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One Flight took off first, heading out slowly in a very loose formation. It started off toward the northeast and then would course correct for the target well beyond prying eyes. Two Flight followed with Wes Janson in command. Corran smiled as he remembered Wes proudly sporting the trio of pips that marked his elevation to the rank of Major. Corran had asked Wes if he’d ever thought he’d live long enough to wear three pips, but before Wes could answer, Hobbie quipped, “He never thought he’d live long enough to count to three pips.”

Two Flight headed out to the northwest and Corran brought his flight along to the launching point. “Heading two-seven-five degrees, ten percent power. Let’s fly.”

The X-wings took off easily and headed down into the Munto valley, then hooked north along the roadway. They followed it for a couple of kilometers, and then, when it cut west again for the run to Kliffen, the X-wings pulled up and flew over the ridgeline and out of the valley. They continued on, flying fairly close to the roll of the terrain and over another line of hills before they locked their S-foils into attack positions.

Corran glanced at the chronometer built into his command console. “Time to target is fifteen minutes.”

“Nine, this is Twelve. I’ve got trace readings on my tail.”

“Whistler, give me a fine-grade sensor scan of our backtrail.”

The droid complied and Corran caught a flash of something moving back there. Whatever it was, it managed to use terrain features to mask itself fairly well. A shiver ran down Corran’s spine. Even though this mission is off all screens back in the New Republic, is it possible we’ve been betrayed?

Corran keyed his comm unit. “Okay, Rogues, throttle up. We’re going to half power and going to bounce over that ridge. Ten and Eleven, keep going to the target. Twelve, we reverse throttle on the other side, drop to ground, and watch to see what’s coming after us. We’ll burn it if we need to.”

“As ordered, Nine.”

The quartet of fighters picked up speed and climbed up the far ridgeline and then over. Corran chopped his thrust back, then reversed it and killed his forward momentum. The X-wing began to drop from the sky, so he cut in his repulsor-lift coils and bounced to a stop a meter and a half above the ground. He nudged the fighter over into a small gully and saw Inyri’s fighter go to ground about twenty meters to his port side. In the distance he saw Ooryl and Asyr cruising along and down into a pass that would take them north.

Then, from back over the ridgeline, came four TIE Interceptors. They screamed past nearly fifteen meters overhead, correcting to follow the two X-wings into the pass. Corran saw no markings on them, and the scanner data didn’t identify them as hostile. For all I know those are a bunch of kids out flying around in surplus Interceptors.

Then one of the Interceptors burned a green laser bolt through the air at Ooryl’s vanishing X-wing.

I guess that settles that.

Corran immediately dropped his crosshairs on one of the Interceptors and thumbed his weapons-control over to proton torpedoes. On the heads-up display a green box surrounded the Interceptor, then it went yellow. Whistler’s piping picked up speed as the droid sought a targeting solution for the torpedo. When he finally got it his tone became constant and the box went red.

Corran goosed the throttle forward, brought up the fighter’s nose, and launched a proton torpedo. The missile leaped up, riding a brilliant blue flame that scorched a Fijisi tree as it went past. The torpedo spiraled up into the air, then curled down as the Interceptor tried to evade it. The pilot’s efforts proved partially successful: The torpedo did not hit it, but overshot and exploded when proximity sensors reported it had missed.

The force of the missile blast crumpled the Interceptor’s port wing and tore most of it away from the stubby stanchion that connected the wing to the ship’s ball cockpit. Shrapnel from the missile itself blew through the transpari-steel viewport. Lethal shards