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Han’s jaw dropped.

“What is that thing?” Leia said.

“Threepio, get in here!” Han yelled, without taking his eyes from the creature.

C-3PO staggered into the cockpit, clamping his hands on the high-backed navigator’s chair to keep from being thrown off balance, as had too often happened.

Han raised his right hand to the viewport and pointed. “What is that?” he asked, enunciating every word.

“Oh, my,” the droid began. “I believe that what we’re looking at is a kind of boat creature. The Yuuzhan Vong term for it is vangaak, which derives from the verb ‘to submerge.’ Although in this case the verb has been modified to suggest—”

“Skip the language lesson and just tell me how to kill it!”

“Well, I would suggest targeting the flat dome, clearly visible on its dorsal surface.”

“A head shot.”

“Precisely. A head shot.”

“Han,” Leia interrupted. “Four more coralskippers headed our way.”

Han manipulated levers on the console, and the Falcon accelerated. “We gotta work fast. Threepio, tell Meewalh to activate the manual release for the landing ramp. I’ll be there in a flash.”

Leia watched him undo the clasps of the crash webbing. “I take it you’re not planning to land.”

He kissed her on the cheek as he stood up. “Not if I can help it.”

The swoop fought to maintain an altitude of eight meters, but that was enough to keep it from the snapping jaws of the Yuuzhan Vong vangaak that had almost snagged it on surfacing.

Thorsh might have opted to head inland if the Yuuzhan Vong search parties and their snarling beasts hadn’t reached the marshy shore. Worse, four specks in the northern sky were almost certainly coralskippers, soaring in to reinforce the pair the YT-1300 was chasing. Instead, the Jenet had the swoop aimed for deeper water, out toward the volcano, where the waves mounded to a height of ten meters.

Thorsh and his rider could feel the sting of the saline spray on their scratched and bruised faces and hands. Behind them, the vangaak was rapidly closing the gap, but if it had weapons other than torpedo analogs it wasn’t bringing them to bear. An unsettling vociferation from the Bith broke Thorsh’s concentration.

“The vangaak’s gone! It submerged!”

Thorsh didn’t know whether to worry or celebrate. The vangaak put a quick end to his indecision. Breaching the surface in front of the swoop, the dull olive triangle spiked straight up out of the waves, venting seawater from blowholes on its dorsal side, and opening its tooth-filled mouth.

Thorsh demanded all he could from the swoop, climbing at maximum boost, but there was no escaping the reach of the creature.

He heard a surprised scream, then felt his flight jacket rip away. Lightened, the swoop ascended at greater speed, only to stall. Thorsh threw a distraught glance over his shoulder. The Bith was pinned between the vangaak’s teeth, mouth wide in a silent scream, black eyes dull, Thorsh’s jacket still clutched in his dexterous hands. But there wasn’t time for despair or anger. The repulsorlift came back to life, and Thorsh veered away, even as he was falling.

A roar battered his eardrums, and suddenly the YT-1300 was practically alongside him, skimming the waves not fifty meters away. The quartet of coralskippers began firing from extreme range, their plasma projectiles cutting scalding trails through the whitecapped crests.

The old freighter’s landing ramp was lowered from the starboard docking arm. It was clear what the ship’s pilots had in mind. They were expecting him to come alongside and hurl himself onto the narrow incline. But Thorsh faltered. He knew the limitations of the swoop, and—more important—his own. With the coralskippers approaching and the vangaak submerged who-knew-where beneath the waves, it was unlikely that he could even reach the freighter in time. Additionally—and despite what were obviously military-grade deflector shields—the freighter was being forced to make slight vertical and horizontal adjustments, which only decreased Thorsh’s chances of clambering aboard.

His grimace