By the time Donos arrived, a handful of seconds after the appointed hour, Runt was still not in evidence. The main lights of the Trench cut out, leaving only the new spotlight and the false stars overhead blazing, and Runt, quite dashing in his dress uniform, emerged from the galley. “My friends,” he said, waving his hands with unusual theatricality, “how glad we are that you have chosen to accept our invitation.”
That elicited some chuckles, and Runt plowed on. “We are obliged to admit that we may have accidentally misled Commander Antilles when describing this event. We think he believes this to be a Thakwaash ritual.”
Wedge crossed his arms and gave Runt a stern look. “ ‘Accidentally misled’?”
“Well, you will have to ask the Runt you were talking to this afternoon. We are not he at this moment.”
“We are now the Runt who ducks and retreats when confronted with the errors of his ways?”
Runt grinned, his huge teeth flashing white in the gloom in front of the galley. “Kell must have given you lessons in knowing who we are at any moment. So. This is a ritual we have seen among the military officers of the New Republic. It is called a formal dance. I have painted a lawn. Come forward and dance under the stars.”
The Wraiths and maintenance personnel looked at one another as though to inquire silently as to which of them would summon the military police in charge of pilot sanity. Piggy huffed and asked, “And if we decline?”
Runt’s expression became serious, even menacing. “We will have hurt feelings. And this is a compulsory dance, so we will shoot you.”
Kell crossed to him, grabbed him by his fur-backed ears, and shook Runt’s head. “Runt! That was a joke. A human-style joke. I’m so proud of you.”
Runt smiled again. “We are pleased you are pleased.”
Kell moved to the center of the absurd dance floor and extended a hand. Tyria came to him, smiling, and took it. Kell glanced significantly at Runt, who in turn nodded to Chunky, Tyria’s R5 unit, who stood watch at the bottom of the pole on which the spotlight rested, and suddenly music blasted out at the squadron—a formal dance of Alderaan, Wedge noted. Runt gestured at Chunky, a lowering of his hand, and the volume decreased to appropriate levels.
And Kell and Tyria danced, smiling at one another, the rest of the universe suddenly lost to them.
Janson sighed. “I’m going to have Runt shot.”
Wedge gave him a tolerant smile. “Wait for results before you assign punishment.”
“Now you’re talking like a general again.”
“Oh, that stung.”
Then Shalla was out on the dance floor, beckoning Donos to join her, and Wedge saw one of the female mechanics hauling Cubber out to dance, her fingers firmly clamped on his septum as the mechanic protested inarticulately.
Janson turned to Dia. “Shall we, wingmate?”
She looked startled. “I don’t know how.”
“I thought you were a dancer.”
“Not that kind. I have never danced with anyone. Only for them.”
“Time to learn.” He led her out onto the floor.
Leaving Wedge alone.
He watched others drift onto the floor, some smiling, some tentative, some resigned. He watched Runt reenter the galley and emerge, carrying one end of a long table, Squeaky carrying the other, and then the two of them began bringing out trays and bowls and glasses and cutlery—the night’s dinner, transformed by some extra work and attention into a wider variety of dishes, a buffet appropriate for a dance.
When they were done and Squeaky had returned to the galley, Wedge approached. Runt was now slicing a ripe ball cheese and setting slivers of the stuff on a plate. “Good job, Runt.”
Runt straightened and almost saluted. “Sorry, sir. You surprised us.” He returned to cutting.
“No need to apologize. Nor is there any need for formality. This is a social event. What gave you the idea?”
“For the dance? You did, sir—uh, Command—uh, W-Wedge.” The name sounded as though it was almost too strange for Runt to utter. “You and the lieutenant walked by talking of the hurt that Wraith morale had suffered. When you have a hurt, you do not wait for it to heal. You set out to heal it.”
“Why, precisely, a dance?”
Runt was slow to answer. “It has been our observation that dance among the people of the New Republic, when it means anything—and it does not always mean anything—is an activity of mates. Making mates. Tending to mates. Reacquainting with mates. The Wraiths have been doing little but staring at death. But mates are life, what one lives for. What better way to turn away from death than to think of mates, present and distant?”
Wedge thought that over. “Runt, I’m afraid you’ve just made yourself morale officer.”
Runt made a noise somewhere between a snort and a deep chest cough. “We have been told that under your command one cannot do a good thing without it becoming a duty.”
“Was that another joke?”
“We hope so.”
Wedge smiled. “Keep it up, Runt. And good work.” He turned away.
“Will you be dancing?”
Wedge paused. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll put in one dance for courtesy’s sake and then go. The Wraiths will probably loosen up more once I’m gone.”
“What of your morale?”
“You’ve already lifted it, Runt.”
Face watched the couples gather on the floor and join in the sweep of the Alderaanian waltz. Then he felt hands against his back and was propelled into their midst.
He turned to face his attacker. It was Lara, advancing purposefully. He put up his hands in mock fear; she seized them and pulled him into the pattern of the dance. “That’s mutiny,” he said.
“Put me up on charges. Then I won’t have to be part of this mission against Iron Fist.”
“Good point. Maybe I’ll mutiny, too.”
“Besides, I have a special right to push you around. It was you who brought me into this unit.”
“True,” he said. Then what little cheer he still enjoyed evaporated. “Well, it was me and Ton.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad. I know you were very close to him. You almost haven’t smiled or made a joke since he died.”
“I only met him a few weeks ago. But by the end of the second day, we were finishing one another’s sentences and being obnoxious enough to drive everyone around us crazy.”
“Well, you’ll have to be obnoxious enough for both of you now. Phanan would want that.”
“He would.” Face smiled down at her. “You dance very well.”
“So do you.”
“Well, I was trained to. For the holos. Where did you learn?”
“A long time ago, on Coruscant.”
“A long time ago?”
She tensed, then relaxed and smiled. “Well, it seems like such a long time ago. Pilot training seems to last for years.”
“I know what you mean.”
“This dance I learned on Coruscant. But on Aldivy we danced all the time. It was an important part of social life. Dances were where youngsters met and families dickered.” Oddly, in spite of these thoughts about the life she could never return to, she did not seem sad.
“So, why did you launch me out onto the floor? Just looking after your wingman?”
“Partly that. And, partly, I’m maneuvering you.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but you’re far from the first woman to do that to me.”
Her smile broadened. “Ah, but how many women maneuver you to abandon you?”
It was the point in the dance where conservative couples would form a circle, where more proficient ones would raise their hands together and spin in relation to one another, males to their left, females to their right, coming around to face one another on the same beat of the music. Lara signaled the more elaborate move by raising her hands.
But while they were in midspin, he felt too many fingers on his for just one moment, and when he f
inished the maneuver he came face-to-face with a startled-looking Dia Passik. Lara and Janson, now partners, looking very pleased with themselves, pulled away and waved.
Dia’s posture and the tension in her arms suggested that she was not too comfortable with the dance, but she gave him a game smile. “I think we have been fooled.”
Face adjusted his pace and the flamboyance of his maneuvers to her more tentative motions. “When did they arrange that?”
“Lara was signaling something to Lieutenant Janson before she started dancing with you. I thought she was flirting.”
“Well, we both appear to have been enticed and abandoned.”
“I don’t think so. I think it was because of something I said.”
“Which was what?”
“That I—” She paused, apparently to consider her words. “That I wanted to talk to you, but that I was afraid to.”
“I didn’t think I was that fearsome. Especially to someone who’s never seen my holodramas.”
That elicited a smile, a little one. “No. I mean I didn’t know how to phrase the words. When to speak to you. I didn’t know who to be when I spoke to you.”
“Who to be? Who were your choices?”
“Dia Passik and Diap’assik.”
“The pilot you’ve become and the little Twi’lek girl kidnapped off Ryloth.”
She nodded, her expression somber. “The day after we returned from Iron Fist I woke up and I wasn’t either one of them anymore. Somewhere in between a girl I thought was long dead and a woman who was too bloodthirsty for me to particularly like. But I thought about all that had happened the day before and decided that I liked being alive. So I wanted to thank you for not letting me die.” The words came out all in a rush. She tensed, staring at Face, poised as if she were waiting for him to strike her.
“You’re very welcome.” Why had that been so hard for her? Face tried to put himself in her place—stolen child, then slave of an Imperial master, then pilot fighting for a place for herself among people she did not know, few of whom even belonged to her species. Nor had she ever spoken a favorable word about the Twi’leks; perhaps she blamed her own kind for the way she had been stolen from their midst.
Understanding where she had come from, with his limited knowledge, was too great a task for Face, but an idea emerged from his effort. “Dia, when was the last time you relaxed?”
“I relax many days.”
“When you’re alone.”
“Yes.”
“I meant, when was the last time you were really at ease among others? The last time you felt safe in someone else’s company?”
Her gaze drifted off into the distance of time. “At ease? I don’t know. When I was a child, I suppose. And safe?” She looked startled and came back to herself, to the present time. She tried to remove her hands from his. “Thank you for the dance. It’s time for me to go.”
He did not release her. “I know I’m prying, Dia. But if you won’t open up to me, will you open up to someone?”
“I don’t think I can.”
“You could talk to Squeaky. He could use a friend.”
She looked up at him, unbelieving, then smiled and stopped trying to break away. “You’re joking again. It is sometimes so hard to tell when you are serious.”
“For me, too.”
They danced in silence for a few moments, long enough for the music to give way to a slower, more intimate dance from Chandrila. Then she said, her voice so low that he had to strain to hear her, “The last time I felt safe was not so long ago.”
“When was that?”
“It was when I was at my worst. When I had shot Castin, when I’d desecrated the corpse of a brave man and pretended to do it with glee. When I tried to kill myself and you would not let me. Just before I fell asleep, I knew that you would not let anyone hurt me. You would not even let me hurt myself. And in that moment I knew myself safe, for the first time since I was a child.”
He looked down into her eyes—eyes that were too large and luminous to be Dia’s, eyes that were familiar to him yet opened up into a woman he didn’t know. A woman who had come into being only since the mission to Iron Fist.
“That’s what I wanted to say to you, what I didn’t know how to say before,” she said. “That I know that you feel you failed Ton Phanan. But you did not fail me.”
He took her head in his hands and kissed her, and was swept away by the sweetness of her kiss, by the spicy taste of her, so different from human women. He felt her arms encircle his neck. And they stood motionless beneath the twinkling stars as the dancers swirled around them.
17
“Our target,” Wedge said, “is almost certainly a Kuat Drive Yards facility in the Kuat system.” He nodded at the holographic display, showing a central sun orbited by numerous planets and space stations, which floated above the table in the crowded conference module. Again he wished for a full-sized briefing room.
He took a pointing stick and drew a circle through a ring of space stations, an astonishing number of them, surrounding the system outside the orbit of its most distant planet. “This, collectively, is Kuat’s main shipyard facility, the famous Kuat Drive Yards. It is not, however, the only place the yards build their vessels.”
He gestured at one of the planets. “This is Kuat itself. There are also secondary facilities in orbit above it. Now, the data Zsinj provided the Hawk-bats, including a gravity-well delay for hyperspace jumps more lengthy than we’d experience out in the chain of satellites, and showing speed of response of a fleet arriving at the site being attacked, makes planetary orbit the most likely prospect. However, since New Republic Intelligence hasn’t been able to confirm that there even is a new Super Star Destroyer under construction there, we can’t be sure of this. Another planet in the system, a station not orbiting a planet, any such thing could be our objective.”
The Wraiths were following his presentation with rapt attention. They seemed different this morning—more possessed of themselves, more cocksure, some of them nearly smug. Alive and eager. Once again Wedge offered thanks to whatever turn of fortune had brought Runt Ekwesh into this unit.
“Piggy,” Wedge continued, “has had some thoughts on this mission I thought he should share with you. Piggy?”
The Gamorrean pilot started to rise but thought better of it and stayed seated. The proper manner to make a presentation in a standard military briefing was on one’s feet, but the crowded nature of this conference module didn’t allow for it. “Once again I must turn to the subject of Zsinj and pirates,” he said, his mechanical voice vibrating the tabletop and the caf cups resting on it. “This time I can do so with some evidence instead of relying merely on speculation.
“We assume Zsinj is going after a new Super Star Destroyer. We know that he has requested the Hawk-bats to be part of this mission. My belief is that the Hawk-bats will merely be part of a large unit of mercenaries and pirates that will act as part of the defensive screen around the new Super Star Destroyer once it begins moving.”
Kell waved to get his attention. “You’re getting ahead of me, here. Why part of a mercenary unit, and why once the vessel gets moving?”
“From Zsinj’s perspective, optimum efficiency demands a certain set of steps,” Piggy said. “He can’t, for example, drop out of hyperspace in the midst of the Kuat system and do a boarding action against the new Destroyer. Every minute it takes to accomplish the takeover is a minute the forces of Kuat can be using to approach and attack. So—”
“So,” Face said, interrupting, “the takeover of the new Destroyer has to be accomplished before Iron Fist drops into the Kuat system.”
Piggy nodded. “Correct. And as soon as the new Destroyer begins moving, if not before, Kuat’s forces will be alerted and will move against her, to retake her … or destroy her.”
“So that,” Wedge said, “is when we predict Zsinj will drop in with Iron Fist and as large a fleet as he can manage … and it’s that fleet that will serve a
s a screen for the new Destroyer. It has to be escorted until it can get far enough from the nearest gravity well to launch into hyperspace.”
“If the pirates,” Piggy said, “including us Hawk-bats, are the first line of engagement the Kuat defenders encounter, Zsinj profits. Fewer of his TIE forces will be destroyed. Of the pirates who survive, some will belong to destroyed bands and will want employment … and they’re most likely to be the best pilots of the bunch.”
Dia frowned. “Your pardon, Piggy … but isn’t this all just guesswork?”
The Gamorrean nodded. “Educated guesswork.”
“What if you’re all wrong?”
Piggy looked between Wedge and Janson. “Between the three of us, we’d have a hard time being that wrong.”
Dia managed a smile. “Piggy, what if you’re wrong?”
“We improvise,” Wedge said. “We’ve come up with this model for Zsinj’s plan because we think it’s most likely. But regardless of what Zsinj’s plan is, our objectives stay the same. And our objectives are pretty simple in explanation even if they turn out not to be simple in execution.
“Before we get to that, we need to remember that this is our best shot so far at taking out Iron Fist and Zsinj. This means that other concerns … such as our personal safety and even survival … come second.” He looked around at the suddenly somber faces of the Wraiths. “I’m not asking anyone to go on a suicide mission. But I am asking you to keep in mind the same measures and balances I’ll be considering. If what I do can take out this enemy, who has caused so much pain and destruction, and who will continue to do so if allowed to, is my survival more important than his defeat?
“So … our goals. Number one, most important, is to get a transmitter on Iron Fist or the new destroyer or both. We have several ways to do this. One is Castin’s program, which any one of us invited to join Zsinj’s advance party might have an opportunity to plant. Another is a standard transmitter, which we might be able to plant on one of the ships’ surfaces. It’s less subtle than Castin’s code, but will only broadcast when the ship’s main communicators are being used, which might conceal its use. A third is to get someone aboard the two ships, as a stowaway or in supposedly permanent employ with Zsinj.
Star Wars: X-Wing VI: Iron Fist Page 26