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Rogue Squadron!

The second he recognized the crest, his finger fell away from the trigger. He didn’t know why he didn’t fire. Fear crystallized in his belly at the sight of it, but he knew he wasn’t afraid of the Rogues. It was something else. Something was wrong, hideously wrong, but he could not pierce the veil of mystery surrounding that sensation.

Suddenly something exploded behind him, pitching him forward. He slammed hard into the steering yoke, crushing his life support equipment and driving the breath from his lungs. His chest burned as he tried in vain to catch his breath. He caught the fleeting scent of flowers, then a painful brilliance filled the cockpit. He waited for the pain in his chest and the fire in his lungs to consume him, but those sensations dulled, and his ability to focus on them or anything else eroded.

A woman’s voice spoke to him. “You have failed, Nemesis One. You are weak.” Her words came tinged with anger, bitten off harshly and clearly meant to hurt him. “Had this been other than a simulation, your atoms would be floating through space and the rabble would be laughing at you. You are pathetic.”

Corran’s right hand rose toward his throat and pressed itself against his chest. The shattered remains of his life support gear prevented him from touching his breastbone, but he knew something was missing, something that should have been laying against his flesh. He did not know what it was, but he knew he would draw comfort from it.

In its absence, despair flooded through him.

“I had thought you worthy, Nemesis One. You told me you were, didn’t you?”

Though he recalled no such declaration, he confirmed it. “I did. I am.”

“You are nothing unless I say you are something. Now I say you are nothing, nothing but a failure!” In the light he saw the silhouette of a tall, slender woman. The sight of her made him shiver more than her words. He knew he feared her, but he also wanted to please her. Pleasing her was very important to him, the only thing that was important in the world. “You have failed me and yourself.”

“Please,” he croaked, but her silhouette gave no indication she had heard him.

“One more chance, perhaps.”

“Yes, yes.”

“If you fail again …”

Corran shook his head adamantly. “I won’t, I won’t.”

“No, for your next failure will be your last, Nemesis One.” The silhouette folded its arms together. “Disappoint me again and what is left of your life will be spent in agonizing atonement, disgrace, and, after a long time, death.”

7

The reversion to realspace brought Wedge and the Rogues out into a situation that just seemed like another simulator run, with one minor variation. As he expected, Wedge saw the space station slowly revolving in a star-stained void. Way off toward the right, closer to the yellow star burning at the center of the solar system, sat Yag’Dhul. The planet’s grey cloud cover made it only slightly more colorful than the Givin who called it home.

The only variation from the opsims was the appearance of a flight of four TIE starfighters patrolling the area around the space station. Mynock, the R5 unit in Wedge’s X-wing, immediately screeched out a warning when he noticed them off to port. Wedge glanced at his monitor, noted how the TIEs moved into an attack formation, and smiled.

Action beats inaction every time. He keyed his comm unit. “One flight, on me. Rogue Twelve, take the Defenders in.”

“As ordered,” Aril Nunb replied.

Committing only one flight of fighters against an equal number of TIEs, especially when he could have had two dozen Y-wings and seven more X-wings join the fight, might have seemed the height of arrogance, though Wedge knew it was quite the opposite. While TIE pilots seldom managed to amass the experience of their Rebel counterparts, they were quite competent, and more than capable of killing in a dogfight. Warlord Zsinj’s pilots had proved to be good fighters in the past, and Wedge expected them to be nothing less in this engagement.

The reasons he