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Again, the low tones of a negative answer.

“Wraith Five to Narra. Can you get me? Repeat, Five going down. Can you grab me?”

No answer. Kell’s helmet comlink didn’t have the range of his fighter’s comm unit, didn’t have enough power to pierce the interference from the dish.

Kell counted the seconds as the ground came closer and felt a heaviness settle on his chest. He turned to look through his aft viewport at his astromech; the R2 unit regarded him steadily. “I’m going to go now, Thirteen. Thanks for everything.”

A trill of good-bye. Then Kell faced forward and yanked the handle for his ejection seat.

The explosive bolts in his canopy blew, sending it up ahead of him, and the thruster under his seat fired off. He felt a blow to his rear as he was launched up and away, momentarily defying the moon’s weak gravity. The pressure sensor in his suit registered the sudden drop in atmosphere and activated the small personal magcon field that would protect his body from vacuum exposure.

He watched his fighter speed away ahead, locked in its fatal descent.

He felt almost as though he were losing a fellow pilot. He’d never known, no one seemed to know, just how alive droids were, just how much of their behavior was programming and how much was true personality.

His X-wing hit the far lip of an impact crater and instantly became flattened garbage and flying shrapnel. It did not explode.

Coldness gripped at Kell as his body heat fled his inadequately insulated pilot’s suit and the magnetic containment field around it. But for the long moments while he still rose on that rocket thrust, he had an incredible vista of the flaring lasers and bright explosions of the fighter battle before him, of the battle-scarred Star Destroyer beyond.

Wedge’s sensors officer said, “Implacable’s silhouette is expanding.”

Wedge gave the officer a puzzled look. “How again?”

“She’s falling, sir.”

“Sithspit! Tell Wraiths Three and Four to get out of there.” Wedge pulled back on the control yoke, leaning Night Caller over at a steep backward angle that, if it continued, would result in the corvette’s crash. “Cut the tractor, now.”

A moment later Night Caller lurched upward, accelerating smoothly but slowly at an angle that would carry it out from under the Star Destroyer. “Drop all shields. Put everything into thruster power.”

“Yes, sir!”

The corvette’s rate of speed increased.

So did Implacable’s rate of descent.

Grinder’s last proton torpedo vaporized more mass of the Star Destroyer’s increasingly widening power center.

The illumination from that blast also showed Falynn something else.

“She’s dropping!” Falynn inverted her TIE fighter, goosed the thrusters—but before she could dive something hit her from the rear. Her ion engines fired, but the thrust merely made her swing to starboard, then back again, and to starboard once more.

She swore. Her starboard solar wing array was hung up on something flexible. “Grinder, get out of here.”

“Not without you.”

“You moron, if you don’t get clear of the way out, I can’t get out. Go!”

She watched as, dozens of meters below, the silhouette of Grinder’s X-wing rotated, then its thrusters lit off, pushing the snubfighter down toward the way out.

She waited until she was lined up again with the hole in the keel, then she brought her engine thrust up to full power.

She swung to starboard, hit a bulkhead hard, and swung back again.

This time, her front viewport was starred with cracks.

As Grinder shot through the hole, his starboard laser cannon clipped a piece of wreckage. His X-wing tumbled, uncontrolled, as it exited.

The Bothan struggled with his stick and brought his fighter back in line.

The instant he was back in control, one of Implacable’s turbolaser blasts washed across him, engulfing him cleanly.

When the beam faded, Grinder was gone.

Janson saw Implacable’s blast hit Wraith Four.

Janson climbed, firing. His first shot pinged the turbolaser turret. It rotated to target him—

And Piggy’s shot punctured it, the Gamorrean’s linked blast hulling the turret. The emplacement went