New Republic on many missions. Later, he had changed his al-liance to the New Republic and had even been a part of Rogue Squadron.
What wasn't as widely known was that Wedge's sister Syal was Fel's wife. Or that both Fel and Syal had disappeared, years ago. The 181st was theoretically now under the com-mand of another Imperial officer, serving the coalition of Moffs and military officers that now acted as the unofficial heir to the rule of what was left of the Empire. And this made Fel's sudden recent reappearance, commanding portions of the 181st as part of the complement of starfighters aboard Star Destroyer Implacable, particularly unsettling. Fel and many of his pilots had escaped Implacable's fate and their location was now un-known to the New Republic... but Wedge had a suspicion that Fel would be found serving Warlord Zsinj.
Ackbar met Wedge's gaze again and shook his head. "We have no news on any official cooperation between the remains of the Empire and Zsinj. No idea why the Empire would loan the One Eighty-first to the warlord. No news of Fel, the details of his return... or his family. I am sorry. I will let you know if his name crosses my desk."
"Thank you, sir. I appreciate it."
In the hangar temporarily assigned to the vehicles of Wraith Squadron-seven battered X-wing snubfighters, two battle-scarred captured TIE fighters, and a comparatively pristine-looking Lambda-class shuttle-they explained the colonel's decision to the Wraiths who had not been called in for the sec-ond stage of interrogation. "I hate to say it," Wedge said, "but leave is effectively canceled. I want volunteers to act as guards for Runt and Wes until they're discharged. I want someone on duty here with our vehicles until we lift for our next assign-ment, and I want everyone walking around with eyes behind as well as in front. Understood?"
The Wraiths nodded. "I'11 work out a duty roster," Face said.
"Why you?" Kell asked.
Face smiled at the big man. "Because Janson's not here to
do it. Because I was promoted two minutes ahead of you, so I outrank you. Check back with me in a few minutes and I'll have assignments ready to transmit."
As the Wraiths moved their separate ways, Phanan threw
his arm over Kell's shoulder. He looked at Tyria. "Tyria, if
you'd excuse us for a moment, I have a few words to say in pri-
vate to your toyfriend-"
She g ave him an arch look. "My what?"
Kell straightened, causing the shorter man's arm to slide
off, and glared. "Her what?"
"What did I say?" Phanan shrugged. "A few moments."
She shrugged and moved to her X-wing.
"Did you catch the name of the colonel?" Phanan asked.
Kell's scowl turned from irritation to confusion. "I don't
think Commander Antilles mentioned it." "Repness."
Kell glanced over at Tyria, but she had one of her snub-fighter's engine ports open and was intent on the machinery within. "That's the name of the trainer who tried to get her to steal an X-wing. Before she joined the Wraiths."
"The same. I checked on him as we were marching back from the interrogation. He's still training pilots, now here on Coruscant, though he's about to be assigned to the training frigate Tedevium. He has other duties as well, mostly high-profile volunteer stuff not unusual for an ambitious officer. He was officer of the day today for the subbase the military po-lice belong to, which is why he debriefed us on the incident."
Kell took a deep breath. Atton Repness was an instructor for New Republic pilot trainees who were on the verge of washing out of the training program. He had a reputation as being good at salvaging pilots thought unsalvageable. But Kell and Phanan knew that he had secretly altered Tyria's failing grades to make them passable, then tried to enlist her in an ef-fort to steal an X-wing, and had used the revelation of the grade forgery to blackmail her into silence. "You wouldn't have mentioned him if you didn't already have a plan," Kell said. His voice was hard.
Phanan smiled. "That's what I like to hear. Acknowledg-
ment of my superior intellect along with a desire to hurt some-body else very badly. It's a good day for me.
"Yes, I have a plan. We know of one and only one tactic he has used. He approached a struggling pilot candidate, female, attractive-we don't know whether those characteristics are important to his thinking, but let's put a skifter in the deck and make sure-and helped her two ways. Extra training, for le-gitimate gains in her scores, and doctoring of her grades, to en-sure she passed... and to ensure that she was in debt to him, or could at least be blackmailed into silence. If we wave some bait around in front of him, maybe he'll snap at it."
"Bait." Kell scowled and leaned against the strike foil of the nearest X-wing. "Phanan, I don't know about you, but I haven't had enough time to make enough friends and acquain-tances that I can just snap my fingers and find someone with the qualities you're talking about."
"Ah, but you don't have my superior intellect, do you?"
"One more mention of your superior intellect and I'll make
it necessary for you to install a brain that's all mechanical."
Phanan leaned close, unfazed by or oblivious to the threat. "When I was in the hospital on Borleias, the patient in the next room was a woman. A beautiful woman. A survivor off the Implacable."
"So she's a military prisoner now? Ton, we can't break her
out of jail for your plan-"
"Not a prisoner now. She was a prisoner aboard the Im-placable. Admiral Trigit's mistress-unwilling mistress. She was snatched off a planet colony Trigit bombarded into sand, she was kept drugged... you can guess the rest." Kell grimaced.
"She had a whole lot to tell New Republic Intelligence about Trigit and his methods. A very observant, intelligent young woman. Not to mention a beauty."
"You've already mentioned that she was a beauty."
"Yes, but I'm still not over her. I heard she was being
transferred to Coruscant for further debriefing. If we can find her and convince her to help..."
"We could sponsor her to pilot training and catch Colonel
Repness in his same pathetic tactic." Kell glanced again at Tyria. "I'm in."
"Good. I'll see if I can track her down-Lara Notsil is her name-and then see if Face will keep us off the duty roster long enough to talk to her."
"And if he won't?"
"I'll bring him in on the plan." Anticipating Kell's objec-
tions, Phanan hastily continued, "I won't mention Tyria by name. I can keep her out of the story."
"Well... all right. Let's keep her out of this end of it, too."
"Done."
A day later, they reassembled in the same hangar, all the
Wraiths and more personnel besides.
Face looked over the newcomers with interest. Tallest among them was a human male, on his head an untidy mess of straw-colored hair. Next was a dark-skinned woman with large, alert eyes, a red bead tied to one lock of hair on her fore-head, and a broad smile that suggested that every minute of every day she was thrilled to be alive. The last, and shortest, was a Twi'lek woman, her features startlingly beautiful by hu-man standards but her red-eyed stare forbidding, her brain tails hanging loose behind her instead of being draped over her shoulders in the fashion of a Twi'lek among friends and allies. All three wore the standard orange-and-white New Republic pilot's suit.
"Lots of news today," Wes Janson said, looking over his datapad. He was, Face saw, back to his usual self, his eternally youthful features merry, no sign on them of discomfort from the injury to his side. "Most of it good, some bad.
"Bad news I'm back. Bad for me, because I was enjoying my rest, and bad for you, because if some of you had been a lit-tle quicker, I wouldn't have been shot. Keep it in mind as I make up assignments over the next few weeks."
He smiled at the chorus of groans that resulted. "Runt,
also, is fit for duty, which is probably both good and bad, be-
cause some of his personalities enjoy working and some
"We have new pilots to fill our roster." One of the Wraiths had died at the battle on the moon of System M2398; two more had perished in the fight that destroyed the Implacable. "I present to you Flight Officer Castin Donn, our new com-puter specialist." The blond-haired man nodded cheerfully. Janson continued, "Castin is a native of Coruscant, so the next time we decide to walk into a trap here, we'll take him along to make sure it's a better grade of trap.
"Flight Officer Dia Passik is a native of Ryloth." The Twi'lek woman nodded, looking among the Wraiths as if to guess which one would attack her first. Janson said, "She has experience with a broad variety of New Republic and Imperial vehicles, especially larger space vessels, and knows quite a bit about criminal organization-she's a new resource for us where things like smuggling, the slave trade, and mercenary opera-tions are concerned.
"Our third pilot is Flight Officer Shalla Nelprin-"
"Oh, no," Kell said. He banged his head against the fuse-
lage of Face's X-wing.
Janson looked vaguely amused. "You have something to say, Lieutenant Tainer?"
Kell stopped hammering the snubfighter for a moment.
"You're related to Vula Nelprin?"
The new Wraith's smile broadened, causing dimples to ap-pear. "She's my older sister."
"And your father trained you, too?"
"Yes... though I think I'm a little better than Vula."
Kell sighed. "I think I've told you all about my hand-to-
hand instructor in the commandos, the one who could throw me around as though I were a dust rag without even letting me see her sweat-this is her sister."
Janson said, "This should come as no surprise to you, then Nelprin is going to be our new trainer in unarmed com-bat. You make her the best pilot she can be, and she gets to re-ward you by beating the life out of you. But she's also well versed in Imperial Intelligence doctrine and tactics, which is helpful to us, since Zsinj seems to be fond of employing Intelli-gence personnel. Wedge ?"
Wedge said, "Make the new pilots welcome, Wraiths.
We're going to put them, and you, immediately to work on our new mission." He drew his datapad from a pocket and punched in a command on its keys. "I've just transmitted to your data-pads the details of our assignment... one which, unfortunately, won't take us off Coruscant yet." He waved down the chorus of groans that resulted. "Sorry. But our results on this task may determine where we're assigned next, so pay attention.
"Our efforts in tracking Admiral Trigit and insinuating ourselves into his confidence have gone over very well with High Command. We've demonstrated that we have both skill and luck on our side. But now we have to prove it beyond a doubt.
"We're going to divide ourselves into three groups. Each group is to ask the following questions What is Zsinj up to? What are his specific plans and strategies? Once you've arrived at a set of theories, we'll put them to the test We'll go out into the field and look for evidence to corroborate the best of the theories.
"I'm choosing three of you to head these groups based on your ability with tactical thinking and skill in getting into your enemies' heads." Wedge nodded toward three pilots in turn. "Runt, you're Zsinj-One. Piggy, you're Zsinj-Two. Face, you're Zsinj-Three. Choose your teams and confine yourselves, as much as possible, to research resources available here at head-quarters. Questions?"
Janson's hand went up. "Are we going to be working with Rogue Squadron on this?"
Wedge nodded. "Once we're off-planet, yes, but not in the theoretical phase. The Rogues are being assigned to General Solo on the Mon Remonda to look for Zsinj; once we get out into the field, we'll work with them as circumstances demand."
Tyria was next. "Have they found out whether it was Zsinj who arranged the ambush on us?"
Wedge managed a sour smile. "The survivors of that little operation have been free with their information. But none o f them knew who they were working for except the organizer, who assembled them as a team, trained them for this opera-tion, and led the mission. He was the one whose throat Phanan cut."
Phanan didn't look abashed. "Oops."
"General Cracken's field investigators are trying to back-track their expenditures and movements; maybe that will turn up some leads for them. Not our problem. Anything else? No? Dismissed."
In the organizational chaos that followed, Runt chose Kell and Tyria as his partners; Face took Phanan and Janson; and Piggy chose Myn, and rounded out his group by adding Squeaky, the unit's 3PO quartermaster, to his roster. By silent agreement, each of the three virtual Zsinjes took one of the new squadron members Runt took Shalla, Piggy chose Castin, and Face took the Twi'lek Dia.
"And may the best Zsinj win," Face said. "Until he runs into Wraith Squadron, that is."
2
Gara Petothel rechecked the code for the last time, her atten-tion skipping back and forth across screens of data, then sent the command to compile the ungainly-looking mess into what she hoped would be the final version of her program.
A work of art, it was. It would transfer a number of pack-ets of encrypted data from her terminal deep in the low-rent warrens of the city-planet of Coruscant to public computer repositories, disguising the data as ancient archives of account-ing data. Then, once the trail back to Gara's terminal was cold, it would transmit the data out across the New Republic Holo-Net, to HoloNet addresses Gara had committed to memory weeks before... addresses that would lead eventually to the communications station of the warlord Zsinj.
lf he a smart man, she thought, and by all accounts he is, within a few weeks I'!! have gainful employment again. Away from this cesspool and away from the Rebel police and Intelli-gence agents-
A heavy knock fell on the door. She jumped. Sign of a guilty conscience, she thought, and tried to school her features back into an expression of innocent curiosity. She switched off power to her terminal's screen.
As she rose to answer the door, she looked into the mirror
to make sure she looked the part she was supposed to be play-ing. Her downy white-blond hair, cut very close, still seemed odd to her, as was the absence of a mole she'd carried on her cheek since childhood-a mole she had secretly had removed when preparing this identity. No, this identity shared only a certain delicacy of features with Gara Petothel, and hair and makeup were sufficiently different that no one should recog-nize her in the time it would take her to leave. She opened the door.
Two Rebel pilots stood outside, both in pilot's jumpsuits topped with transparent slickers more suited to Coruscant's frequent thunderstorms. One had saturnine features and a prosthetic faceplate over the upper left half of his face, a red glow where his left eye would have been. The other would have been startlingly handsome, with luxuriant dark hair framing intelligent, active eyes and features suited to raising heart rates, but his face was marred by a puckered scar-a blaster graze, she guessed-running from his left cheek to his right forehead.
She knew the one with the faceplate, and it was he who spoke first. "Lara Notsil." It was a statement, not a question.
"Yes." She looked beyond them, to the pedestrian traffic in the tenement hallway. Though her tiny quarters were on the fortieth floor of a building, this hallway was part of a tube ac-cess allowing people to walk across kilometers of Coruscant at this altitude, and traffic was always heavy. Her hallway was a place of thefts and assaults, but also a way for her to lose her-self quickly in a crowd, which is why she'd chosen it.
She returned her attention to her visitors. "It's Lieutenant Phanan, isn't it? From the hospital on Borleias? Please, come in before someone sticks a vibroblade in you." She backed away and allowed them to enter, th
en shut the door against the ceaseless stream of humanity outside.
"Actually, it's just Flight Officer Phanan," her visitor said.
"The smart one here is the lieutenant, Garik Loran."
She froze in mid-handshake and gave the other pilot a closer look. It was him, and it embarrassed her, the way she suddenly felt light-headed. "The Face? You're still alive?"
Face gave her a smile. She knew it was an actor's smile,
carefully rehearsed to suggest amusement, comradeship, and
attraction, but despite the fact it did not fool her, she was still half washed away by the emotions it caused. She felt as though she'd just been invited into his intimate acquaintance. Her light-headedness worse than ever, she sat heavily at her termi-nal chair.
"That's me," Face said. "I get that a lot. No, the story of my death was a sort of propaganda thing cooked up by the Empire to make people think the Rebel Alliance was full of evil people who'd kill a child actor. I'm a pilot these days."
"Obviously." She struggled to bring herself under control. Remember, she thought. You're Lara Notsil now. Farm girl from Aidivy. Former prisoner of Admiral Trigit. That what they're here for, more debriefing on Trigit. Phanan had been there, one of the Rebels shooting at Implacable-shooting at me. "Please, sit down. I'm sorry about the mess-it's hard to keep anything clean here. How did you find me?"
Phanan sat on the edge of the bed. Face took the only other chair. Phanan said, "Anyplace you can walk or sit with-out sticking to everything is very hygienic by low-level Corus-cant standards. Believe me, we know. As for finding you-we asked around New Republic Intelligence. They said you'd been discharged and had declined transportation back to your home-world. We ran a search on the worldnet looking for your name and recent employment application. You're working as an in-formation processor for a shipping concern?"
"Yes. It pays"-she gestured at the tidy squalor around her-"for all this."
Face said, "How would you like a better job and the chance to live in better conditions?"
Star Wars - X-Wing - Iron Fist Page 2