The Vector’s threat display lit up. Missiles, from nowhere, a wide spread of them, at least a dozen, headed straight for the flight recorder fragment.

“What is this?” Mikkel said.

“They’re headed for the fragment,” Te’Ami said. “They’re trying to destroy the flight recorder.”

“Hnh,” Mikkel said. “Perhaps it’s Kassav again. Looks like we’ll get to work on that mission a little sooner than we expected, Master Te’Ami.”

“Seems so, Master Sutmani.”

Mikkel pulled his lightsaber from its holster and held it against the activation panel on his instrument console—his weapons display unlocked and went live, glowing green as it linked with the crystal in his lightsaber hilt.

On his screens, he saw that the Longbeams were also aware of the threat—the three ships were scattering, moving into a position to try to shoot down the missiles.

His systems tracked back to the projectiles’ point of origin to…nothing. Empty space. This many missiles implied a good-sized war vessel, but nothing like that showed up on his scope.

He put the question aside. The identity of their attacker could wait. Protecting the fragment—that was the thing.

Mikkel began to fire, blasts whipping out from his Vector’s lasers toward the missiles. By this point, the Longbeams had begun to shoot as well—a combination of offensive and defensive systems deployed to either destroy or distract the missiles. It didn’t matter which, as long as none of the projectiles reached the flight recorder.

One of the missiles veered toward one of those defensive measures—a cloud of static-activated foil emitted by one of the Longbeams, designed to present an appealing false target to the weapon’s tracking systems. The Longbeam that had sent out the chaff held position, already shifting toward another target, clearly assuming the missile would explode automatically once it hit the foil. Instead, the weapon entered the shifting, spinning cloud…but no explosion. Mikkel sensed what was about to happen, but he was too far away. There wasn’t enough time. He reached for the Force, but there was not enough time. The missile emerged from the other side of the chaff cloud, impacting directly against the Longbeam’s hull.

Now the explosion came.

“Blast it!” came Joss Adren’s voice over the comm.

Nothing else was said. The Jedi and the two remaining Longbeams went to work, not knowing the source of the missiles, not knowing if they would die at any moment—just doing the job they could do.

Lourna Dee watched as a few more of her missiles were shot down, or exploded harmlessly against Longbeam-deployed defenses. She still had five left in play, though, and only one needed to hit its target. Victory was just a matter of time.