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Pure venom poured through her voice. “If you think to make this the tiebreaker, you’ll lose.”

Before Wedge could contradict her, fire blossomed in the shuttle’s concussion missile firing tubes. Two missiles jetted out and began a gently curved flight toward the prison’s top floor. “Corran Horn has returned to be with those he escaped,” she hissed, “now it’s time for all of them to die.”

36

Admiral Ackbar climbed back into his command chair. “Damage Control, report.”

A Twi’lek female turned in his direction. “Artificial gravity restored. Hull breaches forward, decks one and three. The Mrlsst is dead in space, Sullust and Mantooine are badly damaged. Peacemaker is also dead in space.”

The human at the sensor station raised a hand. “Admiral, Binder has brought its gravity well projectors up. Nothing is leaving the system.”

The Mon Calamari nodded slowly. “Signal the fleet. Begin the Thrawn Pincer.”

In waging his war against the New Republic, Grand Admiral Thrawn had proved himself to be a masterful martial tactician. Rumor had it that he credited the study of a people’s art as being the key to understanding and defeating them. Ackbar didn’t know if that were true or not, but what he did understand was that Thrawn had a superior command of how to utilize the tools of his trade. Thrawn had again and again used an Interdictor cruiser as the equivalent of a magnet. He sent it into systems to pull a fleet from hyperspace with more precision than most navigators could plot.

Ackbar had learned well from him.

While Ackbar’s main battle group had jumped directly into the Ciutric system, arriving to the sun side of the planet, the second part of the taskforce had exited hyperspace deeper in the solar system. When the signal from Ackbar reached them, the two Victory-class Star Destroyers jumped in toward Ciutric and were dragged from space by Binder’s presence.

This brought the two ships out of hyperspace at Binder’s aft. The second the crews oriented themselves, General Garm Bel Iblis issued orders to engage the enemy. They unloaded their beam weapons on the Emperor’s Wisdom and launched their concussion missiles at Reckoning. They did this just after Reckoning completed its ninety-degree shift to starboard, presenting its undamaged side to Home One, and its unshielded flank to the newly arrived Selonian Fire and Corusca Fire.

A terrifyingly beautiful garland of explosions rippled down Reckoning’s right flank and on up the command tower. Heavy turbolaser batteries disintegrated, hull plates buckled, while even more missiles stabbed deep into the ship’s interior to detonate and tear holes that breached multiple decks. Fires raged as the void of space sucked air out of the ships. Pieces of the hull broke away or twisted out of place, leaving the Impstar looking as if it had sideswiped an asteroid.

One missile shot past the front of the command tower, then course corrected and circled around to strike the forward viewport. The transparisteel resisted the impact at first, but the interior layer cracked and spalled off a hail of crystalline fragments that stormed through the bridge. They passed over the heads of those individuals at the action stations, but blew through Prince-Admiral Krennel so fast that they had exited his back without appreciably slowing down at all.

Krennel looked down to see his white uniform covered with red dots slightly lighter than the scarlet trim on his cuffs and hem. Only his right forearm sleeve remained pristine. He got as far as realizing that it had not changed color because the arm underneath was purely mechanical, before blood running from his forehead dripped down into his eyes, blinding him.

Then the concussion missile detonated.

The comlink on Corran’s lapel squawked loudly. “Concussion missiles incoming prison east!”

“Everyone, down! Get down!” Corran screamed at them, waving his arms at the ground. “Down, DOWN!”

A missile slammed into the prison at the southeast corner of the fourth floor. Corran saw a brilliant light blossom in that direction and caught a fleeting glimpse