A Twi’lek commando standing by a water spigot held up a small vial and swirled it around. The clear liquid turned blue. “Seems potable.”
Kapp nodded. “Good. Fill me a flask and bring it over here. Get water to the rest of them.” He glanced down at the man before him. “You’ll be okay now.”
The man reached out and clutched weakly at Wedge’s flight-suit leg. “Am I dreaming? I know you.”
Wedge crouched beside the man and patted his hand. “Could be. You were with the Rebellion?”
“Ground support. They got me at Hoth. I am Lag Mettier.”
Wedge frowned. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was possible he knew the man from Hoth, but the picture that was coming up in his mind was of a much younger man, blond, with a booming laugh. “You knew Dack Ralter, right?”
“Dack, I knew Dack.” Lag let Kapp ease him into a sitting position and accepted the flask of water the commando offered.
Kapp looked past him and addressed Wedge. “You know him?”
“Possibly. If so, he didn’t look like this at the time.”
The Devaronian nodded as he looked around at the people moaning and staggering in the barn. “They’ve all been sorely used here. I’m guessing they’ve not been cared for at all in the past couple of days. Maybe a week. We had minimal resistance.”
Page dropped to his haunches and nodded in agreement. “The main house looks pretty well cleaned out. We have a forensics team coming in to get whatever there is to be gotten.”
Lag lowered the flask, water dripping silver from his beard. “It won’t do any good. She’ll have seen to that.”
Wedge frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Lag let the flask slowly settle to his lap, as if he was too weak to hold it up to his mouth. “She said you’d eventually find this place, and she wanted to make sure it would be a dead end.” A gray tongue played over cracked lips. “They took the others out of here and left us. She wanted you to find us dead. She told us that.”
Wedge helped Lag raise the flask to his lips again. “This woman you speak of, who is she?”
Lag swallowed, then shivered. “Iceheart.”
Wedge’s blood ran cold. “Ysanne Isard was here?”
“A week ago, maybe two.”
“Are you sure?” Wedge dropped a hand to the man’s shoulder. “We killed her on Thyferra almost two years ago.”
“If you did, you didn’t do a very good job.” Lag cracked a smile. “She looked more alive than I do, and a whole bunch more deadly.”
Prince-Admiral Krennel stalked into the darkened cavern of a room where Isard
laired.
Krennel knew that word was not really exact enough, but he couldn’t think of Isard as
living
within the warrens described by the various computers and arcane equipment. Glow panels hanging down from the roof barely lit the canyons of fiberplast crates, making negotiation of the labyrinth all but impossible.
He rounded a corner and found Isard seated in a huge chair at the heart of a small arena. Around her, monitors and holoprojectors danced with countless images. Her fingers flashed over keypads built into the chair’s arms. With each keystroke another image changed, or the volume on one vignette rose to drown out all the others. She spun in the chair and the images were altered by the wave of her gaze sweeping past.
She came around to Krennel and stopped. His appearance seemed to surprise her, but then a casual grin curled her lips and she drew her legs up, shifting into a more comfortable position in her chair. Her gaze flicked to the datacard Krennel clutched in his artificial right hand. “I see you got my report.”
Anger surged in Krennel, but he kept it in check. He casually tossed the datacard into the space between them, then clasped his hands behind his back. “I got the report. I have read it. I do not approve of it. You cannot put your plan into effect.”
Isard snorted a little laugh, then punched a button on one of the keypads. The holoprojector to Krennel’s right showed the image of a compound with several buildings, an X-wing parked amid them, and a number of individuals walking back and forth between the main buildings. The figures and the X-wing were rendered in reds and yellows, and Krennel assumed he was looking at an infrared cam feed.
“You’ve allowed them to hit your facility on Commenor.”
Isard nodded. “This feed is six hours old. I had expected them to arrive in a week or so, not quite this soon. Chances are some of the prisoners I left there are still alive. Pity, but they were useless to me anyway. They know nothing of value—nothing beyond what I want them to know.”
Krennel nodded his head once, curtly. “What they know could lead the New Republic to suspect that one of my worlds is the location of more of your
Lusankya
prisoners. That will be enough to bring the New Republic down on my neck.”
“Oh, I expect so.” Isard’s smile broadened.
“This is unacceptable. I will not tolerate the loss of even one world of mine!” Krennel narrowed his eyes. “You have been here for two weeks, have requisitioned a fortune in equipment, have authorized payment to agents all over, and so far have only succeeded in losing personnel and turning prisoners over to the New Republic. This is no way to deal with our enemies.”
Isard slowly shook her head. “I would have thought the lesson Grand Admiral Thrawn learned so recently would not have been lost upon you, Prince-Admiral.”
The low, slow delivery of her comment sliced through his anger. “Meaning?”
“Thrawn died because it was inconceivable to him that anyone could defeat him. While his string of victories made this attitude warranted, this belief also hampered him.” She pressed her hands together. “Look at the New Republic. They killed the Emperor. They took Imperial Center. They destroyed Thrawn. Now they believe they are invincible. The fact is, we will defeat them because they have this weakness.”
Krennel snarled. “I have never believed in lulling an enemy into a false sense of security.”
“Then believe this, Prince-Admiral: You
will
lose a world to the New Republic.” Isard’s voice took on an icy tone. “I know your strengths and I know their strengths. You cannot stop them, you can only force them to expend more resources than they want to take the world. Now the world I have chosen is a small one, a simple one, one of
no value aside from being one bauble in the diadem you wear as Prince-Admiral. In choosing the battlefield, I can choose how the battle will go, and how we will make the New Republic pay for their victory.”
“You are wrong, Isard.” Krennel turned away from the scene on Commenor and met her stare evenly. “Only by standing up to them in an even fight will I be able to convince them I am too much trouble to take. I can and shall do that.”
Isard shrugged. “I suspected that might be your reaction, and I have planned accordingly. You will still indulge me, however, in our political pursuits, yes?”
Krennel hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. Have your envoy meet with the leaders of the Alderaanian expatriates. I can see giving them a new home.”
“And you would issue a statement of conciliation and apology for the destruction of Alderaan?”
He shifted his shoulders uneasily. “If it were necessary, yes.”
“Good. What we shall do, then, is this: We will have our negotiations going on, but we will not specify a world. We say we want to learn what the Alderaanians want in a world, and we will pick one to match. We will hint that our generosity is an overture for peace between your realm and the New Republic—perhaps even suggesting that you might like to join the New Republic. Then, when the New Republic attacks, we will note that the world they take from you would have been the one you were going to give to the Alderaanians. This should anger them and weaken their support for the New Republic. After all, the people who have suffered so much now have to suffer even more.”
“That ought to work.” Krennel nodded slowly, then gave Isard a wry grin. “You are very good at the political manipulation of people—almost as good as I am at killing them. If you confine yourself to what you are good at, I will as well, and our partnership will have a long future.”
“I will be happy to limit what I do, Prince-Admiral, if you will agree to a request.”
“And that is?”
“If Rogue Squadron survives its next encounter with you,” she smiled frostily, “you will leave their destruction entirely in my hands.”
Krennel smiled carefully back. “And if they do not?”
“Why then, Prince-Admiral, I will just find you bigger and better targets.” Isard bowed her head in his direction. “If you do manage to kill them, clearly nothing else will be able to stop you.”
9
Wedge Antilles started to seat himself halfway down the left side of the lozenge-shaped briefing table when a red-fleshed Mon Calamari directed him to a chair several places closer to the head of the table. “This will be fine, Captain Jhemiti. I’ll sit here.”
The Mon Cal kept his voice low. “Ah, General, these seats are for
junior
officers. Staff officers sit over there.”
Wedge hesitated for a second, feeling his cheeks burn with a blush. “Thank you for correcting me.”
“Not correcting, General,
informing
.”
Wedge suppressed a shiver as he moved to the chair Captain Jhemiti had pointed to. The Mon Cal nodded as Wedge slid it out from the table. Wedge seated himself and scooted the chair forward, then stared down at the keypad and monitor, water bottle and glass, comlink holder and personal datapad recharge jack built into his place at the table. He glanced down at the place where he’d meant to sit and saw none of that stuff.
Hmmmm, rank isn’t all bad.
He smiled, then killed the smile as the other senior officers began to filter into the room. General Horton Salm took a seat across from Wedge. The balding, mustached pilot gave him a quick nod, then
turned to speak with the tall, blue-skinned Duros Admiral coming to the table beside him. Wedge himself offered a hand to the redheaded woman seating herself on his left.
“I’m Wedge Antilles.”
“I’ve heard of you, General Antilles, but what Corellian hasn’t.” She smiled easily at him. “I’m Admiral Areta Bell, also of Corellia.”
Wedge smiled. “We actually met on Hoth, didn’t we? You were the navigator on the transport Tarrin flew, the one that Luke and I took out through the Imp fleet.”
“That’s right, the
Dutyfree.
” Her blue eyes sparkled. “I’m surprised you remembered.”
“How could I forget. You plotted a great course that got us through in a spot the Imps thought no one could go.” He swiveled his chair toward her. “What do they have you flying now?”
“I command the
Swift Liberty.
It’s an old Victory Deuce, but it’s functional. We’re often paired on ops with Admiral Kir Vantai’s
Moonshadow
.”
Wedge glanced at the Duros Admiral for a moment, then back to Areta. “That’s an Impstar Deuce, right?”
The answer came from behind him as a hand fell on his shoulder. “Yes, an Impstar Deuce, the same as my
Freedom
.”
Wedge spun around and offered his hand to a tall, slender, black-haired man whose goatee had been grown into a full beard and was now shot with white in stripes leading down from the corners of his mouth. “Commander Sair Yonka, good to see you again.”
“And good to see you as well. When last we met, I think my ship was still being refitted at Sluis Van.”
“Right, but Thrawn’s mole-miners didn’t get to it, so you actually managed to do some fighting against Thrawn. You were at Bilbringi, as I recall.”
“We were.” Yonka’s blue eyes focused a bit distantly for a moment. “The
Freedom
didn’t get hit, but I lost a freighter that served as a supply ship for me. Had Thrawn not died, I suspect we all would have been hit much harder.”
Admiral Ackbar passed behind Salm and Vantai to take
his place at the head of the table. “The fact is, Commander Yonka, Thrawn did die. This puts us in a very interesting Position. Please, be seated, all of you, and I will begin the briefing.”
While Ackbar waited for everyone to be seated, Captain Jhemiti closed the doors to the briefing room, activated the antisensor fields, then dimmed the lights. The Mon Calamari Admiral hit a couple of buttons on the keypad at the head of the table and Krennel’s image burned to life above the holoprojector plate set in the middle of the briefing table.
“As you have all been informed, Prince-Admiral Delak Krennel will be the target of a series of operations. The method by which we go after him is going to have to be very skillful. It is not common knowledge, but the war against Thrawn taxed our military resources rather heavily. We are still more than capable of maintaining a defensive posture that would make any attack against us punishing, but our ability to launch offensive operations is limited. General Garm Bel Iblis’s return to the New Republic has supplemented our forces and has many of our enemies guessing what we will be doing next. It is our hope that while his presence keeps our enemies guessing, this operation against Krennel will convince them that they do not want to become our next target.”
Ackbar opened his hands. “Krennel is not an idiot, but he is in a difficult position. He has roughly a dozen capital ships: a mix of Imperial Star Destroyers and
Victory
-class Destroyers. He has a dozen worlds to protect. With the
Freedom, Swift Liberty
, and
Moonshadow
, we have a task-force that can destroy any
one
of his ships in a running battle, and can fight any patrol taskforce he’s likely to put together. If he concentrates his ships enough to hammer us, we attack the worlds he leaves open.”
The Duros Admiral raised a finger. “The force we have is significant, but I wonder if the
Lusankya
will be refit in time to use it against Krennel?”
Wedge’s jaw dropped open. “You’ve rebuilt the
Lusankya
?”
Ackbar nodded. “We have, and it’s gone to Bilbringi for final refits. It won’t be ready for the start of this operation, but if Krennel does not fall early, we could employ it against him.”