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The helmsman looked up, surprise on his face. “That will leave the Dreadnaught in our aft, Admiral.”

“Thought occurred to you, too, did it, Lieutenant Cyslo? We can weather another of their shots, and we want them watching us.” She gave the man a quick nod. “Do it, now!”

“As ordered, Admiral.”

“Good. And Guns, pour more fire into the Direption. I want it hurt and hurt now.”

• • •

Wedge snaprolled his X-wing onto the port S-foils and followed Asyr through a quick split-S maneuver that let the squints that had been on their tails overshoot them. They leveled out again and broke to starboard, applying rudder to get their noses around, then cruised in on the Hegemony fighters. Wedge chopped his throttle back a bit as he made his approach, but Asyr shot ahead and closed fast with her target.

The Bothan pilot fired off a quad burst of lasers that converged on the squint’s cockpit. The scarlet beams burned the top off the cockpit, instantly liquefying the Quadanium steel. It condensed into tiny round pellets that sparked off Asyr’s forward shields, but that was as much of a threat as the Interceptor posed to her. Fire flared in the engines, and the ship started a slow spiral down toward Liinade III.

Wedge settled in on his target and dropped his aiming reticle over it much too easily. Part of him wanted the pilot to juke and move the ship, to make the shot tough for him. He realized instantly that his desire did not come because he wanted to prove himself the superior. It’s just that I’d rather not slaughter some kid on his first mission.

Wedge immediately pushed that thought aside and tightened up on his trigger. The quad burst of laserfire drilled the Interceptor in its twin ion engines. The engine housing began to melt, warping out of shape, which compressed the reaction chamber. The engine exploded with a great gout of golden flame, jetting the Interceptor forward. The fire at the squint’s aft winked out, snuffed by the vacuum of space, leaving the fighter to fly on powerlessly.

Wedge felt a moment of remorse for the pilot’s death—whether it had come with the engine explosion or would come from exposure and suffocation as the squint’s lifesupport systems failed. He didn’t let himself dwell on the enemy’s fate, though. The other pilot had accepted the same risks Wedge did when he entered a cockpit and flew into combat. Dead is dead, no matter how you go. Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. And the object of this exercise for me is to avoid getting dead at all

Wedge glanced at his sensor scopes, and aside from some fighters tied up in a dogfight with the B-wings, the Rogue Squadron area of operations appeared clear. “Rogue Lead to Flight Control. We are negative for targets. Do you want us on the Dreadnaught?”

“Negative, Rogue Squadron. Prepare for targeting run on Alpha target dirtside.”

“I copy, Control.” Wedge punched up the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Form up on me, we’re being cleared to go to ground.”

“There’s more targets up here, Lead.”

“Really?” Wedge smiled. “You mean Asyr left a few?”

The Bothan’s voice came on the comm channel. “I didn’t think I had.”

No, you were on a crusade, Asyr. I wonder why? Wedge shook his head. “Punch up your ground attack data. We need to be ready to go as soon as it comes time to ferry troops down.”

Tycho asked a question. “Swift Liberty doesn’t want help with the Dreadnaught?”

“They seem to think they have that situation under control, Tycho.”

Even as Wedge made that observation, he looked up through his canopy and saw the capital ship battle still under way. The Direption had begun to come about to starboard, swinging its shieldless port side away from Moonshadow. Moonshadow was coming up and turning to port, its port-side batteries firing against Direption’s aft shields. Red and blue laser and ion cannon fire pumped terajoules of energy into the shields, but somehow they stayed up.

Probably shunting energy from the port side shield projectors into the aft shields. Wedge watched as Swift Liberty