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Saba called in the squadron’s state of readiness and immediately received the unit’s orders. With a hiss, she turned her attention away from the screen before her as if rejecting its presence.

“What is it?” Danni asked. “If you can tell us, I mean.”

“We are to defend, and lose, and quit the field,” Saba said. “To act as a shield. Conservative tacticz. This one is a hunter. This one does not know how to defend or flee.”

“This one is a scientist,” Danni said. “This one didn’t used to know how to kill.”

Saba regarded Danni levelly, then returned her attention to the screen. “Danni can return to using human grammar now,” she said.

Twin Suns Squadron, Rogue Squadron, and the Wild Knights blasted off from Borleias’s surface. The fuel it took to reach orbit, though not a substantial portion of the starfighters’ capacity, could well be missed in the later stages of today’s battle, but Luke agreed with Wedge that allowing the Yuuzhan Vong to detect the launch of three preeminent New Republic squadrons from the planet’s surface would reinforce the enemy’s impression that this was a significant site.

As they reached high orbit, their astromechs and onboard computers received detailed orders. Luke reviewed them and nodded. Twin Suns was to stay in geosynchronous orbit above the biotics facility and vape anything that came at it. Rogue Squadron would set up above Borleias’s moon and make a speed run against any promising target of opportunity. The Wild Knights would move to reinforce the lunar station at Pyria VI. “Twin Suns on station,” he announced. “Rogues, Knights, good hunting.”

“Good hunting.” That was Saba Sebatyne’s voice, made even raspier by the limitations of the comlink. Her starfighters and blastboats peeled off for their run to Pyria VI. Gavin Darklighter responded with a mere click of his own comlink before Rogue Squadron looped away for the short run to Borleias’s moon.

Luke glanced behind him, to port and starboard. To port, Corran Horn waited with a calm he had never enjoyed as an X-wing pilot, a calm he had attained only after becoming a Jedi Knight. But to starboard, where Mara should have been, was Zindra Daine. She was a Corellian pilot, green as grass, barely out of her teens, not a Jedi. Luke winced at the thought of himself and Corran having to cover for a novice. Mara’s absence would be keenly felt today and in subsequent engagements. Though he sympathized with her desire to stay with Ben, to protect him against all possible dangers, he hoped Mara would realize that her desire was irrational, her goal an impossible one—and that her absence from the battlefield might just result in the loss of good people.

Wedge stood before the hologram at the center of the command room. This was an unlovely lozenge-shaped chamber with a curved ceiling two dozen meters below the biotics building. It had once been intended as a blast shelter, but now it was crammed with mobile consoles and their operators.

The chamber’s duracrete walls, not well designed for acoustics, rang with noise, the voices of military officers doing their duties, the beeps and chirps of computers demanding their operators’ attention, live sound feeds from unit leaders up there in the battle zone. Wedge ignored them and concentrated on the continuously updated tactical holo.

It showed Pyria at one edge, Borleias a little out from it, Pyria VI farther out, and the fringes of the solar system at the far edge. Red blips representing the Yuuzhan Vong invasion force clustered at that edge and streamed toward the other sites.

“The Rogues are on-station,” Tycho said. As chronically unable as Wedge was to run his operations from a seated position, he stood before the console devoted to starfighter coordination. “The starfighters on the target moon are standing by. Vong intrusion there anticipated in two minutes.”

“Have those fighters launch,” Wedge said. “Make it erratic. They can form up in time, but they should look as though they were caught off guard.”

“Done.” Tycho turned