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Before Corran could reveal the traitor’s identity, a soldier burst through the courtroom doors and ran over to General Cracken. He said something quickly and urgently to the Alliance Intelligence chief. Cracken shot to his feet and pointed at Corran. “Lieutenant Horn, I order you to say nothing more at this time. Admiral Ackbar, we need to use the adjoining jury room, now!”

Corran hesitated, then frowned. “I wasn’t going to reveal any of your secrets, General.”

“Horn, shut up. That’s an order.” Cracken walked across the courtroom to the door in the southeast corner. He opened it and swore. “This can’t be happening.”

Corran vaulted from the witness box and followed on Cracken’s heels into the large, rectangular room. Transparisteel made up the room’s entire southern wall, with a small doorway cut in the middle of it to allow access to a balcony. Cracken worked a set of controls on the wall, fading the sequestration opaquing of the transparisteel to nothingness. Corran looked out to the south and felt his heart sink into his bowels.

A colossal white wedge knifed its way into the sky. A fearsome broadside silhouetted a skyhook against a green background, then sent a smoking crescent crashing planet-ward. The ship—Corran knew it had to be a Super Star Destroyer because of the size—continued its upward flight and turned its weapons on the lower defense shield.

Corran found himself drifting through the doorway and onto the balcony with Admiral Ackbar and the others from the court. Above the city TIE fighters and X-wings tangled together in a complicated dance punctuated with fireballs and underscored with laser light. Corran couldn’t get an accurate count on the X-wings, but he didn’t see any of them go down. That’s gotta be Rogue Squadron up there.

The Super Star Destroyer moved up through the first defense shield. The TIEs started to run back to the ship that had launched them and the X-wings flew on in close pursuit. Corran smiled as more TIEs exploded or augured into the planet, but that appeared as a minor bright spot in comparison to the damage the Imperial ship had done to the defense shields.

Corran frowned. “Where did that ship come from?”

Whistler popped a sensor dish from his dome and let it spin around a couple of times before keening cautiously. Emtrey’s head jerked up and down, from the ship to Whistler and back again. “Sir, he says that ship’s transponders report it to be the Lusankya!”

Corran’s jaw dropped open. The bulkhead doors closing off access to the gravel mine wasn’t salvaged from a ship, it was part of a ship. The turbolifts, too, were part of the ship. Our whole complex must have been one tiny part of the ship with bulkheads trimmed out with stone. The mines were outside it, but we lived all snugged up in the belly of an Imperial Super Star Destroyer.

Cracken held a comlink up by his ear. “The ship appears to have been buried beneath a portion of the cityscape southwest of the Manarai Mountains. It came up firing. Freeing itself it devastated over a hundred square kilometers. Millions are missing, presumed dead.”

Corran pointed at the platform made of hexagons hugging the ship’s hull. “What’s that below it, some new type of armor?”

Whistler hooted sharply and Emtrey translated. “Whistler says it appears to be a massive collection of repulsorlift cells grafted together to float the ship free of Coruscant.”

“Ah,” said Cracken, “so that’s what they did with the lift-coils. Well before Endor, we uncovered an Imperial operation to collect an incredible number of repulsorlift components. We feared they might be planning to produce some new planetary assault vehicles with them, but could never trace the shipments. Now we know where they went.”

He looked over at Ackbar. “Can you stop it?”

“Most of the fleet is staging at … elsewhere in preparation for the operation against Zsinj—to hunt down his Super Star Destroyer. The rest of the fleet is on an assignment for you. Can you get them here?”

Cracken shook