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“Blue Nine here to save your tail, Wraith Five.” The A-wing shot through the space Kell had just occupied and fired, vaporizing the TIE Interceptor that had been dogging him.

“You know some of these TIEs are friendlies—”

“We know.”

Kell finished his loop lined up once again with the heaviest concentration of TIEs. He dove in again, this time on Blue Nine’s tail, using rudder to slew to starboard and port, scattering fire in a cone around the A-wing now breaking trail for him.

Admiral Trigit walked at a fast clip toward the cluster of Interceptors remaining in the now cavernously empty TIE hangar. He spoke into his comlink. “Main computer. Verify identity by voiceprint. Code omega-one, prepare self-destruct.”

“Verify self-destruct.”

“Apwar Trigit commands self-destruct.”

“Confirmed. Verify timing.”

The mechanic on duty opened the access port to Trigit’s Interceptor. The admiral climbed in, still talking. “Five minutes from mark. Mark.”

“Confirmed. Timer running. Verify resources.”

“All remaining power. All weapon systems capacitances. All fuel reserves.”

“Confirmed. Self-destruct operational.”

The sky brightened behind Face.

He twisted to look. Phanan’s X-wing was still tucked in behind and to the starboard of his, but its entire stern was ablaze and burn marks peppered his cockpit. The starfighter that had hulled him, an Interceptor with a set of distinctive horizontal red stripes on the upper and lower portions of its wing arrays, was roaring by at an angle. Now well past Face and Phanan, it began looping around for another pass. “Seven, punch out—”

Phanan did so, firing up and away from his crippled fighter. An instant later, it blew. Face felt debris hammer into his stern. “Wraiths, Seven is EV, repeat, EV. Narra, can you pick him up?”

“If he doesn’t land in Night Caller’s dust cloud, will do.”

A TIE fighter dropped into position behind Face. Face saw his sensor board try to light up with a laser lock. He rolled left and dove toward the gigantic cloud of smoke concealing the corvette’s position.

His sensors showed a clear laser lock. Then the red dot of his pursuer lost resolution and disappeared. “Who did that?”

“You owe a drink to Rogue Two, son.”

“Drink, hell, I’ll buy you a distillery!”

The dozen blue dots of Rogue Squadron lit up the sensors, and suddenly the odds against the Wraiths didn’t seem quite as deadly.

Lieutenant Gara Petothel, her shoulders set with anger, recorded two quick messages on her comm console, then took the next turbolift up.

She exited at the deck of officers’ quarters, picked up a sealed package from her small room, and took another lift to the level where the admiral kept his chambers.

Those doors were unguarded. No surprise; Trigit would have taken his favorite bodyguards to be his escort pilots. Gara told the doors, “Emergency override zero seven nine seven Petothel.”

The doors slid open.

She entered, shut them behind her, and quickly peeled out of her uniform and undergarments. Let Trigit remember me as a willing sacrifice, she thought. Let him regret an affair he wanted but never had time for. Let him think whatever he wants. He’ll be dead in ten minutes.

How dare he? Thirty-seven thousand men and women.

Angry, she pulled off her black wig. It was the color her hair used to be, at the length she wore it when she entered service with the New Republic fleet and then joined the Implacable’s crew, but now her real hair was much shorter, a downy blond. She threw the wig atop her clothes.

She tugged at the mole on her cheek. It came free. There had once been a mole there, a real one, but she’d had it removed by a Rebel ship’s doctor and replaced it with an item of makeup. She tossed it onto the pile.

Now, the container. She opened it to reveal clothes—if you could call them that. Lingerie, sheer stuff made from Loveti moth fiber, the garment would have cost her six months pay had she not stolen it.

She put it on. Beneath it in the case were datacards, her choices