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“Ten seconds to break, Rogues. Nine, don’t feel you have to be a hero.”

“Have to be? I’m a Rogue. I thought hero came with the territory.”

“It certainly does, Nine. Break now.”

Corran banked off to the left as the rest of the squadron went right and filled his aft sensor scope. “Later, my friends.”

If there was any reply it didn’t make it over the horizon to him.

Corran throttled back and took the X-wing down close to the lunar surface. He cut off his comm unit and flipped his sensors over to passive mode. “Okay, Whistler, it’s just you and me. Let’s find us a hole to crawl into. No, not one to hide in, but one to ambush out of. The Commander knew as well as we did that this split wouldn’t fool all the Imperial pilots. They’ll come for us eventually. I’ve never had a desire to die alone, and taking a bunch of them along will suit me just fine.”

37

As certain as taxes and as slow as paperwork they come. With his X-wing nestled in a frozen lava tube on the side of a volcano, Corran watched as paired Interceptors flew search patterns over the lunar surface. They’d pushed enough power to their sensors that even with having them focused directly downward, enough energy bled off to register on his passive receptors.

Whistler had detected differences in the energy signatures of each sensor unit and had isolated a dozen different Interceptors. That means ten squints didn’t make it back from their pursuit. Given that the Rogues had only fifteen minutes to play, that’s very good work.

He reached up and tapped the transparisteel at the rear of his cockpit. “Whistler, they’ve been at this search stuff for nearly half an hour. Have you got the solution worked up yet?”

The droid piped a jeer at him.

“Hey, just asking.” Corran started his engines and shunted power to the weapons control. He armed two proton torpedoes. “Ready when you are.”

A countdown clock appeared on his console and slowly started running down. The squints continued their back and forth grid search pattern, moving ever closer to his position. From the second he saw what they were doing he asked Whistler to time the runs. They remained constant for speed and duration, which told Corran the pilots had done exactly what he would have—they programmed the search pattern into their navigational computers and let it run on autopilot.

Which means we know where they’ll be in thirty-five point three seconds. He nodded grimly. I’m dead, but you’ll be dead sooner, and that’s a bit of a victory, to be sure.

It occurred to Corran that he was angry about dying. That emotion seemed, on the surface, to be rather logical, but emotions rarely were. Had someone described his current situation to him and asked him how he’d feel, he would have told them he’d have been scared out of his wits. The fact was, however, that the anger overshadowed the fear.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. Fear and anger aren’t right here. He knew that going out to bring the Interceptors down just so he’d take more of them with him when he died was wrong. He didn’t know if the pilots were clones or volunteers or conscripts or mercenaries—and who they were didn’t really matter. The only reason he had for fighting against them was the same one he’d had for going after the squints down on Borleias.

I want to stop the Empire from taking lives. I’m not an avenger; I’m here to protect others. He smiled. Somehow it seemed right that he, son and grandson of men who protected others in CorSec, had followed them into CorSec and had ended up here, with the Rebellion. His life, his father’s life, his grandfather’s life, had all been devoted to safeguarding others. And now the guys on the ground and Salm’s bomber jocks will get protected.

The timer went to zero.

Corran hit the trigger.

Two proton torpedoes streaked out from the launch tubes on either side of the X-wing. Because they were programmed to reach a certain point at a certain time, Corran did not need a target lock on the pair of squints flying past. A kilometer separated them