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No, now it was ships. More and more of the loathsome things of metal were dropping out of hyperspace, all aimed at Borleias. At Charat and Penzak.

A moment later, Charat could feel a buzz through the cognition hood, a telltale sign that Penzak was sending a warning to the Domain Kraal commander on Borleias.

The foremost New Republic ship, a sharply angled triangle in white, passed over the two coralskippers, blotting out the sun, casting them into shadow. Nowhere near so large as a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, it was still of impressive size, and so near that Charat felt he could reach out and drag his finger along its hull as it passed.

Penzak Kraal sent his coralskipper into a dive and turned to match the larger craft’s course. Charat paced him. Above, he saw thruster gouts from the ship’s belly herald the launching of the hated infidel starfighers.

“How do we hurt them worst?” Charat asked.

“Follow me in,” Penzak said. “While they’re launching. Don’t engage the fighters; bait them so they follow us. The ship won’t fire on us with the fighters in close proximity. We’ll enter their launching bays and destroy the facilities there, then gut the ship from within.” He looped around, rising and angling in toward the ship’s belly. Charat followed.

Mon Mothma, one of the newest cruisers in the New Republic’s fleet, a Star Destroyer refitted with gravity-well generators capable of interfering with the short jumps made by Yuuzhan Vong craft, cruised straight toward Borleias from the point where it had dropped out of hyperspace. This hadn’t been a timed drop—they’d plotted a course straight for the planet Borleias, and the planet’s gravity well had dragged them into realspace when they’d come close enough. And now before them was the blue-green world they had come to recapture.

“No sign of a Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit,” reported the sensor officer, a Mon Calamari male with deep blue skin. “The two coralskippers are turning to engage.”

General Wedge Antilles, a lean man with a careworn face and military posture, commander of the fleet group for which Mon Mothma was the flagship, nodded. “Gunnery, stay on them, vape them if they come against us. Fighter control, continue launching starfighter squadrons.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Data screens lit up with colored blips as New Republic starfighters—X-wings, A-9s, B-wings, E-wings, and more—streamed out of the docking bays and turned toward the planet. Wedge, standing at the captain’s station toward the rear of the spacious bridge, ignored the screens. He concentrated instead on the live view of Borleias, which filled the main viewport at the bow end of the bridge.

I hope the Vong here have come to love this world, he told himself. Because I’m going to take it from them. They’re going to learn what it is to lose the things they love.

Luke Skywalker hit his thrusters. His X-wing roared out of the main docking bay, losing altitude relative to the Mon Mothma. Behind him, eleven pilots of Twin Suns Squadron, the temporary X-wing squad that was his command, formed up on him. “Twin Suns away,” he said.

“Twin Suns, copy.” That would be the controller on Mon Mothma’s bridge. “Be advised, two coralskippers are maneuvering into your flight path.”

Luke glanced at his sensor board. Two red blips were indeed turning from below to head toward them. “Squadron, follow me out, let’s give these two the gauntlet treatment.”

He heard a chorus of acknowledgments. There was tension in some of the voices, but not alarm. All his pilots were veterans, survivors of the Sabers, the Shocks, and other squadrons that had been reduced to shield trios, wing pairs, and solo pilots during the Yuuzhan Vong attack on Coruscant mere days earlier. Two of them, forming with him a shield trio, were his wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, and the Corellian-Security-officer-turned-pilot-turned-Jedi named Corran Horn. All his pilots were disciplined and competent. Many wanted revenge.

Luke understood how they felt. The Vong, aided by their human agent Viqi Shesh, had almost managed to kidnap his