his hip cloak around him in a dramatic flourish.
Today, the people of Cartann had apparently discovered that Wedge and his
pilots were flying at the air base. When they and Cheriss departed the base on
their rolling transport, the street was thick with admirers. They clustered up
against the rails, offering things to Wedge and the pilotsflowers, Adumari
daggers, folded notes scented with a variety of exotic perfumes, necklaces,
metal miniatures of the Blade-32 fighter-craft, objects too numerous to
catalogue. Wedge accepted none of them, preferring instead to shake hands with
as many of his admirers as could reach him, and his pilots followed suit.
Their procession slowed to a halt at a major cross avenue, however,
blocked by a similar paradepeople thronging around an identical wheeled
transport returning from Cartann Bladedrome. Aboard, Turr Phennir and his
Imperial pilots accepted the gifts and accolades from the crowd. Phennir gave
Wedge a mocking smile as his transport rolled serenely past the stalled New
Republic entourage.
"What's his record for today?" Wedge asked.
"He accepted two challenges, and he and his pilots shot down two half
flightknives," Cheriss said. "Experienced pilots, good ones. He gained
considerable honor today."
"Yes, he's just rolling in the honor coupons," Wedge said. He didn't
bother to refrain from glaring at Phennir's retreating parade. "They stick to
the blood all over him." He caught sight of Cheriss's confused expression and
waved the thought away.
Tycho, at Wedge's ear, murmured, "Phennir has known for a day or two what
we just found out today. That Adumari pilots just aren't very good."
"A few of them have decent technical skills," Wedge said. "But not many.
The attrition they experience has to be keeping their level of proficiency
pretty low. Add that to their lousy tactical choices..."
"Small wonder they treat us like supermen," Tycho said. "Us, and that
happy band of Imperial murderers over there."
In the days to come, Wedge's routine requests for an audience with the
perator to discuss diplomatic relations were met with routine refusals and
apologies. But Tomer reported that rumor had it that the perator and his
ministers were drawing up a proposal for the formation of a world governmenta
move, Tomer gleefully announced, that benefited the New Republic more than the
Empire and therefore had to be interpreted as a slight gain for their side.
Wedge, unconvinced, didn't bother to point out that the Empire would find it
easier to rule this world through an existing planetary government.
Each day, Wedge and Red Flight would return to the air base and conduct
training exercises with Adumari pilots. Usually Red Flight used Blades, but
sometimes they flew their own X-wings, to the astonishment of the Adumari, who
were impressed with and appalled by the smaller crafts' greater speed,
maneuverability, and killpower.
In the first couple of days, the challenger pilots were all from Cartann,
but soon afterward flightknives began visiting from distant nations with
exotic names like Halbegardia, Yedagon, and Thozzelling. In spite of the
contempt with which Cartann pilots treated these newcomers, Wedge made sure
that Red Flight's attention was divided equally among all pilots who showed an
interest.
Each day, the kill numbers of General Turr Phennir and his 181st Fighter
Group pilots climbed. According to Cheriss, Phennir's popularity also rose
above that of Wedge and the New Republic flyers. "The Imperial pilots," she
said, "show more affection for Cartann by doing things the Cartann way; how
can the people of Cartann not respond with more affection?"
"By remembering the sons and daughters they've lost?" Wedge suggested.
The pilots' nightly activities usually involved accepting dinner
invitations made by prominent politicians and pilots of Cartann. Sometimes
these affairs were simple dinners, sometimes lavish spectacles of
entertainment, sometimes storytelling competitions among the survivors of
aerial campaigns.
Wedge almost never saw Turr Phennir and the Imperial pilots at these
dinners. Most were small affairs, orchestrated so that the host could showcase
the pilots for a choice number of guests, and even at the larger affairs there
seemed to be a growing division among Cartann nobleson one side, those who
preferred the New Republic; on the other, those who preferred the Imperials.
Increasingly, the more prestigious nobles seemed to extend their invitations
to Turr Phennir rather than Wedge Antilles.
Red Flight and Cheriss spent one afternoon visiting a facility Wedge
hoped would one day serve the New Republic. Buried hundreds of feet below the
city of Cartann, it was a missile manufacturing plant.
The Challabae Admits-No-Equal Aerial Eruptive Manufacturing Concern was a
succession of enormous rectangular chambers separated by tunnels. Portions of
the ceiling above each chamber were open to an upper tunnel series, and it was
from catwalks along these upper tunnels that the pilots observed the details
of the manufacturing process.
Chambers early in the sequence took in raw materials, including metals,
man-made materials, and raw chemicals, and began processing them into
components such as missile bodies, circuit board frames, wiring, explosives,
and fuels. Chambers farther along would test missile body integrity, define
and test the functions of circuitry, and test explosives and fuels for purity
and reliability. Toward the end of the kilometers-long facility, chambers were
used for final assembly and quality checking of finished missiles.
But though each chamber would have a different function from the ones
nearest it, all chambers shared characteristics in common. There was a
grimness to them all that lowered Wedge's spirits.
Each chamber was filled with assembly lines, conveyor belts, and other
machinery, all painted in the same lifeless tan-brown. Each chamber was
occupied by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of workers, men and women, all of
whom wore featureless garments in a darker brown. Walls were an eye-deadening
off-white; floors were a dirt-colored brown. In chambers where manufacturing
processes released smoke or soot, even the air was brown. Regardless of the
air color, it was always sweltering.
Wedge saw workers moving and laboring. He saw none smiling. None looked
up to see him or his companions on the catwalk far above.
"Where do they all live?" he asked. "I can't remember seeing masses of
peopl e wearing workers' garments like those. Not anywhere."
Berandis, the plant's assistant manager in charge of public concerns, a
lean man whose mustache was topped by a series of ridiculous curls held in
place by some sort of wax, gave him an easy smile. "Well, they live wherever
they want and can afford, of course. Most are in turumme-warrens, above."
"I'm not sure I understand."
Cheriss said, "Turummes are reptiles, distant relatives of the farummes
you've seen. They dig elaborate nests in the ground. So large banks of
apartment quarters built below the surfac
e are often called turumme-waiiens.
The warrens above a plant like this are always owned by the plant."
"Some workers live aboveground, of course," Be - randis said. "There are
no laws to keep them in the warrens. But few can afford aboveground housing.
Mostly you see it with managers, stewards"
"Informants," Cheriss said. "The occasional parasite."
Berandis's smile did not waver, but he lowered the tone of his voice.
"Manufacturing plants are the same all over Cartann," he said. "But we do
offer a difference. Our missiles are the best, which is why we are the
recipient of the government contract for all missiles for Cartann's Blade-
Thirties and Blade-Thirty-twos. A pilot like you can stake your life on a
Challabae missile and know that it will serve your purpose faithfully and
reliably. This gives our workers something to be proud of."
Hobbie nodded. "I can tell. You can see the pride on their faces."
Berandis beamed, oblivious to sarcasm.
On the long walk back to their start point, Cheriss dropped back behind
Berandis to march with the pilots. Her voice artificially cheery, she said,
"There is another advantage to having worker quarters above plant facilities,
of course."
"Which is what?" Wedge asked.
"Well, if some enemy were to fill the skies above Cartann City and drop
Broadcap bombs on the plant, the bombs would only penetrate as far as the
warrens before exploding. The plant would take little or no damage." Her tone
was light, but Wedge detected something in it bitterness or sarcasm, or
perhaps both. He couldn't tell.
Tycho said, "You've either worked at a plant like this or lived in the
turumme-warrens, haven't you?"
"Both," she said. "My mother worked at a food-processing plant until
brownlung killed her. I worked there for a season before I was well
established enough to make my living with my blastsword."
"How, precisely, do you make your living?" Wedge asked. "By taking
trophies from the enemies you defeat?"
"No... though I did that at first. Now I use only blastswords
manufactured by Ghephaenne Deeper-Craters Weaponmakers, and they pay me
regularly so that they can mention that fact in their flatscreen boasting."
"Endorsements," Hobbie said. "I could do that instead of flying. I've had
offers from bacta makers. Bacta's a sort of medicine," he added for Cheriss's
benefit.
She offered a little frown. "You are not a well man?"
"I'm well enough. But the ground and I get along so well we sometimes get
together a little too vigorously."
"So let me be sure I understand this," Wedge said. "Under Cartann City,
there are lots of underground manufacturing concerns, huge ones, where they
make missiles and preserved food and Blades and everything Cartann needs, with
worker quarterswhere most workers have to live because they can't afford
anything elseabove them but still underground."
Cheriss nodded.
"And we don't see these workers aboveground because?"
"Because they're too tired at the end of a long day of working to do much
but eat and watch the day's flatscreen broadcasts," Cheriss said.
"How much of the population lives belowground, compared to what we've
seen aboveground?"
"I don't know." She shrugged. "Forty percent, perhaps. But don't feel
that they are trapped, General Antilles. They can always break free of the
worker's existence. They can volunteer for the armed forces. They can take up
the life of the free blade, as I've done."
"So the only sure way for them to get out is to risk their lives."
She nodded.
Wedge exchanged looks with the other pilots, and his appreciation for the
world of Adumar dropped another notch.
Later the same day, Tomer Darpen visited the pilots' quarters with some
bad news. After two days of incarceration, the surviving four men of the six
who'd tried to assassinate them had escaped. "Definitely with the aid of
someone in the Cartann Ministry of Justice," Tomer said. "Whoever paid them in
the first place had enough money or pull to enlist the aid of a whole chain of
conspirators."
"They'll be coming after us again," Hobbie said, a mournful note in his
voice.
Cheriss shook her head. "They were not just defeated but embarrassed last
time. They'll be instructed to come after you again to regain their honor. But
instead they'll probably run. And so they'll either vanish from the face of
Adumar... or be found dead in an alley, a warning to others who might
contemplate failure."
Still, Wedge was not entirely displeased with the way things were shaping
up. His informal flying school at Giltella Air Base was actually proving to be
a satisfying experience. Increasingly, pilots both from Cartann and foreign
nations were discussing Wedge's philosophies as much as his tactics and
skills, and doing so without contempt. One Cartann pilot, barely out of his
teen years, a black-haired youth named Balass ke Rassa, finally summed it up
in a way that pleased Wedge "If I understand, General, you are saying that a
pilot's honor is internal. Between him and his conscience. Not external, for
his peers to see."
"That's right," Wedge said. "That's it exactly."
"But if you do not externalize it, you cut yourself off from your nation,
" Balass said. "When you do wrong, your peers cannot bring you back in line by
stripping away your honor, allowing you to regain it when you resume proper
behavior."
"True," Wedge said. "But by the same token, a group of people you
respect, even though they don't deserve it, can't redefine honor for their own
benefit, or to achieve some private agenda, and then use it to control your
actions."
Troubled, the youth withdrew from the post-duel conversation and sat
alone, considering Wedge's words, and Wedge felt that he had at last achieved
a dueling victory.
6
The night of the discussion with Balass ke Rassa was one of the few in
which the pilots had declined all dinner invitations, giving them a chance to
dine in their quarters and get away from the pressure of being on display
before the people of Cartann.
As the ascender brought them up to their floor, Jan-son said, "They're
calling me 'the darling one.' "
"Who is? "Wedge asked.
"The court, the crowds. They have tags for us all now, and I'm the
darling one. Tycho is 'the doleful one."
Tycho frowned. "I'm not sad."
"No, but you look sad. Makes the ladies of Cartann's court want to
comfort you. They're so sad about wanting to comfort you that you could
comfort them."
Hobbie snorted. "And Tycho the only one of us with a successful
relationship with a woman. Missed opportunities, Tycho."
They paused before the door to give its security flatcams primitive
devices by New Republic standards, but still capable of facial recognition
time to analyze their features. Janson continued, "Hobbie is 'the dour one.'
Not too much romance in that, Hobbie. And Wedge is 'the diligent one.' That
may not sound too romantic, Wedge, but 'di
ligent' has a couple of colloquial
meanings here that add to your luster"
"I don't want to know," Wedge said. The doors opened. "Say, look who's
here."
Hallis sat on the monstrously overinflated chair situated in one corner,
her legs up over one of the chair arms. She waved. Her recording unit,
Whitecap, said, "Say, look who's here" in inimitable 3PO unit tones.
Wedge led his pilots in. "What's with Whitecap?" he asked.
"What's with Whitecap?" Whitecap asked.
Hallis made a cross face. "Oh, something's gone wrong in his hardware."
"Oh, something's gone..."
"I was recording some of General Phennir's challenge matches out at the
Cartann Bladedrome. When the pilots were leaving, the crowd got a bit unruly
and I was knocked down. Since then, Whitecap repeats back everything anyone
says within earshot. I can't get him to stop."
"... get him to stop."
Janson grinned at her. "Some days make you just want to beat your heads
against a wall, don't they?"
Hobbie said, "Maybe not. The young lady might not have her heads on
straight, after all."
Tycho said, "Still, I think she ought to get her heads examined."
Wedge looked at them, appalled.
"Pilots," Hallis said. "How did I ever get this assignment? Who did I
offend?"
"...did I offend?"
"Still," she said, "you'd better be nice to me. I know you don't take me
seriously, but you ought to." Her expression was unusually earnest.
"...you ought to."
Wedge sprawled on a sofalike piece of furniture large enough to
accommodate three full-sized people comfortably. "Hallis, it would be easier
if you didn't look like something out of a tale to frighten children."
"...to frighten children."
"All right, "she said.
"All right."
She pulled her goggles off and set them aside. Then she reached up to
press a control on Whitecap's clamp; with a hi ssing noise, it relaxed and the
recording unit began tilting from her shoulder. She caught it as it pitched
forward, then moved across the room to set it within a cabinet. She closed the
cabinet door with an irritated thump; from inside, Whitecap did a credible job
of imitating the noise. "Better?"
Wedge tried to make his tone neutral, nonjudgmental. "What is it, Hallis?
"
She straightened from the cabinet and gave him a serious look. "Someone
Star Wars - X-Wing - Starfighters of Adumar Page 11