Almost immediately his comm unit crackled. “X-wing group, this is
Allegiance
. You, uh, seem to be off your approach vector for Bay Alpha Two.”
“Allegiance
, this is Red Leader,” Wedge said. “We’re inbound for the main bay. By orders of the expedition commander.” He let the comm officer stew over that one for a moment. He, Wedge,
was
the expedition commander.
There was a moment of delay—just long enough, Wedge estimated, for the comm officer to make one short broadcast to the ship commander and get one short reply. “Acknowledged, Red Leader.
Allegiance
out.”
Wedge and his companions took up position beneath the gigantic vessel and rose within the spacious confines of the ship’s main bay. Wedge hovered, ignoring the flight line worker beckoning to him with glowing batons, and took a look around.
Starfighters stood ready to launch into battle—A-wings, B-wings, X-wings, Y-wings, and even TIE fighters that had once fought the New Republic. Retrofitted with shields, the TIEs were now a common sight in friendly hangars. Mechanics worked briskly on fighters in need of repair or maintenance. The metal floors and bulkheads wore a dull sheen, showing age and wear but also cleanliness, rather than a shine suggesting that the captain was too concerned with appearance. These were good signs.
The smaller bay they’d originally been directed to could have been put in tiptop shape for their arrival with comparative ease, but the state of affairs in the main bay
was a better indicator of how the ship was being run, and things here looked good.
Wedge finally allowed the worker to direct Red Flight to a landing spot, near the vessel’s single squadron of X-wings. The unit patch on those snubfighters, showing a single X-wing soaring high above a mountain peak, identified them as High Flight Squadron. Wedge nodded. They weren’t the best X-wing unit in the fleet, but they were a veteran squadron with plenty of battle experience.
As he and his fellows set down, Wedge saw the main doorway into the bay open upward and a crowd of people enter at a run. Some of them skidded as they spotted Red Flight and turned in the direction of the recently arrived snubfighters. Among them were a man in a Fleet Command captain’s uniform, the usual complement of junior officers and guards, and, most odd of all, what looked like a woman with two heads, one of them shining silver.
Wedge descended his access ladder and turned to face the delegation. He felt and heard his own pilots fall into line behind him. He extended his hand toward the highest-ranking officer. “Captain Salaban. I was glad to hear you’d been promoted off
Battle Dog
.”
The captain, a lean, bearded man with skin the color of tanned leather, still breathing hard, hesitated. Obviously confused for a moment as to whether he should salute properly or follow Wedge’s informal fashion of greeting, he chose the latter and shook Wedge’s hand. “Thank you, sir. And welcome aboard. Allow me to introduce you to my senior officers …”
It was a ritual Wedge knew from countless repetitions in the past. He committed each officer’s name and face to memory, hoping his retention would last until the end of the mission; it usually did.
Then the captain gestured to the two-headed woman. “And the mission documentarian, Hallis Saper.”
Wedge could finally give her his full attention. She was a tall woman, taller than he by two or three centimeters, with long brown hair worn in a braid and wide-open features; she looked as though she’d recently arrived from a one-shuttle agrarian world. He could not read her eyes, as they were concealed behind goggles darkened almost to opacity. She wore a brown jumpsuit festooned with belts, pouches, and pockets.
And on her right shoulder, held on a bracket affixed to her clothing, was the silver head of a 3PO protocol droid. Its eyes were lit.
“I’m so happy to meet the most famous pilot of Starfighter Command,” she said; her voice was pleasant but loud, unrestrained.
“Thank you,” he said. “Um, I couldn’t help noticing that you have two heads.”
She smiled. “This is Whitecap, my holo-recording unit. I put him together from a ruined protocol droid and a standard holocam. I added memory and some basic conversational circuitry and programming. He looks wherever I look—the goggles have sensors that track my eye movement—and records whatever I see.”
“I see,” Wedge said. He didn’t, but the words served as building tones useful for plugging up holes where conversation should be. “Why?”
“I record a lot of interviews with children. Studies suggest that they find 3PO units nonthreatening.”
“Ah. And have you had much luck with this approach?” He was pretty sure he knew the answer to this one.
“Well, not yet. I’m still working out the kinks in the system.”
It would help if you started with the fact that you’re a two-headed lady with eyes that children can’t see
, Wedge thought, but kept it to himself. “And now you’re taking a temporary break from children to record starfighter pilots.”
She nodded. The 3PO head remained stationary on her shoulder, unaffected by her motion. “It’s a wonderful opportunity. Thank you.”
“Well, you’re welcome. But I’m afraid that Whitecap is going to have to suffer some additional coding. I need to be able to issue a verbal command and shut him off. Circumstances sometimes demand privacy.”
Hallis fidgeted. “That was never part of the arrangement. I’ll have to refuse.”
“Very well. You’ll be getting some very good footage of the inside of your cabin.”
“Oh. Well, in that case, I accept. I’ll do the coding myself.”
“And then hand Whitecap over to the
Allegiance
’s code-slicers briefly for, oh, code optimization.”
Hallis’s smile flickered for a moment and Wedge knew he’d guessed correctly. Hallis must have intended to arrange things so that a second code issued by her would secretly override Wedge’s shutoff command. “Of course,” she said, but there was now just a trace of brittleness to her voice.
Wedge returned his attention to Captain Salaban. “Allow me in turn to introduce you to my pilots. I present Colonel Tycho Celchu, leader of Rogue Squadron.”
Tycho offered the ship captain a salute. “Sir.” He was a lean man, blond, graying in dignified fashion at the temples, with handsome features and an aristocrat’s bearing. The perfection of his looks might have made him appear severe, even cruel, in earlier years, but the beatings life had handed him—the loss of his family on Alderaan at the hands of Grand Moff Tarkin and the first Death Star, capture and attempted brainwashing by Imperial Intelligence head Ysanne Isard, and suspicion on the part of New Republic Military Intelligence forces that despite his escape he had succumbed to that brainwashing and was an enemy in their midst—all had weathered him in spirit if not in form. Now, he still
looked in every way the cold aristocrat … until one looked in his eyes and saw the humanity and the signs of distant pain there.
“This is Major Wes Janson, and if you’re not aware of his exploits, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to give you the whole story.”
Janson shot Wedge a cool look as he shook the ship captain’s hand. “Good to be here.” He turned to the documentarian. “Oh, and, Hallis, I’m better known for my breathtaking looks than my fighting skills, so don’t forget that this is my good side.” He turned his head so Hallis’s recorder would get a straight-on look at his left profile.
Wedge suppressed a snort. Janson’s self-promotion came out of a desire to entertain rather than from any serious case of narcissism, but he was as good-looking as he suggested. Like Wedge and a majority of other successful fighter pilots, he was a few centimeters short of average height, but Janson was unusually broad in the shoulders, and endowed with a body that showed muscle definition after only light exercise and was not inclined to fat. His hair was a rich brown, and his merry features were not just handsome but preternaturally youthful; he was now in his thirties but could pass for ten years younger. A most unfair combination, Wedge thought.
“And Major Derek Klivian,” Wedge concluded.
The fourth pilot leaned in for a handshake. He was lean, with dark hair and a face best suited to wearing mournful expressions. “Captain,” he said. Then he, too, turned to the documentarian. “Everyone calls me Hobbie,” he said. “And I’ll get back with you on my last name. Lots of people misspell it.”
Wedge resisted the urge to look into the eyes of the recording unit. He knew that second head would attract his attention during upcoming events; it was best to train himself now to ignore it. But he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of scene would emerge from this recording,
what part it would play in the documentary Hallis would be assembling. Or how he’d look beside his more colorful subordinate pilots. Wedge was, like Janson, below average height, and he thought of himself as one of the most ordinary-looking men alive. But admirers had told him that his features bespoke intelligence and determination. Qwi had said there was a mesmerizing depth to his brown eyes. Other ladies had been charmed by his hair—it was worn short, but as long as military regulations allowed, and was the sort of fine hair that stirred in any breeze and invited ladies’ hands to run through it.
He gave an internal shrug. Perhaps he didn’t suffer as much as he feared in comparison with extroverts like Janson. He just wished that when he was shaving he could see some of these traits his admirers noted.
“I’d appreciate it,” he said, “if we could get a temporary paint job on the X-wings. Red Flight One, Two, Three, Four.” He pointed to himself, Tycho, Janson, and Hobbie in turn. “A white base, but Rogue Squadron reds for the striping, no unit patch.”
Salaban nodded. “Easily done.”
“So,” Wedge said, “what’s first on our agenda—settling in to quarters or a mission briefing?”
Salaban’s expression suggested that the question was not a welcome one. “Settling in, I’m afraid, sir. There won’t be a briefing until you land on-planet. Intelligence decided not to provide a liaison at this time.”
Wedge bit back a response that would not have sounded appropriate in the mission documentary. “We’re going in cold?”
Captain Salaban nodded.
Wedge forced a smile for the holocam. “Well, just another challenge, then. Let’s see those quarters.”
2
Wedge was still occasionally fuming, days later, when
Allegiance
dropped out of hyperspace at the edges of the Adumar solar system. There was such a thing, of course, as overplanning. With too much time and too much desire to put every mission detail into a mission profile, it was possible to lose perspective on which objectives were most important, on which tactics were most effective.
But this was the polar opposite of that situation. He didn’t know any more now about the people of Adumar than when he received the datacard from Cracken. As he sat in his X-wing, running through his preflight checklist, he had available to him only a set of coordinates on the planet’s surface. Once
Allegiance
made its approach to the world—an odd, inconvenient path like an obstacle course, with direction changes at one of the system’s uninhabited worlds and one of Adumar’s two moons—Wedge and his three pilots would launch and make the final approach to their destination … whatever it was that the mathematical coordinates represented. One of
Allegiance
’s shuttles, filled with support personnel, including
Hallis Saper, had already descended to make preparations for their arrival.
“Red Flight, this is
Allegiance
. Our final leg terminates in one minute.”
Wedge glanced at his comm board. The minute was already counting down—his R5 unit, Gate, had also received the transmission and, on his own initiative, begun a count down. Wedge said, “This is Red Leader. Understood. We launch at arrival plus five seconds. Red Flight, are you good to go?”
“Red Two, ready.” That was Tycho, as economical of words as he was of motion.
“Red Three, four lit and ready to burn.” Janson’s inimitable voice and enthusiasm were evident even across the standard X-wing comm distortion.
“Red Four, nothing’s gone wrong yet.” There was almost a hopeful note to Hobbie’s dour tone.
Wedge felt
Allegiance
heel to starboard, a maneuver lasting ten seconds, and it ended just as his countdown dropped to zero. “Red Flight, launch.” He suited action to words, bringing his X-wing up on repulsorlifts until it was three meters above the hangar floor, then drifting forward over the main hangar access. Below was a great dark mass featuring occasional sprinkles of light—Adumar’s night side. He angled until his nose was straight down, then smoothly brought up his thrusters and shot toward the planet’s surface. His sensor board and a visual check to either side showed his three companions tucked in close beside and behind him in diamond formation. He oriented toward the planet’s direction of spin;
Allegiance
’s orbit was above the planet’s equator.
“Leader, Two. We have company.”
Wedge checked his sensor board again. It showed two red blips paralleling their course, about ten klicks from one another and ten klicks above Red Flight’s course. As he watched, another two blips began rising from below on an identical course. The sensors designated them
“Unknown Type.” He took a look at them with visual sensors, but could just barely make out a black fuselage and an unusual split to the rear fuselage; the distance, and vibration from the X-wing’s speed, made a better look impossible.
“Presumably an escort,” Wedge said. “Stay loose, Red Flight. Diplomacy first.”
“Leader, Three. Diplomacy means saying something soothing as you squeeze the trigger, right?”
“Quiet, Three.”
In moments, as they held their altitude above Adumar’s surface, he saw the system’s sun rise above the planetary curve ahead of them. Wedge’s viewport automatically polarized, cutting down a bit on its brightness, but his eyes were still dazzled. He brought down his helmet goggles and kept his attention on his instruments.
Seconds later, Red Flight crossed the day/night boundary. Visual sensors showed a tremendous archipelago of islands below them, graduating to a series of larger mountainous islands, and then suddenly they were above an enormous continent, one that had to occupy at least a quarter of the world’s planetary surface. Their course led them northward, over what looked like the continent’s temperate zone. Through breaks in the world’s cloud cover, Wedge saw sprawling cities, deep belts of greenery, and large cultivated fields. The sensor board indicated the continued presence of their escorts, who maintained a ten-kilometer distance.