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The warning did not come soon enough. The battle net grew frantic with exclamations.

“Twin Six and Seven are down!”

“Scimitar reporting four casualties!”

“Taanab Ten, pull out! Divert power to your shields!”

Jaina glanced over her right shoulder and saw Twin Suns Two fly apart.

This can’t be happening, she thought.

“Stingcrawlers have broken through our lines,” Twin Suns Six said. “They’re going directly for the transports.”

Jaina pulled hard on the yoke, climbing back toward carrier one at maximum boost. “Twin Suns, disengage and regroup. Screen formation on my mark!”

She issued the command, and the remaining starfighters formed up once again. They chased the coralskippers flat out, wending through continuous volleys of incandescent fire.

“Scimitar is calling for backup at carrier one.”

“Enemy fighters are taking up positions around our transports. We can’t fire without risking collateral damage.”

“All pilots, weapons on number one carrier are active! Repeat—”

The rest of Scimitar Three’s words were erased by an agonized scream.

Jaina hurtled into the fray, thumb pressed on the trigger, only to watch her stutterfire bursts disappear into the yawning mouths of enormous gravity wells fashioned by the skips’ dovin basals. Was the convoy a cleverly engineered ruse? she asked herself. Disinformation to lure the Alliance into a trap? But that couldn’t be. If so, the Yuuzhan Vong would have capital ships and a yammosk vessel. They would have struck before any of the prisoners had been rescued and transferred to the transports—

Lowbacca growled a warning.

Four blazing missiles had Jaina’s name on them. She slalomed successfully through the first three, but the fourth nicked the port stabilizer and sent the X-wing into a rapid spin. She calmed herself and regained control, emerging from the spin in time to see a transport explode directly in front of her. Sudden anguish kept her stunned for a moment; then she swerved away from the fragment cloud and went searching for the guilty skip.

Kyp and Alema Rar sent a sudden alert to her through the Force.

She rolled the X-wing onto its back. The Falcon had launched from the freighter’s docking bay and was making fast for clear space, a Galactic Alliance gunship right behind.

Twisting free of engagements, four enemy fighters converged on the Falcon.

Jaina tried to establish contact with her parents, but the battle channel was screeching with static.

Mom!

The Falcon was jarred by missiles her parents either hadn’t seen coming or were unable to avoid. In her mind’s eye, Jaina could see Han taking the ship through a repertoire of evasive maneuvers. And yet the enemy pilots of the stingcrawler skips were clearly anticipating the Falcon’s every move.

Jaina, Alema, and Twin Eleven and Twelve flew to the freighter’s rescue, battering the skips from behind, but the Yuuzhan Vong fighters refused to be distracted from their target. In a moment of blind rage, Jaina dropped her guard and was struck from starboard. Slewing helplessly, she watched Eleven and Twelve shatter.

The enemy was on a killing spree.

“All flights, go to proton torpedoes!”

Brilliant orbs of energy streaked forward and disappeared. The stingcrawler skips’ singularites were swallowing four times what a normal skip was capable of dealing with.

Jaina flinched with each magma missile that hit the Falcon. The freighter’s shields were holding, but the Falcon was literally rattling around inside them. Three skips accelerated, determined to overtake their quarry. Quad lasers spraying fire in all direction, the Falcon tipped up on her starboard side, only to take a devastating blow to the belly. One skip sustained a broadside hit and went careening into a Peace Brigade ship, opening a ragged breach and sending the ship into a dizzying rollover.

The Falcon and the gunship were almost clear enough to go to hyperspace. Jaina imagined herself in the outrigger cockpit, throwing switches and actuators, pushing the