surpriseand the good cheer that meant he now had some new trouble to cause.
The newcomer glanced at Janson and shook his head regretfully. "I should
have known. Wes Janson. Now my life can take on the aspect of a personal hell.
" He returned his attention to Wedge. "Tomer Darpen. New Republic Diplomatic
Corps. I'm your liaison to the people of Adumar."
"Good to have one," Wedge said. "This is Colonel Tycho Celchu, Major
Hobbie Klivian. Janson you've obviously experienced already. Mind telling us
what that assault during our arrival was all about? I assume an assassination
attempt."
Tomer winced. "Not precisely. They were probably young, undisciplined
pilots trying to achieve some personal honor by killing you in a fair
dogfight. I doubt it was anything personal."
"You do." Wedge gave him a dark look. "I take it very personally. We just
had to vape four pilots in what is theoretically a friendly zone. Is this
likely to happen again?"
Tomer shrugged. "Probably not. We'll adjust security measures to reduce
the likelihood."
Wedge hesitated, not satisfied by Tomer's explanations; there was
obviously a lot more he wasn't saying. "All right, for now. What's expected of
us here?"
"Not much." Tomer gestured at the crowd. "A short speech for the
assembly. Speaking of which..." He pulled a round silver object, three
centimeters across, from a pocket. It had a clip on the back. By use of the
clip, without prelude or request for permission, Tomer fixed it to Wedge's
collar. "This is an Adumari comlink. This one is keyed to the speakers on the
poles where the flatcams are."
Wedge raised an eyebrow. "Flatcams? They don't record in holo?"
"No, but we have some holocams up there, too, for our own records and to
keep our documentarian from going mad. Anyway, please don't do anything too
elaborate with the speech until you're used to the Adumari dialect of Basic;
pronunciation is a bit tricky, and the crowd may not understand you. After the
speech, we settle you into quarters, give you some orientation, and you can
dress for the ball. That's where all the politicking and introducing really
take place."
Wedge fingered the Adumari comlink. He didn't care for the familiar way
Tomer had placed it on him, but he decided not to pursue the matter at this
time. "We don't meet the planetary president or representative here?"
Tomer shook his head. "No, the, ah, perator of Car-tann offers you
considerable honor by not showing up here."
Wedge said, "Perator is whatplanetary president?" "Well, here it's an
inherited rather than elected title," Tomer said. "But he has the support of
the people through demonstrations of his piloting leadership during his youth.
And his absence here means, basically, that he doesn't steal any of the
attention the crowd would otherwise pay you." He gestured toward the edge of
the landing area, where steps led up to the stage. "After you. After all of
you, actually. Mere civilians, even former pilots, don't presume to walk
beside active pilots unless invited."
Janson smiled. "I like this place. I'm going to go shopping for land and
build myself a retreat." He fell in step behind Wedge. "Hey, boss, do you have
a speech ready?" "No."
"So you're going to sound like a complete idiot, right?"
Wedge turned to offer him a smile that was more malice than cheerfulness.
"Once, maybe. But since I made general and have to do this all the time, I've
developed the Antilles Four-Step Instant Speech."
Janson gave him a dubious look. "This I have to hear."
Once on the stage, Wedge headed to its center and raised his hand with a
theatricality that wasn't really part of his naturejust a by-product of the
numerous public-relations tours he'd taken after the death of Emperor
Palpatine. The crowd roar increased, but he waved it down and the noise
dropped again. He thumbed the switch on the Adumari comlink.
Step one Remind them who everyone is in case they've forgotten. "People
of Adumar, I am Wedge Antilles, and it's my pleasure to meet you at last." His
words blasted out from speakers set up on four strategically positioned metal
poles around the plaza.
The audience roared again, but the noise quickly modulated into a chant
but dismissed it from his mind. That answer would wait.
Step two Remind them what you're here for. "And as a representative of
the New Republic, I'm pleased to be present at this historic meeting of our
great peoples." The cheering became more generalized, with the "Car-tann"
chants slowly dying out.
Step three Something personal, so they'll know you're paying attention.
Wedge gestured out at the flat display panels. "I must admit, I find this
display very heartwarming. It's possibly the best greeting I've ever received.
I'll have to find out if I can replicate it on the walls of my quarters back
home." Some laughter mixed in with the shouting and cheering.
Step four Wrap it up before you make a fool of yourself. "I expect to
have more to say once I've settled in, but for now, thank you for this warm
welcome." He waved again and took a step back, as if abandoning a lectern,
then switched off the comlink. The crowd's cheers continued.
His pilots advanced to flank him and joined in waving at the crowd. He
heard Tomer's voice from immediately behind him "This is good. If you can
just stand here and wave for a while, that'll satisfy diplomatic obligations,
and then we can get you to your quarters."
"All right." Wedge took some time to look at the crowd.
They were men, women, and children, all ages, consistently light-
complected, though their hair color ranged throughout the color spectrumWedge
suspected that many of the colors were artificial in origin. Facial hair was
common among the men, especially elaborate mustaches.
There was a wide variance in the color and cut of their clothing, but
some consistencies as well. Males and many females wore tights and close-
fitting boots in black, with long shirts with flowing sleeves. Other women
wore long dresses, tight from the torso down but again with the broad,
rippling sleeves. About half of the people wore headgear, some sort of tight-
fitting cloth or leather skullcap matching one color from the rest of their
attire; many of the skullcaps featured a sort of visor, a curved band of what
looked like heavily polarized transparisteel, that fell before the wearer's
eyes or could be raised up to their foreheads.
Belts were common, usually narrow single-color loops with no buckle or
attachment showing. Some people wore three or four in different colors; others
wore them looping from one hip to the opposite shoulder; others still wore
both waist and shoulder belt rigs.
And weapons were everywhere. From most of these belts hung sheathed long
blades, short blades, pistols of some variety. Wedge could see few in the
audience who were not armed in some way; even the children had knives at their
belts.
It occurred to Wedge, belat
edly, that he could see no security detail on
duty around this stage. He glanced at Tycho; the colonel's return glance
indicated that he, too, noticed the lack.
Wedge said, "Tomer, I suppose I'm not concerned if you're not, but what
are you using for security here?"
Tomer's answer was tinged with amusement. "Why, the crowd."
"Ah. And what if they wanted to cause a problem?"
"Others would stop them," Tomer said. "For instance, let's say someone
jumped on the stage with the intent of killing you. He'd give you fair
warning, of course, and choice of weapons."
"Of course," Wedge repeated.
"Then you could choose to kill him yourself or refuse him. If you
refused, he should withdraw, but might theoretically press the issue, if he
was stupid."
"That's where security issues be come a trifle more important," Wedge
said.
"If he pressed the issue, which is a grave breach of etiquette"
Wedge heard Janson snort in amusement.
"then someone in the crowd would probably shoot him dead, just to please
you."
Wedge glanced back at the diplomat. "Just like that."
"Just like that."
"Oh, stop worrying, Wedge." Janson's grin was infectious. "It's obvious
they adore you. You could throw up all over yourself and they'd love it. By
nightfall they'd all be doing it. They'd call it the 'Wedge Purge.' They'd be
eating different-colored foods just to add variety."
Wedge felt his stomach lurch. He half turned to glare accusingly at
Tycho. "I thought maybe you'd be able to do what I never could. Get Wes up to
an emotional age of fourteen, maybe fifteen."
Tycho gave him a tight little shake of the head. "No power in the
universe could do that. Not Darth Vader and the dark side of the Force, not
the nuclear devastation of an exploding sun."
Janson waved at the audience. "They'd be competing for distance and
volume."
"Wes, just shut up. Tomer, how is it that you know this reprobate?"
The diplomat offered a rueful shake of his head. "I was once a pilot.
Briefly. Tierfon Yellow Aces. My talents lay elsewhere, though, so I ended up
in a less violent service."
Janson nodded amiably. "His talents certainly did lie elsewhere. They
weren't in landing. Tomer here made the Aces' list for a landing almost
horrible enough to kill him two different ways."
Tomer sighed and ignored him.
"His Y-wing was shot to pieces and his repulsorlifts were dead," Janson
continued. "Had to land, though, or he'd never get dinner. Luckily we were
based on a lowgrav moon at the time, big long stretch of duracrete serving as
a landing zone. All the other Y-wings clear off the landing zone and he lines
up on it, descends toward it like he was landing an atmospheric fighter
without repulsorlifts. Drops his skids as he gets close. The skids take the
initial impact but he bounces, so he's like some sort of hop-and-grab insect
all down the duracrete. But he's lucky enough that he stays top side up.
Finally he's bled off a lot of momentum, but he loses control and his Y-wing
rolls. Comes to a stop on its belly and he's safe. Then" Janson's face
became more merry as he relived the incident"his ejector seat malfunctions
and shoots him off toward space. With grav that low, he achieves escape
velocity. We had to send a rescue shuttle up after him or he'd still be
sailing through the void, one cold cadaver."
"I saved the astromech," Tomer said. "And the Y-wing was repairable."
"Sure," Janson said. "But seeing you as that wish-
bone skidded to a stop, seeing you sag in relief and then, poof! you're
headed toward the stars"
Tomer caught Wedge's eye. "As you can see, I've provided amusement for
years."
"Efficient use of effort," Hobbie said. "When do we eat?"
3
One of those processional vehiclesa giant flatbed that rode the ground
on wheels, with a raised front control panel where the driver stood, and with
braces for the passengers to lean back against as they rodeconveyed Red
Flight, Tomer, and Hallis from the plaza. It wasn't fast going; the crowd did
not want to part to admit them, but preferred to shout and jump and wave to
attract the pilots' attention. Wedge solved that problem by moving to the
vehicle's side and reaching out to shake hands as they passed; suddenly the
members of the crowd wanted to be beside the vehicle rather than before it,
and the vehicle's speed increased. The other pilots moved to the sides as
well, and within minutes the vehicle was beyond the edges of the crowd and
heading out into the city's avenues.
Wedge saw that the city's love affair with balconies was not limited to
the avenues they'd flown above. Every building on every street facing was
thick with balconies. Some had rope bridges hung between adjacent balconies,
and a few had such strung across streets. Wherever they drove, people thronged
their balcony rails and waved down at them. The building exteriors were also
decorated, on the ground floor at eye level, with panels about a meter wide by
half a meter high that showed two-dimensional images. Tomer called them
flatscreens, and some buildings had continuous banks of them all around their
exteriors.
"I am so glad the people of this planet like to wave and shake hands,"
Janson said.
Wedge gave him a curious glance. "Why is that?"
"Well, what if their usual greeting for visiting dignitaries was to throw
paint?"
"Point taken."
Their conveyance pulled up before one of the taller and more richly
appointed buildings they'd seen, and minutes later Tomer led the four pilots
into a suite of rooms on an upper floor; their support crew had already been
separated off, installed in rooms lower down in the building. "These are the
quarters of a bachelor half squad recently reduced in combat," Tomer said.
"The survivor gladly abandoned it for the duration of your stay, for your
comfort."
Wedge took a look around. The floor, again, looked like stone, this time
a green marble thickly decorated with silvery veins, but like the plaza
flooring it gave slightly when stepped upon. There was one main room, mostly
open, with a few padded chairs around the edges. Several arched exits led to
round-topped doors of a silver hue. The walls were hung with light blue
draperies; just behind the top of the drapes, banks of lights shone up on the
off-white ceiling, offering indirect lighting for the chamber.
Tomer pointed to four of the doorways. "Bedchambers there, there, there,
and there." Two of the building porters, adolescent boys who could not stop
grinning, obligingly carried the pilots' bags to those chambers.
Tomer gestured to the bank of drapes opposite the entry into the main
chamber "Your balcony there. It's a pilot's balcony, by the way."
Wedge said, "Which means what?"
"Extra-broad and reinforced, and with nothing, including cables, for a
level or two aboveso you can land your starfighters on it," Tomer said. "You
can move your X-wings here at your leisure, or I can get a member of the
&nbs
p; support crew to do it"
"We'll move them," Wedge said. "Speaking of those cableswhat are they
for?"
Tomer grinned. "Private communications from building to building,
informal communications. Say you're a young lady in one building, and your
young man lives in the next"
"You run a comm cable." Wedge shook his head wonderingly. "There are
hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of them out there."
"None to your quarters, though; we've had them removed. You can put some
in if you choose." Tomer gestured again. "Kitchen through there, though I
doubt you'll have the opportunity to feed yourself much while you're here. If
you choose to dine here and you prefer not to cook, the building comlink is
behind that drape." He pointed to one of the main chamber's long walls, near
the center. "Servants are standing by for any of your needs."
"Any of them?" Janson asked.
"No," Hobbie said. "Some of your needs stray too far outside human norms.
"
"Meaning," Tomer continued, just a trace of testiness creeping into his
voice, "that a cook, a courier, a dresser, and a few others are always
standing by. If you want a late-night meal or something, press the button and
ask for a cook. That's all it takes." He gestured to another door. "The
refresher. You'll be dealing with unfamiliar plumbing, which you'll probably
think of as backworld stuff, so I'll need to show you how the devices work."
Hobbie nodded. "A refresher course." Janson made a face. "You beat me to
it." Wedge gestured at the two doors not already identified. "And those?"
"Extra bedchambers. This was essentially a dormitory for six unmarried
pilots."
"Good." Wedge nodded. "We'll set up one for workouts, and the other will
be our operations center. These quarters have been swept for listening
devices?"
"Oh, yes." Tomer smiled. "And they were, of course, thick with such
gadgets. We've removed them."
"It sounds as though we're set up, then," Wedge said. "What's next on our
agenda?"
"Get cleaned up and get into your dress uniforms; your court dinner with
the perator at his palace is in about two hours."
"Ugh," Janson said. Hobbie made an unhappy face. "They're not reacting to
the idea of meeting the perator," Tycho was quick to explain. "It's the dress