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“We owe you one,” Lando said.

“Actually, that’s two,” Talon replied. “But who’s counting?”

Tendra eased the angle of the yacht’s descent and set a course for the Middle Distance. By approaching from the east, they could avoid the hail of plasma missiles that were pounding the central canyon. The adjusted course took Lady Luck, Wild Karrde, and some of the other rescue craft almost directly beneath Jade Shadow. While it remained in stationary orbit, Mara’s ship had sustained heavy damage.

Below, youthful mountains poked from opaque white clouds, their flanks and foothills cloaked with unspoiled boras. To the west the forest was interrupted by expanses of grasslands. Where those ended, the virgin terrain undulated, rose again to lofty heights, then angled down toward the central canyon, which was blanketed in layers of thick smoke.

Toning proximity alarms told Lando and Tendra that Lady Luck had attracted the attention of some of the coralskippers that were strafing the canyon and surrounding woodlands. Four skips were already climbing out of the smoke to welcome the yacht to the fight.

“Talon, we might need your help again,” Lando started to say when two of the coralskippers were cracked open and knocked out of the sky by laserfire. The trailing pair deployed singularities, but the shields bought them mere moments of refuge before proton torpedoes blew them apart.

An instant later, two red X-wings streaked past Lady Luck from astern, banking broadly to the south before coming about to assume the same approach vector the smugglers were taking. Lando opened a channel to the starfighters.

“Thanks from Lady Luck for clearing the way.”

“Red Two at your service,” a familiar voice responded.

“Wedge!” Lando said around a broad grin. “How much grease did it take to get you installed in that snubfighter?”

“Less than half what it took at the start of this war.”

“Yeah, I suppose we’re all back to fighting trim.”

Tendra stretched out her left hand and patted Lando’s slight paunch. “He means, most of us,” she said into her headset.

Lando cocked an eyebrow at his wife, then said, “Where’s that poisoned vessel, Wedge?”

“Tell your scanners to look due north-northwest.”

Tendra tasked the instruments to provide a close-up view. Defended by a ring of eight coralskippers, the six-armed slayers’ vessel was swooping down toward the south rim of the canyon. As many Red Squadron X-wings were in close pursuit, needling the enemy with lasers and torps. But instead of answering them with plasma missiles, the skips were devoting all their power to fashioning shielding singularities to protect the poisoned craft.

All the levity had left Wedge’s voice when he said, “There’s no stopping it now.”

Lady Luck’s proximity alarms began to blare again. Lando watched the friend-or-foe identifier cycle in apparent bewilderment, then he glanced around the sky.

“Wedge, our scanners are showing unfriendlies, but they’re not registering as skips.”

“Because they’re not,” Wedge said flatly. “Whatever they are, they’re rising out of the forests—hundreds of them!”

Lando leaned toward the forward viewport. A swarm of insectile ships, showing green wings and red carapaces, was corkscrewing up toward the Smugglers’ Alliance ships. As they drew nearer, singularities formed to both sides of Lady Luck. The yacht pitched violently to port and began to slide for the surface. Lando lifted his hands from the control yoke and turned to his wife in wide-eyed confusion.

“That’s not me piloting!” He commed Wedge. “We’re caught up in some kind of tractor beam. It’s dragging us down!”

“Wish I could help,” Wedge said a moment later. “But they’ve got me, too.”

Corran had been the first to spot the ships—or creatures—rise from the tampasi east of the canyon. He, Kyp, Lowbacca, Cilghal, and the rest of the downed Jedi pilots were gathered on the landing platform now, watching the red and green craft dart through the sky like maidenflies, making use of grasper claws and dovin-basal-like gravitic anomalies to bring down Red Squadron