“Go ahead, Qwi. I’m not angry. I’m not going to make this harder for you.”
She flashed a brief smile. “No, you wouldn’t. Wedge, when we came together I was a different woman. Then, when I lost my memory, I became someone else, the woman I am now, and you were there—brave and modest and admired, my protector in a universe that was unfamiliar to me—and after I realized this, I could not bring myself to make you understand …”
“Tell me.” Unconsciously, he leaned over to take her hand.
“Wedge, I feel as though I
inherited
you. From a friend who passed away. You were her choice. I do not know if you would have been mine. I never had the chance to find out.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Then a laugh escaped him. “Let me get this straight. I look on you as a comfortable old simulator, and you look on me as an inheritance that doesn’t match the rest of your furniture.”
She started to look stricken, then she laughed in return. She clapped her free hand over her mouth and nodded.
“Qwi, one of the things I truly admire is courage. It took courage for you to say what you’ve said to me. And it would be irresponsible, even cruel, of me if I didn’t admit that I came here tonight to break up with
you
.”
She put her hand down. Her expression was not surprised. Instead, it was a little wondering, a little amused. “Why?”
“Well, I don’t think I have your eloquence on this matter. I don’t think I’ve thought it through the way you
have. But one reason is the same. The future. I keep looking toward it and I don’t see you there. Sometimes I don’t see
me
there.”
She nodded. “Until just now I had a little fear that I was wrong. That I might be making a mistake. Now I can be sure I was not. Thank you for telling me. It would have been so easy for you not to have.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“Well … maybe it wouldn’t for Wedge Antilles. For many men, it would have been.” She turned a smile upon him, a smile made up, he thought, of pride in him. “What will you do now?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I’ve been looking at the two sides of my life. My career and my personal life. Except for the fact that I’m not flying nearly as much as I want to, I have no complaints about my career.” That wasn’t entirely true, and hadn’t been ever since he’d been convinced to accept the rank of general, but he tried not to burden her with frustrations he was convinced arose from his own selfishness. “I’m doing important work and being recognized for it. But my personal life …” He shook his head as though reacting to the death of a friend. “Qwi, you were the last part of my personal life. Now there’s nothing there. A vacuum purer than anything in space. So I think, in a few weeks, I’m going to take a leave of absence. Travel a bit, try to sneak a visit into Corellia, not think about my work. I’ll just try to find out if there is anything to me
except
career.”
“There is.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“Keep your visual sensors turned up, then.”
He laughed. “What about you?”
“I have friends. I have work. I am acquiring hobbies. Remember, the new Qwi is less than two years old. In that way, I’m still a little girl experiencing the universe for the first time.” She looked apologetic. “So I will learn, and work, and see who it is I am becoming.”
“I hope you’ll still consider me a friend,” he said.
“Always.”
“Meaning you can still call on me. Send me messages. Send me lifeday presents.”
She laughed. “Greedy.”
“Thank you, Qwi.”
“Thank you, Wedge.”
He packed as though he were still an active pilot. Everything went into one shapeless bag, a bag chosen for its ideal fit within the cargo compartment of an X-wing fighter. Nothing his life would depend upon went into the bag—just clothes, toiletries, a holoplayer. More crucial items—identicards, credcards, hard currency, comlink, a holdout blaster pistol—he kept on him, so that a sudden separation from his bag would be an inconvenience rather than a crisis.
He sealed the bag and looked around his quarters. They were spacious, as befitted a general of the New Republic, and well situated high in a Coruscant skyscraper. He had only to speak a word and the quarters’ computer would change the polarity of the wall-to-wall viewports to give him a commanding view of sky, endless cityscape, ceaseless streams of vessels large and small.
These quarters were clean and spare as a military man kept them. They were—
They weren’t home. Neither were the smaller but equally lavish quarters he enjoyed on the Super Star Destroyer
Lusankya
, the seat of his military operations—though he was still assigned to Starfighter Command, the special task force he commanded kept him in circumstances and settings more suited to a Fleet Command officer.
Here, as there, the presence of a few mementos, of a framed holo showing his parents in a happy embrace, of friends captured at celebrations or launch zones, didn’t
conceal the impersonal nature of the furniture. If he received a new posting while he was away on leave, he wouldn’t even have to come back here. He’d send a short message to the right department and an aide or droid would pack everything up and ship it off, and an identical one would receive it all and unpack it into a new set of quarters on some other world or station, and that would become the place where he lived.
But not home. Home was a family-owned refueling station, destroyed half his life ago with his parents still aboard, and nothing had ever come along to replace it.
He slung his bag over his shoulder. While on leave, maybe he’d be able to see in the faces and hear in the words of those he visited what it was that had turned their housing into their homes. Maybe—
His door chimed. He set the bag down again. “Come.”
The door slid up. Beyond was a man, muscular, graying, a bright and often cheerless intelligence in his eyes. He wore the uniform of a New Republic general.
Wedge approached, hand extended. “General Cracken! Come in. Have you come to see me off? I wasn’t expecting a military escort.”
Airen Cracken, head of New Republic Intelligence, entered and took Wedge’s hand. His expression did not brighten; he looked, if anything, regretful. “General Antilles. Yes, I’m here to see you off.”
Something in his tone sounded a quiet alarm in Wedge’s mind. “Should I be going evasive?”
That brought a faint smile to Cracken’s face. “Probably. I have an assignment for you.”
“I’m on leave. It’s already begun.”
Cracken shook his head.
“General Cracken, you’re not in a position to issue assignments to me. So what you’re saying is you have something you’d like me to volunteer for.”
“I have something you’re going to volunteer for.”
“I don’t think so.”
“The following information is for your ears only. You’re not to discuss it outside these quarters until you reach your rendezvous point.”
“That explains it.”
Cracken frowned. “Explains what?”
“When I was packing this morning. Why things seemed a little different. As if a cleaning detail had been through and picked up everything, putting it back
almost
exactly where it was before. Your people were through here when I was out, weren’t they? Making sure there were no listening or recording devices present.”
Cracken didn’t reply to that. He just looked a little surly. He continued, “The world of Adumar is on the near edge of Wild Space. It was colonized as long as ten thousand years ago by a coalition of peoples who had staged a rebellion against the Old Republic, been defeated, and been spared … so long as they went far away and never caused any more trouble.”
Wedge just stared. Perhaps if he demonstrated continued indifference Cracken would go away. That wasn’t usually the way it worked, of course.
Cracken said, “According to what we’ve been able to gather, their spirit of rebellion and divisiveness didn’t end when they found a world worthy of settling. Their history suggests they fought among themselves a number of times, eventually reducing themselves to poverty and barbarism—not once, but twice at least. Though apparently their ancient teaching-recordings survived for thousands of years; their language is recognizably a dialect of Basic.” He paused as if anticipating questions from Wedge.
“I’m not curious.”
“Anyway, they were completely forgotten by the Old Republic. There is no mention of them in Imperial archives, either. We were fortunate that one of our deep-space scouts stumbled across them when returning from a mapping mission into the Unknown Regions.”
“If you continue to map the Unknown Regions, you’ll have to call them something else.”
Cracken blinked, his expression suggesting that he didn’t know whether to interpret that comment as humor or not. “Adumar is heavily industrialized, and a large portion of its industrial development is military. Their weapons are oriented around high-powered explosives. Our analysts suggest that it would be a simple matter to convert a portion of their industry over to the production of proton torpedoes. General, how would you like it if the New Republic’s X-wings never had to face a shortage of proton torpedoes again?”
Wedge suppressed a whistle. Lasers were the most often-used weapons of starfighters, the means by which they shot one another down … but it was proton torpedoes that gave some starfighters the punch necessary to damage or even destroy capital ships. “That would … be helpful.”
“You’ve pushed for years for increased production of proton torpedoes. Since you made the rank of general, people have even been listening. But the New Republic has so many demands on its resources that efforts to boost production of the secondary or tertiary weapon of choice among all starfighters tends to get lost in the shuffle. It wouldn’t keep getting lost if we could bring Adumar into the New Republic; then, it would just be some industrial retooling.”
“So send a diplomatic mission and work things out with them.”
“Ah, that’s the trouble.” Cracken rubbed his hands together. “The people of Adumar have no respect for career politicians. A very sensible attitude, in my opinion—though if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll merely have to deny it. Do you know what sort of individual they hold in highest regard?”
“No.”
“Fighter pilots. The Old Republic had its Jedi; Adumar has its fighter pilots. They love them, a case of hero worship that spans their whole culture. Their entertainments revolve around them. Social promotion, properties, titles, all accompany military promotion in their pilot corps.”
“That sounds like a reasonable arrangement. Let’s implement it in the New Republic.”
“And so they’ll talk with a diplomat. But only if he’s also a pilot. Our best.”
Wedge sighed. “I’m no diplomat.”
“We’ll assign you an advisor. A career diplomat, already on station at Adumar, named Darpen. By the terms by which the Adumari are allowing our diplomatic mission, you’ll be accompanied by three other pilots, your choice, a crew of aides, including that advisor, and one ship—you’ll be in command of the
Allegiance
, an
Imperial
-class Star Destroyer—”
“I remember her. From the Battle of Selaggis.”
“Well, then.” Cracken took a datacard from a pocket and held it out. “Your orders. You and the pilots you choose will rendezvous with
Allegiance
at the coordinates provided here. Tell your pilots nothing about the mission until the rendezvous.”
Wedge offered him nothing but a steady stare. “I need this leave, General. This is no joke. Find someone else.”
“You
need. Antilles, the New Republic needs. You’ve never turned your back on the New Republic in its times of need.”
Wedge felt his last hope slipping away, to be replaced by anger. “What’s it like, General?”
Cracken’s expression turned to one of confusion. “What’s what like? Adumar?”
“No. What’s it like to have so many resources? So that you can simply turn to your staff and say, ‘I need so-and-so
for this task. Find me the button I can push so he’ll do whatever I say, regardless of what it costs him.’ What’s that like?”
Cracken’s face flushed. “You’re coming dangerously close to insubordination, General.”
“No, General.” Wedge took the datacard from Cracken’s hand. “I’m not your subordinate. And what I’m coming dangerously close to is violence. Perhaps you’d better leave.”
Cracken stood there a moment, and Wedge could see him struggling against saying something further. Then the man turned away. The door opened before him.
As he passed through it, Cracken said, “Pack your dress uniform, General.” Then he was gone.
Wedge’s X-wing and the three snubfighters accompanying him dropped out of hyperspace at the same instant.
Unfamiliar stars surrounded them. But within visual range was something he recognized—the white triangular form of an
Imperial
-class Star Destroyer, a 1.6-kilometer-long package of destructive force.
His sensor unit tagged it immediately as
Allegiance
, his expected rendezvous. But his heart rate still quickened a bit as he oriented his X-wing toward the vessel.
For many years, Star Destroyers had been objects of dread among Rebel pilots. Wedge had fought against so many of them, participating in the destruction of some, losing friends to several. Over the years, the New Republic had captured a number of them, turning their awesome firepower against the Empire. Now they were almost a common sight in New Republic Fleet Command, but Wedge could never rid himself of the presentiment of evil he felt whenever he saw one.
His comm unit beeped and words appeared on the text screen—acknowledgment by
Allegiance
that they
had recognized him, authorization for landing, and a small schematic indicating the small landing bay, suited for dignitaries, where they were supposed to put down.
“Red Flight,” he said, “we are cleared to land. Main starfighter bay. Follow me in.”
He heard acknowledgments from his three pilots, then began a long, slow loop around toward the Star Destroyer’s underside.