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Emtrey canted his head to the side. “Ah, sir, Whistler was agreeing with Commander Ettyk. You’re not his witness. Your testimony won’t put this whole business to rest.”

Halla shook her head. “The only witness who could do that is dead.”

Whistler trumpeted loudly, whirling his head full around in a circle. The droid bounced excitedly and his tone became a piercing shriek.

Ackbar’s gavel cracked once, sharply, jerking Emtrey to attention. “Tell Whistler to calm down or I’ll have a restraining bolt put on him.”

The little droid stopped and hummed mournfully.

“Now what was he talking about, Emtrey?”

Whistler answered.

Emtrey glanced sharply down at him and gave him a good clout on the dome. “Make sense, Whistler. They’re waiting.”

Whistler repeated his previous answer.

The 3PO unit raised its arms and looked up at Ackbar. “I am sorry, sir, but he makes no sense. The stress—circuits must have become polarized. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Ackbar sighed. “Answer my question. Who is he saying this witness is?”

Before Emtrey could answer, a man spoke from the court’s open doorway. “Begging your pardon, Admiral, I think Whistler intends for me to be called as a witness.”

Ackbar’s barbels twitched. From the black depths all manner of beasts can swim. “This is impossible.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Corran Horn smiled, “but as for impossible, Admiral, you know impossible is what Rogue Squadron does best of all.”

43

Wedge snaprolled up on the port S-foil, then pulled the stick back to the box over his breastbone. He rolled the X-wing into a dive, then came up and around to starboard in a horizontal loop that brought him back head-to-head with the pair of eyeballs that had been bucking his exhaust. He spitted one on his crosshairs and hit the trigger, filling it with coherent light. The cockpit instantly combusted, and, trailing thick black smoke, the TIE fighter corkscrewed down to slam into a ferrocrete tower.

The TIE’s wingman tried to avenge his partner, but Wedge never gave him a chance. He hit the left rudder pedal, pulling the aft end of the X-wing off to the right. The maneuver skidded the fighter out of the TIE’s line of flight and fire. The TIE pilot tried to match the stunt, but as he did so he brought his fighter’s hexagonal solar panel perpendicular to the ship’s flight-line. In the vacuum of space that move would have given him a good shot at Wedge, but in atmosphere, it made the TIE jump and begin to roll.

Wedge brought the X-wing up on its port stabilizers and dove after the TIE. Just as the pilot began to regain control, slowing his spin, Rogue Squadron’s leader tightened up on his trigger. A quad burst of laserfire blasted the port solar panel off the fighter. The TIE began to tumble uncontrollably toward the ground, but before it could descend into the black bowels of Coruscant, it bounced off an aerial walkway and exploded.

Pulling back on his stick, Wedge nosed his fighter toward the sky. He wanted to feel some remorse for the pilots he’d just killed. He waited for concern to bubble up in him for the people who could have been hurt when those TIEs fell into the city below. He wanted something other than cold concentration filling him, but he didn’t expect it to come. Those thoughts and emotions are normal, but normal doesn’t exist at this place and time.

All around him TIEs and the X-wings of Rogue Squadron swooped and climbed, rolled, dove, and looped. Laser-bolts, green and red, filled the air as if each fighter was a renegade cloud spitting abbreviated lightning bolts at its enemies. TIEs exploded with regularity, showering the cityscape with half-molten bits of metal and staining the sky with oily black streaks that were the mortal remains of their pilots.

As exciting and dramatic as the dogfight raging above the mountain district was, Wedge remained cold and in shock. Out there a white needle stabbed skyward. The Lusankya—a Super Star Destroyer eight kilometers in length—laid waste to the area beneath which it had lain buried for years. Green turbolaser