The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  He waved the visitors toward the cream-colored stuffed furniture that lined one wall of the room. “Have a seat.”

  Captain Barthis gave him a little shake of the head. “Actually, we’ve been sitting for hours, on a shuttle—”

  “Of course.” Wedge waited.

  “The Galactic Alliance needs your help, General,” the woman said.

  Wedge offered a faint snort. “Captain, the Galactic Alliance is teeming with officers who were compelled to retire after the war with the Yuuzhan Vong, for the simple reason that a peacetime military doesn’t need as many of them. Some of these folks are quite brilliant, and, unlike me, they’re anxious to get back into uniform. Me, I’m anxious to sit around in comfortable clothes all day, give my wife all the time my military career wouldn’t allow me to give her, and complete my memoirs. You’re looking for the wrong man.”

  “No, sir.” Captain Barthis shook her head in vigorous denial. “The GA needs you and your specific help.”

  The male visitor finally spoke, his voice softer than Wedge would have suspected. “It has to do with the events of nearly thirty years ago when Rogue Squadron did so much work preparing for the taking of Coruscant from Imperial forces.”

  “I see. And it’s something that requires my presence instead of a simple holocomm call.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Barthis said.

  “And if you’re here in the middle of the night, it’s because you need me in the middle of the night.”

  The captain nodded, the expression on her face regretful.

  Wedge flipped a switch on the door-side panel, and the entryway opened again. “Wait for me in the building lobby. I’ll be down directly.”

  Now, finally, the two of them glanced at each other. Barthis said, “We’d prefer to remain here, sir.”

  Wedge gave her a frosty little smile. “And will you be making a holocam recording of my good-byes with my family? Or perhaps you’d prefer to hug my daughter for me.”

  Barthis cleared her throat, thought the better of it, and moved out into the hall. Titch followed. Wedge shut the door behind them.

  Iella moved into the bedroom doorway again. She was now wearing a green-black rain drape. She looked annoyed. “What do they need that they couldn’t have asked you decades ago?”

  Wedge shrugged. “Retired is such an imprecise word … Did they check out?”

  Iella nodded. “They’re the genuine article. In fact, I worked for a year with Barthis’s father. The family is Corellian.” She moved up to put her arms around Wedge’s neck. “Sometimes I wish you hadn’t been as influential as you were in your job. So that they’d stop coming for you anytime the military discovers it’s forgotten how to coordinate an X-wing engagement.”

  Wedge wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. “And who was it they came for last time? An hour before dawn, sweeping the hallway for listening devices before they even rang the chimes?”

  “Well, me.” Iella had spent her professional career as a security officer, first for CorSec and then for New Republic Intelligence, and the demands on her postretirement time matched the demands on Wedge’s.

  Wedge kissed her. “Wake Myri up so I can say good-bye. I’ll grab my go-bag and get dressed.”

  She reached past him to unlock the hallway, then turned toward that door. Not looking back, she said, “I don’t like Titch.”

  “Yeah.” It was a bit of verbal shorthand. She didn’t mean she didn’t like the man; she didn’t know him. But Titch was the sort of intelligence officer brought along to ensure security—to ensure that the person being transported didn’t cause trouble. It led to the question—Was Titch actually Barthis’s regular partner, or had he been brought in because someone anticipated Wedge causing trouble?

  CORUSCANT

  Han and Leia crowded in close, side by side, so that the holocam on the terminal before them could capture both their images. “Luke,” Han said.

  The lights on the terminal flickered, and after a few seconds the face of Luke Skywalker swam into view on the terminal screen. He was wearing a cold-weather wrap in black, with jagged decorative lines on it in subdued gray, and behind him was an anonymous white wall. He looked surprised to see the caller. “Hello.”

  “We were wondering,” Leia said, “if you were planning on seeing any X-wing action in the near future.” Her tone was light and conversational.

  For the merest instant, Luke looked startled, but his features settled into an amused grin. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, we’re planning on a vacation,” Han said. “In the Falcon. Dashing around, seeing old friends. Me, Leia, Goldilocks, the Noghri—do you see what I’m getting at, conversationally?”

  Luke’s grin broadened. “I think so.”

  “Leia and I can talk. The Noghri can keep each other occupied. But if See-Threepio doesn’t have Artoo-Detoo to talk to, he’ll talk to us.” Han mimed putting a blaster barrel to his own temple and pulling the trigger. “Save me, Luke Skywalker, you’re my only hope.”

  Still cheerful, Luke shook his head. “I wish I could. But Mara and I are about to do a quick training tour with a bunch of Jedi Knights anxious to learn about adapting their Force-based abilities to X-wing piloting tasks. In other words, I’m about to head out with Artoo.”

  “Oh.” Han gave his brother-in-law an unhappy stare. “All right, then. Doom me to day after day of listening to dithering obsequiousness.”

  “Nice word choice,” Luke said. “By the way, where will you be heading on your vacation?”

  Leia shrugged. “We’re not sure yet. We may visit Lando and Tendra and get a tour of their new manufacturing complex, but don’t tell them, since we want it to be a surprise if it happens. We’re thinking hard about a trip through the Alderaan system, and then planet-hopping along the Perlemian Trade Route.”

  “Lots of shopping,” Han offered, his tone suggesting that such a fate was only one step above death as a matter of preference.

  “Ah, good. Have fun. And sorry I couldn’t help with Artoo.”

  “That’s the way it is sometimes,” Han said.

  The polite smile remained fixed on his face after Luke reached forward to break the comm connection. But Han’s posture failed him; he sagged into his chair as if beaten. “He’s part of it,” Han said.

  “We can’t be sure—”

  “Don’t try to kid me, Leia. He was wearing a weather wrap indoors. Either he just got out of the ’fresher—and his hair was dry, you’ll note—or he threw it on to cover over something else he was wearing, like a pilot’s uniform. You saw the wall behind him? White, curved. A bulkhead on a vessel. He’s already shipped out.”

  Finally Leia nodded, reluctant. “Probably.”

  “He’s on their side.”

  “As the Master of the Jedi order, he has taken oaths to support the Galactic Alliance.” Leia let a little sternness creep into her voice. “And don’t pretend this is a simple situation, where everyone on one side is smart and sensible and everyone on the other side isn’t. It’s more complicated than that. It’s more complicated than that for me.”

  Han reached over to hold her for a moment. “Yeah. I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s just like he hit me when I wasn’t looking.” He buried his face in her hair, took a deep breath. “All right. It’s time for us to go.”

  In the foremost passenger seat, Wedge sat up, startled, as his shuttle came in for its landing and a familiar-looking Corellian YT-1300 leapt up past his viewport, headed for the skies. “That,” he announced, “was the Millennium Falcon.”

  “If you say so, sir.” Across the aisle between seats, Captain Barthis looked dubious. “There are thousands of those old Corellian transports still flying, though.”

  “Oh, that was definitely the Falcon. I’m intimately familiar with her lines … and her rust spots. I had to replicate them once on a decoy vehicle, decades ago. No matter what Han does, paint the hull, anodize it, those rust patches come back after a few months or years.�
�

  Barthis cocked her head, a whatever-you-say gesture that left no doubt in Wedge’s mind that she was humoring him, and returned her attention to her datapad.

  Half an hour later the two of them, Titch, and a droid porter swept into the government facility Barthis had said would be Wedge’s home for the next several days at least. It was deep within a gray pyramidal building at the edge of what had once been the Imperial government district. The dark corridor from the turbolifts led into a large outer office laid out in rows of monitoring stations; most of the stations were empty, their viewscreens unlit, but Wedge could see two that were active, both showing holocam views of long rooms with dormitory-style accommodations for four at one end and office equipment at the other.

  Barthis led Wedge and the others to a door, which whooshed upward and thumped into place with the speed, air displacement, and echoing sound of an armored portal. The chamber’s overhead lights flickered on as they entered, revealing a room very much like those shown on the monitors: closest to the door were four desks, facing one another, laden with computer material; the far side of the room held four bunk beds and oversized equipment lockers. Wedge could also see a door that he presumed led into a refresher.

  The porter droid moved in to drop Wedge’s bags on the nearest of the bunk beds. Barthis and Titch stayed near the door and gestured at the accommodations. “A bit plain,” Barthis admitted. “I’m sorry.”

  “They’re luxurious compared with some of the places I’ve been quartered.” Wedge glanced over the computer equipment, noting brand names and designs. “These terminals have to be thirty years old.”

  Barthis nodded. “Almost. This facility was installed by Intelligence just after the New Republic conquered Coruscant and drove Ysanne Isard into exile. The equipment is original … but it has been serviced and upgraded.”

  “What’s the facility for?”

  “It was what we called a pressure cooker,” Titch said. “The idea is that in times of crisis, you get teams of civilian coders, technicians, and specialists together in combined living and work quarters. They’re the sort of people who are going to be working sixteen, twenty hours a day anyway. More convenient for them to be packed in together, exchanging ideas, keeping one another’s spirits up, and so forth, rather than in separate offices and with quarters minutes’ or hours’ travel time away.”

  “Ah.” Wedge grabbed the rolling chair before the nearest desk, swung it around, and sat. “So. You wouldn’t tell me on Corellia, you wouldn’t tell me on the shuttle trip—now, in the heart of your own secure facility, maybe you can tell me what this is all about? What am I supposed to be doing?”

  Barthis and Titch exchanged a look. Their faces remained impassive, but Wedge read it as a here-we-go exchange. Barthis returned her attention to Wedge. “Just, um, waiting, General.”

  Wedge blinked. “Waiting for orders?”

  “No.” Barthis looked regretful, and waved for the porter droid to leave the chamber, which it did. Wedge noticed that, though his posture looked relaxed, Titch was ready for action, and had positioned himself in the doorway so that he could draw the blaster at his hip and fire without endangering Barthis.

  “No,” Barthis continued, “you have no orders. Our orders are to keep you as comfortable as possible during your stay here.”

  Wedge refused to allow the alarm that was beginning to well up within him to show on his face. “The duration of my stay?”

  Barthis shrugged. “Unknown.”

  “Its purpose?”

  “Can’t say.”

  Wedge closed his eyes and offered up a slow, silent sigh. Then he looked at the two of them again. “I said no, you know.”

  They looked confused.

  “When officers of the Corellian military came to me and said, ‘There could be trouble between us and the GA,’ I said, ‘Sorry, fellows, I’m retired. You can get advice as useful as mine, and much more up to date, by looking at other Corellian officers.’ And so they left me alone. Why didn’t you?”

  Barthis opened her mouth, evidently realized that she could offer no answer without somehow compromising her orders, and closed it again.

  “Because, you see …” And this time Wedge couldn’t quite keep the pain he was feeling from being reflected in his voice, as a hoarseness he could not control. “You see, that way I’d be with my family if something happened. And now, someone, somewhere, at the GA end of things has decided I need to be out of the way for what’s going to happen. And has separated me from my family.” He fixed Barthis and Titch with his stare.

  Barthis actually leaned back. She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said—not an admission that she or her team was doing what Wedge was speculating, but her voice carried emotion, and it sounded genuine. She turned away and walked into the outer office.

  Titch seemed unaffected. “You approach this door anytime it’s open, it closes,” he says. “Meaning it won’t do you any good to make a sudden dash for the door when we bring you food or drink. Besides, if you do make an attempt to escape, I get to kill you.” He patted the blaster pistol at his side. “This model can be set to stun or burn. I always leave it on burn.” He nodded as though he thought the gravity of that action would impress Wedge.

  He also glanced after his partner, apparently making sure she was out of earshot. He turned back to Wedge. “Let me add this,” he said. “I’m sick of hearing the Rebel Alliance generation brag about how they stomped the Empire and then whine about how the galaxy owes them a living, or special favors. The Empire would have kicked the Yuuzhan Vong in the teeth, and I wouldn’t have lost almost everyone I knew when I was a kid, if you hadn’t ‘won.’ Well, the higher-ups seem to think they owe you a little dignity, so here it is. Eat your meals, get in some quiet exercise, keep your mouth shut, and when all the shouting’s done, you can go home and finish your self-serving memoirs about how you single-handedly won half a dozen wars. That’s the deal. Got it?”

  Wedge studied him. “If you’d been a little smarter, I might have left you some shred of a career when I leave here. But I won’t. You’ll be cleaning refreshers for the rest of your life.”

  Titch snorted, unimpressed. He backed out of the doorway, and the door slid shut.

  chapter seven

  OUTER SPACE, NEAR THE CORELLIA SYSTEM

  A few light-years from the star Corell, a vessel dropped out of hyperspace, winking back into existence in the physical universe.

  In design it was something like the old Imperial-class Star Destroyers, and was just as long, though where the ISDs looked more like narrow, armor-piercing arrowheads, this ship was broader, massing half again what an ISD did.

  It was the Galactic Alliance Space Vessel Dodonna, the second capital ship named for the Rebel Alliance–era military leader who had plotted and executed the destruction of the first Death Star, and it was the first completed vessel of its type, the Galactic-class battle carrier—a designation chosen to avoid unpleasant reminders of the old Star Destroyers, of which this new ship was little more than an elaboration and update.

  On the bridge, on the broad walkway that looked over technicians’ pits and stations, Admiral Matric Klauskin, commander of Dodonna and leader of this operation, stood staring out through the high viewports into space. In his peripheral vision, to starboard, another vessel of war, one of the Mon Calamari star cruisers with hull designs that suggested a successful blend of technology and organic design, popped into existence.

  Over the next several hours, many elements of the Galactic Alliance’s Second Fleet would be arriving here to form up with Dodonna. Once everything was in position, Klauskin would give the word and send this operation into motion.

  He knew that, on the surface, he appeared calm, rocksteady. Had there been a course at the academy in maintaining appearances of coolness, he would have placed first every time. But inside, his guts knotted.

  With the correct few orders, the correct few maneuvers, he could prevent a war. The galaxy might not r
eexperience the sort of horrors it had within living memory—the agony of worlds being besieged, families torn apart, homes and histories erased.

  He could prevent it. He had to succeed.

  Had to.

  CORONET, CORELLIA

  The diminutive woman was dressed in the flowing gowns and profanely costly jewelry strands of a noblewoman of the Hapes Consortium; a semi-transparent veil concealed the lower half of her face. Her bodyguard stood in contrast to her in every way possible: tall, primitive, and brutal of appearance, he wore the dusty robes and carried the crude blaster rifle of one of the Tusken Raiders, the Sand People of rural Tatooine. His features were concealed behind the dust-storm-resistant mask that such beings usually wore in their own environment.

  Five World Prime Minister Aidel Saxan watched the two of them enter the hotel suite’s outer chamber. Saxan, a handsome, black-haired woman of middle years, wielded considerable political power, but in the company she was about to receive she did not feel at a political advantage. She was, as such things could be measured, the peer of her guests, and it was in recognition of that comparative equality she had agreed to meet them here, in this relatively ill-protected hotel away from the prying eyes of others.

  When, years after the end of the Yuuzhan Vong war, the Galactic Alliance had decided to reward the Corellian system with removal of the appointed governor-general position, Corellian-born politicians had been swept into the new offices created by the change. Each of the five worlds had elected its own Chief of State, and together they had created the office of the Five World Prime Minister, charged with coordinating budgets, resources, and policies of the five worlds, as well as representing the system in negotiations with other multiplanetary bodies. Aidel Saxan was the first and, so far, only person to occupy that post.

  Saxan waited until the outer and inner doors had shut behind her two visitors, then rose from the spindly decorative chair that served temporarily as her seat of power. She offered her visitors a nod. “Welcome to Coronet,” she said.

  “Thank you,” the woman replied. “Before we continue—the chamber has been searched for recording devices?”