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Then fire blossomed on either side of the X-wing’s slender nose.

Throughout the time snubfighters had engaged in combat, a debate had raged over the efficacy of employing proton torpedoes against other starfighters. There was no doubting that the missiles would obliterate a starfighter. The weapons were designed for damaging much larger ships. To use them against a snubfighter was the equivalent of using a vibro-ax to kill an insect—gross overkill.

Then again, in combat, can overkill ever be gross?

Jaina couldn’t be sure if the Yuuzhan Vong pilot realized that Anni had waited for him to pick up speed before she fired, or if he died assuming she had just gotten lucky. He did try to deploy another void, but it was late in materializing and only slightly altered the course of the second torpedo. The first one flew straight and true, slamming into the skip’s belly. It detonated in a burst of argent fire that fed up through the fighter like lightning. The fragmenting coralskipper disintegrated before her eyes, with the second torpedo flying through the heart of the blast and detonating a hundred meters beyond it.

“Great shot, Twelve.” Jaina smiled as she looked up at the Lost Hope. She could feel her brother on board. You’re safe now, Jacen.

Then a terrible explosion ripped apart the freighter’s port side, and the stricken ship started falling toward Garqi.

Hitting Jacen harder than the jolt from the explosion was Jaina’s shocked anguish. He’d tried to steel himself for it, having anticipated it, but the grief and sense of loss rolled through the Force all raw and jagged. He wanted to reach out to her, through the Force, and tell her all was well, but he could not.

Instead he pulled himself in, shutting down his presence in the Force. He’d not liked having to deceive his sister about how the Lost Hope would be used to get them onto Garqi, but fooling her had been necessary. No one knew how much the Yuuzhan Vong could read in terms of communications or emotions. Just because we are blind to them through the Force, we’ve no call to assume they are blind to us, too. Only by having the people on the ship and in the fighters think their freighter was going down could they be sure the emotions and communications would be genuine.

“Jacen, my screen is showing a faulty linkage at J-14. Bad switch or—”

“Just a second, Corran.” Jacen’s fingers flew over his console. “Looks like the explosion kicked metal back. J-14 is broken and has released prematurely. J-13 and J-15 are still holding, but pressure is beyond spec already.”

“Sith spit.” Corran turned in his chair enough to glance back at Jacen. “Get the secondary charges ready to go. Blow them in sequence two on my mark. Be sharp. Can’t be worrying about your sister right now.”

“Yes, sir.” Jacen brought up the pattern diagram of the sequence two explosions. Six of the eight charges glowed green, but two others showed red. The two nearest J-14. “We have a problem, Corran. The charges near J-14 are bad.”

“Got it.”

Jacen looked past the pilot’s head and at the holographic feed occupying the area of Best Chance’s forward viewport. The feed came from holocams mounted on the Hope’s hull, allowing the pilot to see what things looked like as the doomed freighter hurtled at the planet. The freighter was just beginning to hit the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. Little pieces of the hull began to glow from the friction, with scraps of paint ablating off as sparks.

Corran keyed a comlink. “Ganner, look out the starboard viewport. Can you see the two charges there on the stanchion? They’re blinking red.”

“I see them.”

“Can you use the Force to compress the det-chargers to the point of exploding?”

“Never done it before.”

“Well, we have to do it now. If you can’t get both, just focus on the upper one. On my signal.”

“I copy.”

“Jacen, get ready. Once his goes, you blow yours.”

“As ordered.”

The freighter bucked as the atmosphere became denser. Corran’s hand danced over the command console. He fed power into the