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He could see on his sensor board the second wave of fighters, the missile-bearing craft, heading in two columns around the engagement zone toward Agonizer. And what he could see, the enemy could see. It would be best not to give the TIE Defenders a crack at those columns; Defenders would tear the slow-moving Y-wings and Blades to pieces. He identified the nearest Defender on his sensor board and headed straight for it.

It was engaged with two Allegiance TIE fighters and a B-wing operating in concert. As Wedge approached, the Defender’s lasers chewed through one of the TIE fighters; the eyeball vented the gases in its cockpit and went dark. A linked ion-cannon blast from the B-wing missed the Defender by thirty meters or more, and the Defender’s return ion blast eliminated the other TIE fighter, filling its cockpit with sparks before the vehicle went dark.

“Red Two, go wide. Let’s give him nothing but guns to run toward.” Wedge looped to starboard, away from his wingman, and Tycho looped to port; they arced toward the B-wing and Defender from opposite directions.

The Defender, itself looping around for a run at the B-wing, instead swung wide to keep clear of its original target and accelerated toward Tycho.

Wedge’s targeting brackets flickered green across the Defender. He fired, but his lasers were meters off the mark.

Tycho and the Defender, skittering around like drops of ale on a cooking surface, came toward one another, Tycho unloading lasers, the Defender firing ion cannons. They passed one another seemingly undamaged … until Wedge noticed that Tycho was no longer maneuvering. Red Two’s X-wing was dark, headed out to space like a missile with no guidance control.

Wedge bit back a curse. He didn’t bother trying to raise Tycho on the comlink. Ion cannons tended to wipe out all a vehicle’s electronics. Tycho was out of the game unless he could manage a cold start on his engines, an unlikely eventuality.

Instead, Wedge turned in the Defender’s wake. He’d have only a shot or two before the other vehicle’s superior speed and maneuverability would take it out of Wedge’s range.

As his targeting brackets edged toward the Defender, its pilot detected the attempted targeting lock and went evasive, executing the kind of side-to-side maneuvers that only a TIE-style vehicle could manage. He also put on a burst of acceleration, drawing away from the X-wing at a prodigious rate, and began a tight loop upward that would inevitably put him at Wedge’s stern.

Wedge shook his head and held his fire. Instead, he maneuvered his brackets around and across his target, seeing which way the Defender jumped whenever threatened with an imminent hit. The Defender’s response was always a spiraling loop down and to starboard, a fatal predictability … Wedge ran his brackets toward the Defender one last time, then, not waiting for the Defender’s response, sent his X-wing into a loop down and to starboard.

The Defender rolled right into his targeting brackets. The pilot saw his mistake, began a reverse, but Wedge fired, quad-linked lasers punching through the vehicle’s engines and into the cockpit. Fire flared through the hole he’d made, then the vehicle detonated.

Wedge found the B-wing on his sensors. “Red Leader to Solar Wind Eight. Tag Red Two, calculate his course and velocity, and transmit that data to Allegiance with a request for rescue.”

“Will do, Red Leader.”

Wedge turned back toward the heart of the engagement.

He could see, in the distance—not so great a distance as before—the B-wings, Y-wings, and Blades beginning their attack run on Agonizer. A little flare of light within the Y-wing formation had to be one of the wishbones intercepting a turbolaser blast, with fatal results.

Then bright lights began erupting on Agonizer’s hull, proton torpedo and Adumari missile impacts. A moment later the first barrage was done and Wedge could see char marks and buckled hull plates where the attack had hit.

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