"I need to see her. Tonight. As soon as we get back to our quarters and
change into native dress."
Janson winced. "Am I going to get any sleep tonight?"
"Sleep when you usually do. During pilot briefings. During missions."
"Oh, that's right."
The quarters of Iella Wessirior Fiana Novarrwere some distance from
Wedge's quarters, in a part of Cartann where buildings seldom rose over six
stories, where balconies sometimes sagged in the middle, where the glow bulbs
illuminating the streets and flatscreens mounted on building exteriors were
often burned out or flickering their way to uselessness. Still, the clothing
on pedestrians showy and colorful, if often a trifle wornindicated that the
residents of this area were far better off, financially, than the drones and
drudges Wedge had seen in the missile manufacturing facility.
Iella's building was a shadowy five-story rectangle situated between two
taller constructions, with a single entrance leading to the ground-floor
foyer. There was no security station, no building guards, not even an
ascender. They took four flights of steps up to Iella's floor, Janson
switching off power to the flatscreen panels on his cloak in order that he not
glow at an inopportune moment.
There was no answer to their knock at her door. Wedge waited half a
minute, knocked again, waited a while more, and shrugged. "We wait," he said.
He surveyed the hallway they were in. Iella's door was near to the stairwell;
on the far side of the railings that guarded the stairwell was a corridor
leading into blackness. "There," Wedge said.
They were in luck. The corridor led to no more rooms, but to a curtained-
off window overlooking the street. They could wait just around the corner,
keeping an eye on Iella's door, exposing themselves to very little danger of
being seen while they watched.
"I know a game to help us while away the time," Janson said.
"Sure."
"First, let's go back out and meet a couple of women."
"Wes."
"Well, it was a thought."
Minutes later, a silhouette, a cloaked figure, approached Iella's
doorway... and then bypassed it, moving on to the next door. It knocked
quietly, waited, determined that the door was locked, and then looked around.
Finally, it came creeping in the direction of Wedge and Janson.
When it was a few meters away, the figure apparently realized that two
men already waited in that shadowy nook; it stopped and put its hand on its
belt. Even in the dimness Wedge could see the handle of an Adumari pistol.
Wedge drew, but heard the rasp of metal on leather from beside him and was not
surprised to see Janson's blaster leveled first.
The newcomer, his pistol in hand but not aimed, leaned forward. Wedge saw
glints of his eyes beneath the hood of his cloak. "You are not here for me,
Irasal ke Voltin?"
Wedge shook his head, slowly, not taking his attention from the man's
pistol.
With his blaster, the newcomer pointed toward the doorway whose knob he
had tried. "You wait for him?"
Wedge again shook his head. Wedge pointed to Iella's door, the only other
doorway visible from their position. He dared not speak; his accent would give
him away as a non-Adumari.
"Ah. She of the glorious hair. Are you here from rage" he touched his
fingers, still wrapped around the pistol butt, to his heart"or from love?" He
touched them to his lips.
Wedge touched his own fist to his lips.
"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 itand
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 off
world 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 dark - ened 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 oth
er 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 offworldyour employers wouldn't let youbut
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 1 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 the 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?"
"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. "Urn, 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"