There was the familiar crack of a blastsword going off, and a yelp of
pain.
"and his feud with"
"Irasal 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 bolstered 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 somethingthe 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 mistakes."
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
"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."
"Let me make it formal." Wedge pulled back, to stand, to adopt a
traditional pose, but Iella didn't release him.
"Later," she said. "After Adumar. Let's just say for now that I'm willing
to stop making mistakes if you are."
"It's a deal." He supposed she wanted to hear the words in surroundings
less alien, in times less stressful.
"But you need to understand something. No matter what a great leader you
may be, Intelligence doesn't take orders from Starfighter Command."
"Or the other way around."
"Right. Or the other way around."
"I can live with that."
Her expression became worried. "Can you live with this? Wedge, I'm an
Intelligence officer. If my superior tells me to, I may end up on the opposite
side from you."
"Just until this Adumar mess is over," he reminded her.
She nodded. "But will you be able to forgive me? If I have to throw a net
over you and ship you offworld because of your damned fool cockpit-jockey
antics?"
"I'd forgive you. Though I won't have to." He gave her a confident grin.
"You wouldn't be able to catch me."
Her return smile was that of a well-fed predator. "I have the feeling I
can catch you anytime I want." She kissed him again.
When Wedge finally left Iella's quarters, Janson moved out from his
hiding position to join him. Janson was not graceful going down the stairs;
one of his knees tended to pop, and his posture was stiff.
"You're getting old, Wes."
"I am not old. I'm stiff from waiting for hours in that stupid corner.
With just three pastries off the Allegiance to sustain me. Hiding out from all
the other skulker traffic. Did you get what you wanted from Iella?"
Wedge turned a surprised face toward Janson. "What?"
"The holocomm access to General Cracken? Did she say you could?"
"Oh, that. No." He felt his smile return. Wes was merely baiting him, as
usual. "Say, what happened next door, anyway?"
They reached the bottom of the stairs and marched, Janson hobbling,
through the foyer toward the street. "The guy we met hit the guy who lived
there just as he was going in. They fought for few seconds, and then there was
a lot of quiet, and then the guy we talked to came staggering out of there
with the other guy across his shoulders. Dead, I think. And me without anyone
to bet with."
They re ached the street. Wedge was struck sideways by a blast of intense
light; he stumbled, threw up his sleeve to block the glare. "Sithspit! What's
that?"
"That's the sun, Wedge. It's after dawn."
"Well, it offends me. Turn it off."
"It's a hundred thirty, hundred forty million klicks from here."
"Go up in your X-wing and shoot it down for me."
"You're acting very strangely, chief. Come on, this way." Janson tugged
Wedge in the direction of their quarters. "Something else odd happened during
the night."
"What?"
"In the darkest, quietest hoursyou hardly ever even heard someone
swinging on a cable from balcony to balcony, and there were barely two knife
fights out there to keep me awakeI thought I heard breathing."
Wedge afforded him an amused glance. "You breathe, don't you? In between
fits of bragging, that is."
sitting there with my back to the wall, I thought I heard the creak of someone
on the stairs. Coming up, I think. I turned to look around the corner and
there was no one to be seen... though the entire stairwell wasn't lit, of
course. Someone could have been standing in the deepest shadows, the way I was
in that hallway. I waited and didn't hear anything more, and then I held my
breath and listened. I thought I heard someone breathing over there, but
eventually there was a roaring in my ears"
"That old lack of oxygen thing will get you every time. How much brain
damage did you suffer?"
"Wedge..."
"And, more importantly, was it to any of the parts of your brain that you
use, or was it in the majority portion?"
"Wedge... I really think someone was spying."
"Well, you should have introduced yourself." Wedge moved over to the
street curb and walked along its very edge, balancing like a high-wire walker.
"Wedge, stop acting like a kid. You're embarrassing me."
Wedge had been asleep in his quarters for five minutes when he became
aware of a noise from the main room shouting, crashing of furniture.
Sleepily, he pulled on a robe and stumbled over to open his door.
Tomer Darpen was in the main room, walking in circles around the main
table. Tycho stood slumped, yawning, in the doorway to his room. Hobbie was
sprawled on the main room floor, immediately behind him a tipped-over chair
showing how he'd come to end up prone, and was carefully aiming a comlink at
Tomer and thumbing its on-off switch as though firing a blaster at the
diplomat; his expression was groggy enough to suggest that's exactly what he
thought he was doing. Janson emerged in his own doorway, his robe askew, and
if glares were lasers Tomer would have been the victim of a dual-linked direct
strike.
Tomer was speaking in a voice loud enough to awaken sleepers on the
floors immediately above and below "very promising indeed, but we need to be
there with our best faces on..." Making the turn at the end of the table, he
caught sight of Wedge. "General! Excellent news.
"Excellent enough to persuade Hobbie to spare your life, I hope," Wedge
said.
Tomer glanced at the semiconscious pilot. "Maybe even that good. As you
know, the perator of Cartann, two days ago, flew in representatives of all of
Adumar's nations for purposes of discussing the foundation of a world
government."
"I didn't know," Wedge said. "Did you include that in a briefing you sent
us?"
"Iuh, oh." Tomer looked abashed, gave Wedge an apologetic look. "My
mistake. I thought we'd done so. At any rate, we've received word from the
perator's palace that they'll be making an announcement on that subject this
morning."
"... ths mornng," said the cabinet beside him, its words muffled.
Tomer glanced at it. "What's this?"
"Wt's ths?" said the cabinet.
"Cabinet," Wedge said.
"I know it's a cabinet, but it's talking."
"...ts tlkng," said the cabinet.
"Oh, that," said Janson. "It's the Cartann Minister of Crawling Into Very
Small Spaces."
Tycho nodded. "He bet Wedge that he could fold himself into that cabinet,
around the shelves and all."
Hobbie finally found his voice, though it was gravelly from lost sleep.
"Never bet against Wedge," he said. "The minister gets to stay there until he
admits that it was a stupid bet and Wedge doesn't owe him anything."
Tomer looked among them, his expression making it clear that he knew they
were kidding... and yet there was still a trace of uncertainty to it. "Anyway,
" he said, "be ready and at the perator's palace in an hour, please."
"... hr, pis," said the cabinet.
"We'll be ready," Wedge said.
When Tomer was gone, Wedge opened the cabinet. Whitecap was still there,
but less of him; the back of his head was open, and it was evident that
hardware once mounted within him was missing.
"Looks like Hallis did some scavenging," Tycho said.
"Looks like Hallis"
Wedge shut the cabinet against further words. "Where is she, anyway?
Haven't seen her recently."
Tycho shrugged. "Haven't seen Cheriss either, not since some time last
night. I think we're being abandoned by our retinue."
Janson moved to the closet of not-yet-claimed Adumari garments. "What to
wear, what to wear..."
"Dress uniforms, please," Wedge said.
The others groaned.
"No, this is an official diplomatic function. From now on, at all such
functions, it's dress uniforms. Issue blasters and vibroblades, but no
blastswords. We're not Adumari, and it's time to stop legitimizing their bad
behavior; we won't emulate them in any way." Wedge clapped his hands together.
"Let's go, people."
"Great," Hobbie said. "Who brought the old Wedge out of retirement?"
8
The New Republic officers' dress uniformdesigned in committee long ago,
implemented months or years before Wedge was even aware of its existencewas
not the fashion disaster its wearers made it out to be.
It started with a black sleeveless turtleneck body stocking and boots.
Over it went a white jacket, a V-necked garment that fastened at about navel
level and below. A broad red band ran along the left hem of the garment, up
over the shoulder and at an angle down the back, with a rank designation in
gold on the red band above the wearer's left breast. A gray belt over the
jacket completed the outfit.
There were variations to the uniform, with Starfighter Command utilizing
black body stockings and Fleet Command preferring gray, for instance. Higher-
ranking officers often preferred instead, and were allowed, to wear somewhat
costlier and better-kept versions of their day uniforms in formal
circumstances.
It was, Wedge thought, the body stocking that most wearers objected to.
Flight suits and pilot day uniforms
"The one where the man went after he'd been through your quarters."
"Ah, that one." Wedge nodded. "It belongs to Tomer Darpen."
She looked crestfallen. "You already knew."
"No, I guessed, based on some other evidence I've picked up. It's very
valuable to me to have your confirmation. Your work wasn't wasted. Where is
your recording unit?"
She pointed to her hair. The elaborate combs holding her hairstyle in
place each featured several crystals, plus smaller stones, some of which
seemed to be glowing. "The lenses and microphones are up here, and I have
cables down to the processor and storage memory, which are on the small of my
back. I can even zoom with sight and sound."
"Less menacing that way. I think you'll get further with children with a
rig like this."
"I suspect you're right." Clusters of Adumari began to converge on the
pilots. "Time for me to leave. I'll talk to you later." She moved off into the
crowd, drawing her cloak around her, effortlessly becoming an anonymous
Adumari woman.
Wedge steeled himself for another endless round of handshaking and
introductions. But the diplomatic ritual was to have an unexpected benefit
The fifth introduction he received was from the Cartann Minister of Cognitive
Machinery, and on his arm was Iella Wessiri. Today she was in another sheath
dress, this one ranging from red to yellow-gold depending on the angle from
which one viewed the material, and how it hung upon her; when she was in
motion, it was like watching fire walk. "This young lady," the wispy-bearded
minister said, "is, like yourself, an otherworlder, and has expressed an
interest in meeting the famous pilot. I plucked her from work today so that
she might do so." were baggy things festooned with pockets. They were
comfortable. The wearer could carry his datapad, plus amusements and weapons
for a half squad, in those pockets. The dress uniform body stocking had no
pockets, and the jacket had only a couple of small onesbarely large enough
for datacards. Too, the body stocking revealed any extra weight its wearer
might be carrying, a fact not at all appreciated by image-conscious officers..
. and pilots were often the most image-conscious of all.
But the uniforms tended to have an effect on their audience. When Wedge