to land and get into hiding. Even if they punched out, experience had shown
that the enemy pilots could spot them and were willing to shoot them out of
the air as they descended.
Wedge suppressed a pang of regret. Not fair of him to offer a future to
Iella and then rush off and get killed this way. He turned toward the incoming
flightknives. He said, "Guess we're just going to have to rack up some
numbers, Tycho." Despite his best effort, his voice was heavy.
"Understood, boss." Tycho stayed tight to him. Then, on his lightboard,
one of the two clouds of Blades looped toward the other, and the comm board
was suddenly active with traffic "Strike the Moons Flightknife issues a
challenge to Lords of Dismay Flightknife!" "Ke Mattino, you madman, now is not
the time-" "There is always time to crush incompetence and cowardice. Fire!"
The sky between the two flightknives, not so distant now, was suddenly
lit up by lasers and ball-shaped explosions. A moment later there was no way
to distinguish between the flightknives on the lightboard; they had merged
into a single firefight.
"Red Two, we're going to ground," Wedge said. He switched to the standard
Cartann military frequency. "Red Flight to Strike the Moons. Is that you,
Captain ke Mattino?"
"It is I."
"Thanks, Captain."
"You have won your departure. I will not let some honor-grubber deprive
you of it in this fashion. Confusion to your enemies."
"And frothing disease to yours. Antilles out." He pointed his nose toward
the ground, toward the section of Cartann not so brightly lit by street
illuminators.
It was hours later, the darkest and quietest hours of the night, when
Wedge and Tycho arrived at the door of Iella's quarters. Wedge could not
remember ever having been so tired. But when the door opened to his knock and
he saw her there before him, his exhaustion evaporated in an instant. He took
her in his arms and she dragged him inside. He heard Tycho follow and close
the door behind them.
"You almost killed me," Iella said. Worry blunted the accusation in her
tone. "Having to wait hour after hour to find out if you'd survived or not."
"I'm sorry." Wedge offered her a look of apology. "We needed to maintain
comm silence as much as possible. To travel back streets and alleys and
sometimes roofs and balconies to make sure we weren't spotted, weren't
followed. Have you heard"
The light in the apartment's main room clicked on and Wedge discovered he
had an audience.
Janson and Hobbie were lounging on the sofa, Jan-son with his feet up on
a small table, a brightly colored datapad, of the sort usually optimized for
children's games, on his lap. His slicked-back hair suggested he'd recently
had a bath, and his fresh clothes made Wedge long to be rid of the sweat-
drenched garments he was wearing. Hobbie was similarly scrubbed, though his
tunic was off to show a half-dozen places where his torso and arms were
bandaged.
Cheriss stood at the wall, near the light control, and Hallis sat on
another chair.
Wedge blinked at them. "I'm sorry," he said. "I seem to have interrupted
a party."
Iella smiled at him. "More like a conspiracy." She led him and Tycho to
additional chairs.
The room was crowded with more furniture than the last time Wedge had
seen it; he supposed that she'd dragged it in off the balcony and out of other
rooms. Wedge sat wearily and looked among the others. "You'll excuse me, I
hope, if I look a little confused. Cheriss, how do you come to be here? And
how are you?"
Cheriss, in dark blastsword-fighter's clothing, raised and lowered her
left shoulder a couple of times, experimentally. "Better," she said. Her voice
was low, her tone somber. "I need some more time before I can fight again. But
I was out of danger, and they brought me down to Cartann, where I learned of
the air duel you'd had. I went to your quarters, where I found Hallis but not
you or your X-wings. I knew if you were to go anywhere, you would come here,
so I did." When she finished, her expression suggested that she had more to
say, but she bit back on it.
Wedge struggled with a way to suggest that bringing Hallis here was not a
good idea, as it could compromise her identity, but Iella seemed to read his
thoughts. She said, "After Cheriss came here and told me what she'd done and
who she'd seen, I suggested she bring Hallis. It's all right, Wedge."
He nodded and sat back in his chair. "Hallis?"
She shrugged. "I robbed your quarters."
"Ah."
"Actually, when they said they'd taken your X-wings, I knew they'd
ransack your quarters eventually. I went there intending to get Whitecap's
remaining parts. But I overheard the two men who were packing up your
belongings; they were stealing things like they were in a contest, laughing
about the four of you like it was good entertainment that you'd been shot
down, so I got mad. When they were apart, I hit them both with a hydrospanner
and took all the stuff they'd gathered up."
Wedge couldn't help but laugh. "I was always under the impression that a
documentarian shouldn't get so close to her subjects."
"Well... well... I was angry."
"What did you get?"
"Your civilian clothes, pilot's suits, Janson's fancy cloak, helmets,
datapads, some datacards, four comlink headsets, your blastswordsone of them
belonged to Cheriss so I gave it back to hera whole pile of love notes Janson
had been collecting..."
Janson looked up, his expression outraged. "Hey! You didn't look at any
of them."
"No, certainly not."
He relaxed, a little mollified.
"Except for the ones that had been opened, that is. The one from Lady
Marri was very poetic, I think,"
Janson stood, his face flushing red. "I can't believe you" Then his
expression changed. "I don't recall any note from a Lady Marri."
Hallis grinned at him.
Janson sat again. "I've been had. General, I request permission to jump
from an upper-story balcony, to ease my shame."
"Granted," Wedge said. "Now, Iella. You're the one in the most tricky
situation here. I hate to be a demanding houseguestbut what can you give us
without ruining your life?"
She gave him a wan smile. "Good question. I'm still bound by my orders
and my duties, so the answer is 'not much.' But since my superior doesn't know
of any direct connection between us, I have some latitude... for the time
being. I can put you up, unless my superior asks a direct question whether
I've seen you. And until the searches going on for you turn into door-to-door
searches. You're going to have to get out of Cartann. I can get you Adumari
money, some comm and computer equipment. Unfortunately, I don't have many
contacts; the team that followed me here was responsible for setting up that
sort of thing."
"How about a holocomm transmission back to the New Republic?"
She shook her head. "The holocomm unit was eventually moved to a site set
up by my superior. I don't know where
it is."
Wedge considered. "Still, the rest is very helpful. Is there any way you
can find out what the status is of Allegiance? We need to know that before the
next time we try to get up there."
Iella glanced over at one of her cabinets. "My comm gear picked up and
recorded your open transmissions to Allegiance." Her expression grew bleak.
"And their lack of a reply. But I know they're still up there. My comm unit
has picked up coded transmissions from them continuously since before you went
on your gauntlet run. There's been no irregularity to their comm traffic. No
sort of activity to suggest they were captured, for instance."
Hallis said, "Iella, I need to talk to you. Privately."
Iella gave her a quizzical look.
"I'm going to persuade you to abandon your mission, to go with Wedge and
the others. And to shoot your superior right in the guts if you ever happen to
see him again."
"That'll take a lot of persuading." Iella gestured toward one of the side
doors. "But I'll give you the chance. After you."
They were gone only a couple of minutes, long enough for Wedge and Tycho
to wearily drag their boots off and accept cups of water from Cheriss. Then
Iella came slamming back through that side door, her face pale, her expression
set and angry.
"Change of plans," Iella said. "I'm abandoning my post and my mission.
I'll figure some way to get you out of Cartann. And if I see Tomer Darpen, I'm
going to burn him down where he stands."
Wedge stared at her in shocked silence for a moment. Then he turned to
Hallis. "How did you do that?"
Hallis shrugged.
"No, really, please. I have to know. It normally takes a vote of the
Senate or a planetary collision to get Iella to change her mind. I need to
learn how to do whatever you did."
Iella colored nicely. "Wedge."
"I'll show you." From beneath her sleeve, Hallis pulled out a standard
datapad. With her other hand, she reached behind her and dragged a wire with a
standard datapad coupler at the end of it. She jacked it into the pad and
powered the unit up, then held the screen so Wedge could see. "You're not
going to like this."
Tycho leaned in to see. Janson, Hobbie, and Cheriss also crowded in
behind him to get a look. Iella turned away, perhaps unwilling to see this a
second time.
The datapad view wavered across a sea of faces and the backs of heads.
Wedge recognized the surroundings as the Outer Court chamber of the perator's
palace.
Finally the view stabilized. Wedge recognized the perator standing at the
heart of his knot of advisors. The clothes worn by his advisors defined the
scenethis was the last gathering Wedge had attended, the one where he and his
pilots had been exiled and effectively sentenced to death.
The recording's sound kicked in, a meaningless babble of voices. Then the
voices dropped out one by one; Wedge presumed that the recorder had to have
been using a directional sound recorder to home in on a very few voices.
On the perator's voice. He was saying, in hushed tones, "... pity they
couldn't have been persuaded to lend us their arts. That would have been
spectacular, and Antilles's name alone would have been enough to cow some of
the enemy forces..."
Then Tomer Darpen was at his elbow. "A moment of your time, my lord."
"Only a moment. Time is pressing."
"I wish to extend my personal apologies, and General Antilles's
apologies, for what he has just been obliged to do."
Even in the somewhat blurry recording, the perator looked surprised.
"Obliged?"
Tomer nodded. "The general is pinned down between opposing forces. His
natural desire is to aid you, of course; he knows it is the only honorable
option. But ambiguous orders handed down by his diplomatic corps superiors,
orders intended to keep him alive so that he remain valuable to them, prevent
him from fighting. The situation has crushed him, has robbed him of all will
to live."
The perator shook his head, his expression shocked. "I cannot believe it.
"
Tomer lowered his eyes, his expression sad. "It's true. He longs for
death to burn away his shame. And so General Antilles begs a favor of you."
"Speak."
"He begs you to set your forces on him, assaults that he cannot decline..
. and cannot survive. So that he can die honorably and never again be used as
a tool by the diplomatic corps. Do this, and not only will his memory be
cherished, but you can be sure that the next pilot-representatives sent here
will be unfettered by ridiculous orders restraining them from behaving as true
pilots should."
The perator nodded, his expression sympathetic. "At last I understand.
The poor man."
"It must look like an act of justice on your part. But he will thank you
with his dying breath."
"I understand."
"Thank you, perator."
Hallis's recording view followed Tomer as he left the ruler's side and
moved toward Wedge and his pilots. Her audio lock remained with him, and
though his next few words were muffleddoubtless by him holding a comlink up
to his face and speaking quietlyWedge could make out his words. "En-Are-Eye-
One to Allegiance, acknowledge. New orders, Allegiance. Do not accept, record,
or acknowledge any transmissions from Adumar's surface or from vehicles not
belonging to the New Republic until I rescind this order. Repeat it back to me
to indicate you've understood... Correct, Allegiance. En-Are-Eye-One out."
Hallis switched the datapad screen off.
They were all silent for a long moment. Finally Wedge looked at the
documentarian. "Thanks, Hallis. But I have to askwhy didn't you tell me some
of this before we left the perator's palace?"
"The first part, knowing that Tomer had set you up, couldn't help you.
The second part, knowing that the Allegiance was off the comm wavesI was just
getting up to you to tell you that when I heard you figuring it out for
yourselves."
"Makes sense," Wedge said. He turned to Iella. "You know that you're
next."
She nodded.
"I don't understand," Janson said.
"Tomer set things up to kill us," Wedge said. "Accomplishing a lot of
things. It scored points with the perator by making him think that we pilots
had been with him all along, just thwarted by bureaucratic orders, so the
perator doesn't think we opposed him. And it scrapes us out of the way so I
can't file my report, my conclusions on the way he set up this whole
diplomatic mission-conclusions I now have to assume were largely correct. He
wants everyone who can offer up a comprehensive report to the Chief of State
to be dead. That means that Tomer's subordinates here, including Iella, will
eventually end up facedown in an alley."
"It'll take me just minutes to pack," Iella said. "Which begs the
question Where do we go? I wasn't in charge of setting up safe houses."
"I know where," Cheriss said. "General Antilles"
"It's about time you called me Wedge."
She didn't smile, but she did offer him a little nod
of acknowledgment.
"Wedge, there are some men and women who want to meet you. When I returned
earlier tonight and made myself known at the perator's palace, they tracked me
down and told me so."
Wedge frowned. "What sort of men and women?"
"Political leaders. From nations not controlled by Cartann. From nations
soon to be smashed by Cartann."
"Do you think they'd be willing to offer us use of a spaceworthy craft to
get us to Allegiance?"
She nodded. "I think they would. But I don't think that is what is
foremost on their minds. I think they want to ask a favor of you."
"I'd be happy to listen. All right, everybody. Tycho and I need to get
cleaned up, and everybody is to get dressed upnicely as we can. They're
scouring the streets looking for four downed pilots hiding from their eyes,
not seven upstanding citizens out for a late night of carousing."
"You're issuing orders to Intelligence," Iella said, her voice mild.
"Just to my pilotsand making some assumptions. Care to come along?"
"Anywhere," she said.
11
By dawn, Wedge and the other six refugees were in the passenger/cargo
compartment of a farumme-class hauler, an aircraft Wedge suspected was
constructed about the time he was being born. Air whistled through holes in
the hull. Rings were imbedded in the compartment's framework, the better to
allow for cargo to be lashed down securely, but the only thing being
transported now was Wedge's party, seated on padded benches that ran the
length of the compartment. The Yedagon Confederacy agent who had met them, a
lean, very fair man of few words, rode with the pilots in their control
compartment.
Wedge glanced around the compar tment. Janson, Tycho, and Hobbie were all
asleep. He was as tired as they were, in as great a need of sleep, but he had
things to think about.
Cheriss sat alone on a bench on the other side of the craft. She had
seldom looked at Wedge since their departure from Telia's quarters, and seemed
lost in her thoughts.
Hallis was on the same side of the craft, alone, all the New Republic
personnel's datapads piled up beside her.
She had, at Wedge's request, copied the recording of Tomer Darpen's
treachery to each datapad. Now she was struggling with the most sophisticated
of the datapads available to her, Iella's, to edit that and some other
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