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“Hang on, ladies,” he called on the comlink. “We’re going around again!”

Savage pleasure filled him as he swung Millennium Falcon around for another dive toward the dovin basal. Attack my galaxy, will you? he thought.

They had doubtless seen the beginnings of his maneuver, so he altered his trajectory slightly to put the space mine directly between himself and the oncoming fighters. Then he altered his trajectory a second time, just to be safe. If the enemy commander had any sense, he’d be doing the same.

Both sides were now blind. The problem was that the Yuuzhan Vong were alert to his tactics. They wouldn’t just run blindly toward him: they would have their dovin basal propulsor units shifted to repel any attack, and they’d come in shooting.

“Be alert, people,” Han said. “We’re not going to be so lucky this time, and I can’t tell precisely where your targets are going to be. So be ready for them to be anywhere, right?”

“Right,” Leia said.

“Understood,” Dorja said.

“Commander Dorja,” Leia said. “You’ll see that your four lasers are aimed so as to fire on slightly diverging paths.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t readjust. There’s a reason for it.”

“I presumed so. I won’t change the settings.”

A pang of sorrow touched Han’s heart. It was his son Anakin who had discovered that if he fired three shots into a Yuuzhan Vong vessel at slightly diverging courses, at least one shot would curve around the gravity-warping dovin basal shields and hit the target. The quad lasers had been set to accomplish this automatically, without Anakin’s eye and fast reflexes.

Anakin, who died at Myrkr.

“Twenty seconds,” Han said, to cover both his own rising tension and the grief that flooded him.

He triggered another pair of missiles at ten seconds, just in case he was lucky again and the enemy flight appeared right in front of him. And then, because he had no choice but to trust his luck, he fired another pair five seconds later.

You are not keeping me from seeing Jacen again, he told the enemy.

The next thing he knew plasma cannon projectiles of molten rock were cracking against the Falcon’s shields, and there was a blinding flash dead ahead as the first pair of concussion missiles found a target. Han’s heart throbbed as coral debris pounded on the deflectors, bounded off like multicolored sparks. There was a flicker on the displays as another coralskipper flashed past at a converging speed somewhere close to that of light, too fast for Han’s eye to track it.

If he hadn’t blown up the first coralskipper, he might have actually collided with it and been vaporized along with the enemy.

Han tried to calm his startled nerves as he kept his eyes on the displays, searching for more enemy craft around and behind the dovin basal. In a moment he understood the enemy’s tactic. The two Vs of three had split into three pairs and curved around the dovin basal on separate paths, in the apparent hope that at least one pair would be in a position to splash the Falcon as they flew past each other. It hadn’t worked, but by sheer chance one of them had almost taken out the Millennium Falcon through ramming. What, Han wondered, were the odds on that?

The comm board began a rhythmic bleating, and Han shut it off. From the display he gathered that the Falcon had just lost her hyperspace comm antenna.

Oh well. They hadn’t been planning to talk to anyone long distance, anyway.

Feeling cheered by the thought that he’d win the battle in jig time if he could go on killing at least one coralskipper with each pass, he prepared to swing the ship around and dive toward the dovin basal yet again. And then his displays lit up at the appearance of an enemy fighter, the one intact survivor from the flight of six he’d splashed with his opening salvo. It was curving toward him, its plasma cannons spitting out a stream of molten projectiles.

It was placed just so as to keep him from swinging around on the ideal trajectory for passing the dovin basal again. He suppressed the curses that were ringing around the inside of his skull and instead warned his two