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“Rad Flat, Rad Flat, this is Cartann Bladedrome. Congratulations on four stops. Ar apologies far the inconvenience. Please resume the original course.”

He switched to Red Flight’s scrambled frequency. “Any of you getting any of that?”

“Leader, Three. It’s Basic, but I don’t want to imagine how they have to twist their faces to pronounce it. They don’t sound as though this was part of the planned celebrations.”

“That’s my read also, Three. Let’s resume our planned course. But keep your eyes open and your sensors optimal.”

Moments later it was before them, the biggest city they’d seen so far, a broad stretch of skyscrapers; even the smallest of buildings, at the city’s periphery, seemed to be six or seven stories in height. The sky above it was alive with small craft. Wedge’s navigation computer indicated that their destination was within the city borders.

As they got closer, they could see that the city was a riot of colors, each building painted differently from the ones next to it, most of them bearing one color for walls and another for roofs and trim such as ledges and window frames. Rust, brown, red, black, and tan seemed to be preeminent.

And then there were the balconies. Every building seemed to have a broad balcony. On most of the worlds Wedge visited, a balcony might extend as far as the edge of the sidewalk, but some of these stretched out over the street, almost meeting balconies from the buildings across the way.

Cables also stretched between buildings, masses of them, but whether they carried power or communications signals, or did nothing more than add structural support or please some aesthetic sense, Wedge couldn’t guess.

Red Flight’s course dictated an altitude and direction that sent the four X-wings straight down the middle of one of the city’s broader avenues, just above the rooftops. Wedge reduced speed for better maneuvering close to structures. As they entered the city Wedge could see people on the streets and especially on the balconies: fair-skinned humans dressed in flowing garments he could only glimpse as they flashed past. The people all seemed to be waving, pointing up at the X-wings. There were vehicles on and above the streets, long, broad transports without seats. Wedge also saw living transportation—reptilian beasts, seven to ten meters long, in colors ranging through browns and greens; the beasts possessed natural armor on flanks and necks, a sort of hard-shell banding, and they carried saddles, some of them built for multiple riders and cargo.

As the pilots got farther into the city, the buildings grew taller, but Wedge’s orders mandated the same height aboveground. Suddenly they could see balconies and residents beside them, then above them, and they had to vary their altitude occasionally to miss banks of the cables stretched between buildings; yet the city builders seemed to have planned to accommodate low-level flying, because the cables were clustered at various altitudes, with gaps between them wide enough to permit easy passage of starfighters.

Sensor signals showed some of those pursuit aircraft catching up from the rear, and then Wedge spotted them visually: They were negotiating one cable-bounded passage below Red Flight, in tight formation, moving like the escorts they were probably intended to be, a score or more of the same craft Red Flight had shot down moments before.

“Not bad-looking.” That was Janson’s voice. “Chiefly atmospheric from the look of them.”

Their path took them abruptly out from between the balconied buildings and over a plaza. It was broad, wide enough for an X-wing to do some maneuvering at reduced speed, and packed with people.

And at the boundaries of the plaza were erected display screens, each showing a different moving two-dimensional image.

They were images of Wedge Antilles and the X-wings under his command, images of battles from throughout his career.

Wedge almost jerked in surprise. On one screen were in-the-trench shots from the original Death Star, from the viewpoint of an X-wing camera mount. On another, the