“But now I find that the Adumari people have hyper-drives; 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 everyone—Tomer, the rulers of Cartann, our own Intelligence network—think 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 devices—but 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 lightboard—the 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 challenge.”
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.”
“I’ve been reviewing engineering records and damage statistics,” Tycho said.
Janson laughed. “While we’ve been maneuvering?”
“Restraining myself so you could keep up with me left me plenty of time for intellectual pursuits,” Tycho said. “I also composed a symphony and drafted a plan to bring peace to the galaxy. Anyway, without shields, these things come apart under any missile hit. But they’re structurally tough, more so than X-wings, so they hang together after taking more collateral damage or laser hits. I’d like to see how much maneuverability they lose with a set of shields, hyperdrive, maybe a gunner’s seat installed. If it’s not too great a loss, we may have a viable fighter-bomber here, something useful in fleet actions against capital ships.”
“Good point,” Wedge said. He rolled his fighter over and up again, decided he didn’t much like the way the atmosphere bit at his flight surfaces. “All right, let’s take them back to the hangar. Wedge Antilles out.”
That was a code signal, the use of his full name. After
bringing his fighter around so that it was headed back toward Giltella Air Base, one of two bases close to the city of Cartann, he switched the microphone off his fighter’s comm system, then pulled an elaborate comlink headset out of a flight-suit pocket. Tycho had brought these back from the
Allegiance
last night, comlinks with scrambler attachments. Wedge set its registers to a previously agreed-upon scramble code.
Hobbie had determined that their clothes were free of listening devices, but he’d found two such objects in their quarters, obviously of New Republic make. Not being Intelligence-trained, he’d said that he wasn’t confident that he could find them all. That meant their quarters were not a safe place to discuss things in confidence. With Cheriss or Tomer with them most of the rest of the time, this left few occasions for private conversation between them.
Wedge dialed the power down on his headset so its signal was unlikely to be intercepted at ranges of more than a few hundred meters. He pulled off his pilot’s helmet, setting it in the little cargo space behind his seat, and put on the headset. “One to Flight. Are you reading? Answer by number.”
“Two, ready.”
“Three, ready to run off at the mouth.”
“Four, I’m a go.”
“All right, gentlemen, what’s news?”
“One, Four. On the lightboard, I keep seeing fighter maneuvers about one hundred fifty Adumar klicks southwest—”
“That’s
keps
.”
“Thank you, Three. Southwest, and with what I’ve been able to tell from these broken-up signals, they’ve been doing pretty much what we have. My bet is that Turr Phennir and his pilots are also out familiarizing themselves with the Blades.”
“Good to know, Four.”
“One, Three. There’s something I just don’t get.”
“This is news?”
Wedge smiled. “Quiet, Four. Go ahead, Three.”
“Why does the
perator
of Cartann assume that the Empire just won’t move in here and take over? Why does he think they’ll cooperate in this competition to win their favor and then just go home if they lose?”
Wedge thought about that. “Three, here’s a guess. You’re thinking in terms of the Empire we knew when we joined the Rebellion. Today’s Empire is a fraction of that size, with a heightened sense of economy. To conquer this world, they’d have to commit and probably spend a lot of resources. To do so, they might even have to smash flat the very industry they want to obtain. The Empire would win, no doubt. But they’d lose more than they’d gain. It would probably never be a cost-effective decision.”
“Good point, One. I just can never think of the Empire as anything but this gigantic thing with limitless resources.”
“Back to normal communications,” Wedge said. “The air base is coming up.” Ahead were the familiar colors and shapes of the Cartann air base from which they had taken off—several concentric rings, hangar buildings surrounding central control buildings, all of them with elaborate balconies.
Minutes later, they had landed and returned the Blade-32s back to the flightknife that had loaned them, declined yet another challenge from that flightknife, and been rejoined by Cheriss just outside the hangar. “Did you enjoy them?” she asked, her eyes shining.
“Yes, we did,” Wedge said, and led the way toward the wheeled contrivance that would carry them back into the city. “Very hardy fighter-craft.” The girl’s expression suggested that she awaited further praise for the Blades, so he added, “Obviously a vehicle of conquest.”
She nodded, happy. “There is none better. And it is obvious that you’ve learned to master it very swiftly.”
“Well … we managed not to crash,” Wedge amended. “I wouldn’t say we’ve mastered it.”
“Oh, you were putting them through their paces as though you’d been flying them for years,” she said. “And the Imperial fighters accepted a challenge today and shot down four members of Blood on the Flowers Flightknife.”
“Shot down?” Wedge frowned. “How many survived?”
“One,” she said. “Ejected, badly wounded. He’ll have some scars to brag about.” Her voice became a little more soft, more shy. “Will you be accepting challenges, too? Maybe tomorrow?”
Wedge, out of the corner of his eye, saw Janson grinning at him. Wedge slowed his pace and managed to step on Janson’s foot before the other pilot could adjust. Over Janson’s yelp, he said, “Tell me, are all your challenges live-fire exercises, or do you ever use simulators?”