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Jacen used his targeting circles to lock onto a sluggish, fully loaded TIE bomber that arrowed toward the clustered residential structures. The bomber came in, picking up speed while preparing to drop its deadly explosives.

Jacen grasped the firing controls and gritted his teeth. 'Come on... come on," he said. Finally, the target lock blinked as the TIE bomber settled directly in the crosshairs.

He squeezed both controls, launching searing blazes of laser energy from all four cannons. The beams targeted on the bomber just before it could drop its proton explosives.

Instead of destroying the homes of hundreds of Wookiees, the bomber became a brilliant ball of fire and smoke. The belch of detonations grew louder as the TIE fighter's own proton bombs fed into the eruption.

"Got one!" Jacen crowed.

Tenel Ka fired repeatedly until another pair of TIE fighters exploded in the air. 'Two more, she said.

By now, additional Wookiee defenders had arrived to assume positions at the remaining guns. Jacen fired again and again, rotating his chair to aim at the rapidly moving targets. He blasted another TIE fighter out of the sky.

"Just like our practice runs in the Millennium Falcon," he said. 'Only this time, hitting the targets is a lot more important than winning a contest with my sister."

"This is a fact," Tenel Ka said.

Another wing of TIE fighters swooped down, and Jacen shot wildly. So many Imperial targets, he thought, all of them bristling with lethal weaponry.... Ms quad-laser cannon spat beams of energy, but they all missed as the fighters spun evasive loops in the air.

"Oh, blaster bolts!" Jacen said.

Wookiees kept appearing, leaping off the vine pulley-lifts and rushing to their positions, although now there were more defenders than guns. Lowie and Sirra hurried over to Jacen and Tenel Ka, speaking loudly. Their grunts and growls overlapped, so that Em Teedee had difficulty translating both.

"One at a time, please!" the little droid said. "All right, I believe I understand the basics of what you're saying. Master Lowbacca and Mistress Sirrakuk have determined that a single-point defensive failure occurred in the traffic control tower for this facility. Somehow, all of the central command systems have been compromised. It appears that the attack is being guided from there."

Lowie roared a suggestion. "Oh dear," Em Teedee said. "Master Lowbacca suggests we would be well advised to go to the heart of the problem and leave these well-trained Wookiee gunners to continue the fight here.

While I agree that it might be safer to move insider am skeptical about the wisdom of rushing into greater danger."

"Good idea, Lowie," Jacen said, ignoring Em Teedee's warnings. He fired the quadlaser one more time, almost offhandedly, and was astonished to see his quick shot destroy the side panel of another TIE fighter, which spun out of control and crashed to the treetops. 'Hey, got another one,"

he said.

Barricaded in the traffic control tower, Zekk listened to outraged Wookiees pounding against the sealed door. A sizzling, melting sound worked its way into the background din as the Wookiees used high-intensity laser torches to slice through the armored metal.

Their own well-constructed defenses worked against them, since they had intended Kashyyyk s command center to be impregnable. Slowly but surely, though, the Wookiees made headway, slicing through the door one centimeter at a time.

Using the security monitors, Zekk watched the hairy creatures out in the hall. With bestial rage one of them picked up a metal pipe and hammered at the door-to no effect, of course, because of the thick plating, but the Wookiee seemed satisfied just to be able to vent his fury.

Tamith Kai crossed her arms over her reptile-armored chest. "The noise level out there is most annoying," she said, then glared at the stormtrooper standing guard.

Her violet eyes flashed with a twisted idea.

"Why don't we trigger the locking mechanism and let the Wookiees stumble inside. We can easily take care of the