Starfighters of Adumar

by Aaron Allston

  Final question: If General Cracken supported the local Intelligence head’s orders, mandating that Wedge begin the slaughter of Adumari pilot-duelists, what would he do?

  No matter how he thought his way around the problem, the answer always came back: To do this would be to dishonor myself and my uniform. I would refuse those orders.

  With that finally came another thought: Which means I would have to face court-martial or resign my commission.

  Wedge suddenly found himself short of breath.

  It wasn’t the thought of losing his rank that hit him; it was the realization that leaving the military would be the same as abandoning what little remained of his life.

  His home system, Corellia, was closed to him; joining the Rebel Alliance had put him on the enemies list of the Corellian Diktat, the ruler. His family was gone, parents dead and sister missing for long years. Almost everyone he knew was associated with the New Republic military, and the few long-time friends who weren’t, such as Mirax Terrik, had busy lives that intersected his only infrequently. If he resigned, most of these people would disappear completely from his life, leaving him as alone as a pilot who ejected into space with no hope of rescue.

  The bleakness of that vision settled as a chill upon him. It was all the more frightening because he knew that even in the face of what it would cost him, he would have to refuse orders insisting that he do things Tomer’s way. If he didn’t, he might as well be Turr Phennir, flying for the Empire.

  Had a decision like that cost him the friendship of Iella Wessiri? Had the moment come and gone without him noticing? He didn’t know. But on the eve of perhaps losing what was left of his life, he resolved to see her and find out.

  “Yes, another. And this time, a bit stronger.”

  It wasn’t the words that attracted Wedge’s attention, but the accent: the clipped, precise tones of Coruscant, or of a dozen worlds that emulated the former Imperial throne world.

  Within a nearby booth, its flap held open for the moment by a bartender, was a man in dark, somber Adumari dress. His body could not be seen within the folds of his voluminous black cloak, but he was of only average height, and his face suggested that he was lean. His hair was gray, his features sharp and suggesting intelligence.

  Wedge knew that face. When the bartender hurried off to fetch the man’s drink and let the flap fall back into place, Wedge rose and set a few coins on the bar top. He parted the flap covering the booth and slid into the seat opposite the man.

  The gray-headed man offered him a cool smile. “I have a blaster trained on you,” he said. “Perhaps you’d better leave.”

  “You’d do the Empire a big favor by pulling the trigger,” Wedge said. “Admiral Rogriss.”

  The man frowned. The gesture was a bit exaggerated, as though he were more drunk than he looked. “I know that voice, don’t I? I certainly know the accent. Is it you, Antilles?”

  Wedge raised his mask.

  Rogriss brought his pistol up and then set it on the tabletop. “I’d never shoot you,” he said, “not even for the bounty on your head. I want to see how you get out of this mess you’re in. Or, more likely, how you fail.”

  At close range, Wedge could offer the man a closer inspection.

  They’d never met in person, but Wedge had seen his face on recorded transmissions. Five years ago, Admiral Teren Rogriss had surreptitiously aided the Han Solo task force pursuing the Warlord Zsinj. As Han Solo’s opposite number, chief of the Imperial task force hunting Zsinj, Rogriss had risked charges of treason by cooperating with the New Republic, commanding an Interdictor-class cruiser in collaboration with Solo’s task force. Later, he’d led the Imperial effort to to win back territories left disorganized by Zsinj’s death.

  Today, Rogriss seemed little changed, though a bit of the fire and animation Wedge remembered from the recordings seemed to be gone. Perhaps it was the effect of alcohol. “What’s a much-decorated fleet commander doing on a backwater mission like this?” Wedge asked.

  Rogriss offered him a half smile. “Fleet commander no more, General. Battling with Warlord Teradoc and your Admiral Ackbar for Zsinj’s leavings, I fared rather poorly. I’m sure you heard.”

  “I did. But that happens a lot to Ackbar’s opponents.”

  Rogriss shrugged. “I cost your New Republic a lot in that struggle. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. And I remain an admiral, but with just one ship under my command, the Agonizer.”

  “An Imperial Star Destroyer,” Wedge said. So Rogriss’s ship had to be the counterpart of the Allegiance, orbiting Adumar opposite the New Republic ship. “That’s still prestigious.”

  “Says the man who normally conducts business from the bridge of a Super Star Destroyer.”

  “Admiral, have you ever wondered why the Emperor gave such nasty names to his Star Destroyers? Executor, Agonizer, Iron Fist, Venom?”

  “I’ve heard every schoolboy theory ever proposed on that matter.”

  “This one comes from Luke Skywalker—”

  “Having exhausted the schoolboys, we now turn to the farmboys? How charming.”

  “—who has a certain perspective on the matter the rest of us don’t. He thinks it all has to do with corruption, with the seduction of the not-too-unwilling.”

  Rogriss gestured for him to keep speaking, but his expression suggested that he’d heard it all before. The bartender brought Rogriss his drink, and Wedge waited until the man departed before continuing.

  “Put a man or woman in a situation where the actions he’s obliged to take, such as serving Emperor Palpatine, are a certain path to personal corruption. Fill his ears with words saying that his actions are honorable ones. But surround him with constant reminders of the wrongness of what he’s doing. Our victim will cling to the words but will, at some level, always be aware of the wrongness—he can’t escape it. The symbols, such as the names of ships he commands, won’t let him forget. He’s always aware of his descent, of his slow transference to the dark side. Skywalker thinks the Emperor found this knowing acceptance of corruption, this half-accepting, half-struggling process, particularly delicious.”

  Rogriss pointed his finger at Wedge as though it were a loaded blaster. “You Rebels remain so very self-righteous,” he said. “Always speaking of honor, as though you invented the concept. I’ve spent my whole life in honorable conflict. I’ve conquered worlds to bring civilization to them—literacy and medicine and sanitation and discipline. I’ve fought the forces of chaos to keep galactic civilization from flying apart. I’ve had only a few weeks of each year to spend with my own children. I’ve made all these sacrifices… only to be lectured about honor by someone a generation younger than I am. That’s reward for you.”

  “You’re not drinking here, alone, anonymous, because you like the company. Or because you like the local brew, I’ll bet. You’re here wrestling with a question of honor, aren’t you?” Wedge was speculating madly, but the fact that honor seemed to be such a sore point with Rogriss made his wild shot more likely to strike home.

  “What about you?”

  “I was,” Wedge admitted. “I solved it. And you?”

  Rogriss drew himself up stiffly. The action, made a little unsteady by the amount of alcohol he’d had to drink, was perhaps not as dignified as he’d hoped. “Where duty is clear, there is no question about honor.”

  Wedge laughed. “I wish that were so. Well, I’ll leave you to keep wrestling. Best of luck, Admiral.” he rose and departed.

  Out on the street, he went to considerable effort to make sure that no one followed him—that no aide of Rogriss’s meant to do him harm. But he saw no shadows pacing his and could finally relax on his way to his quarters.

  Chapter Seven

  An hour later, Wedge and Janson were in their flight suits, sitting in a small conference office on the Allegiance, with steaming cups of caf on the table beside them, datapads open, and scrolling data before them. “So my question is,” Janson said, “why me? Why didn’t you br
ing Tycho up with you? He’s your wingman. And he’s better with records.”

  “I need someone to be in charge on the ground when I’m up here. For example, if there’s a diplomatic emergency.”

  “I can be in charge on the ground.”

  “Oh, that’d be good. You and Hobbie running through the streets of Cartann, leaving destruction in your wake, taking charge when a delicate political disaster strikes. Here’s an example. A noble of Cartann comes to you and says, ‘I know we have no diplomatic relations yet, but I’m here to request asylum in the New Republic.’ What do you say?”

  “Is she good-looking?”

  “Thanks for making my point.” Wedge gestured at Janson’s datapad. “What have you got on Rogriss?”

  Janson sighed and returned his attention to the screen. “Wife dead. Two children surviving. Daughter Asori, twenty-eight, status unknown, which could mean anything. Son Terek, twenty-four, in the Imperial Navy.” He shrugged. “Nothing helpful. You?”

  “Maybe.” Wedge shook his head over Admiral Rogriss’s career record—what of it was known to the New Republic, anyway. “His postings—after he was of sufficient rank to have an influence on them—seem to be awfully unambiguous.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning most of them have been duties where he fights the New Republic. What’s interesting is where his name doesn’t show up. There’s no known association with any operations like the Death Star, or governorship of nonhuman-populated worlds, or projects we later found out are associated with Imperial Intelligence, anything like that.”

  “You’re talking about Rogriss?” That was Captain Salaban, entering the conference room with a tray of pastries. He set it down in the center of the table and took the third chair, then put his booted feet up on the tabletop.

  “That’s right,” Wedge said. “What’s the opinion of him in Fleet?”

  “Wily old so-and-so,” Salaban said. “Loves strategy and tactics for their own sake. An intellectual. Doesn’t much like to stick around for a slugging match.”

  “We noticed that in the Zsinj hunt,” Wedge said. “We’re trying to figure out what his commanders might have recently called on him to do that it would send him to some shadowy bar to get seriously drunk. To get belligerent on the subject of honor.”

  Salaban, chewing on a pastry, shrugged. “Coo bee anyfing,” he said, then swallowed. “ ’Scuse me. Pound the surface of Adumar flat if they don’t side with the Empire? If the Allegiance weren’t here to keep him in check, he could do that. Eventually and with tremendous losses.”

  Janson shook his head. “That’d be a fair fight. He’d enjoy preparing for that, coming up with tactics to swing the battle his way. That wouldn’t offend his sense of honor.”

  Salaban nodded. “Well, he is coming up with some sort of tactics, just as I am. There’s going to be a fight here. Allegiance against Agonizer.”

  Wedge gave him a curious look. “How do you figure?”

  “Well, it’s like this. The Empire can’t afford for Adumar to fall into New Republic hands. They know as well as we do what it means to us to have that explosives production. So if we, I mean you, win over the Adumari and they decide to sign on with us, it’s a certainty that the Imps will break their word. They’ll call in additional ships and attack both the Adumari and the Allegiance, and we are in for one serious furball.”

  Wedge and Janson exchanged a glance. Wedge said, “Wait, scan backward a little bit. What ‘word’ will the Imps break?”

  “That was—oh, that’s right, you were already on the ground for that little ceremony, weren’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Salaban put on an expression of annoyance. “Shortly after our arrival in-system—after you notified us that the Imps were here and we confirmed Agonizer’s presence—a representative of the Cartann government visited. He said that in order to ensure the honorable continuance of these negotiations, the government would have to offer its words of honor that if Adumar decided for the Empire, we’d leave system within the hour and not return except under ‘formal banners of truce or war.’”

  “And did they get these assurances?”

  Salaban nodded and speculatively eyed another pastry. “Took a day or so, but they got a formal transmission from the Chief of State’s office. Not from Organa Solo herself; scuttlebutt has it she’s on a diplomatic mission too, to the Meridian sector. Anyway, the Adumari were supposed to notify us if they failed to get the equivalent word from the Empire, and they haven’t notified us, so I assume it’s two-way. I just expect the Empire not to honor their agreement.”

  “That’s it,” Wedge said. “Probably. Like you, Rogriss is at the center of that word of honor. And he expects the Empire not to stand by it. But his personal impulse is to do what he’s sworn to do, or at least what he’s had to maintain to Adumar that the Empire has sworn to do.”

  “Well, it begs a question.” Salaban stared at a second pastry, sighed to indicate his surrender, and picked it up. “Which is this: So what? We have one more promise about to be broken. If my opposite number is honorable enough to feel some shreds of guilt as he breaks it, so what?” He bit into the pastry as fiercely as if taking a chunk out of his Imperial counterpart.

  “It’s a fluctuation gap in their shields,” Wedge said. “A weakness the Imps may not be aware of in their plan to take Adumar. It’s not even relevant if the Adumari side with the Empire in the first place. But if they don’t, it’s something I might be able to use. I also ought to forward these little notions to General Cracken, and some questions I have about how much the Chief of State knows about policy on this operation. Set me up for a holocomm transmission, would you?”

  Salaban shook his head. “Caw bappoug. Awm assageg—”

  “Chew your food, Captain.”

  Janson grinned. “These kids.”

  Salaban swallow his mouthful. “We’re in a comm blackout. All messages have to be cleared through the local Intelligence head before being sent on. Record what you want and I’ll put it through his office for review.”

  Wedge kept his smile on his face, though his mood had just gone dark again. “Never mind. Some other time.” He rose. “Come on, Wes, back to Cartann. Thanks, Captain.”

  “Anytime.”

  Janson snagged a handful of pastries. “Can’t let Salaban have all these. They’ll kill him.”

  In the corridor, Wedge said, “When you found out Iella’s Cartann identity, did you get her address?”

  Janson nodded. “Her name, address, everything.”

  “I need to see her. Tonight. As soon as we get back to our quarters and change into native dress.”

  Janson winced. “Am I going to get any sleep tonight?”

  “Sleep when you usually do. During pilot briefings. During missions.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  The quarters of Iella Wessiri—or Fiana Novarr—were some distance from Wedge’s quarters, in a part of Cartann where buildings seldom rose over six stories, where balconies sometimes sagged in the middle, where the glow bulbs illuminating the streets and flatscreens mounted on building exteriors were often burned out or flickering their way to uselessness. Still, the clothing on pedestrians—showy and colorful, if often a trifle worn—indicated that the residents of this area were far better off, financially, than the drones and drudges Wedge had seen in the missile manufacturing facility.

  Iella’s building was a shadowy five-story rectangle situated between two taller constructions, with a single entrance leading to the ground-floor foyer. There was no security station, no building guards, not even an ascender. They took four flights of steps up to Iella’s floor, Janson switching off power to the flatscreen panels on his cloak in order that he not glow at an inopportune moment.

  There was no answer to their knock at her door. Wedge waited half a minute, knocked again, waited a while more, and shrugged. “We wait,” he said. He surveyed the hallway they were in. Iella’s door was near to the stairwell;
on the far side of the railings that guarded the stairwell was a corridor leading into blackness. “There,” Wedge said.

  They were in luck. The corridor led to no more rooms, but to a curtained-off window overlooking the street. They could wait just around the corner, keeping an eye on Iella’s door, exposing themselves to very little danger of being seen while they watched.

  “I know a game to help us while away the time,” Janson said.

  “Sure.”

  “First, let’s go back out and meet a couple of women.”

  “Wes.”

  “Well, it was a thought.”

  Minutes later, a silhouette, a cloaked figure, approached Iella’s doorway… and then bypassed it, moving on to the next door. It knocked quietly, waited, determined that the door was locked, and then looked around. Finally, it came creeping in the direction of Wedge and Janson.

  When it was a few meters away, the figure apparently realized that two men already waited in that shadowy nook; it stopped and put its hand on its belt. Even in the dimness Wedge could see the handle of an Adumari pistol. Wedge drew, but heard the rasp of metal on leather from beside him and was not surprised to see Janson’s blaster leveled first.

  The newcomer, his pistol in hand but not aimed, leaned forward. Wedge saw glints of his eyes beneath the hood of his cloak. “You are not here for me, Irasal ke Voltin?”

  Wedge shook his head, slowly, not taking his attention from the man’s pistol.

  With his blaster, the newcomer pointed toward the doorway whose knob he had tried. “You wait for him?”

  Wedge again shook his head. Wedge pointed to Iella’s door, the only other doorway visible from their position. He dared not speak; his accent would give him away as a non-Adumari.

  “Ah. She of the glorious hair. Are you here from rage—” he touched his fingers, still wrapped around the pistol butt, to his heart—“or from love?” He touched them to his lips.

  Wedge touched his own fist to his lips.