"You mean, it's a very decorative way to get killed. You're awfully
unconcerned."
Tomer shrugged. "This is their planet, Wedge. Their way of life. It's for
me to understand it... not to try to change it."
Cheriss, backing away from an especially aggressive advance, caught
Depird's blastsword blade centimeters below the tip with her dagger. She swung
it out of line and brought her own blastsword point to bear in a single,
beautifully fluid motion. Depird tried to check his forward motion but
couldn'this body arched away from her blade but he ran upon it anyway. There
was a sharp crack, a shriek of pain from him, and he was thrown to the floor
on his back. He lay there writhing, a blackened patch on his tunic at the
center of his chest, smoke rising from it.
Cheriss, barely winded, set her dagger on the floor. She turned to smile
at Wedge, then extended her hand toward him, palm up; a moment later, she
turned it palm down.
"You get to choose," Tomer whispered. "Palm up means she spares him. Palm
down means she kills him. Palm up will suggest excessive sentimentality on
your partnot something the Adumari hope to see in a fighter pilot."
Wedge stared at him. "You think I should let him die?" he whispered.
Tomer shrugged. "I'm not expressing an opinion. Just analyzing actions
and consequences."
Wedge put on his sternest face, his offended officer face, and stepped
out into the open ring. He moved to stand over Depird, who writhed in obvious
agony. The duelist was unable entirely to keep quiet; each of his breaths
emerged as a moan.
Wedge studied him critically for several seconds, then raised his gaze to
Cheriss's. He spoke loudly enough for all to hear. "This boy needs to learn to
handle pain, so that when he does die, he does not embarrass his family." He
held out his hand, palm up.
Cheriss shrugged and nodded, not apparently both - ered. Some applause
broke out from the audience, and some murmuring; 6ut Wedge could see the
perator nod agreeably, and suddenly all the courtiers around the ruler were
applauding, and the applause spread from there to the rest of the crowd.
Wedge returned to his place in the audience. As he approached, Tomer,
too, applauded. "A good solution," Tomer said, his voice barely audible over
the crowd. "Credible."
"We're going to talk about this later," Wedge said. "And you're not going
to enjoy it." He looked around for his pilots and spotted them, all three
together, standing toward the back of the audience ring.
The crowd broke up, its members drifting away, and Wedge saw the
perator's personal retinue move toward a side exit. Two men dressed in the
featureless brown livery worn by the door guards collected Depird, hauling him
unceremoniously to his feet and helping him toward the main exit. Janson
caught his eye and grinned uninformatively.
"Did you like it?"
Wedge turned. Cheriss, her weapons once again sheathed, stood before him.
Her smile was, oddly, just a little uncertain.
"He certainly did," Tomer said. "I thought it was a very impressive,
skillful display," Wedge said truthfully. "With an interesting aesthetic
component. Do I understand right that his objection to you was that you'd
beaten his brother in a tournament?" She nodded. "In the finals of the last
Cartann Ground Championship. Depird's brother, unlike Depird, was one of the
few pilots who really knew how to handle a blastsword. Almost a pity that he
died of his injuries."
"Pity. Um, Cheriss, what purpose did the ground championship serve, other
than to establish you as the new ground champion?"
She smiled. "Well, none, I suppose." "Entertainment," Tomer said. "And
continuation of a tradition dear to the hearts of the people of Cartann."
"That, too," Cheriss said. Janson appeared beside Wedge. "News," he said.
4
They were on foot in the streets of the city of Cartann, but nearly
anonymousthe people on the street accorded them not a second glance. Wedge
supposed it was because they were in native dress; had they been in their New
Republic flight suits or dress uniforms, he was certain they'd be mobbed.
conversation as she led them back to their building.
"You don't speak for me," Wedge said. "Ever." The words originated in a
cold spot deep in Wedge's gut, but Tomer seemed oblivious to Wedge's emotion.
The diplomat merely shrugged. "I understand. But you have to understand that
sometimes I can't let you say the first thing to pop out of your head. Until
you know a lot more about the way things work in Cartann, you're likely to
precipitate an interplanetary crisis with an ill-thought-out remark."
"Tomer, I direct your attention to the word 'let.' You've misused it. You
don't 'let' me, or 'not let' me, anything. Understand?"
"I understand completely. You're the one who doesn't understand. You shot
your mouth off tonight and precipitated a duel you immediately wanted to stop.
Should I step aside, keep quiet, and let you do that again? Or something
worse?"
"No." Wedge fumed for a few moments. "We have to work out a way to do
this. To work together. But I'm not going to blindly follow your lead."
"It would be better for everyone if you did." Tomer caught sight of
Wedge's expression. "Well, on another matter, what's this news Janson brings
us?"
"Pilot news," Wedge said. "Results of some Red Flight betting. And rather
than compromise myself with the diplomatic corps by letting you know just how
badly I lost, I'm going to ask you to go on ahead. We'll be along to our
quarters after a while."
Tomer frowned, obviously trying to figure out how to phrase a refusal,
then shrugged. "Contact me by comlink if you need me." He increased his pace,
said a word or two to Cheriss as he passed her , then disappeared into
pedestrian traffic ahead.
"It's Iella, all right," Janson said. "She wants to see you. I mean, it
didn't seem to be an urgent thing. I think she was happier to see me, of
course. She even asked about Hobbie."
Hobbie brightened. "She did?"
"Oh, yes. 'How's old Bugbite?' she asked."
Hobbie's shoulders slumped. When first he'd met Iella, years ago, on a
covert mission to Corellia, he'd been stung in the face by a local insect.
Iella's partner Corran Horn, both of them then investigators with Corellian
Security, had shot him down with that nickname. " She did not."
Janson's grin deepened, but he returned his attention to Wedge. "And she
did want to talk to you. Underneath the shortest of the flat displays around
the plaza where we landed, at midnight tomorrow. You have to make sure that
you're not being shadowed. You can't compromise her cover identity."
"What is her cover identity?"
"She's some sort of computer slicer. Hired a while back to develop
programs to translate and interface between Cartann computers and New Republic
and Imperial computers."
"Define 'a while back,' " Wedge said.
Janson shrugged. "I'm not sure. At least severa
l weeks, possibly several
months."
Wedge looked between his pilots. "There's something very odd going on
here. I had the impression from General Cracken that a mapping ship
accidentally discovered this planetwhich had been cut off from the rest of
galactic civilization for thousands of yearsa short time ago. Immediately
afterward, the New Republic was supposed to have dispatched a diplomatic
delegation, which immediately discovered that they preferred dealing with
pilots, which immediately resulted in our being sent here. Quick, quick,
quick.
"But now I find that the Adumari people have hyperdrives; they even have
some hyperdrive-equipped fighters. They've brought in specialists to link up
their computer systems with ours. They've contrived to bring in pilots from
the Empire at the same time we're here, and even set things up so that the two
opposing groups of pilots wouldn't know about one another until we bumped into
one another tonight. What do you want to bet that we haven't been brought here
chiefly because they love pilots? We've been brought here to duel with our
opposite numbers."
"It's worse than that," Hobbie said.
The others looked at him. "You know," Janson said, "whenever the name of
Derek 'Hobbie' Klivian comes up, the words 'It's worse than that' ring in my
ears. Sometimes I hear them when I'm dreaming."
Hobbie ignored him. "Wedge, while Janson was politely asking Iella about
her love life" "I wasn't!"
"I was talking to people about things. Asking questions instead of
answering them. And I found out that Adumar doesn't even have a world
government. The perator of Cartann doesn't represent the whole world."
"That would certainly explain why they all seem to identify more with
this nation than with their world," Wedge said. "What do they have?"
"Well, remember that all the answers I got were from Cartann loyalists."
Hobbie shrugged, apologetic. "But if you read past the text stream to the data
stream, it looks as though Cartann is the biggest of a large number of
nations, and it controls several other nations besides. Through tradition and
military. It controls something like more than half the planet. So they could
set up trade treaties, that sort of thing, for Cartann, but they couldn't
negotiate to bring all of Adumar into the New Republic."
"You're right," Wedge said. "It was worse than I thought."
Janson grinned. "Oh, it's even worse than that."
Wedge sighed. "Look, this is your last one. The next person after Wes who
has bad news, we all just shoot him. Go ahead, Wes."
"Cheriss is sweet on you."
Wedge felt his shoulders sag. "Tell me you're kidding."
"Sorry, chief. Do you see the way she looks at you? And she gave you the
decision on her challenge duel, to kill or not to kill. They say that's a
really big thing here. As subtle as flowers and sweets."
"Wes, she's half my age."
"True." Janson looked resigned. "I'll help you, Wedge. I'll go break the
news to her, console her in her time of grief. I'll"
Wedge held up a hand. "Never mind what I just said. Let's just shoot Wes.
"
"I'm for that," Hobbie said.
"What's our strategy?" Tycho asked.
Hobbie gave him a curious look. "I thought we'd just all draw and fire.
But I could count down to zero, and then we could draw and fire."
Tycho gave him a mock-scowl. "Quiet, you. Wedge, what's our strategy in
dealing with all these serpentine politics?"
"Play dumb for now. Let everyoneTomer, the rulers of Cartann, our own
Intelligence networkthink we believe everything they've told us so far.
Follow Tomer's plans for use of our time with just enough belligerence to
remind them we're fighter pilots. And find out what we can on our own. I'll
talk to Iella tomorrow. Hobbie, Tomer said that Intelligence certified our
quarters as free from Cartann listening devicesbut nobody certified them free
of New Republic Intelligence listening devices; I want you to screen our
quarters and see if our own people are eavesdropping on us. Tycho, Wes, I want
you to visit Allegiance tonight; I'll wager every credit I'm carrying that
there's an Imperial capital ship orbiting Adumar opposite our ship, and I
don't want Allegiance taken off-guard if there's trouble."
Janson spoke up, sounding hurt "Can it be later tonight? I, uh, sort of
made an appointment for this evening..."
Wedge just looked at him.
"I suppose not," Janson said. "Tycho, didn't anyone ever tell you that
when you ask Wedge for strategy, he gives you work to do?"
The next morning, Wedge led Red Flight in a dive toward the trees,
keeping a careful eye on the unfamiliar range meter. The cockpit of the
Tarrvin-on-Kallik Blade-32 was unfamiliar to him; it wouldn't do to get
himself and his pilots killed because he wasn't completely at home with the
controls.
Or with the speed measurements, for that matter. Adumar didn't measure
things by the old Imperial standards; instead of klicks per Coruscant hour,
flight speed was measured in keps, or thousand paces (measured by the stride
of some long-dead Cartann perator) per Adumar hour. The Adumari measurement
was about eighty percent of the Imperial standard, so Wedge had to do constant
conversions in his head.
When the forest below began to turn into individual trees, streams, and
riders on those banded-armor farumme reptiles, the control console began to
chime insistently at Wedge. He knew that it was the collision alarm of the
system's computer, but it seemed to be set on fairly conservative numbers and
distances. Only after several more moments, in which the chime became more
loud and insistent, did Wedge haul back on the control yoke, bringing his
Blade-32 out of its dive.
As he began to level off above the forest floor, he felt his maneuver
pushing him back in the pilot's seat, felt a slight dizziness as blood began
to rush from his head. A moment later, the pressure eased and the dizziness
diminished. He shook his head. The Blade-32 had inertial compensators like the
New Republic and Imperial fighters he was used to, but their computers weren't
quite up to the task of calculating precise adjustments to keep the pilots
from suffering all the ill effects of high-gravity maneuvers.
Still, he was flying again, testing a new fighter, tearing up the sky
with gravity and engineering limitations his only enemies.
When he was chained to his desk and his general's duties for days, weeks
at a time, he could pretend that flying was something he had largely set
aside, something he returned to occasionally for enjoyment. But at times like
this, it was impossible to deny his pure love of flying, his need of it. It
was impossible to deny the ache it caused him when he was unable to find
cockpit time. Flying was a part of him, had been since his childhood, and he
felt a flash of anger at the bureaucrats and deskbound organizers who, since
his promotion to the rank of general, had given him assignment after
assignment that kept him far from a cockpit most of the time.
Regular fighter missions
were a thing of his past, and he missed them
terribly. But perhaps they were a thing of his future as well. Perhaps someday
he could find himself a post, as General Salm and General Crespin had before
him, that would allow him regular command of a fighter wing. That prospect
gave him some hope for his military future.
He checked his sensor board, or lightboardthe screen with the green
wire-frame grid the Adumari called a "lightbounce system"and saw that Tycho,
Janson, and Hobbie were still tucked in tight. Off in the distance, their
escort of four Cartann fighters was still in formation.
But Wedge's visual check showed that Janson was upside down. "Janson,
orient yourself," he said. "You're belly to sky."
"Negative, boss. I'm right side up. You three inverted coming out of that
headache maneuver."
Wedge glanced up, saw only sky and sun above him.
Janson's voice came again, a taunt this time "Made you look." He righted
his Blade-32.
The lightboard beeped at him. It showed an incoming flight of a half-
dozen Blades, four advanced, two in the rear. Wedge's communications system
buzzed. "Hail General Antilles! The Lords of Dismay Flightknife issues a
chall enge."
Wedge sighed. He was already well familiar with some of the Adumari pilot
terminology, such as the use of "flightknife" for "squadron." For the sixth
time since Red Flight had commenced this familiarization run, he switched over
to general frequency and said, "Antilles here. Denied."
"Another time, then. Confusion to your enemies! Farewell!" The incoming
fighters began a slow loop around to head back the way they'd come.
"They love you, Wedge." That was Janson's voice. "This is the only planet
where everyone who loves me also wants to kill me," Wedge said. "All right.
Opinions, people? On the fighters, I mean."
"A bit like flying wishbones," Janson said. "These Blades have the kind
of mass and solidity I like in the Y-wings. But sluggish."
"I like the weapons arrangement," Hobbie said. "Two lasers forward, two
lasers back. Two missile ports like the X-wings... but we're carrying sixteen
missiles, not six. More punch against capital ships. If we could swap proton
torpedoes for the lower-powered explosives these are carrying, that'd be a lot
of bang."