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Captain Salaban nodded.

Wedge forced a smile for the holocam. “Well, just another challenge, then. Let’s see those quarters.”

2

Wedge was still occasionally fuming, days later, when Allegiance dropped out of hyperspace at the edges of the Adumar solar system. There was such a thing, of course, as overplanning. With too much time and too much desire to put every mission detail into a mission profile, it was possible to lose perspective on which objectives were most important, on which tactics were most effective.

But this was the polar opposite of that situation. He didn’t know any more now about the people of Adumar than when he received the datacard from Cracken. As he sat in his X-wing, running through his preflight checklist, he had available to him only a set of coordinates on the planet’s surface. Once Allegiance made its approach to the world—an odd, inconvenient path like an obstacle course, with direction changes at one of the system’s uninhabited worlds and one of Adumar’s two moons—Wedge and his three pilots would launch and make the final approach to their destination … whatever it was that the mathematical coordinates represented. One of Allegiance’s shuttles, filled with support personnel, including Hallis Saper, had already descended to make preparations for their arrival.

“Red Flight, this is Allegiance. Our final leg terminates in one minute.”

Wedge glanced at his comm board. The minute was already counting down—his R5 unit, Gate, had also received the transmission and, on his own initiative, begun a count down. Wedge said, “This is Red Leader. Understood. We launch at arrival plus five seconds. Red Flight, are you good to go?”

“Red Two, ready.” That was Tycho, as economical of words as he was of motion.

“Red Three, four lit and ready to burn.” Janson’s inimitable voice and enthusiasm were evident even across the standard X-wing comm distortion.

“Red Four, nothing’s gone wrong yet.” There was almost a hopeful note to Hobbie’s dour tone.

Wedge felt Allegiance heel to starboard, a maneuver lasting ten seconds, and it ended just as his countdown dropped to zero. “Red Flight, launch.” He suited action to words, bringing his X-wing up on repulsorlifts until it was three meters above the hangar floor, then drifting forward over the main hangar access. Below was a great dark mass featuring occasional sprinkles of light—Adumar’s night side. He angled until his nose was straight down, then smoothly brought up his thrusters and shot toward the planet’s surface. His sensor board and a visual check to either side showed his three companions tucked in close beside and behind him in diamond formation. He oriented toward the planet’s direction of spin; Allegiance’s orbit was above the planet’s equator.

“Leader, Two. We have company.”

Wedge checked his sensor board again. It showed two red blips paralleling their course, about ten klicks from one another and ten klicks above Red Flight’s course. As he watched, another two blips began rising from below on an identical course. The sensors designated them “Unknown Type.” He took a look at them with visual sensors, but could just barely make out a black fuselage and an unusual split to the rear fuselage; the distance, and vibration from the X-wing’s speed, made a better look impossible.

“Presumably an escort,” Wedge said. “Stay loose, Red Flight. Diplomacy first.”

“Leader, Three. Diplomacy means saying something soothing as you squeeze the trigger, right?”

“Quiet, Three.”

In moments, as they held their altitude above Adumar’s surface, he saw the system’s sun rise above the planetary curve ahead of them. Wedge’s viewport automatically polarized, cutting down a bit on its brightness, but his eyes were still dazzled. He brought down his helmet goggles and kept his attention on his instruments.

Seconds later, Red Flight crossed the day/night boundary. Visual sensors showed a tremendous archipelago of islands below them, graduating to a series of larger mountainous islands, and then suddenly they were above an enormous continent, one that