“One minute, tops.”

“We haven't got a minute—”

“What d'you want me to do, chew through it?”

The transparisteel plate was distorting as the hot frame burned through from the outside. Niner gathered up the hololink and snapped it back on his forearm plate. Atin shoved datapads and tools in his belt.

“Tell you what, shall we just float here and panic incoherently while we're waiting?” Fi said.

“Good idea,” Scorch said, unmoved.

“Very good idea, panicking,” Boss said. “Guess what I just eyeballed from the port-side screen.

RAS Fearless, ops room, ETA to target: two minutes

The assault ship had to decelerate to drop from hyperspace and open fire. It cost critical time. Etain watched while Tenn made rapid calculations to see if they could find that single critical firing solution that balanced losing speed with firing missiles and would not only make up those seconds, but also take out the Sep ship before it had a chance to target Omega.

The ops room was crowded with white armor and yet utterly silent as Fearless's crew watched the tracking screen repeater on the bulkhead. It mirrored what Tenn, Gett, and Etain could see in smaller format at the PWO's station.

Tenn didn't seem to have blinked in the last three minutes.

“Firing solution, General.” His hand rested on the firing key, his gaze welded to the screen. “Target acquired. Best solution we're going to get and our window is ten seconds or we'll take out Omega and Delta, too. Now, General?”

Etain glanced at Gett, her mind partly sensing the ripples in the Force. And the Force agreed with Tenn, to the very second.

“Take it, Tenn.”

“Yes, ma'am.” The key made a small snipping noise as he depressed it. “Fire one, fire two. Missiles away—”

Two huge trails of savage energy sped away from the decelerating assault ship and into the void. Etain could feel too much imminent disaster in the Force: she didn't want to watch it as well. She cupped her hands over her nose and shut her eyes for a second, and then made herself look back at the screen.

The tracking screen followed the missiles as steady white lines. They looked as if they had overlapped the pulsing red point of light that was the Separatist fighter. All the traces winked out of existence at the same time.

“Splash one,” said a trooper at another station. “Visual confirmation. Target destroyed.”

“And who else?” Commander Gett asked.

“Whoaaaa … !”

Fi wasn't certain if it was his own cry of shock or Scorch's voice in his comlink, but he saw the ball of white-and-gold flame expanding toward them, silhouetting the section of Neimie ship that partly obscured the shield, and he ducked instinctively.

A hailstorm of debris rained on the screen. Something large and metallic skidded along the casing of the freighter with a long dull screech. Fi straightened up as the hammering faded to the occasional rattle, like stones being tossed onto a roof. Then it stopped completely.

“Fierfek,” Scorch said. “Now, if they'd only added a spot of maranium to the warhead, it would have burned a really pretty purple.”

“Fearless Fearless Fearless calling Delta. Are you clear, repeat, are you clear, respond.”

A large rectangle of hot softened glass peeled slowly away from the screen, helped by Scorch's fist, and drifted off serenely into a silent, slow-motion collision with the headrest of the pilot's seat.

“Delta here, Fearless. Just extracting Omega and cargo now.”

Fi fought to stop himself from sounding breathless and shaky. It would let the squad down. “I'm glad the navy's here,” he said. “Because if it had been down to you, Greased Lightning, we'd be an asteroid belt by now.”

Scorch's visor poked through the aperture at last, followed by his arm, and he made an unmistakable gesture of displeasure.

Fi felt his mouth take over, fueled by shock. “My hero! You finally made it!”

“You want to walk back to base?”

Niner lifted the plastifoil-wrapped Orjul with one hand and lined him up with the opening. “Fi's going to give his mouth a nice rest now and help me cross-deck the garbage.”

“Gift-wrapped? Aww, you shouldn't have.” Scorch hauled himself a little farther down the access tube and hung motionless at 135 degrees, assessing the three bound prisoners. “Feet first, please. Then if the di'kut tries to kick out I can break his legs. Don't want this tubing breached.”

It proved harder than expected. But by the time the second Nikto had been rammed up into the connecting tube like a torpedo, the warm air from the hijacked Neimoidian vessel had worked its way into the freighter cockpit and made Fi feel a lot more comfortable. He stood back to let Atin then Darman make their way up the tube.

Scorch hauled Darman inboard by his webbing. Fi waited for his boots to disappear and then rolled to peer up the aperture into a circle of dim light.

“Next!”

Fi lined up and then pushed off with one boot. As he passed through the open hatch at the other end, he felt artificial gravity seize him, and he rolled onto the deck with a clatter of armor plates. It took him a few seconds to get to his feet. Niner collided with him from behind. It wasn't a very big ship.

Boss—his armor daubed with chipped and peeling orange paint—slammed the hatch behind Niner and sealed it. Niner stared at him as if he wasn't sure what should happen next and then the two men simply shook hands and slapped each other on the back.

“Like what we've done with the place?” Boss said, taking off his helmet. The flight deck looked as if someone had been dismantling it the hard way: panels had been ripped out, wires hung from the deckhead, and there were empty slots in the console where units had either been removed or not installed in the first place. “Okay, perhaps it's a little basic, but we call it home.”

“You nicked this?”

“No, they let us take it on a test drive.” Boss gestured at the rest of his brightly painted squad. “Fixer, Sev, and you already know Scorch. Say hello to the boys in boring black.”

“Thanks, vode,” Fi said. He wondered why Atin wasn't joining in; he had turned away and seemed to be taking a technical interest in a run of conduit. “Any word on Sicko?”

“If that's your pilot, Majestic's been diverted now. They picked up his beacon and that's all we know.” Boss looked down at the three prisoners, lined up on the deck like corpses. He gave each of them a nudge with his boot. “You'd better be worth everyone's effort.”

Fi eased off his helmet and inhaled almost fresh air. Except for Scorch, they had all taken off their helmets. Delta was one of fewer than a dozen squads that had survived intact since decanting, a true pod as the Kaminoans had called it, and they seemed to think that made them an elite within an elite. They had been raised and trained together, and they had never fought with anyone but their brothers. It was a luxury few squads now enjoyed.

Fi suspected it meant they didn't play well with others. He remembered only too well how ferociously competitive and inward looking his own pod had been, and how badly his confidence had been dented when he lost his brothers at Geonosis and was then dumped in Niner's care.

“You do okay for a mongrel squad,” Sev said, and Fi chose not to react. He knew he was on autopilot now and that he should shut up. Niner's glance helped him decide. “I don't suppose you did a rummage on that ship, did you?”

“Not with a rapid decompression on our hands, no,” said Niner. “Word was that it was carrying explosives.”

“Okay, we're going to be coated in Seps anytime now, so let's get this crate into Fearless's hangar and then they can blow the freighter. If there's anything useful in it, at least the Seps don't get it.”