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Inverting his X-wing, he pulled the fighter into a loop that brought him around in the TIEs’ wake, though slightly below their formation. Keeping the nose up, he headed back in again. He picked up on a TIE Interceptor that had broken right while its wingmate had broken left. Ooryl continued on the tail of the latter squint. The other Interceptor tightened its turn into a teardrop loop designed to bring it onto the Gand’s aft.

Corran’s quad lasers shredded the Interceptor’s starboard wing and blew apart one of the twin ion engines. The other, operating at full power, sent the squint spinning away. Corran winced in sympathy with the pilot, then drove into the middle of the TIE formation.

The X-wings plunging and wheeling through the middle of the TIEs had an unanticipated advantage in that they had a very high target-to-comrade ratio to shoot at. Moreover, because the X-wings had shields, even a shot taken in haste at another Rogue would not likely prove fatal. The same could not be said of the TIEs—one burst from their lasers could cripple or kill a fellow pilot.

Corran snapped a shot off at one starfighter and watched it disintegrate. A warning warble from Whistler and he mashed his right foot down on the etheric rudder pedal. The X-wing’s stern slew around to the left, swinging him out of an Interceptor’s line of fire while pointing his nose right at the ship as it sailed past him. He punched the X-wing over ninety degrees, hauled back on the stick, then completed the inversion and dove down onto the Interceptor’s tail. He sent kilojoules of scarlet energy into the ball cockpit and watched the craft explode.

“Nine, break left.”

Without thinking Corran slammed the stick hard to port and caught the green highlights of laser bolts shooting through where he had just been. More red laser fire chased back along those same lines and something exploded out there.

“Thanks, Commander.”

“No problem, Nine.”

Corran eased his stick forward and dove down to stay clear of the mass of starfighters. With the arrival of the rest of the squadron he knew there was no way he could track all the ships and sort friend from foe. Even as he came back up he saw less laser fire permeating the cloud of fighters than there had been when the forces were less evenly matched. “So much twisting and turning going on in there, no one can find a target and stick with it long enough to dust it.”

Pulling up to continue his loop around the fringe of the battle he saw one X-wing break free with a starfighter on its tail. His sensors told him Gavin was at the stick of the Alliance ship. Measuring Gavin’s line, Corran rolled his craft and looped down at a tangent to it. “Rogue Five, break hard right.”

Gavin’s fighter rolled up on its starboard S-foil crisply and pulled away at an angle that cast doubt on the existence of inertia. The starfighter following him tried to imitate his maneuver, but neither the pilot nor craft were up to it. As the TIE rolled, Corran swooped and fired. His quad-lasers burst the spherical pod like a bubble, sending the hexagonal wings slicing off through space.

Before he could even smile, his X-wing jolted forward. His instruments indicated heavy damage to his aft shield. “Whistler, get me a lock on that TIE.”

Corran inverted and dove, then pulled back on the stick to power up through a teardrop and onto the TIE’s tail. Instead of being where he expected it, the TIE, an Interceptor, showed up off his port S-foil, going away at a right angle to his course. Corran stood on his left rudder, then did a snap-roll that gave him a view of the planet above his head and the Interceptor racing away from him.

Just as he feared it was going to run far enough for Tycho or someone else on the Eridain to blast it, the Interceptor pulled its own loop planetward and started back at him. Head to head—he knows what he’s doing. As Wedge and Tycho had pointed out countless times in training, the majority of kills took place in head-to-head engagements.