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She’d done it. She couldn’t keep a smile off her face as she followed in Baron Fel’s wake.

Captain Onoma stood before Solo. “We have found the position Iron Fist held throughout the engagement. A wingpair from Mon Delindo detected her a few minutes ago.”

Solo came upright. “Alert Rogue and Nova Squadrons, tell them to stand ready. Communicate with Mon Delindo. We’ll converge on Iron Fist’s position—”

“Sir, Iron Fist has already jumped out of system.”

Solo sagged into his chair. “Abandoning his pilots? Not even bothering to pick up survivors off the Reprisal?”

Onoma nodded in the awkward Mon Calamari fashion. “Doubtless he’s relying on planetary forces for rescue, and will send a freighter back for his TIE squadrons. He’s gone, sir.”

Solo offered him a disbelieving shake of the head. “He just won’t come in close enough to a system for its mass shadow to delay his departure. He’s that spooked.”

“You should be honored, General. You’re what’s ‘spooking’ him.”

“Failures don’t get honored, Captain.” He shook his head, looked away from the captain. “I have to think about this.”

The crew of the Millennium Falsehood—two Corellian men, a Wookiee, and a 3PO droid in a general’s uniform—descended the loading ramp more hastily than usual, as though they expected the battered craft to burst into flame, and turned to look at the freighter.

She had new laser scoring all over her hull. Smoke drifted from beneath the keel and rose to the hangar’s ceiling.

“Not bad,” Wedge said. “I’ve flown worse.”

Squeaky said, “You are joking, I hope, sir.”

Wedge turned his attention to the droid. “And now that we have a moment or two, Squeaky, would you mind telling me why you said we should allow Lara Notsil to blow holes in our hull?”

“Well, I thought she was trying to tell us something.”

Wedge blinked. Then he turned to the Wookiee. “Chewbacca, go ahead. Pull his legs off and hit him with them.”

“Wait!” Squeaky threw up his arms as if to ward off the blows to come. “Let me explain.”

And he did.

General Solo, Captain Onoma, and Wedge were already in the briefing room when Donos arrived. Within a minute, they were joined by Shalla and Face.

“This meeting concerns Lara Notsil,” Wedge said. “Each of you is here for a different purpose. General Solo and Captain Onoma are here because this pertains to mission planning. Shalla, because of your knowledge of Imperial Intelligence techniques … and mentalities. Donos, because of your familiarity with Lara. Face, because of your training as an actor; we assume that you can recognize your own kind.”

Face managed a smile. “From time to time,” he said.

Wedge said, “Earlier today, the Falsehood was fired upon by Lara Notsil, who was acting as a TIE interceptor pilot for Zsinj’s forces. Squeaky, acting as communications officer, noticed that every time she hit us with laser fire, our comm unit stored fragments of a transmission.”

Donos frowned. “Her attacks were also transmissions?”

“That’s right. She had apparently rigged one of her laser cannons to pulse in the fashion of a line-of-sight laser communicator. She had also, according to what we can determine, reduced the strength of her lasers somewhat—else we would have suffered more damage than we did.”

Shalla said, “This is sort of what Donos did with his laser rifle at Halmad.” Above that world, needing to trigger an explosive device but prevented from doing so by comm jamming, Donos had modified the output of his laser sniper rifle to transmit the detonation signal.

Wedge nodded. “That may have been what gave her the idea. Here’s the message. It’s voice only.” He reached over to the terminal keyboard beside the conference table and pressed a button.

First, a hiss suggesting a low-quality recording, then Lara’s voice emerged from the air around them. “This is Lara Notsil, transmitting to Wraith Squadron and Mon Remonda.”

Donos tensed. Knowing that the message was from her hadn’t prepared him for actually hearing her voice; he felt almost