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“No, really. Did you hear anything odd a moment ago?”

“Well, actually, yes. Some sort of skittering. Like something small running around.”

Grinder looked suspiciously up and down the corridor, then carefully shut his door.

Eleven members of Wraith Squadron—all but Tyria, whose X-wing was again assigned to Phanan—dropped out of hyperspace in the Todirium system, as close to the mining planet as the hyperdrives would allow. They screamed down to the planet’s surface a hundred kilometers from the colony’s warehousing district, then looped around from an east-to-west heading to a north-to-south, flying in terrain-following mode to confound local sensors.

Thirty kilometers from their target, they overflew a small residential compound. They saw someone outside the compound, a humanoid figure in a blue environment suit, look up at them as they roared past.

Wedge said, “That may have cost us our element of surprise. Stay alert, people.”

“Twenty kilometers,” Janson said.

More roads, most of them still dirt tracks, crisscrossed the brown landscape beneath them.

“Ten kilometers,” Janson said.

Wedge said, “Reduce speed,” and throttled back. “S-foils to attack position.”

They now crossed over some tilled fields, the crops a weird blue-green Wedge would not have thought belonged in nature, and irrigation canals. Some of the roads were paved.

“Five klicks,” said Janson.

Gate, Wedge’s R5 unit, shrieked a warning as his sensor board lit up with an alert—directional sensors seeking a lock. “Break off by wings,” Wedge said. “Deal with the threat first. Worry about the primary target later.”

Four pairs of X-wings rolled away from Wedge, leaving him with his temporary wingman, Donos, in the middle of their new, broader formation.

Moments later the threat came into view. Just above the outskirts of the planet’s primary settlement rose a line of repulsorlift craft: short, stubby vehicles half the length of X-wings, powerful-looking blaster cannons protruding from their rear sections, red and yellow paint jobs suggesting danger.

Janson said, “Ultra-Lights.”

Wedge frowned. ULAVs, or Ultra-Light Assault Vehicles, were still in use—barely—by the New Republic and on backwater planets like this. Their repulsorlifts should not have been powerful enough to lift them to rooftop level; these vehicles had to have been retrofitted with much more powerful engines. “Five, Six, break left,” Wedge said. “Eleven, Twelve, break right. Prepare to do crossing strafing runs on those targets. Everyone else, go evasive and continue on to primary target. Be careful: those rear guns are the real problems.”

He heard their acknowledgments as he stood his X-wing up on its port wing, then continued into a rollover, maneuvering like a corkscrew on toward the target. Sensors showed Donos sticking close to his tail.

Lasers lit up the front ends of the ULAVs; two beams stopped dead twenty meters ahead of Wedge’s nose, stopped clean by his forward shields.

Then he and Donos were past the line of attackers. The ULAVs were indeed floating ten meters up on what had to be improved repulsorlift engines, and immediately behind them and the buildings shielding them were artillery units, small self-propelled missile racks pointed back toward the Wraiths’ direction of approach. The pilots of the artillery units watched the Wraiths fly over, their expressions startled; it looked as though the snubfighters’ speed had caught them off guard.

Wedge continued his roll. The blaster cannons on the ULAVs’ rears opened up, their emissions lighting up the sky behind him; one gunner was good enough to graze Wedge’s rear shields.

He heard Piggy’s voice: “Five, recommend you—”

Wedge spoke up fast, “Twelve, no personal comments.” He couldn’t have Piggy commencing his advisory comments, not if they were to bring off their imitation of Rogue Squadron.

“Yes, sir.”

Face’s voice: “Oh, lighten up, Tycho.”

“Same order to you, Eight.” Wedge grinned. Face had chosen a good point to insert his “mistake” of identifying his mission leader by name.

“Yes,