Solo Command

by Aaron Allston

  He used a spoon to extract some of their food from the box. It was unappetizing-looking stuff, looking like little glass beads with green flecks at their centers. But when he poured a spoonful into each cage's feeder box, the Glass Prowlers fell upon the food as though it were the most wonderful of treats; the Prowlers's arms snapped out to scoop up each in­ dividual bead and their mandibles chewed away at the trans­parent coating and green flecks within. Face smiled at their voracity.

  There was a knock at his door. "Come," he said.

  It slid open and Wedge stepped in. "Am I intruding?"

  "No. Just feeding my roommates. Have a seat." Face flicked a tunic from one of the room's chairs. He settled in the other, forgetting for a moment, flinching as his back came in contact with the chair.

  Wedge said, "I just came in to see how you were doing. Well, more precisely, to see how you felt about today's mission."

  "I figured you would. So I've been thinking about it."

  "And?"

  "And I feel pretty good about it."

  That got him a raised eyebrow from his commander. "Can you explain that?"

  "Well, I don't feel good about the casualty total, obvi­ ously. Sithspit. Janson and Runt in bacta tanks, everyone else bandaged and drugged up to the eyebrows ... I have only four pilots fit to fly."

  "So what makes you feel good about the mission?"

  Face took a deep breath. "We had an objective. Get infor­ mation. We succeeded, even if that information is going to be difficult to drag out of Doctor Gast. We got out of there with everyone more or less alive.

  "Even more, it's obvious that they'd geared that whole fa­cility to kill us, which is something we hadn't anticipated. We were channeled to the place they intended to kill us, and they threw everything they had at us—and we took it and got out anyway. That's a tremendous thing. When my pilots realize that, it's going to be harder than ever to stop them. To intimi­date them.

  "And then, again, there's the fact that the enemy went to such lengths to wipe out the Wraiths. They spent a tremendous amount of money and effort. They may want us dead, but they're showing us respect—which is something I need to point out to the other Wraiths." He shrugged, then winced again at the incautious move. "We all feel as though we've had the stuff­ ing kicked out of us, then been fried up for someone else's meal—but we won this one, Commander."

  Wedge nodded and rose. "I guess I don't have too much to tell you."

  Face stood as well. "You came here to talk me out of a de­ pressive state." He mimed drawing a blaster and placing it to his temple. "Good-bye, galaxy of cruelty. My pilots are all burned; I must kill myself out of shame."

  "Something like that. But you're obviously too smart for that."

  Face shook his head. "Too experienced. A year ago, I'd have felt like bantha slobber after something like this. Maybe even a month ago. Now, I just feel pride for my pilots ... and a realization that I'm going to be sleeping on my stomach for a while. By the way, I'm putting in a commendation for Kell for his initiative, and one for Lieutenant Janson for bravery."

  "Like he needs another one."

  "Maybe he can build a little fort out of them."

  Wedge smiled and departed.

  There was another knock at his door.

  "Come."

  Dia almost flew through the door. She wrapped her arms around his neck, high so as to avoid his bandages, and drew his face to hers for a kiss.

  A long one. He held her to him, the two of them able, at long last, to be clear of the military traditions that made it in­appropriate for them to embrace before the other pilots, to be able simply to appreciate that they were both still alive.

  When she finally released him, it took him a moment to re­member what he'd been up to recently. "I sure am glad you two arrived in the right order."

  She looked confused. "What do you mean?"

  "I'd have hated to have offered you the chair and given the commander the kiss."

  She gave him a smile, the one she'd never displayed before the two of them became a couple, the smile that was only for him. "Let's see what we can do so you'll always remember to keep the order straight."

  Donos settled onto the stool next to Lara's and looked across the bar. "Fruit fizz, double, no ice," he said.

  Lara looked curiously at him. "You know there's no one tending bar."

  "Sure, but some of the old formalities have to be main­tained." Donos looked around. The two of them were the only people in the pilots' lounge—not unusual, considering the late­ness of the hour, and the way no one much felt like celebrating. "I was wondering if you'd thought about what I asked you to."

  "You, you mean."

  "Well, us, really."

  "Sure, I had plenty of time, when I wasn't planting comm markers, shooting at stormtroopers, and tending the injured."

  "That's what I thought."

  She gave him an exasperated look. "Lieutenant, will you give me an absolutely honest answer?"

  "Call me Myn. Sure."

  "What do you want from me?"

  He took a deep breath, stalling as he composed his answer. "I want to get to know you better. What I do know, what I've seen, suggests that we'd be good together. I want you to stop saying it can't ever be—stop throwing that up as a theory and let us accumulate some evidence. I want to make you smile with something other than a wisecrack. I want to know who you really are."

  Her laugh, sudden and hard, startled him. "Oh, no, you don't."

  "Try me. Lara, does anyone know who you really are?"

  That put a stop to her hard-edged amusement. She had to take a moment to consider. "No."

  "Even yourself?"

  "Least of all me."

  "So how do you know no one can love you for what you are? Until you know, you can't have friends, you can't even really have family—you have to be absolutely alone in the uni­verse." He took a moment to settle his thoughts. "Lara, I just want you to give me a chance. But even more, even if it's not with me, I'd really like to see you give yourself a chance."

  She looked away from him, studying the gleaming brown surface of the bar top. Real wood, protected by so many coats of clear sealant that it shone like glass. He could see thoughts maneuvering behind her eyes, could see her examining them as if measuring and weighing trade goods. But her expression wasn't clinical; it was sad.

  Finally, her voice quiet, she said, "All right."

  "All right, meaning exactly what?"

  "All right, I'll stop avoiding you. All right, let's get to know one another."

  ''All right, let's find out if we have some chance of a future together?"

  She looked back up at him. "I'm pretty sure I'm going to break your heart."

  "Well, that's a step in the right direction. Can I break yours, too?"

  She didn't smile. "Maybe you already have."

  Normally, taking news to the warlord didn't cause General Melvar's stomach to host some sort of internal dogfight. But sometimes the news was bad. Such as when he'd had to tell Zsinj how much they'd lost in the Razor's Kiss battle with Gen­ eral Solo's fleet.

  Such as now.

  Approaching the door to the warlord's office, he nodded at the two guards on duty, two handpicked fighting men of Coruscant, and activated one of the many comlinks he carried on his person. This one signaled a very special set of hydraulics he'd had installed in the doors to most of Zsinj's private quar­ters and retreats. They opened the door at a fraction of the speed and with almost none of the noise of most door mecha­nisms. Silently, he stepped inside, waited for the door to slide shut behind him, then stood before his warlord.

  Zsinj looked up. He hardly ever jumped anymore. So dis­appointing. "What is it?" he asked.

  "Word from Saffalore." He set a datapad before the war­lord. "Here's the full report."

  "From Dr. Gast?"

  "Not quite."

  Warned by something in Melvar's tone, Zsinj sat back and laced his hands together over his prominent stoma
ch. "Give me the short version."

  "There was a raid on Binring Biomedical about thirteen hours ago. As far as we can determine, it was by the Wraiths."

  "Were they killed?"

  "No."

  "Were any of them killed?"

  "We don't think so. Survivors on the site think some of them were injured."

  Zsinj's jaw clenched, then he forced himself to relax. "Goon."

  "They killed Captain Netbers."

  Zsinj sighed. "That's a blow. Netbers was loyal and profi­cient. Is that it?"

  Melvar shook his head. "They had Rogue Squadron with them, apparently flying support. Early reports indicate that Wedge Antilles was back flying with the Rogues, as our man on Mon Remonda suspected, so he was never in any real danger at the Binring site. They blew up the research center and appar­ently strafed one of the nearby air bases for fun."

  "And what does Doctor Gast have to say for herself?"

  "They took her."

  Zsinj went absolutely still. Melvar waited, watching, but the man did not blink for long moments, and Melvar knew this was going to be a bad one.

  Zsinj rose, slamming his chair into the wall behind him. "They took her alive?"

  "Apparently. One of three stormtroopers who survived the bombing witnessed the Gamorrean pilot capturing her. Her body hasn't been found."

  Zsinj made an inarticulate noise of anger. He twisted and seized one of the chamber's decorations, a flagpole bearing a banner in the Raptors' colors, red and black and yellow, and slammed its base onto the top of the desk, obliterating the data­pad. "They took her? She knows all about Chubar! She knows all too much about Minefield!"

  Melvar heard the door behind him hiss open. He heard it hiss shut almost instantly. The guards outside must be peeking in, and, seeing that the warlord was in no danger—only the general was—they'd returned to their posts.

  Zsinj swung the flagpole laterally, narrowly missing Mel­var, and slammed its base into a trophy case full of memora­bilia from his many military campaigns. The case bounced off the wall and toppled forward, crashing onto the floor beside Zsinj's desk.

  Zsinj glared at the fallen case as though it were a new enemy. He threw the flagpole aside and, from a hidden pocket at his waist, drew a small but very powerful blaster pistol. He fired at the back of the trophy case once, twice, three times, blasting a crater into the expensive wood with each shot.

  The room filled with smoke from the blaster emissions. The door slid open behind Melvar and then shut again.

  Zsinj stood, shaking, glaring at the damage he'd done, then tucked the blaster away and sat heavily back in his chair. Melvar let out the breath he'd been holding.

  "Well, we can't have this," Zsinj said. His voice was raw and sweat beaded his forehead. Sweat was also beginning to stain his white grand admiral's uniform at his armpits and chest. "Activate our man on Mon Remonda. Tell him to kill Doctor Gast if he sees her. Whether or not she's there, tell him to kill his primary targets. We'll need to sacrifice some units as bait for Solo's fleet if we're to mop up the rest of them. And put Project Funeral on full speed ahead." He held up a hand as if to curtail an argument, though Melvar did not feel like offering one. "I know, it's a little premature, but all these Ranats biting at my heels are going to ruin my entire plan if we don't do something about it now."

  "Understood, sir." Melvar saluted. "Do you want your of­fice restored, or will you be wanting to redecorate?"

  Zsinj looked at him, puzzled, then glanced around at the damage he'd wrought. He managed a bark of laughter. "I'll re­decorate. Thank you, General. Dismissed."

  On faraway Coruscant, in one of the tallest of the planet's tow­ ers at the heart of the old Imperial governmental district—a district as large, geographically, as mighty nations on other planets—Mon Mothma rose from the chair before her makeup table.

  Not that the Chief Councilor of the New Republic's Inner Council was overly fond of makeup. She made no effort to hide the gray creeping inexorably through her brown hair. She went to no particular lengths to hide her age—she'd earned every one of those years and would not insult others of her genera­tion by suggesting that there was some shame in the accumula­tion of time.

  Still, she needed a little matte to make sure that her face was not too shiny when the holocams caught her under bright lights, and these days she was a little too pallid to suit herself— a bit of color, even artificial color, suggested that she possessed more vigor and health than she actually felt.

  She gave herself one last look in the mirror, adjusted the hem of her white gown, and marched with simulated energy to the door of her quarters.

  They opened to admit her into the hall, and there waiting, as she knew they would be, were two members of her retinue.

  The smaller was Malan Tugrina, a man of Alderaan—a man who'd lost his world long before Alderaan was destroyed, as he'd attached himself to Mon Mothma's retinue in the earli­est days of her work with the Rebellion. He was of average height, with features that would have been vaguely homely if not covered by a natty black beard and mustache, and the only thing striking about him were his eyes, which suggested intelli­gence and deep-buried loss. There was little striking about his abilities, too, except for his unwavering loyalty to Mon Mothma and the New Republic, and his skill at memory retention— everything said to him, everything that passed before his eyes, was burned into his memory as though he had a computer be­tween his ears. He handled many of her secretarial duties with both the efficiency and the pedantic manner of a 3PO unit. "Good morning," he said. "In half an hour, you have—"

  "Wait," she said. "I haven't had any caf this morning. Can you expect me to face the horrors of my schedule when I'm not fully awake?" She swept toward the nearest turbolift. "Good morning, Tolokai."

  The other individual said, "Good morning, Councilor," in his usual monotone. He was a Gotal, a humanoid whose roundish face was adorned with a heavy beard, a broad, flat­ tened nose, and, most dramatically, two conelike horns rising from his head. The horns, Mon Mothma well knew, were sen­sory apparatus that made Gotals some of the most capable hunters and reconnaissance experts in the galaxy—not to men­tion bodyguards. With Tolokai beside her, she knew she'd al­ways have warning of an impending attack, no matter how well prepared. It gave her an edge she needed in these danger­ous times.

  Mon Mothma summoned the turbolift as her companions stepped into place behind her.

  Tolokai said, "If I may, Councilor, there was something I wished to show you."

  "It's nothing I have to remember for too long, is it?"

  "No, not too long. I do this in the name of all Gotals everywhere." From beneath his tunic, he brought out a long, curved vibroblade and drew it back.

  The world seemed to shift into a sort of slow motion, like a holocomedy slowed so everyone could see each twitch, each gesture. The vibroblade darted forward. There was a roar of noise, a voice, from beside Tolokai. Then Malan, arm out­stretched, moving in a bizarre sort of flight, drifted into the path of the weapon. The blade point touched his chest and drove slowly in; then Malan's momentum carried Tolokai's arm out of line, bearing the Gotal into the wall.

  Malan, the vibroblade buried to its hilt in his chest, his face turning ashen, wrapped his arms around Tolokai's and turned to Mon Mothma. He spoke slow words she couldn't grasp. Tolokai yanked in slow-motion frenzy at the weapon he'd driven into his friend's chest.

  Mon Mothma turned and found herself able to move at a normal rate. Her hearing returned to normal. Malan screamed, "Run, run!" Tolokai's words made less sense: "Stay, and ac­cept the death you know you deserve!"

  She reached the door to the nearest stairwell. She heard a thump and a gasp from behind; she hazarded a look and saw Malan sliding across the floor, Tolokai advancing menacingly toward her. She ran down the stairs as fast as she could.

  Not fast enough. As she reached the first landing she felt something yank the back of her hair, and suddenly she was fly­ing down the next flight of sta
irs—

  Flying halfway down. She hit the stairs, pain cracking through her rib cage and chest, and rolled to a stop at the bot­tom of that flight.