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Corran glanced at his main monitor. “I copy, Lead. We have contact in two minutes.”

Out in the distance, the flashes of light from the X-wings boiling into a dogfight could be seen as the flickerings of debris sparking against his shields. He punched up a request for data on Nrin’s snoopscoot and saw that it had jettisoned its pods. Shields looked solid and the changing vector data on the ship suggested Nrin was dancing it in and out through the dogfight, offering himself as an elusive target for the enemy.

Whistler beeped as the last fifteen seconds to target scrolled down. Corran dropped his aiming reticle over the distant form of an Interceptor and watched the torpedo targeting box turn yellow. Whistler’s beeping increased in intensity and frequency, then became a solid tone as the box went red. Corran hit his trigger and launched a torpedo.

He immediately punched up his second target Interceptor, but that ship began juking fiercely. He tried to get a lock on the third, but it bounced around too much as well. Either they have early warning systems, or they’re just being cautious.

Other proton torpedoes streaked out from Three Flight and headed toward the incoming TIEs. Two Interceptors winked out of existence, but the rest boiled on undaunted. Corran rolled to port, then pulled back on his stick for a climb that would take him perpendicular to their line of attack. He inverted, presenting his cockpit canopy to them, then pulled back on the stick again and rolled onto a course that brought him in above their flight plane.

The squints began a climb to come up after him, so he barrel-rolled to port and cruised down toward them. He nudged his stick right, boxing one of the Interceptors. The box went red immediately, so Corran pulled the trigger. The proton torpedo shot out and slammed into the squint at point-blank range. It pierced the ball cockpit, then exploded, blasting the Interceptor into a microfine hail of metal, flesh, and fabric.

Corran flew straight through the explosion, then pulled his X-wing up into a tight loop. He chopped his throttle back to tighten the loop even more, then targeted his last squint. The aiming reticle went red and he launched another torpedo. It jetted away on blue flame, then curved up sharply after the Interceptor. The pilot twisted away at the last second, but the proximity fuse made the torpedo detonate.

As fast as the squint was, it wasn’t faster than the torpedo’s shrapnel. A metal storm shredded the starboard solar panels and continued on to hole the cockpit. The ship didn’t explode, but it did begin a slow spiral that aimed it toward the gas giant. Its gravity well is so deep it will swallow that ship whole and pretty much anything else that’s left out here.

An explosion shook Corran’s X-wing and he immediately knew he was in serious trouble. One of the TIE Bombers had nailed him with a concussion missile. The fact that he actually felt the residual effects of the blast meant that his inertial compensator wasn’t functioning right. His rear shield also showed damage, but before he could shift power around to reinforce it, a squint laced his rear shield with fire, collapsing the shield and pouring energy into his upper starboard S-foil.

Corran felt a weird vibration and heard a corresponding whine for a half second before the engine exploded. The squint’s laserfire had melted part of the centrifugal debris extractor, which threw it out of balance and ripped it free of its supports. Parts of it sprayed back through the engine, shattering it and breaking that S-foil clean off. More debris shot out and peppered the starboard side of the fuselage. One huge chunk slammed into the fighter’s transparisteel canopy, spalling off fragments. One of them lashed Corran’s right cheek, cutting him along the bone, then the atmospheric pressure within the cockpit blew the transparisteel panel and all debris out into space.

The personal magnetic containment bubble projector each pilot was issued clicked on immediately, cocooning Corran in a thin