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“Captain …”

“How dare you insult me!”

“Admiral, then, even Grand Admiral, if it will make you see sense. Your shields are down. Your engines are hit. You have no fighter cover, you can’t hurt your opposition.” Wedge let his damage assessment sink in for a moment. “It’s hopeless. No one else needs to die. Give up.”

“Give up? An Imperial Grand Admiral never gives up. If you think one would, you’ll rue the day you engaged one!”

“That could be, sir, but that day isn’t today! We’ll treat all your people with all due respect.” Wedge fought to keep his voice even. “Surrender.”

“Never! We are all loyal sons of the Empire. We are not afraid to put death before dishonor. Helm, give me all speed. We’re going to ram the planet! There, Antilles, see, a Grand Admiral never …” The comm unit popped and abruptly went silent.

“Drysso!”

“Captain Drysso isn’t here anymore, sir. Ah, this is acting-Captain Waroen.”

“Are you going to crash your ship into the planet, Waroen?”

“Not if I can help it, sir. If you could get the War Cruiser to stop shooting my engines, and if Virulence will pull us a bit further out into orbit so we don’t crash of our own accord, we’ll accept any conditions for surrender you want to offer us.”

“I’m happy to be working with you, Captain Waroen. What you’re doing is no dishonor.”

“I know that, sir, and I think it beats death all hollow.”

Corran found the shuttle easily enough and brought his X-wing in on its aft without a problem. He flipped his lasers over to quad fire. “Whistler, see if you can open a comm channel to the shuttle.” Corran fired his lasers across the Thyfonian’s flight path when Whistler announced he’d found the two frequencies the shuttle was using.

“Just pick one.” Corran punched the button on his comm unit. “This is Corran Horn to shuttle Thyfonian. Stop now and turn back to Thyferra, or I’ll be forced to destroy you.”

A moment’s delay ended with a voice Corran had never expected to hear again coming through the comm channel. “I should have known it would be you, Horn. Go away. You can’t stop me with your lasers.”

“Maybe this will warm your heart, Ysanne.” Corran dropped his aiming reticle on the shuttle’s rear and pulled the trigger. Burst after burst of laser fire splashed against the spacecraft’s shields, but did not penetrate them. What? Shuttle’s shields aren’t that good.

“You can thank Fliry Vorru for me, if he’s still alive. He ordered heavy-capacity shield generators for his shuttle. Cuts down on the passenger room, but I don’t mind. Quite simply, your X-wing lacks the power to burn through them.”

Maybe one will. Corran shifted his comm unit over to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Nine could use some help here. It’s Isard. I can’t get through the shuttle’s shields.”

“Seven here, Nine. Coming as fast as I can. Keep her from jumping to lightspeed.”

“I’ll do my best, but I need your lasers to stop her.”

“I copy, Nine. I’ll hurry.”

“Whistler, project how long it will be before she’s clear to go to lightspeed.”

The droid splashed an image of the solar system up on Corran’s secondary monitor. He used overlapping circles of color to indicate the boundaries for gravitational effects of the bodies in the system and showed the shuttle as a pinpoint of light at the edge of Thyferra’s hyperspace mass shadow.

Sithspawn, she’s almost there. Corran triggered another burst of laser fire, but it only washed a bloody hue over the aft shield. What if she’s bluffing and just has all power going to the aft shield! That’s just the sort of thing she’d do.

He punched power to his throttle and let the X-wing surge forward. He brought it around in a loop that would give him an oblique shot at the shuttle’s port side. As he sailed in, the shuttle shifted direction and came about to face him. Corran hit his trigger and pulsed energy into the shuttle’s shields.

The shuttle fired back. Green energy darts blew through the X-wing’s forward shield and hit the port stabilizer. Corran rolled immediately and dove, then came back up in a weave that took him