Wedge said, “Which means what?”
“Extra-broad and reinforced, and with nothing, including cables, for a level or two above—so 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 support crew to do it—”
“We’ll move them,” Wedge said. “Speaking of those cables—what 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 uniform.”
“I understand.” Tomer nodded, sympathy evident on his face. “I got out of Starfighter Command before the dress uniform was even designed. Umm, if you’re looking for alternatives, I’m certain that the court would consider it a sign of honor if you wore local dress instead of your dress uniforms.”
“Yes,” Hobbie said.
“Yes yes yes,” Janson said.
Wedge repressed a smile. The New Republic pilots’ dress uniform wasn’t too bad, but it had been designed in the depths of some government public relations department, without the input of those who would have to wear it, and many pilots just did not care for it. He cleared his throat. “That’s a possibility. If you’d be so kind as to send up some examples of local dress …?”
Tomer smiled. “One snap of my fingers and you’ll
have your very own fashion show. I’ll see right to it.” He gestured for the porter, who had been hovering at the exit, to proceed him, and he left.
Wedge turned to Janson. “How well did you know him? Do you trust him?”
Janson considered. “Let’s just say that he’s cleaned up better than I expected.”
“No, let’s not just say that. Let’s be a little more informative.”
Janson’s gaze wandered back in time. “Well, in the Tierfon Yellow Aces, he always had something going. Floating sabacc games, trade in the newest holodramas and comedies, a locker that always seemed to have some liquor in it no matter how much he sold. I never had the impression that he was a black marketeer, but he was only one notch above that. When he mustered out and no one ever heard from him again, we figured he’d gone smuggler.” He shrugged. “But the diplomatic corps seems ideal for him. He can persuade and convince and scam and manipulate, and yet remain a patriot.”
Hobbie offered up a rare smile. “Not a bad metaphor for the early days of the Rebel Alliance.”
Tycho offered him a mock glower. “Cynic.”
They were four very different men as they walked toward the Outer Court of the Royal Residence, or palace, of Cartann.
Wedge had chosen green for most of his outfit—boots, hose, belt—and had chosen a tunic in a creamy off-white. He chose to remain bareheaded. His service blaster was holstered at his hip; Tomer seemed to think that wearing weapons was more than appropriate in a social situation, though he had said Wedge would have to surrender it when in a chamber occupied by the
perator
.
Beside it hung a device Tomer had said was commonplace
in Cartann, the comfan. It was a small hemisphere with a handle. On the flat side of the hemisphere were numerous little vents; at the bottom of the handle were an on-off switch and an intake vent. When switched on, the device would draw air in through the intake vent, cool it, and expel it through the other vents, making it a handy personal comfort device. Tomer had said that handling the comfan was itself an art form, with every possible gesture assigned a meaning by the Cartann court … but outsiders such as Wedge would be known not to understand the language of comfan manipulation. The warmth of Wedge’s tunic suggested to him that he’d be better off carrying such a thing.
Tycho’s tunic was a material that shimmered and changed color as it moved; depending on the angle at which one viewed it, portions ranged in hue from sky blue to a pearlescent royal blue. Most of his other garments, including a rakish-looking hip cloak, were black, but he also wore a skullcap in the same material as his tunic. The skullcap came forward in a peak over his brow, an extension that looked like the sharp beak of a bird of prey, a comparison Wedge decided was apt, and the semitransparent visor over his eyes lent him a distant, mysterious look.
Hobbie was a riot of lines and angles. His boots, tights, and belt were a basic blue, his tunic a glorious red; but every hem of every garment was decorated with trim of eye-hurting yellow, making it almost a dizzying experience to look at him walk. “There are three types of dress clothing,” Hobbie had said. “The kind that offends the wearer, the kind that offends the viewers, and the kind that offends everybody. I’m going for the third type. Fair is fair.”
Janson had chosen what Wedge had first misunderstood as a minimalist approach. His tights, his tunic, all his accoutrements were black—most of them a matte
black, though the tunic offered a little shine. He wore no headgear. But then he capped it off with a hooded cloak that made up for the rest of his outfit’s lack of drama. Nearly floor-length, it was a curtain of nebular red-purple shot through with crystalline stars that blinked on and off with internal light.
He carried his service blaster on his right hip, but also carried a new weapon. On his belt at his left hip was a sheath carrying the Adumari blastsword, “preferred weapon for settling personal disputes in Cartann,” as Tomer had explained. It looked much like a vibroblade the length of a man’s arm, but the hilt was protected by a curved metal guard. The blade was sharp starting a few centimeters above the guard, but the tip of the weapon was not a sharp point; rather, it was a small flared nozzle. When the device was powered up—by turning on a switch at the pommel, the knob at the very base of the hilt—the tip would fire off something like a blaster bolt whenever it contacted a solid object.
“So it’s like a blaster you have to hit someone with,” Janson had said. “I have to have one.”
Tycho had shaken his head, looking as mournful as Hobbie for a moment. “Don’t give him a new kind of weapon,” he had told Wedge. “It would be like giving a lightsaber to a two-year-old.”
But Wedge had allowed it, and now Janson’s customary swagger swung the blastsword’s sheathed blade around behind him, making it precarious to walk close to him.
Accompanied by Tomer, they paused at the arched entryway to a large ballroom designated the Royal Outer Court. Tomer stepped forward to speak to the guards on duty. There were two of them, large men armed with what looked like polearm equivalents of the blastswords. Between them, across the entryway, was stretched a sort of silver mesh material; Wedge could see well-dressed people dancing and socializing, but it was as if viewing
them through a warped and mottled piece of unusually reflective transparisteel. He spotted two-headed Hallis in the crowd, her attention turned toward a large knot of men and women.
Tomer returned. “Odd,” he said. “We’re to be admitted, of course—this is your night! But we’re not to be announced.”
“You mean,” Hobbie said, “nobody is going to bellow our names across the crowd, so that everybody turns and stares at us and we have nothing to say, so we stand there like idiots while they wait. That sort of announced?”
“Yes,” Tomer said. “It’s customary. Why the custom was suspended for tonight I don’t know. You’ll have to surrender your sidearms to the guards, of course.”
Tomer stopped Janson’s action of unsheathing his blastsword. “No, you can take that in. Blastswords are fit for polite society. It’s only blasters they object to.”
The semitransparent curtain flicked to one side instantly. Conversation washed out over them, as did a swell of music played on stringed instruments at a fast pace, and a wash of air that assailed Wedge’s nose and informed him that perfuming was another Adumari habit.
Tomer led the pilots into the outer hall. They attracted no immediate notice. The hall itself was a tall two-story chamber, with a balcony all around the second story, thick with onlookers; its walls were draped with tapestries in a shimmering silver hue, and the lights behind the tapestries offered not quite enough illumination. Two tapestries were drawn aside, revealing enormous flatscreens on stony walls; the screens showed, in magnification, whatever stood before them.
Tomer led the pilots straight to the knot of people that held Hallis’s attention. As they approached, Wedge could see that at its center was one man, unusually tall, with a close-trimmed white beard and alert, active eyes. His garments were all a shimmering red-gold; with every
motion he looked as though part of his clothing were on fire. As the pilots neared, he looked at Tomer and asked, in a raspy but well-controlled voice, “What have you brought me, O speaker for distant rulers?” He spoke with the same accent Wedge had heard on the pilots who had attacked Red Flight, in which many vowels sounded like short flat “a”s, but Wedge was becoming more accustomed to it, having less difficulty comprehending it.
Tomer offered a smile that, to Wedge, looked a little artificially tolerant. “Pekaelic ke Teldan,
perator
of Cartann, smiter of the Tetano, hero of Lameril Ridge, master of the Golden Yoke, I beg you allow me to present to you these four pilots: Major Derek Klivian, Major Wes Janson, Colonel Tycho Celchu, and General Wedge Antilles, all of the New Republic Starfighter Command.”
With each recitation of a name, the crowd around the
perator
offered an “ooh,” especially for Wedge. The
perator
nodded in slow and stately fashion to each and extended a hand to Wedge. Wedge shook it in standard New Republic fashion, hoping that was the reaction called for, and that he wasn’t precipitating a war by failing to kneel and put the hand on his forehead or some such thing. But the
perator
merely smiled.
“You are well come to Cartann,” the
perator
said to Wedge. “I look forward to hearing your words and seeing your displays of skill. But first, I have a present for the four of you.” He waved behind him, beckoning someone forward.
Into the open space surrounding the
perator
stepped a young woman. Her garments were all white, though festooned with what looked like ribbons and military service decorations, and she carried blastsword, knife, comfan, and pistol at her belt. She was not tall, being a double handspan shorter than Wedge, but walked with the confident gait of someone a head taller than anyone in the crowd, despite the fact that she was a year or two
from what Wedge would consider full adulthood. Her freckled features were pretty, open, bearing the expression of a youth rushing recklessly into life. Her black hair was in a long braid drawn over her shoulder, and her eyes were a dark blue that seemed almost purple in the dim light of the chamber.
“This young lady,” the
perator
said, “is the most recent winner of the Cartann Ground Championship. With that victory comes certain obligations and prerogatives. Pilots, I present you Cheriss ke Hanadi; I know that you have the most informed Tomer Darpen to give you outlook upon Cartann, but Cheriss will serve you as native guide throughout your stay.”
Wedge gave the
perator
a slight bow. “Thank you, sir.” He spared a glance for Tomer, but the career diplomat did not seem in the least curious or disconcerted; this was obviously not an unusual sort of occurrence.
“I am honored to serve,” Cheriss said. She stared at Wedge with disconcerting intensity, but Wedge could detect no animosity in her expression—just curiosity. “If General Antilles wishes diversion during the evening, I have a show to put on—a non-title from some runny-nosed lordling.”
The
perator
returned his attention to Wedge. “Tonight,” he said, “is an informal night. Meet the heroes and nobles and celebrities we have assembled. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin the tedious affairs of discussion and negotiations, no?” He offered another smile, then turned his back on the pilots and moved away. His knot of courtiers moved with him like a set of shields moving with a starfighter. Hallis turned between
perator
and Wedge, indecisive, then stayed behind, her attention and her recording unit’s gaze on the New Republic pilots.