Cheriss had her blastsword out; she nimbly deflected the blades of two of the oncoming men. That left one to edge past her and go after Hobbie and Tycho, but as Wedge watched, the two moved in concert. Hobbie lunged toward the swordsman and jerked back just as suddenly, drawing an ineffectual lunge from the man’s blade, and Tycho took the opportunity to leap full on the man, slamming him down onto the steps. In a moment Tycho was straddling the man, raining punishing blows on his face, as Hobbie retrieved the blastsword.
Wedge backed away from the man descending after him. He cursed the unfamiliar weapon in his grip. Hand to hand, or blaster to blaster, he was confident that he could at least hold his own against an attacker, but not with a weapon as esoteric as the blastsword.
Then Wedge set the point of the blastsword to the carpet at the base of one of the steps. It unloaded its energy into the carpet, emitting a sharp “bang” and a small cloud of red-brown smoke. Wedge dragged the point all the way across the bottom of the stair, sustaining the sword’s blaster emission, sending up a curtain of smoke before him.
He could still see his opponent, and the man—tall, mustached, smiling in anticipation of victory—shook his head as if correcting the actions of a pupil. “You waste all your charge to put smoke between us?” he asked. “That will be your last mistake, Wedge Antilles.”
“Oh, I have plenty more to make.” Wedge grabbed at the flap of carpet he’d cut free and, with all his strength, yanked. The carpet resisted, the adhesive that made it conform to the shape of the stairs holding; then it gave way. The descending assassin’s feet went out from under him; he flailed wildly as he lost his balance, thumped down onto the stairs, and slid down toward Wedge.
Wedge stood his ground and brought the point of his blastsword up into contact with the armpit of his attacker’s sword arm. He heard and felt the impact of blaster tip against skin, smelled the familiar odor of burning flesh. His opponent shrieked and dropped his sword.
Wedge glanced back up at the others. One of Cheriss’s foes was down, a mass of char where his throat should be, and as he watched she disarmed the other with an expert twirl of their locked blades. Hobbie stepped in and hit the man, a punch that seemed to start a kilometer or two behind him, taking the man in the gut and folding him over. Janson gave his own enemy a little shove and that man, already broken like a toy, toppled to crash down onto the tile floor below. Nor did Tycho’s opponent look anxious to continue the fight; his face was a mass of contusions, his eyes closed.
Janson began stomping on his cloak to put out the fire. Wedge heard a smattering of applause and whistling from the ground floor. He spared the floor a glance; men and women, bright in the lavender-and-gold livery of this building’s workers, were merely cheering their efforts.
“Cheriss,” Wedge said. “Who’s the leader?”
“You are, General Antilles.”
“I mean, their leader.”
She gestured with her sword point at the one Wedge had kicked in the face; he lay halfway between Wedge and Hobbie. He did not move, but his eyes were fluttering.
“Hobbie, get building security and see if you can get our blasters back. Wes, Tycho, pick up blastswords and poke the first one of them who offers trouble. Cheriss, help me with this one.” He moved up the stairs, somewhat tentative because the damage he’d done to the carpeting made walking tricky, and stood over the man he’d kicked.
Wedge moved his sword point back and forth over the man’s throat. “What was all this about?”
It took a moment for the man’s eyes to track on the blastsword tip. “What else?” the man said. “Honor. The chance to kill the famous general from the stars. Tomorrow I would kill the Imperial pilot.”
Cheriss gave him a less than respectful smile. “You couldn’t kill a feed-reptile if it spotted you two legs and an eye. He’s lying, General. He’s a paid assassin.”
The man scowled at her and shook his head, a mute protest of innocence.
“Cheriss, how do you know that?”
She gestured at the man, her expression one of contempt. “First, look at his clothes.”
The man, like most of the attackers, was dressed in what Wedge was beginning to recognize as barely acceptable clothing for a building as prosperous as this. His clothes were stylishly black, but on closer examination, the tunic was threadbare in places, the leather of his boots shined but much worn. The blastsword lying beside him had a guard that was much scarred, seldom polished.
“So?” Wedge asked.
“Second,” she said, “this.” She hauled back and kicked the man hard in the side.
He arched his back and groaned. He opened his mouth, doubtless to offer a curse or threat, and then remember Wedge’s sword point hovering centimeters above his face. He remained silent.
Wedge frowned at the girl. “We don’t torture for information, Cheriss. That’s not our way.”
She turned innocent eyes to him. “Torture? Never. This time, General, listen.” She hauled back and kicked the man again, possibly harder than before.
Over the man’s groan, Wedge distinctly heard a clinking noise from beneath the man’s tunic.
Cautious, Wedge pulled the tail of the tunic up through the man’s belt. Beneath, attached to a second, slimmer belt, was a transparent pouch filled with shining golden disks.
“Adumari credcoins?” Wedge asked.
“Perats,” Cheriss said. “Do you see Pekaelic’s face on the obverse? I see at least twenty of them. Not a fortune, but definitely an improvement in his estate.”
Wedge nodded to Tycho, who searched the others. He found pouches of coins, most of them about half as full as this man’s, on each.
“You’re saying that someone with this kind of spending money should have better garments,” Wedge said.
Cheriss nodded.
Wedge returned his attention to his prisoner. “Who paid you?”
“This money is from the last man I killed,” the man said.
“Then you’ve killed a minister or a wealthy merchant,” Cheriss said. “And his family will be wealthy enough to prosecute you all the way to the grave. I’ll tell the Cartann Guard what you’ve just admitted to. Whoever the last important man to be killed was, you’ll take the blame for it.”
The man opened his mouth as if to offer a denial, then shut it stubbornly.
Cheriss caught Wedge’s eye and gave him a tight shake of her head. Her meaning was clear; the man wouldn’t talk.
Hobbie came bounding up the stairs, leading a handful of men and women in the eye-hurting livery of the building. All wore sheathed blastswords but carried some sort of sidearms in their hands. “It’s a no on our blasters,” Hobbie said. “Until we leave the building.”
“Rules,” said the foremost of the liveried men, “are rules, I fear. But you will suffer no more inconveniences while in our building. Are we here to be witnesses to your kill, or do you wish them given over to the Cartann Guard?”
Wedge frowned at the man, who appeared to be about twenty, very fair, very exuberant. “Do you mean it’s legal for me to just kill them?”
“Of course. You beat them fairly. Unconventionally, but fairly. And until you kill them, release them, or hand them over, the duel is not done.”
“It wasn’t a duel. It was an assassination attempt.” Wedge finally remembered to turn the power off on his blastsword. “I turn them over to you for the Cartann Guard. These men were paid to kill us; perhaps the Guard will want to find out by whom.”
“Of course,” the young man said. “We will hold them if you wish to depart.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Do you wish to take trophies?”
Wedge glanced at Cheriss. She said, “What’s theirs is yours; you have won. What they carry, I mean. You cannot claim what is in their homes, at their moneykeepers’.”
“I see.” Wedge glanced among his pilots. “Red Flight, arm yourselves. Blastswords and sheaths. If we’re going to have this happen again, I don’t want us t
o have to rely only on fists and vibroblades.”
Cheriss smiled at him. “You did very well with fists and vibroblades. You are brawlers. I like that. Cartann swordsmen are too effete.”
“Thank you, Cheriss.” Once he, Tycho, and Hobbie had their new blades buckled on, Wedge led the way past the helpful building guards and down to the street.
It had grown dark and cool outside in the hours of their dinner appointment, and now the streets were filled with shadowy figures and the occasionally wheeled transport. Even more rarely, a repulsorlift-equipped transport would cruise by a few meters overhead, its complement of five or ten passengers idly watching the pedestrian traffic below. Wedge kept his face down, the better to keep passersby from giving him a closer look and recognizing him.
“Cheriss, you heard his coins clinking over all the noise of the fight?”
She nodded.
“And you took out two of the enemy. That’s very good work.”
“Thank you, General.”
“With all your talents, and your obvious respect for pilots, why aren’t you a pilot yourself?” Wedge asked. He saw a little hesitation in her expression and added, “If it’s personal, just tell me it’s none of my business. I won’t be offended.”
“No,” she said. “It’s just—it’s not something I feel shame over.” Her miserable expression suggested she was lying. “But I can’t learn to fly. Ever. When I go up in aircraft, even when I’m on a high balcony, I become dizzy. I panic. I can’t think.”
“Vertigo,” Wedge said. “So you concentrated on the blastsword instead?”
She nodded. “It is a dying art. Oh, most nobles carry blastswords in public, and many commoners like myself. But the art as they practice it in their schools is stylized. They train with blaster power set to shock instead of burn, and they have rules that make some sorts of blows illegal. I, on the other hand, researched the blastsword art of centuries ago, when it was still very prestigious. I learned about alternative secondary weapons and using the environment against my enemies.” She brightened again. “I can tell that you haven’t trained with the blastsword… but it’s obvious you know how to fight. The maneuver with the banister, Major Janson’s use of the cloak, Colonel Celchu’s skill with his fists—I would love to learn what you know.”
“We’ll trade, then. Teach us what you can, in the time we’re here, of the use of the blastsword, and I’ll let my merry band of reprobates teach you about the back-alley maneuvers they’ve learned.”
He turned to catch the eyes of the other pilots, to make sure none of them had an objection, and saw that Janson was glum. “What’s wrong, Wes?”
Janson sighed. “My cloak is all burned up,” he said. “I liked that cloak.”
“We’ll find you one even more garish,” Wedge promised. “Now, Cheriss, I hope you’ll understand, but I have to be very rude to you for a minute.”
“You want me to walk on ahead again,” she said.
He nodded. She offered him what he took to be an understanding smile, then increased her pace.
“I’m going to leave you now,” Wedge told his pilots. He checked the chrono from his pocket. As with most people who did a lot of travel from planet to planet, his chrono showed both ship’s time and local time, and the local time indicated it was less than a half hour of midnight.
“You can’t see her now,” Hobbie said, his face grave.
“Why not?”
“You’re all sweaty from the fight.”
“He’s right,” Janson said. “You stink of sweat, and smoke, and the wine the minister spilled on you—”
“He missed me.”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, you’re not fit for a liaison tonight.” Janson put on a long-suffering face. “I’ll go in your place. I’m ready for this assignment, sir.” He saluted.
“This isn’t a liai—” Wedge shut up and turned to Tycho. “If he keeps this up, Hobbie gets to choose his clothes for the next three days.”
“Oh, good,” Hobbie said.
Tycho nodded. “Keep your eyes open tonight, Wedge. We can be pretty sure the Imps put those assassins on us… but we can’t be sure there aren’t duelists out there who want to kill you honorably.”
Wedge waited until Cheriss turned a corner ahead. He whipped off his cloak and reversed it so its dark interior color was now on the outside, and turned to join the pedestrian traffic heading the other way.
At this time of night, with no events taking place, the plaza where he’d made first landfall on Adumar was nearly empty. Though not illuminated by artificial lights, it was still bright enough under the shine of two moons, one of them full and quite large in the sky.
The temporary stand where Wedge had made his speech was gone, though the four poles with their speakers were still there. The spot where the X-wings had landed was empty, Wedge and his pilots having transferred their snubfighters to their balcony early that day.
But despite its echoing emptiness compared to the previous day, the plaza was not lifeless. Near where the X-wings had landed, a circle of men and women watched a blastsword duel; even at this distance Wedge could see the lines of green and violet color twirling through the air, hear the snap as a blastsword tip hit a surface. The fight continued for several more seconds, so it must not have found flesh, but moments later he heard a second blast followed by a quick shriek. Then a third blast, and applause.
Another life lost to no good purpose. Wedge shook his head.
Ahead, there was a slender silhouette waiting beneath the shortest of the dark display panels. When he was a dozen meters away, he slowed, sure that he should not call Iella’s true name, but not certain as to what sort of greeting was appropriate. Finally he said, “May I approach?”
“You may.” It was Iella’s voice. She lowered the hood of her cloak as he reached her, and moonlight fell full on her face. She extended her hands.
He took them, then stood at a loss for words.
She laughed. “You were more eloquent yesterday.”
“I do that sort of thing more often.” He caught sight of another silhouette, big, probably male, deep within the shadow cast by the nearest building. “Friend of yours?”
“My bodyguard,” she said. “Here, anyone with a marginally profitable job can afford bodyguards for situations like these. Do you have one?”
“Not with me, no. She’s already killed a man for me tonight.” Wedge shook his head, willing away the distraction of the night’s events.
“Killed—were you attacked?”
“All of us. Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie, too. We came out of it unhurt.” He gestured as if thrusting with a blastsword. “Four visiting blades, cutting down assassins. Something more for the court to talk about.” Iella seemed to have caught her breath and grown paler. Wedge leaned in closer. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m not the one in danger, Wedge. You need to be careful. These peoples’ affection for duels, for picking up honor coupons by killing each other, could get you murdered.”
Wedge waved her objections away. “How have you been?”
Her expression remained cheerless. “Well enough. I’ve been working hard. Mixing fieldwork with analysis. It never gets boring.”
“That doesn’t sound as though you’ve found any one thing that you want to devote yourself to.”
She shrugged, and he could sense even more distance between them. “I guess I’m not like you, that way. Listen, Wedge, I can be here, but not forever. What do you need?”
He sighed. “Duty first. I need to know what’s really going on here on Adumar. I’m effectively ambassador here for the time being, and I’m in completely over my head. How long has the New Republic really been aware of Adumar?”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I thought it had been a matter of days or weeks. Your presence, your cover, suggests it’s been longer than that.”
“Five or six months,” she said. “Intelligence discovered that someone was recruiting computer
slicers for hire to do interfaces between a new set of computer protocols and New Republic and Imperial standards. Intelligence got interested, put together an identity for me as a Corellian slicer, and dropped me on one of the worlds where they were hiring. It’s the sort of mission we call a blind jump. When I got here, I set things up for the arrival of a team.”
“What’s your name here, by the way?”
She managed a faint smile. “Fiana Novarr.”
“I’m sort of surprised that a hired code-slicer would be invited to an affair like last night’s dinner, with the perator and all.”
“I went in on the arm of a minister. That’s not important, Wedge.”
“I suppose not. So what’s all this about a mapping ship finding Adumar, and suddenly they want our pilots as diplomats?”
“That’s all true, but it’s only part of the story. I was here for a few weeks—a temporary prisoner in theory, since I couldn’t communicate offworld until actual relations were opened with outside worlds, though I did anyway—and figured out that Adumari scout ships had gotten far enough out to discover human-occupied worlds. They’d figured out that there were two big power hubs, the New Republic and the Empire. And they wanted to learn everything they could before getting in contact with either one. They wanted to have the leisure to decide which one, if any, to side with. But the mapping ship incident did happen, and it sort of accelerated their plans.”
“Thus the invitation to me and Turr Phennir.”
She nodded.
“How did they keep you from knowing about the Imperial pilots coming?”
“They’re pretty sneaky people,” she said. “Convoluted politics and secrecy are a way of life for them.”
“Well, here’s an important one. What sort of arrangements am I going to be able to make with them if they’re not a united world? I can’t do much more than open up diplomatic relations and persuade them that the Imps are bad.”
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