Wraith Squadron

by Aaron Allston

  "Thanks, Eight." Eight's voice had changed. It was more resonant and lacked its usual rustic accent. Things were otherwise as he remembered them. Well, that was all right. Eight would be dead soon, anyway.

  Donos's head swam as he recognized the simple cruelty of that stray thought.

  The Interceptor abruptly lost speed and heeled over to starboard. Donos smiled. Its engine trouble had to have worsened. It headed straight toward the gap between two giant volcanoes, straight toward the trap.

  The ambush. They were all about to die.

  "Talon Leader to squad, break off! Omega signal!" He rolled up on his port wing and curved in a tight arc away from the volcanoes. Away from death.

  The other Talons did not follow. They sped down their destined path toward annihilation.

  "Leader to group! Break off! Follow me!"

  A woman's voice: "Can't do it, sir."

  "Twelve, is that you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Follow me. That's an order! The others die down there. You follow me. Maybe you can make it out this time."

  "No, sir. What does it matter whether I die down there or on the way out?"

  Donos continued his arc until he completed a full circle. He now sped on in the wake of his pilots. But no matter how much power he diverted to his engines, they seemed to gain on him, heedlessly rushing toward their own dooms.

  "It matters, Twelve. Break off." He felt an unfamiliar weight crushing his chest. It wasn't acceleration; it was the inevitability of those pilots' needless deaths. "Please, Twelve."

  Her voice turned scornful. "Don't 'Please' me, Lieutenant. If someone said, 'Please live' to you, you'd just ignore him or spit in his eye."

  "That's crazy." The pilots ahead of him were moments from entering the pass between the volcanoes. The pressure increased, squeezing his chest so hard he didn't think his heart could beat.

  "No, it's not. You don't care enough about yourself to live. So you don't give a damn about us."

  "You're wrong. Turn back."

  "Swear it."

  "I swear it! Turn back!"

  The canopy of his X-wing went black and the roar of his engines died. A white slit appeared where his canopy should rise, but when it did come up, it opened on a port-side hinge rather than on a hinge behind him.

  Sweating, trembling, he stared into the faces of Face, Tyria, Falynn, and Kell. They wore headsets and somber expressions.

  The pressure in Donos's chest snapped. It became a ball of pure rage. He lunged at the faces before him but was restrained by his pilot's harness. "You bastards—"

  All but Kell pulled away. Kell merely pulled his headset off and handed it back to Face.

  Donos got his harness off, stood in his pilot's seat, and leaped at Kell. The force of his leap, the force of his anger, should have taken the big man off his feet, but Kell pivoted, caught Donos's right arm, and spun Donos down to the flooring almost gently. The walls of Night Caller's lounge, their colors chosen by scientists to be soothing, twirled around him as Kell manhandled him.

  But Kell didn't pin him. From his kneeling position, Donos took a swing at the big man's groin. Kell got a hand in the way, angled the blow to the side, and took it on his thigh.

  "I'll kill you." The force of his scream scoured Donos's throat raw. "How could you do that to me, put me through that again—"

  Kell didn't speak. He was concentrating on Donos's movements, which made Donos even more furious. It was Tyria who answered: "What choice did you leave us? You were just lying there. Trying to die."

  "That's my right!" Donos stood and threw his best punch at Kell's face. Kell managed to get his hand behind Donos's elbow, shoving Donos off balance. Then Kell turned away as if to leave, completed the spin, and Donos felt his legs being kicked out from under him. He slammed down onto the hard floor of the lounge.

  "You don't have the right," Kell said. "Do you remember swearing an oath?"

  "Shut up!" Donos kicked out at Kell, but the other man anticipated the move and drew back a pace. Donos's boot fell short and rang on the lounge floor.

  Kell continued, merciless: "Do you have the right to mourn a droid so deeply that you don't give a damn about Jesmin Ackbar dying?"

  "Shiner . . ." Suddenly all the fight left Donos. Grief so strong it was like a physical thing, like a hole in his body, bent him double.

  He became aware that Tyria was bending over him, shaking him. "Myn, don't go away. We need you here. We need you flying. We need you watching our backs. We're your squad now."

  "Shiner . . ."

  "What is it about that droid?" Her voice was at once worried and angry. He looked up at her, saw her incomprehension.

  "The last . . ."

  "The last what?" She stared down into his eyes, then she looked startled. "The last Talon. He was the last Talon, wasn't he?"

  Unable to speak, Donos nodded.

  "And as long as he was still . . . alive, you hadn't let them all down, had you, Myn? You hadn't failed the whole squadron? You still had him to protect."

  Donos spoke around his grief. It made his words thick. He himself would barely have understood if he weren't speaking. "He's gone now."

  "Myn . . ." Tyria looked lost, desperate. "We need you to protect us now. We're your friends."

  "Don't want friends. Friends die."

  "Dammit!" She pulled him to her so his head was in her lap. He stared up at her, hoping she'd stop speaking soon so he could go back to sleep. "Myn, I agree with you. When I joined the Alliance, that was my motto. Friends die, so don't make any. Just go out, kill the enemy, and when death comes, I'll know I've done my best."

  "Then you know."

  "I changed my mind, Myn. When Jesmin died. How could I look her in the eye if I just threw my life away? She fought to live. She'd be angry at me for wasting what she didn't have a chance to enjoy."

  Donos didn't answer. He didn't have a reply for her.

  "What about the Talons? Do they want you to die?"

  "They must."

  "Stop that. You knew them. Would they want you to die?"

  "Their families would."

  "No."

  "They'd want me to die because I led their fathers and brothers and sisters and cousins off to some nothing world to die for no reason." He looked beyond Tyria's shoulder to where Kell and Face stood. "He knows. Muscles there."

  Kell said, "I know what?"

  "You want Janson to die."

  "No."

  "Don't lie! He killed your father."

  "How did you know that?"

  "Someone told me." Donos shrank away from the question. No need to implicate Grinder, regardless of whether Donos chose to live or not.

  Kell knelt beside Tyria and looked gravely down at Donos. "I used to want him to die. I killed him hundreds of ways in my imagination. But I changed my mind."

  "Just so you could argue with me!"

  "No." Kell seemed to sag. He looked tired and years older. "I doubt that I'll ever play sabacc with him, Myn. But I want him to live. Because with him in an X-wing, it means that every year there are fewer Imps and warlord flyers out there endangering my sisters. My mother. My friends. And the families of the dead Talon Squad pilots will think even better of you than I do of Janson. Unless you kill yourself. If you kill yourself, they'll tell themselves, 'My father didn't even have a chance; he was led by a coward.' If they know you were a courageous pilot, they'll say, 'He died fighting for us.' "

  Donos blinked, and for a moment he was far away from Night Caller, flashing at hyperspace speeds through the homes of the families whose members he had led to death. As he'd done so many times in the days and weeks after Talon Squad was obliterated. But this time, the faces he saw were not masks of anger and vengeance. Just sadness, sometimes; sometimes they were just curious and reflective faces turned up toward the stars.

  "I'm sorry about Jesmin," Donos said.

  Tyria nodded and brushed a lock of sweat-drenched hair out of Donos's eyes. "We all are."
/>   Donos looked up at Falynn. "I'm sorry about you."

  Falynn came forward. She wore an expression compounded of pain and even, Donos thought, jealousy at Tyria's ministrations to him. "What do you mean?"

  "I thought you wanted to get close. I kept you away. I was cold to you."

  "I understand why."

  "I think I need to go to bed now."

  Kell rose and helped Donos up.

  Tyria also rose. "Will you be all right?"

  "I don't know." Donos shrugged. "Maybe."

  "Breakfast is at eight hundred. We'd like to see you there."

  Donos nodded. "I guess I'll be there."

  On the way back to his quarters, he felt so strange . . . All the pain he'd known since Talon Squad died was still there, but the exhaustion that had accompanied it seemed to be gone. It was as though toxins he'd been building up for ages had been bled out.

  He fell onto his bed and was unconscious in moments.

  The others watched him depart the lounge. Falynn followed him at a discreet distance, making sure he made it back to his quarters. Then Face slumped against the lounge bar. Kell sat heavily on one of the long couches. Tyria reached in to the simulator unit to power it down, then sat beside Kell. "Well, that was fun," Face said.

  "It worked," Kell said. His voice sounded as heavy as he felt. "And neither Commander Antilles nor Lieutenant Janson walked in on us. We got lucky."

  Tyria leaned back and closed her eyes. "Now, all Myn has to do is actually get up in four hours and we can say we did it."

  Kell said, "Now maybe Runt will get some sleep." "Oh?" Tyria asked. "He's been sleeping badly?" "On the shifts he pulled to sit with Myn, he talked to him endlessly. Tried every way he knew to get Myn to 'switch to a less damaged mind.' Something his people do with fair ease, even the ones who are mentally ill. He's been lashing himself for his failure to help Myn do the same thing."

  Face said, "Four hours? What am I doing awake? I'll see you two tomorrow." He strode from the room.

  The two of them sat in silence for a few moments. Then Kell said, "That was a pretty good idea. About Shiner being the last Talon in the weird way Myn was thinking." "Thanks."

  "Another insight? Like the other day and the ambush those pirates set up for me?" "Something like that."

  "I bet it's the Force. I bet you can only use it when you're not thinking about it."

  "Oh, that's great. That's just what I need. How would you like to be the best pilot in the galaxy, but only when you're outside a cockpit?" He snorted.

  "Was it true what he said?" Her voice was unusually gentle. "About Janson and your father?"

  "Yes." Kell reached out for the deep wellspring of hatred he'd carried for Janson all these years, but it was still gone. Mostly gone. "Every day, I wish it hadn't happened. But Janson had reason." He shook his head, trying to dispel the mood of gloom those memories always invoked. "Was it true what you said? About giving up that whole attitude of 'I might die tomorrow, probably shouldn't make any plans'?"

  She took a while to answer. "Yes, I meant it."

  "Urn."

  "Urn? That doesn't mean anything."

  "You remember a while back, when I told you I loved you, and you told me it was just a puddle on the floor, and then you put my face into that puddle?"

  She looked at him as if to gauge his mood. Seeing that he wasn't mad, she managed a sympathetic smile. "Of course I remember."

  "Well, I have something to tell you. After I realized you were right, I decided that it was enough to be your friend."

  "Good."

  "Then I fell in love with you again."

  Her expression became one of dismay and exasperation, "Oh, Kell—"

  "No, bear with me, just for a minute."

  "It's just the same words again."

  "Same words . . . different Kell. This time I know what I'm talking about."

  "Of course you do. So. Set Honesty to On?"

  "Honesty to On."

  "How much time did you spend thinking about me today?"

  "Every chance I got. Every chance I had when Commander Antilles and Janson weren't working me."

  "Ah, but in how many of those little fantasies of yours was I wearing any clothes?"

  He snorted in amusement. "Lots of them. Most of them." The words, the truth, came easily to him. "I saw us together in quiet times. When the war with the last bits of the Empire was over and we could argue and be confused about what to do next. Deciding things together. I saw myself presenting you to my family . . . and saw them making a place in their lives and hearts for you." He saw distress in her expression but pressed on anyway. "I saw a hundred ways for our lives together to be, and the only thing that made me sad was that we couldn't explore all of them."

  He sighed. "But now, like the galaxy's worst general, I've told you my objective—I'm going to win your heart. I just don't know how I'm going to do it, you being forewarned and all—"

  She lunged at him. Her tackle took him off the end of the sofa. Suddenly she was atop him on the floor, her arms around his neck, embracing him but glaring furiously.

  He rubbed the back of his head where it had hit the deck.

  "Ow."

  "Shut up." She kissed him.

  That went on a while and felt better than a three-day bender on Churban brandy—even better, for the rising heat and excitement he felt were something no brandy could ever simulate. In spite of his confusion, he remembered to wrap her up in his arms so she couldn't escape when she regained her senses.

  Finally she broke the kiss and returned to glaring at him.

  "Well, that wasn't bad," he said. "But I thought you didn't feel the way I did."

  "Of course you did. But then, you're a giant adolescent with no sense. A big shaved Wookiee with no grasp of human emotions."

  "Granted. But how long have you wanted me?"

  Her expression went from angry to plaintive in an instant. "Since I met you."

  "What? Then why didn't you—"

  "Because you were in love with that other Tyria, the one who doesn't exist. We established that weeks ago." She managed a little smile. "But I think you're finally over her."

  "I am."

  "You have to prove it."

  "How?"

  "Oh, we'll find a way."

  Wedge stepped into the officers' mess, took a quick look around, and froze.

  Donos was among the other Wraiths. Chatting. Laughing, despite the new gauntness to his features.

  Face, on the other hand, didn't look at all well. There were circles under his eyes. He had obviously lost sleep. But he seemed cheerful enough.

  Kell and Tyria looked just as bad, sleep-deprived and weary. Yet they seemed even more than cheerful.

  Wedge's sudden appearance caught the Wraiths' attention. Their conversation cut off and they turned to look at him.

  Wedge straightened and nodded sardonically at Face. In a mild tone, he said, "Captain Darillian to the bridge."

  Face scrambled up and out the door. He wouldn't be going to the bridge, of course; Darillian's seat of command was the comm center.

  Wedge jerked his head for Janson to join him. His second-in-command was at his side in an instant. They headed toward Night Caller's true bridge.

  "What's with Myn?" Wedge asked.

  "I don't know. They're not telling me. But he seems to be functional."

  "Good. One crisis averted. What's with all the tired faces?"

  "I, well, don't know. Maybe a late-night sabacc game they don't invite senior officers to?"

  "Fine. Anything else you don't know?"

  "Yes. Something happened with Kell yesterday."

  "What?"

  "I don't know."

  Wedge stopped short and gave Janson a reproving look.

  "No, really, I don't know. We talked. About his father. I got the impression that he'd been thinking of me as some sort of avenging monster who vaped people for screwups. I also got the impression that he really hadn't been plotting my
death every time he came within a few meters of me ... in fact, that he might have been scared stiff."

  "That can actually look the same."

  "Anyway, this morning, things had changed. For the first time, he didn't become a tower of knotted muscles when I sat down to breakfast."

  "Good." They swept into the bridge. "Lieutenant Tabanne, put the compiled transmission up on the main monitor."

  "Yes, sir."

  Face sat at the comm officer's chair, activated the voice and visual translators, and put them through the fastest possible diagnostic check. Both came up in the green. The computers controlling the comm center's cameras thought they were tracking his body motions correctly.

  He sat back, thought for a moment about an aging prima donna of a leading man he'd worked with once, and was instantly in character for Captain Darillian. He turned toward the comm center's main holoprojector, hit the button to activate transmission, and prepared to speak to Admiral Trigit.

  The three-dimensional image of Warlord Zsinj materialized before him.

  Face took an extra-deep breath and broadened his smile to cover his surprise. "My lord. I am honored."

  Zsinj's smile was one of condescension and amusement. "But not honored enough to do your job correctly."

  Face let his eyebrows rise. How had Darillian responded to scorn in his memoirs? With outrage. But the man would never direct an angry response to Warlord Zsinj. No, hurt was the order of the day. "My lord ... I have failed you in some way? You have called to tell me I no longer deserve your patronage. It's the life of a pirate for Darillian . . ."

  "Oh, stop being such a baby. It leeches all the fun out of scolding you." Zsinj heaved an annoyed sigh. "I received the relay of your report on the visit to Blood Nest."

  Pretending not to be fully recovered from the wound to his pride, Face shrugged. "A pity they chose to reject your offer. But since my avoidance of their ambush was so brilliantly successful, I feel I have left them with something to think about. Perhaps they will be more cordial when I return."

  Zsinj shook his head. "I don't believe so. Blood Nest is gone."

  Face leaned forward and assumed an incredulous expression. "They fled?"

  "No, and that's the problem. Sometime after you departed, Blood Nest was destroyed. In fact, every site you've visited in the last several weeks has subsequently been visited ... by Alliance pilots or agents."