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“Colonel Roat.” If Roat’s hand had not been genuine, then neither had he. This meant he and his group of Defenders had been inserted into Ciutric, but for what purpose? They could do no good on Ciutric, she reasoned, unless …

Throughout the building and the entire city of Daplona, sirens began to squeal with a pulsating message of warning. Red lights strobed and out in the hangar techs began scurrying around.

She slapped Lorrir to wakefulness, then hauled him to his feet. “Come with me, I need you.”

“Madam Director!” The man blinked his eyes in surprise. “It was a traitor, it was …”

“Yes, yes, no time for that. You’re under my command now.”

“What?” Lorrir straightened up and smoothed the breast of his flight suit. “I’m a pilot.”

“So you are, and now you’ll be flying for me.”

“For you? Why?”

“Listen to the sirens, fool.” The clone smiled and nodded a salute toward the sky. “There is a military operation planned. It’s coming here. They don’t care about Krennel, they’re after me and my prisoners. We’ll have to see they end up very disappointed.”

The primary monitor on Wedge’s Defender flashed brightly for a moment as image after image of ships filled the screen in rapid sequence. He caught a glimpse of a Mon Calamari Cruiser on the scanner screen, then an Imperial Star Destroyer Mark II, which matched the Reckoning in firepower. After that came three Nebulon-B Frigates, a half-dozen Corellian Corvettes, and a couple of fast little freighters. That’s pretty much the taskforce description I sent Admiral Ackbar, and it would have been more than sufficient for taking on Reckoning and Binder.

The problem was that Krennel had called in Emperor’s Wisdom and Decisive, giving the Hegemony forces a hideous edge in firepower. The Victory-class Star Destroyer, Emperor’s Wisdom, had eighty concussion missile launch tubes on it. Any single salvo could bring down the Mon Cal cruiser’s shields, leaving it open for raking fire from the ship’s energy weapons. Decisive and Reckoning both could pound on Emancipator—an Impstar Deuce the New Republic had captured at Endor. While it could severely damage any of the opposing ships, it would be lost.

Wedge shivered, then punched up the squadron frequency. “You’ve all seen the scans, Rogues. It’s not going to be pleasant. One Flight, we take out the shield generators down here, then we go to the spaceport and heist a freighter big enough to get the prisoners out of here. Two Flight, as planned, you neutralize prison defenses.”

“As ordered, Lead. How do we take the prison? I didn’t see Telik’s commandos or Vessery’s fighters in the mix.”

“I don’t know, Tycho. I hope they’re just late. First things first, then we do whatever we have to do.”

“On it, Lead. Two Flight on me. May the Force be with all of us.”

Wedge rolled his Defender up onto the port side and peeled off toward the south. As he leveled out, Hobbie appeared on his starboard wing, Gavin and Myn on his port. The Defender cockpit gave him a great view of the cityscape over which they flew. Bulbous tan buildings alternated with green belts and parks, the tall skyscrapers of the municipal center giving way to smaller residential buildings and individual homes. Out beyond the residential areas he saw the massive edifices of the factory district and right in the middle lay the shield generation facility.

“Three and Four, you have the towers on the east, Two, take the ones on the west. I’m going straight in.” Wedge thumbed his weapons-selector to concussion missiles. He set them for linked fire, then settled his crosshairs on the central dome. His rangefinder put him two kilometers out, with distance falling away fast.

The ion cannons mounted on towers around the facility had been cranked skyward. They pulsed out massive blue bolts that shot upward at the invading fleet, pouring out through momentary gaps opened in the shields by fire-control computers. Below them, on the same towers, turbo-laser cannons traversed their muzzles across the landscape. Three sets of four cannons had been stacked at twenty, forty, and sixty