Starfighters of Adumar

by Aaron Allston

  “Ah. Then we do not conflict. Frothing disease to your foes, then.” He turned his back on the two pilots and stalked away. Wedge and Janson watched him ascend to the floor above, and occasional creakings from that floor suggested that the man had taken up position at the stairs’ edge, where he could look down upon the doorway of his target.

  “You know,” Janson said, “how I really sort of liked this place when we got here?”

  Wedge nodded.

  “Well, it’s worn off.”

  Wedge grinned. “I thought you liked high romance and skulking and impossibly shallow love affairs and everything they have here in such abundance.”

  “I do. I just don’t like all the competition. Really, Wedge, when you can’t even do a stakeout without bumping into six or eight other guys in the same corridor, on the same mission—”

  “Hold it.”

  Another figure climbed the dimly lit stairwell, emerging onto their floor, heading unerringly toward Iella’s door. It was another silhouette, but Wedge estimated that it could correspond to someone of Iella’s build wrapped in a bulky hooded cloak. Again he cursed the Adumari fashion sense.

  Signaling for Janson to remain where he was, Wedge moved quietly forward along the railing. The person had paused at Iella’s door, and Wedge could now hear a series of low musical notes emanate from the door or nearby—possibly a sonic cue for a lock, he concluded.

  He was only a couple of meters away when the person at the door shoved it open and triggered a switch within, blinding Wedge with unaccustomed light. He blinked against the glare, raising one hand to shield his eyes from it—and discovered that the person at the door was now facing him, blaster pistol in hand, held in a very professional-looking grip.

  “State your business,” Iella said. “Or keep quiet and I’ll just shoot you.”

  Wedge pulled the preposterous lavender mask away from his face.

  He still couldn’t see Iella’s face, but her voice certainly didn’t soften. “Oh. You. Once and for all, I’m not going to tell you any more offworld stories. Go home.” She put away her blaster and beckoned him forward. Once he was close enough, she whispered, “Don’t say a word.” Then she grabbed him by his tunic’s ornate collar and dragged him into her quarters.

  Inside, he had an impression of a small outer room lined with shelves loaded with electronic equipment; beyond was a larger, darkened chamber, the air within it warm and musty.

  After closing the door and resetting her lock, Iella reached up to the top of one of the shelves, reaching over a decorative rim well above eye level, and drew down a device that looked like a datapad but with a series of sensor inputs at one end. She waved this slowly along all four sides of the door, and various digital notations appeared on the screen. Then she pointed it into the darkened portion of her quarters and hit a button; the screen filled with data. She nodded, cleared the screen, and set the device back up where she found it.

  “All clear,” she said. “No new listening devices. Wedge, you can’t be here. You’ll compromise my identity.” Her tone was pleading, not angry.

  “I need your help,” Wedge said. “Help I can’t get from channels. Help I can get only from you.”

  She led him into the next chamber and triggered the light switch. This was some sort of receiving room. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all brown wood, perhaps comforting and warm at some time in the past, now slightly warped and occasionally stained. A woven circle lay on the floor as a rug; the room’s other furniture consisted of a flatscreen on the wall, a sofalike object that seemed to have been fashioned like the wing of an old model of Blade aircraft, and what Wedge recognized as an inexpensive computer terminal desk of Corellian make.

  Iella slid out of her cloak. Today, she was not dressed in garments suited to social affairs; she wore trousers and boots in brown and the standard Adumari flare-sleeved tunic in a subdued rust-red. She sat at one end of the sofa. “All right, Wedge.”

  He remained standing. “You told me earlier that when you got here, you weren’t supposed to send messages offworld—your employers wouldn’t let you—but that you did anyway. I inferred from your words that you were able to smuggle in or get access to a holocomm unit for your reports to your superiors.”

  She nodded.

  “I need access to it.”

  “I can’t give it to you. Orders.”

  “Yes, I know. You’re under direct orders from your superior not to permit any communications with the New Republic without his review. I’m asking you to break those orders.”

  A touch of distress worked through the armor she wore instead of expression. She quickly got herself back under control. “Maybe you’d better explain that.”

  “All right. First, I know that your boss, the regional head of New Republic Intelligence, is Tomer Darpen.”

  This time her expression didn’t change. “I can’t confirm or deny that.”

  “I don’t want you to. I’m not trying to wring some sort of admission out of you, Iella. This is just something I figured out… eventually. Darpen kept speaking on behalf of the local Intelligence head, as if he were privy to his thoughts. He kept issuing me orders and expecting me to follow them, meaning that he’s either very stupid or very used to having his orders obeyed, both out of keeping with the sort of role he was playing. So I conclude that Darpen is not just a diplomat, but also a major player with Intelligence.

  “Anyway, he came to me today and ordered me to stop doing my sim-weapons training with Adumari pilots. Some of them are picking up the habit, which means we aren’t playing this diplomatic game by their rules, and he thinks that’s a very bad thing.”

  Iella managed a soft smile. “He ordered you.”

  “I’m usually pretty good about taking orders—”

  “If occasionally reinterpreting them rather thoroughly—”

  “But only when there’s a clear chain of command. Tomer Darpen isn’t in it. My fear is that he’s going to get in touch with General Cracken and get the confirmation of his orders that he needs… but in such a way that Cracken is still not aware of what it means. The live-weapons dueling, me and my pilots having to kill a lot of eager flyers who just want to achieve a little personal honor…”

  Iella nodded. “So you want to give Cracken the whole story, so he can issue orders, or refuse them, based on the complete picture.”

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “Wedge, I can’t help you. My chain of command is very clear, and so are my orders. What you’re doing now, provoking the regional Intelligence head, is a sort of contrariness that Admiral Ackbar or the Chief of State will excuse you for. What you’re asking me to do is deliberate disobedience of direct orders. I can’t.”

  “Oh.” Suddenly deflated, Wedge sat on the opposite end of the couch. “Well, then. I’ll find a new plan. Perhaps I’ll send Janson and Hobbie back in their X-wings to deliver my message. It will just take longer. Maybe too long.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes.” Stirring from his momentary depression, Wedge faced her. “Admiral Rogriss is in command of the Agonizer. I need a way to get in touch with him without alerting his subordinates… or our people.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Better not let my superior hear about that. He’ll think you’re conspiring with the enemy.”

  “I hope very much to conspire with the enemy. Can you do it?”

  “I think so. It may take some time. Anything else?”

  “No.” He sighed. “Wait. Yes, there is.”

  She waited.

  “Iella, if General Cracken orders me to play Turr Phennir’s game with the aerial duels, I’ll refuse. I’ll resign my commission.” He saw her jaw drop. “When I do that, that’s my whole life, packaged up and fired out a missile port. I have to start over from the ground up: new career, new friends, new world, maybe even a new name.

  “Since I’m on t
he verge of losing everything I have left, I need, I really need, to find out how I lost something earlier. So I don’t do it again with anyone else. I need to know how I lost your regard.”

  She stared at him as if stupefied for long moments. Finally she shook her head and said, “Wedge, you never lost my regard. You never lost my respect.”

  “Then how did I lose your friendship? Where did it go, how did I chase it off?” He felt a hard knot forming in his throat, and it made his voice raspy.

  “It’s not like that. It’s nothing you did. It’s something I did.” Her expression lost all self-assurance. “Wedge, let’s not do this now.”

  “When? Iella, we can’t do it when I’m a civilian, being shipped back to Coruscant in disgrace for a mission I never wanted in the first place. Now’s the time.” He slid toward her, the knot in his throat threatening to cut off his speech altogether. “Please, because we were friends. Tell me how we stopped. Was it my relationship with Qwi?”

  A flicker of pain crossed her face. “No. Yes. It’s related to that.”

  “Well, that certainly clarifies matters.”

  She lashed out, striking his shoulder with her open palm. The blow nearly shoved him off the sofa. “Don’t make light of it. This is very hard for me.”

  “I’m sorry.” Wedge rubbed the stinging from his shoulder and resumed his seat. “I’ll just listen.”

  Her words were a long time in coming. He saw her struggle with them, as if trying to find the perfect angle of approach on a target that had none. Then tears came, just two of them. She brushed them away and finally spoke. “When Diric died… the way he died, still struggling with his brainwashing, still a tool of the Empire, and I had not just his loss to deal with but all that shame, you and Corran were there for me. Making things better. Whenever I flailed out, looking for support, my hand would fall into one of yours. That made all the difference. And when I gradually got better, when I eventually figured out that the galaxy was just going to keep spinning and I could keep functioning within it, you didn’t wander away. It wasn’t a ‘You’re all better now, so it’s back to work for me.’ I can’t tell you what that meant to me.

  “And gradually, I began to wonder…” She was silent for long moments. “To wonder if maybe there was a chance for you and me.”

  He gave her a nod. “I had those same thoughts.”

  “But I told myself, ‘It’s too soon to be thinking about that.’ I told myself that for a long time. I just accepted the time we had together, like after the whole Lusankya affair. I coasted.”

  “I didn’t want to put pressure on you,” Wedge said. “Any pressure. That would have been…”

  “Morbid?”

  “Opportunistic? Crude? Janson-like?”

  She managed a little smile. “Looking back on it, after a while, I don’t suppose you could have thought I was still interested in you. We became just pals, like Corran and I are, while I waited for, I don’t know, that final signal from somewhere deep in my mind that I was all ready to start my life up again. That signal never came, or I missed it, and we were apart so much of the time… and one day there she was, Qwi Xux, the neediest little thing in the galaxy, hanging off your arm…”

  Wedge cleared his throat. “Um, I’m not sure—”

  “And I realized I’d waited too long. It was my mistake. I hadn’t told you the truth about the way I felt, I’d waited for you to make a first move you were too ethical to make, and all these expectations I’d made in my mind blew apart like the Death Star. One second, solid and permanent, the next second, countless millions of little white specks of nothingness.”

  “So, ultimately, I lost your friendship by getting involved with another woman.”

  Iella shook her head. “Not exactly, Wedge. It wasn’t what you did. It was because, after you did it, I couldn’t stand seeing you. It hurt every time I saw you, knowing that I’d thrown away my own opportunity. And you can’t be friends with someone who cuts out your heart, even unintentionally, every time you run into him.”

  “You know we’re not together anymore. Qwi and I.”

  She nodded, but her expression did not lighten. “Wes Janson told me the first night he ran into me, at the perator’s court.”

  “And?”

  “And what? And she’s gone, and so maybe we can start all over again?”

  Surprised by the heat and anger in her voice, Wedge drew back. “Something like that.”

  “Wedge Antilles, I don’t care how much it hurts. I will not be number two to some feather-brained—”

  A small explosion next door vibrated the wall and burned a hole, the diameter of a finger, in it. Wedge grabbed Iella’s sleeve and pulled her down to the rug with him. He drew his own blaster.

  Iella grabbed the barrel, kept him from swinging it into line. “Don’t,” she said. “It’s—”

  Another shot penetrated the wall at about eye level. From the other quarters Wedge could hear shouting, the sound of pottery shattering.

  “—just my neighbor, Garatty ke Kith—”

  There was the familiar crack of a blastsword going off, and a yelp of pain.

  “—and his feud with—”

  “Irasai ke Voltin,” Wedge said.

  “You know him?”

  “You meet a lot of people when you’re an ambassador.”

  There was one final crash, something like a hundred kilos of meat being violently slammed the floor, and quiet fell again.

  “That will probably end the feud,” Iella said.

  Wedge rose and offered her a hand up. He holstered his sidearm. He was surprised at how much energy the motion took. Suddenly his endurance seemed to have abandoned him. “Back to the subject. So what you’re saying is that I hurt you so badly that we can never be anything to one another again.”

  Iella looked as though she were reviewing something—the last several things she’d said, perhaps the last several years of her life. Finally she said, “I suppose that is what I’m saying.” She looked on the verge of tears again. “I’m sorry, Wedge. I am. But I think you’d better leave.”

  “It’s not leaving that’s hard anymore,” he said, scarcely recognizing his own voice. “It’s finding somewhere to go.” He turned toward the door.

  Adrenaline jolted through him. The shock that hit him was that of a man realizing that he was about to step into a trap or a firefight, something that could end his life in a second.

  It couldn’t be a precognitive warning. Outside of a cockpit, his pattern recognition skills didn’t afford him warnings like that… and besides, had there been danger beyond the door, Janson would have communicated with him.

  No, the danger was more personal. It was indeed a matter of Step through that door and your life is over, but in a very different way. “Just how stupid do you think I am?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He turned to face her again. His energy was back. He felt it burning within him. And he now knew the nature of the one last barrier standing between the two of them: Her injured pride, shielding her from further harm… but also shielding her from him. “How big an idiot would I have to be to walk out that door?”

  “I don’t understand, Wedge. I just wish you’d go.”

  “Yes, it would be easier that way. Less risk of humiliation.” He moved to stand before her again. “Now, listen. For years, even when we didn’t see one another for ages, I knew that you were a part of my life. Until a few nights ago, when you said we weren’t friends anymore. Since then, I’ve been in mourning. Not just missing a friend, but grieving for a lost part of my life.

  “It took me a while to figure that out, and to understand just how much I need you to be in my life. As my friend, and more than my friend, for good. Now you tell me it can’t happen. Because of mistakes. I made some, you made some, and now our chances are all behind us?” He shook his head vehemently. “No, Iella. That would be another mistake, and the older we get, the less time we have to bounce back from them. I’m tired of making m
istakes.”

  He put one hand behind her neck, the other around her waist, and drew her to him. She looked at him, surprise in her eyes.

  “You’re a grown woman and in training,” he said. “If you want me out of your room, it’ll take you just one knee and a little leverage to put me out. But you can’t just tell me to go, not this time. I love you. I’m not going to meekly walk away.” He pulled her face to his and kissed her.

  He had a glimpse of her widening eyes. Then he was lost in the sweetness of her lips.

  He could have tensed against the impact he was sure would follow, but did not. If this was to be the last kiss he was ever to have from her, he wanted to enjoy every millisecond of it.

  And the milliseconds stretched into full seconds, and her arms snaked around his neck and held him tight. Finally, it was a need for oxygen that forced him to break their kiss. He held her tight, looking into eyes that were wide but not alarmed, lips that were curved ever so slightly into an enigmatic smile. “If I’m lying in a ball in the corridor,” he said, “I’m doing a tremendous job of hallucinating that I’m not.”

  “Now’s not the time to joke,” she said.

  “Very well.”

  She put her fingers up in his hair, turned his head this way and that, and looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. “So this is the cockpit Wedge,” she said. “The one the enemy has boxed in, and suddenly he snaps and goes off in an unanticipated direction, changing all the rules.”

  “That’s me.”

  “It’s very becoming. I wish you’d shown him to me before. Why aren’t you like this on the ground?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve never been all that comfortable on the ground. But I’m learning.”

  “I’d say you were.” She kissed him.

  When they broke for air a second time, Wedge noted, without surprise, that they were seated on her sofa again. He hadn’t remembered getting there, but supposed that the sofa legs were not as close to buckling as his were.

  “What you said before,” Iella said, a whisper against his mouth, “about being in your life for good, sounded a lot like a proposal.”