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“Break by wings,” Wedge said. “Fire at will.” He banked hard to starboard, Tycho tucked in behind him and to his left, and waited to see how the enemy would react.

All four enemy Blades turned to follow Wedge and Tycho.

Wedge shook his head. That was an odd tactical choice. He heard the first throbbing of targeting locks being brought against him and began evasive maneuvering. For practice’s sake, he opened fire on his pursuers with his lasers, though he had no better laser locks than they did. On his lightboard, he could see Hobbie and Janson pulling into position in pursuit of the four Blades.

The laser locks grew stronger. Wedge said, “Let’s give Wes and Hobbie something to shoot at,” and shoved his control yoke forward, sending his Blade into a steep dive, and rotating so they still only had a side angle on him.

The four pursuers followed but did not rotate. Wedge kept up his laser fire against one of them and grinned. If he understood the simple Adumari lightbounce system correctly, the bigger the metal cross section it saw, the farther away it could get a good laser lock. In exposing their bellies to Janson and Hobbie, the four Blades had substantially increased their cross sections, which the two New Republic pilots should be seeing just about—

He saw missile streaks appear like magic lines between Hobbie’s and Janson’s Blades and two of the enemy craft. Paint clouds erupted, one an appalling pink, one a lavender, and one enemy Blade emerged from each. Both the “kills” broke off from the fight, moving out to meet the two pilots sitting out the conflict.

That left two. No, one. One of the remaining Blades broke away to join the other kills. As it departed, it broadcast, “Ke Mattino congratulates Antilles on a good stop.”

Wedge checked his sensor board. He must have racked up enough hits to put the enemy captain in the kill column. His own Blade showed twenty percent damage; he’d picked up a couple of grazes himself.

The surviving enemy Blade came doggedly on after Wedge and Tycho. Wedge leveled off smoothly and switched his comm system back to Red Flight frequency. “Let’s try a simple one,” he said. “Break to starboard and rejoin Wes and Hobbie. I’ll lead him back for a head-to-head against you.”

“Done, boss.” Tycho broke away sharply. As Wedge expected, the pursuing Blade paid him no heed, continuing on after Wedge.

Wedge juked and jinked, making himself a hard a target to hit, though he saw his simulated laser damage climb to thirty percent, then to thirty five percent. This pilot was a good shot. But his maneuvering pointed him back toward the other three members of Red Flight. As soon as his sensor board indicated that he could get a good shot at his own pilots, the blip that was the last enemy Blade changed to a kill marker and circled off to rejoin its fellows.

“A good exercise, Strike the Moons,” Wedge said. “Care to go again?”

There was a noticeable delay before the enemy captain replied. “Again? The duel is done.”

“Yes, but nobody’s a smoking crater, and we have fuel enough for two or three more at least. Do you want to go again, maybe let the two pilots who didn’t go last time come against us now?”

There was still confusion in the captain’s voice, but he said, “We could do that.” And moments later, four Blades, two that had taken part in the previous exercise and two that had not, broke away from the circling formation and came again against Red Flight.

Captain ke Mattino was a tiny man, lean of form and rising barely to Wedge’s nose, but his long and elaborately curled mustache doubtless helped increase his personal majesty to acceptable levels. He sat opposite Wedge in the Giltella Air Base pilots’ bar and nodded as Wedge spoke, every bob of his head setting his mustache to swaying.

“The problem is not in your skills,” Wedge said. “It’s in your tactics. In every exchange, you kept your whole group together and went with all ferocity after the highest-profile enemy … me. You know what that makes you?”

Ke Mattino looked suspicious. “Dead?”

“Well, I was going to say predictable. But predictability,