible challenges, and this task lay right along his plotted coordinates.

Suddenly the shriek of warning sensors seared through Jaina’s mind. A chorus of wordless voices came at her from all over the ship.

The details of their situation engulfed her in a single swift flood. Several plasma bolts streamed toward them, converging on the underside of the ship—so far, the favored target. Coralskippers had moved into position aft and above, and others were closing in from below and on either side. Another ship came straight on, still at a distance but closing fast.

No matter what she did, they could not evade the disabling barrage.

THREE

Jaina held course, flying straight toward the incoming plasma bolts. At the last possible moment, she threw the vessel into a fast-rolling spiral. The plasma flurry skimmed along the whirling ship, not dealing much damage to any one part. When the scream of plasma grating against living coral ceased, she fought the ship out of the roll and kept heading straight toward the oncoming skip.

“Lowbacca, get up here,” she shouted. “Clear me a lane, Ganner.”

The Jedi gunner hurled plasma at the coralskipper directly in their path. As its dovin basal engulfed the missile in a miniature black hole, Ganner released another. His timing was perfect, and the skip dissolved in a brief, bright explosion.

Jaina quickly diverted the dovin basal to the front shield, and instinctively flinched away as a spray of coral debris clattered over the hull. She glanced back over her shoulder in Zekk’s general direction.

“Zekk, you play dejarik much?”

“Play what?”

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. While Zekk had concentrated on avoiding each immediate attack, the yammosk-coordinated fleet had been thinking several moves ahead, and had neatly maneuvered the stolen ship into a trap. She’d never been fond of dejarik or any of the other strategy games Chewbacca had insisted upon teaching her, but for the first time she saw the Wookiee’s point.

Lowbacca padded up and howled a query.

“Get on navigation,” Jaina said, jerking her head toward a rounded, brainlike console. “Hyperspace jump. Destination: anywhere but Myrkr. Can you input coordinates?”

The Wookiee settled down and regarded the biological “computer,” pensively scratching at the place on one temple where a black streak ran through his ginger-colored fur.

“Now would be good,” Ganner prompted.

Lowbacca growled a Wookiee insult and tugged the cognition hood down over his head. After a moment, he extended one of his retracted climbing claws and carefully sliced through the thin upper membrane. With astonishing delicacy, he began to touch neural clusters and rearrange slender, living fibers, grunting in satisfaction with each new insight.

Finally he turned to Jaina and woofed a question.

“Set course for Coruscant.”

“Why Coruscant?” Alema Rar protested. Her head-tails, which were mottled with darkening bruises and practically quilted together with bacta patches, began to twitch in agitation. “We’ll be shot down by Republic guards long before we reach the planet’s atmosphere, unless the Peace Brigade gets to us first!”

“The Peace Brigaders are enemy collaborators. They have no reason to attack this ship,” Ganner countered. “On the other hand, the Republic has no reason not to.”

Tenel Ka shook her head sharply, sending her disheveled red-gold braids swinging. “Sometimes a live enemy is worth a hundred dead ones. A small ship like this offers no real threat. The patrol will escort us in, hoping to capture a live ship and curious to know the motives of the crew.”

“That’s my thinking,” Jaina agreed. “Also, Rogue