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“Nine, are you chasing Erisi?”

“Yes, Seven.”

“Finish her fast.”

“You need help?”

“Ten is handling things, but the shuttle is running. It can clear to lightspeed if we don’t stop it.”

“I copy, Seven. I’m on it.” He glanced at his monitor. “Whistler, give me range to the freighters who were tied to my torpedo telemetry.”

The droid whistled mournfully. “No, it’s okay that they’re all out of range. I didn’t want them wasting any torps.”

Just to be on the safe side, he hit the switch that turned the telemetry transponder off, then shifted his weapon’s-control over to proton torpedoes. Coming about, he picked Erisi up and started after her again. He nudged his nose up and to port, getting a stuttered beeping from Whistler as the droid tried to get a firing solution for the Interceptor. The tone went constant as the reticle went red.

Corran hit the trigger and launched both torpedoes at Erisi. His last two proton torpedoes streaked out at her and she immediately began maneuvering to avoid them.

I have thirty seconds to kill her. Corran switched back to lasers, then drained energy from his aft shield and fed it into his engines. That kicked his speed up to better than that of an unhurt Interceptor, allowing him to close the gap between their ships fast.

As the missiles approached her Interceptor, Erisi rolled to port and broke hard toward Thyferra’s largest moon. The missiles overshot where she had been, then turned and started in pursuit again. She kept her ship pointed straight at the bone white moon and as the torpedoes closed with her again, she rolled to port and pulled her fighter into a glide path that followed the rough terrain of the lunar surface.

One torpedo, unable to fight inertia and lunar gravity both, slammed into the moon and exploded. The second sailed through the gout of lunar dust and started closing with the Interceptor. Erisi bounced her squint up and over a ridgeline and back down again, interposing it between her and the torpedo.

The ridge shielded her from the torpedo’s blast.

It also blinded her aft sensors to Corran’s presence.

As Erisi pulled her squint up to climb away from the moon’s surface, Corran came up over the ridge and pounced. Pairs of scarlet bolts burned into the squint, shredding both solar panels. As the stabilizers disintegrated, the Interceptor’s climb became a loop into a dive that brought it in on a collision course with the moon. Both engines thrusting fully, the Interceptor plowed into the lunar surface, gouging out a huge furrow. The Interceptor hit the edge of a small impact crater, skipped up, then battered itself again and again against the moon. Finally, crushed into a shape that was unrecognizable as any part of a fighter, it rolled to a stop as the engines sputtered out.

Corran circled the spot once. “No explosion, nothing spectacular. Erisi would have hated it.”

Whistler blatted harshly.

“Right, who cares what she would have wanted.” Corran pulled his X-wing away from the moon. “Find me that shuttle, Whistler. I don’t care who’s on it, we’re going to stop it.”

Another salvo from the Virulence ripped into the Lusankya as Wedge swooped low over the Super Star Destroyer and peppered its hull with laser bolts. The Lusankya tried to defend itself, but the surface-mounted turbolaser cannons simply made themselves targets for strafing runs by X-wings, A-wings, Twi’leki Chir’daki, and the Gands’ curious ships. What shots the Super Star Destroyer did get off at the Virulence failed to penetrate the smaller ship’s shields.

The Lusankya is fast becoming defenseless. Much more of this hammering and the ship could begin to break up, and that would jeopardize the prisoners we want to rescue from her. Wedge pulled up and flashed past the bridge. “Gate, get me an open comm channel to the Lusankya.”

The droid complied with the order instantly. “This is Commander Wedge Antilles to the Captain of the Lusankya. We’ll accept your surrender at any time.”

An angry, shrill voice arced through the comm unit. “This is Captain Joak Drysso—no, Admiral Drysso