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Wedge’s attention flicked across the hologram. Some ships lay dormant, well away from the action, monitoring the situation with their sensors, ready to step in should reinforcements be needed. Frigates, cruisers, and other capital ships were situated above Borleias. Starfighter units maneuvered to head off the Yuuzhan Vong approach.

The main Yuuzhan Vong force stayed coherent, a reserve fleet situated not far from where it had entered Pyrian space. The units moving against the New Republic forces were, Wedge knew, mere probes, sent out to test the strength of the defensive forces. This battle wasn’t about winning or losing; it was about gathering information on enemy capabilities.

“Pyria Six reports contact,” Tycho said.

* * *

Captain Yakown Reth was not a happy man.

It wasn’t enough that, of all the up-and-coming officers in Wedge Antilles’s command, he’d been assigned the unpromising duty of guarding a shuttle load of scientists, engineers, and construction specialists building a subsurface habitat on an airless moon. Yes, he’d been assigned two full squadrons of starfighters to defend the base. But his E-wings were not equipped with proton torpedoes—the brass said that these weapons were in short supply—and Reth wasn’t even authorized to know what the scientific personnel were up to.

And now, as Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers hurtled toward him, came to wipe out this idiotic little facility, Colonel Celchu was micromanaging him, dictating that wing pairs launch only as they came ready after going through a second checklist. His forces were straggling into space like an undisciplined mob. If General Antilles was monitoring the action here, he’d assume that Reth was an idiot.

Finally, as the incoming blips on the sensor screens reached the outer limits of his starfighters’ range of fire, the last two E-wings of Green Squadron struggled into formation and announced their readiness.

“Remember, no individual heroics,” Reth said. “We have to overwhelm their defenses and overlap our own. Break by wing quads on my command, three, two, one … now.” He suited action to words and spun down a few hundred meters toward the jagged and unappealing surface of the moon he was protecting. Green Two through Green Four followed him, in loose, imprecise formation. This was not surprising for a group that had been cobbled together from units shattered back at Coruscant. But it was aggravating. It made him look sloppy.

Coralskippers too distant to see opened fire; trails of glowing redness lanced out toward Green Squadron. Reth nudged closer to Green Two, his wingmate, and saw Green Three and Four crowding in, allowing their shields to overlap. Reth grimaced. Working with unfamiliar pilots in such proximity was as distasteful to him as the thought of trading unwashed clothing with them.

“Accelerate to full,” he said. “We’ll punch through and come back. Set lasers to stutterfire. I’ll designate a target and we’ll all hit it. Ready … mark.” He put his targeting reticle on an incoming coralskipper, not the first in the line coming toward him but the third, and fired a burst.

Red laser beams erupted from his E-wing’s nose and wingtips, an irregular drizzle rather than a hard-hitting burst of concentrated energy. Bursts from his wingmates followed his in, drenching his target. Reth hated the new stutterfire configuration. He knew that it did damage around the coralskippers’ blasted void defenses, but it prevented the lasers from hitting with any sort of satisfying power.

An incoming stream of lava balls angled across his formation. Three or four hit the overlapping shields of the E-wings, and the audible sensor interpreters of his vehicle noted the impacts with sharp bangs. His diagnostics didn’t light up, and his sensors showed his target followed by a cometlike tail consisting of bits of yorik coral chewed away by their laserfire.

Though that coralskipper was still sound, Reth switched targets, pouring his damage and that of his wingmates on another skip. This coralskipper, angling straight into the path of his lasers,