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The first torpedo stabbed through the closest Interceptor and detonated. The explosion vaporized the squint, reducing it to its component molecules. The second torpedo actually overshot its target, but went off when it reached its programmed range. The blast crumpled the starboard wing. The Interceptor began to roll through a tight downward spiral, then slammed into a basalt monolith and exploded.

Shoving the throttle forward, Corran held the stick steady as his snubfighter shot from the lava tube. Once clear he hauled back on the stick and climbed. He saw other Interceptors break their search patterns, but none of them immediately moved after him. Their sensors are still oriented toward the ground.

He flipped his weapons controls over to lasers and set them on quad fire. It would slow his overall rate of fire, but a solid hit was a kill and he needed all the help he could get. Inverting the X-wing he took a quick look at the Interceptors as he flew past the volcano’s crater. Spotting a pair of targets moving toward where the first squints had gone down, he rolled the fighter up on the starboard S-foil and came around in a wide curve.

He dove and leveled out in a small valley between the volcano and a meteor crater. Climbing at the last second, he rose up over the broad lunar plain and sent two bursts of laser fire into the belly of a squint. The starfighter obliged him by melting into a metallic fog that instantly condensed and rained down on the moon.

Whistler hooted proudly.

“Darned right, Horn pulls ahead of the bacta boy.” Corkscrewing his ship into a weave, Corran avoided the retribution of the squint’s wingman. He leveled out for a second, then cut the fighter hard right. Ninety degrees from his original track, he leveled out again, then climbed and did a wing-over to port that pointed him straight back at the Interceptor that had tried to stay on his tail. Corran rolled, shot, melted some armor from the squint, and broke hard right again.

He shook his head in response to Whistler’s question. “No, I didn’t think I killed it. Burned him a bit, though.”

Corran rolled the X-wing through inversion and hit the left rudder to again carry himself back across his own trail. Green spears of laser light crisscrossed through the moon’s thin air as the Interceptors converged on his ship. Whistler toted nine up on the monitor and made the closest ones flash red on the screen. Static hissed through Corran’s helmet as occasional hits weakened his shields, but energy shunted from lasers reinforced it quickly enough.

He glanced at his fuel indicator. “As much as we could teach them something about flying, it’s time we change some of the rules here.” He broke left and climbed, then came over, inverted, and pointed his fighter at the volcano’s cone. “We’ll see if these guys are such hot stuff in the place where hot stuff used to spew!”

The astromech droid splashed a message on console.

“Yes, inviting them into the caldera will be fine. The enclosed area will hurt them more than it does me, just like it hurt the TIEs that Wedge nailed on Rachuk.” Corran brought the fighter down into the crater and throttled back to zero thrust. He cut in the repulsorlift engines and powered them up so he hung suspended in the middle of the obsidian arena.

As he pointed the fighter’s nose toward the sky, he glanced at Whistler’s reply to his earlier statement. “Yeah, nine to one odds are hardly fair.”

The X-wing shook violently, as if a titanic child had grabbed it in an invisible fist. Whistler hooted anxiously and Corran felt his stomach turn inside out. Tractor beam! It’s all over.

The astromech droid wailed piteously.

Corran read the message on his console and shook his head. “Hey, it’s not your fault. Your telling me the odds isn’t why they evened them.” He brought his torpedo control up again as the first Interceptors streaked over the lip of the volcano’s crater.

“Sensors forward, Whistler. Time to remind them that trapping a Rogue doesn’t make