But the Grand Admiral didn’t seem to hear him. He just stood there at the viewport, gazing outward at the New Republic ships scrambling to meet them, his hands gripped tightly behind his back. “Admiral?” Pellaeon asked cautiously.
“That was them, Captain,” Thrawn said, his voice unreadable. “That ship straight ahead. That was the Millennium Falcon. And it was towing an X-wing starfighter behind it.”
Pellaeon frowned past the other. The glow of a drive was indeed barely visible past the flashing laser bolts of the battle, already pretty well out of combat range and trying hard to be even more so. But as to the design of the craft, much less its identity … “Yes, sir,” he said, keeping his tone neutral. “Cloak Leader reports a successful breakout, and that the command section of the freighter is making its escape to the periphery. They’re encountering some resistance from escort vehicles and a squadron of X-wings, but the general response has so far been weak and diffuse.”
Thrawn took a deep breath and turned away from the viewport. “That will change,” he told Pellaeon, back in control again. “Remind him not to push his envelope too far, or to waste excessive time in choosing his targets. Also that the spacetrooper mole miners should concentrate on Calamari Star Cruisers—they’re likely to have the largest number of defenders aboard.” The red eyes glittered. “And inform him that the Millennium Falcon is on its way in.”
“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. He glanced out the viewport again, at the distant fleeing ship. Towing an X-wing …? “You don’t think … Skywalker?”
Thrawn’s face hardened. “We’ll know soon,” he said quietly. “And if so, Talon Karrde will have a great deal to answer for. A great deal.”
“Watch it, Rogue Five,” Wedge warned as a flash of laser fire from somewhere behind him shot past and nicked the wing of one of the X-wings ahead. “We’ve picked up a tail.”
“I noticed,” the other came back. “Pincer?”
“On my mark,” Wedge confirmed as a second bolt shot past him. Directly ahead, a Calamari Star Cruiser was pulling sluggishly away, trying to get out of the battle zone. Perfect cover for this kind of maneuver. Together, he and Rogue Five dived underneath it—
“Now.” Leaning hard on his etheric rudder, he peeled off hard to the right. Rogue Five did the same thing to the left. The pursuing TIE fighter hesitated between his diverging targets a split second too long; and even as he swung around to follow Wedge, Rogue Five blew him out of the sky.
“Nice shooting,” Wedge said, giving the area a quick scan. The TIE fighters still seemed to be everywhere, but for the moment, at least, none of them was close enough to give them any trouble.
Five noticed that, too. “We seem to be out of it, Rogue Leader,” he commented.
“Easy enough to fix,” Wedge told him. His momentum was taking him farther under the Star Cruiser they’d used for cover. Curving up and around it, he started to spiral back toward the main battle area.
He was just swinging up along the Star Cruiser’s side when he noticed the small cone-shaped thing nestled up against the larger ship’s hull.
He craned his neck for a better look as he shot past. It was one of the little craft that had come out with the TIE fighters, all right. Sitting pressed up against the Star Cruiser’s bridge blister as if it were welded in place.
There was a battle going on nearby, a battle in which his people were fighting and very possibly dying. But something told Wedge that this was important. “Hang on a minute,” he told Five. “I want to check this out.”
His momentum had already taken him to the Star Cruiser’s bow. He curved around in front of the ship, leaning back into a spiral again—
And suddenly his canopy lit up with laser fire, and his X-wing jolted like a startled animal beneath him.
The Star Cruiser had fired on him.
In his ear, he heard Five shout something. “Stay back,” Wedge snapped, fighting against a sudden drop in power and giving his scopes a quick scan. “I’m hit, but not bad.”
“They fired on you!”
“Yeah, I know,” Wedge said, trying to maintain some kind of evasive maneuvering with what little control he had left. Fortunately, the systems were starting to come back on line as his R2 unit did some fast rerouting. Even more fortunately, the Star Cruiser didn’t seem inclined to shoot at him again.
But why had it fired in the first place?
Unless …
His own R2 was too busy with rerouting chores to handle anything else at the moment. “Rogue Five, I need a fast sensor scan,” he called. “Where are the rest of those cone things?”
“Hang on, I’ll check,” the other replied. “Scope shows … I don’t find more than about fifteen of them. Nearest one’s ten kilometers away—bearing one-one-eight mark four.”
Wedge felt something hard settle into his stomach. Fifteen, out of the fifty that had been in that freighter with the TIE fighters. So where had the rest of them gone? “Let’s go take a look,” he said, turning into an intercept vector.
The cone thing was heading toward another Escort Frigate like the Larkhess, he saw, with four TIE fighters running interference for it. Not that there was much potential for interference—if the Frigate was manned anywhere near as sparsely as the Larkhess, it would have precious little chance of fighting back. “Let’s see if we can take them before they notice us,” he told Five as they closed the distance.
Abruptly, all four TIE fighters peeled off and came around. So much for surprise. “Take the two on the right, Rogue Five; I’ll take the others.”
“Copy.”
Wedge waited until the last second before firing on the first of his targets, swinging around instantly to avoid collision with the other. It swept past beneath him, his X-wing shuddering as it took another hit. He leaned hard into the turn, catching a glimpse of the TIE fighter dropping into a pursuit slot as he did so—
And suddenly something shot past him, spitting laser fire and twisting back and around in some kind of insane variant on a drunkard’s-walk evasive maneuver. The TIE fighter caught a direct hit and blew into a spectacular cloud of fiery gas. Wedge finished his turn, just as Rogue Five’s second target fighter did likewise.
“All clear, Wedge,” a familiar voice called into his ear. “You damaged?”
“I’m fine, Luke,” Wedge assured him. “Thanks.”
“Look—there it goes,” Han’s voice cut in. “Over by the Frigate. It’s one of Lando’s mole miners, all right.”
“I see it,” Luke said. “What’s it doing out here?”
“I saw one stuck onto the Star Cruiser back there,” Wedge told him, swinging back on course for the Frigate. “Looks like this one’s trying to do the same thing. I don’t know why.”
“Whatever it’s doing, let’s stop it,” Han said.
“Right.”
It was, Wedge saw, going to be a close race; but it was quickly clear that the mole miner was going to win it. Already it had turned its base around toward the Frigate and was starting to nestle up against the hull.
And just before it closed the gap completely, he caught a glimpse of an acridly brilliant light.
“What was that?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know,” Wedge said, blinking away the afterimage. “It looked too bright for laser fire.”
“It was a plasma jet,” Han grunted as the Falcon came up alongside him. “Right on top of the bridge emergency escape hatch. That’s what they wanted the mole miners for. They’re using them to burn through the hulls—”
He broke off; and, abruptly, he swore. “Luke—we got it backwards. They’re not here to wreck the fleet.
“They’re here to steal it.”3