Star Wars: X-Wing II: Wedge's Gamble

by Michael A. Stackpole

  He felt her hand on his back as she sat up beside him. “Actually, while it is frustrating, I do find this hesitation one of your more endearing qualities.”

  “Decisiveness in men is so off-putting, after all.”

  Erisi laughed easily. “Your sense of humor is attractive as well, except when you use it as a shield.”

  “Sorry.”

  She kissed his shoulder. “You see, Corran, few are the men who allow their emotions to have a part in their decision-making process. Most are expediently logical—emotions motivate them, but do not guide them. With most men there would be no hesitation—if emotions were going to come into play, it would be afterward. Your ability to factor emotions into your choices ahead of time makes you rather unique and worth pursuing.”

  “Or a big waste of time.”

  “Not so far.”

  “I’m just warming up. You’ll see. Give me time.”

  Erisi sighed beside him. “Perhaps that is the best idea, right now, no matter what we think we want. What we need is time alone.”

  He smiled in the direction of her silhouette. “How can you be so logical? Aren’t you supposed to be feeling scorned right now?”

  “Perhaps I should, but then I don’t always allow myself to be ruled by emotions.” She shrugged. “We’ve just come to a decision to postpone making a decision about us and the nature of our relationship. Depending upon the decision made, I might be scorned, but I don’t think that emotion is worthy of either one of us.”

  Corran nodded. “Yeah, you’re right there, on both counts.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you here, then …”

  “No.” Corran reached over and squeezed her leg just above the knee. “I’m fairly used to taking walks to sort things out. I’ve got a key, so I can let myself back in. I don’t know when I’ll get back.”

  “I’ll head out and get some food. I should be here when you get back unless some Hapan princeling comes along and sweeps me away to make me the queen of some distant planet. Then won’t you be sorry?”

  “Actually I think I would be.” Corran stood, then leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Thanks for understanding.”

  “Thank you for letting me understand.”

  Guided more by emotion than any sort of rational thought, Corran left Erisi behind in the room, entered a lift, and hit the lowest numbered button he could find. It took him well below the level where they had last seen Rima. The walkway onto which it dumped him didn’t look that bad, though it was deeper than any place he’d been since his arrival on Coruscant.

  Shoulders hunched and hands jammed deep into the pockets of a brown bantha-suede jacket, he started wandering. It didn’t matter to him where he was going, but just that he was going. Walking demanded little in the way of mental activity, so it gave him time to think and he’d done scant little of that which was unconnected to the mission for well over a month.

  He tried to trace the source of his discomfort, but no easy answer presented itself. Certainly the pressure of being on Coruscant had a lot to do with it. Though precautions had been taken against discovery, something as simple as his nearly being sighted by Kirtan Loor showed that no matter how much care one took, there were times when luck just ran out.

  Corran smiled. Back in CorSec they’d adulterated an old Jedi aphorism about luck to answer criminals who claimed they’d been caught because of bad luck. The Jedi Knights maintained there was no such thing as luck, just the Force. In CorSec they’d told criminals there was no such thing as bad luck, just the Corellian Security Force.

  Now there’s not even that. In news he had seen scrolling across readouts throughout Coruscant he learned that the Diktat had dissolved CorSec and had allocated most of its resources and some of its personnel to the new Public Safety Service. It didn’t take much to see the change was a purge of people with questionable loyalties to the Diktat, but whatever its purpose, it erased yet one more link he had to his past.

  His hand rose to his breastbone, but the gold medallion he normally wore was not there. General Cracken’s people had said that by keeping it he could seriously compromise security, so he’d put it away in Whistler’s small storage compartment. He knew the droid would keep it safe and, for him, knowing where it was had almost the same effect as actually wearing the good luck charm. And the Jedi whose face appears on that coin would say there’s no such thing as luck, so clearly it can’t be a good luck charm.

  It occurred to him that he was losing his focus on life. Back when he had been with CorSec things had been simple. He knew who he was and so did everyone else around him. Though things were not all black and white, the number of grey tones were limited. There wasn’t too much for him to handle, which made it that much easier to focus on what he was supposed to be doing.

  In cataloging the chaos that had dominated his life over the past five years or so, it was easy to tote things up in the negative column. His father had died. He’d left CorSec and his friends had vanished. He’d slipped in and out of various identities while on the run. After months of training and fighting for the Rebellion—escaping death by the narrowest of margins over and over again—he got stuffed onto Coruscant and nearly got spotted by one of the few people on the planet who could recognize him. He wasn’t flying. He didn’t have his good luck charm and he found himself missing Whistler, Mirax, Ooryl, and the others.

  He shivered. If I only look at things on the negative side of the balance sheet, I’ll keep imposing reasons on myself to remain unfocused. The key to getting his focus back was to isolate those things he could control and work with them. Anything else didn’t matter because he couldn’t influence it. Only by doing as much as he could to manipulate the variables under his control could he keep himself in position to make decisions instead of finding himself without options.

  What that means now is concentrating on my mission. I’m here to learn about security and that’s what I should be doing. He nodded, then slowly began to realize that his wanderings had taken him farther and lower than he would have consciously chosen to go. Coronet City on Corellia had some seedy spots, but they appeared positively immaculate and safe compared to where Corran found himself. While his location did provide him with a datapoint for his mission—namely that there was no active Imperial security to be seen this deep down—it was a small speck of silver lining in a large cloud.

  He decided to get his bearings and moved in off the street. This required him to thread his way through various makes and models of speeder bikes hovering in a wall in front of a cantina. If there was any lettering painted on the wall or door to indicate what the place was, it had long since faded too much for Corran to read it. A series of holograms flickered in sequence showing a stormtrooper’s helmet breaking into four uneven and rather messy sections. What it meant mystified him until he walked inside and down the steps and saw a sizzling orange sign that proclaimed the place to be “The Headquarters,” or, at least, did so when all the letters chose to buzz to life.

  Corran had chased fleeing Selonians through sewers with better atmosphere and more consistent lighting than the Headquarters. The narrow stairway broadened out into a foyer that ended where one side of the triangular bar blocked it off. To get farther into the cantina one had to pass through the choke points at either end of the bar. While a fair amount of dense smoke filled the air, Corran could see tables clogging the floor and booths back against the walls. Two curtained doorways were built into the back corners, leading to waste relief stations and, given the sort of clientele drawn to this type of establishment, providing access to dozens of bolt-holes.

  Speaking of bolt-holes … Blaster bolts had dotted the walls near the entrance with a dense pattern of holes. Corran noticed they tended to be grouped about a meter up from the floor and tapered off past head height for the average stormtrooper. He found this marginally reassuring, though his gut did not agree with that sentiment at all. The faster I can get out of here, the better I’ll like it.

  He k
ept his gait casual and a bit loose. His hands emerged from his pockets slowly as he approached the bar, slipping into a spot near the end over to the left. A fairly powerfully built Quarren female in a sleeveless tunic planted her hands on the bar right in front of him. “I think you’re lost.”

  In an instant Corran was back in CorSec making sweeps of various Coronet City cantinas. “If I wanted thinking, I’d not be in here. Lomin-ale.” He put enough of an edge in his voice to make her question the judgment she’d made of him. As she moved away to comply, with her facial tentacles twitching out a silent curse at him, he realized his clothes were too new for him to fit in easily. Most of the patrons wore cloaks, less out of a concession to fashion than because it concealed their identities, and not many people coming into a place like the Headquarters really wanted to be spotted.

  She returned with a small glass of ale, half of which was foam. He tossed a couple of credit coins on the bar and they disappeared instantly in her grey fist. He sipped the ale and found it wasn’t as bad as he expected, though it could have benefited from being colder. His was the only small glass being used in the place, which he took as a not-so-subtle measure of his popularity with the staff. He knew he’d not get served again, and he wasn’t inclined to linger over his drink.

  By the same token, if he just turned around and walked out, half the regulars would be all over him like chitin on a Verpine. Running away would have the same effect as flagrantly flashing credits around, or opening his jacket and letting everyone see he didn’t have a blaster with him. He considered, for a moment, trying to buy a blaster from someone, but that would put him in direct contact with gun-carrying criminals who might decide killing and robbing him was easier than selling him a weapon.

  Corran leaned on the bar and drank more of the ale. Realizing he was not in a good position, he started to look around and assess the threats suggested by the cantina’s patrons. Dozens and dozens of criminal profiles flitted through his brain. He classified people based on their species, the amount of interest they showed in him, and the kind of hunches he got when he looked at them. The people inside seven meters provided him with two definite class-one threats, a half-dozen class-two threats, and one Gamorrean who appeared scared enough that Corran tried to attach the face to any warrants that had been outstanding when he’d been in CorSec. He came up blank, then started on the booths along the wall to the left.

  What? Corran blinked his eyes and shook his head, then took another look. Through the swirling smoke, seated facing a tall, slender figure in a cloak and hood, Corran saw Tycho Celchu. Impossible.

  He looked away, then back for a third time. The individual to whom Tycho was speaking stood, eclipsing Corran’s view of the unit’s Executive Officer. In doing so the figure also managed to destroy Corran’s interest in Tycho because despite the dim light and the thick smoke, he knew the hooded and cloaked figure could only be one person.

  Kirtan Loor.

  Corran set his ale down and began to move around the bar. Loor and Tycho! He is an Imperial agent! I have to get to …

  He slammed into a large Trandoshan and rebounded from the reptilian’s chest. Someone clapped a hand on Corran’s right shoulder and he felt the muzzle of a blaster jam into his ribs. The Trandoshan closed in on the left, pinning him against the man with the blaster. “You’re going nowhere, pal.”

  Corran looked to his right and couldn’t recognize the man holding the gun on him. What he did notice about the gunman was that he had a comlink clipped to the lapel of his jacket and a small lead to an earphone in his left ear. As Corran looked back to the left to see if the Trandoshan was similarly equipped he saw the cloaked figure disappear out one of the back entrances. Tycho was gone as well.

  Depression blossomed full in the pit of Corran’s stomach, yet he knew things could easily continue to get worse.

  They did. Very easily.

  Through the doorway that swallowed the cloaked man swaggered a person swathed in garish and gaudy clothes. The smoke would have been enough to conceal his identity until he drew closer, but the cantina’s dim light allowed the diamond pupils in his eyes to shine brightly.

  Corran shook his head. “What you see when you don’t have a blaster.”

  Zekka Thyne didn’t bother to smile. “Your thoughts parallel mine.” He reached back and drew Inyri Forge from his shadow. As she came around him she handed him a blaster pistol. “Of course, now I have a blaster and am just full of ideas about what I can do with it.”

  23

  Though he marched at the head of the parade, Gavin Darklighter felt anything but happy. He’d been searched and deprived of his hold-out blaster. The Gotal walked behind him, occasionally poking him with a blaster, and Asyr Sei’lar walked on his right. She seldom looked over at him, but when she did he saw only venom in her violet eyes.

  The other Rogues had been dragged along in his wake, with a thick knot of denizens from the cantina traveling behind them. The Rogues had been allowed to keep their weapons, but their power packs had been taken away, reducing the blasters to oddly shaped clubs. Shiel seemed the most angry, but Aril and Ooryl insulated him from the individuals on either side so no violence broke out.

  Asyr led the way through a set of corridors and stairways that provided easy and instant access to the city’s lower reaches. Unlike the pathways Gavin and Shiel had located, this one appeared to have been built in place, not hacked out of what construction droids had created. It didn’t seem that new—and certainly not as new as Asyr had made the Alien Combine sound—so Gavin guessed it had been built after a Hutt or some other criminal bribed the city planners to program it into a construction droid.

  The journey ended in a large rectangular warehouse area that they entered through double doors in one of the narrow walls. Scattered throughout the space were all sorts of makeshift hovels. They had been cobbled together from ferrocrete blocks, duraplast packaging, broken sheets of transparisteel, and ragged bits of cloth. Dwellings for larger creatures formed the foundation of the makeshift apartment blocks. Smaller creatures like Sullustans, Ugnaughts, and Jawas occupied the upper levels. Gavin felt pretty certain things actually roosted up in the shadows ten meters overhead, but the light was too dim for him to see more than silhouettes moving about.

  The Bothan led them to a central clearing. Wide roll-up doors had been slid down in place where they bisected the longer walls. The one off to Gavin’s left had a hole cut in it large enough to permit transit by most humanoid creatures. A couple of Twi’leks and a Rodian bearing guns stood watch nearby. Since both of the roll-up doors were large enough to admit repulsorlift trucks, Gavin assumed they led out onto whatever passed for streets at this level of the city.

  Asyr stopped Gavin at the center of the clearing. The rest of the aliens fanned out in a semicircle behind them to ring half the clearing. This left the rest of the Rogues halfway between Gavin and the circle. The Gotal came around from behind him and stalked forward to where a steel post had been set into the duracrete floor. He picked up the hammer that hung from a string and pounded it against the post’s flattened top.

  A heavy mournful tone rang from the post and filled the room. Gavin could feel vibrations play through the floor. All around curious faces peered out through holes, windows, and doorways in the hovels. The Gotal hit the post again, summoning more people to come out of their homes. He hit it a third and final time, then let the hammer drop.

  Gavin heard the whir of an engine and looked up as a box drifted forward and slowly down. Cables lowered it from the mobile winch moving along tracks out away from the far wall. Lights came on inside the box, revealing windows and a doorway. As the floating building came to rest against the floor, the doorway opened and a male Devaronian stepped forth. The black cloak he wore nearly shrouded all of him—what little of his rotund belly and chest it didn’t cover made a bright scarlet stripe down his middle that matched the tone of his flesh.

  Asyr bowed her head in his direction. “Dmaynel, we have b
rought you one of the bigoted men who has traveled into Invisec to mock us. He is the one we should use as the message we wish to send to the Empire.”

  Light reflected white from the Devaronian’s sable horns. He stepped forward and took Gavin’s chin in his hand. His fingernails pressed hard into Gavin’s flesh, but Gavin did not flinch nor try to pull away. He stared down into Dmaynel’s dark eyes and did his best to hide his fear.

  The Devaronian smiled, then released him and stepped back. “You have chosen wisely, Asyr. He is youthful and even handsome by their standards. His body will say all we want to say, and more.”

  “Indeed,” said Nawara Ven, “it will let them know they are superior to all of us in every way they think now and new ones as well.”

  “Who are you?”

  The Bothan scowled. “These five were with this Man.”

  Dmaynel looked past Gavin. “And you five are his friends?”

  “We are, and proud to be so.” Nawara Ven appeared at Gavin’s left hand. “I have known him for well over six standard months and consider him one of the best friends I have ever had.”

  The Devaronian folded his arms across his chest. “It is rare among us to find one who so openly professes his friendship with a bigot.”

  Nawara smiled. “And what proof do you have that he is a bigot?”

  Asyr snarled. “He refused to dance with me.”

  The Twi’lek opened his arms. “Of course, how could I have forgotten? Refusing to dance is a sign of being a bigot. What if I had refused your request? Would I have been a bigot?”

  “You were with her.”

  “The human female, yes.” Nawara nodded slowly. “So you would say I would have had a reason to refuse you.”

  Asyr nervously smoothed the fur on her face. “Yes, you would have.”

  “Is it not possible, then, that this Man had a reason to refuse you?”

  “He did. He is a bigot.”