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“Nine, if you can’t handle your four, I’ll take them.”

Corran ignored Bror’s jibe.

“Trim it, Rogues. We’re here protecting our own.” Wedge’s voice carried a confidence with it that buoyed Corran’s spirits. “Focus on your mission and let the rest take care of itself.”

“Control to Rogues. Squint ETA is thirty seconds. EV Three is recovered.”

Corran smiled and looked up. In the distance he could see the white triangular hull of the Forbidden motionless in space. The pilot had brought the ship in close to where Nawara Ven had been floating, then used a rescue tractor beam to pull the pilot inside the emergency hatch in the hull.

The Corellian brought his X-wing up and around, then flew toward where Ooryl hung in space. “Ten is here, Forbidden.”

“Thanks, Nine, I have the coordinates. On my way.”

Corran blinked. That’s Tycho’s voice. “Cap, is that you?”

“Guilty, Ten. You have four squints closing on your position. Deal with them before I get there, please.”

“You got it.” Corran shivered. The only thing he could think of that was more stupid than engaging four Interceptors with a single X-wing was flying an unarmed shuttle into a hot zone to pick up pilots. A smile slowly crept across his face. It’s only stupid if we die doing it, otherwise it’s heroism. “And I can be a hero today.”

Corran jumped his throttle full forward and shunted laser energy into his engines. That pushed his speed up toward maximum. Adjusting the stick and tapping the pedals he made his ship jump, cut, and dive. He flipped his weapons over to torpedoes and tried to get a lock on the lead squint, but it juked out of his sights. The others took shots at him, but his evasive maneuvers made them miss.

His fighter flew past them and two of the Interceptors started loops to come after him. Their turns took them high and away as they throttled up to match his speed. Increasing their speed meant their loops became wider than they might have preferred. They outnumber us enough that being a bit sloppy can’t hurt.

Corran chopped his throttle back to half and pulled his X-wing through a tight turn. “Forbidden, paint one with a missile lock.”

Punching the throttle full forward, Corran shot his ship back along the vector that had carried him through the squint formation. One of the Interceptors broke off on its run at the shuttle, so Corran concentrated on the other. He centered the ship in his aiming reticle and waited until he got a missile lock. When the reticle turned red, he hit the trigger and sent a proton torpedo speeding out toward the Interceptor.

The Interceptor pilot juked up and starboard, which pulled him out of the shuttle’s forward firing arc. While that maneuver would have carried him away from any torpedo the shuttle had launched, Corran’s missile had to make little more than a minor course correction before it hit. The torpedo cored through the Interceptor’s ball and exploded, spitting shrapnel out in all directions from an incandescent cloud.

Knowing he was pushing his luck, Corran rolled the X-wing and dove after the first Interceptor the Forbidden had scared off. Throttling back he tightened a turn and came up inside the arc of the squint’s loop. With a flick of his thumb he snapped weapons control over to lasers. The squint began to juke and twist, but Corran stayed with him.

Whistler screeched a warning about the return of the other two Interceptors, but Corran ignored it. He triggered one burst of lasers and clipped one of the squint’s wings, but it sailed on. Pushing more power to his engines, Corran started to close with it, but the astromech whistled insistently at him.

The pair of Interceptors had closed to inside a kilometer and were firmly on his tail. “Nine here, I could use some help.”

“I’m on it, Nine. Ten on the way. Break to port on my mark.”

Ten? That’s Ooryl, but not his voice. What’s going on?

“Mark.”

Left rudder, then a snap-roll onto the port stabilizers pulled him wide out of his previous flight path. He saw blue bolts shoot back toward the ships following him and for a half second Corran felt utterly