1

She was beautiful and fragile and he could not count the number of times he had told her he loved her. But he had come here knowing he had to hurt her very badly.

Her name was Qwi Xux. She was not human; her blue skin, a shade lighter than her eyes, and her glistening brown hair, downy in its softness, were those of the humanoids of the planet Omwat. She was dressed for the occasion in a white evening gown whose flowing lines complemented her willowy form.

They sat at a table in a balcony café three kilometers above the surface of the planet Coruscant, the world that was a city without end. Just beyond the balcony rail was a vista made up of skyscrapers extending to the horizon, an orange sky threatening rain, and the sun setting beyond one of the more distant thunderheads. Breezes drifting across the two of them smelled of rain to come. At this early-evening hour, he and Qwi were the only diners on the balcony, and he was grateful for the privacy.

Qwi looked up from her entree of factory-bred Coruscant game fowl, her soft smile fading from her lips. “Wedge, there is something I must say.”

Wedge Antilles, general of the New Republic, perhaps still the most famous pilot of the old Rebel Alliance, breathed a sigh of silent thanks. Qwi’s conversational distraction would give him at least a few more moments before he had to arm his bad news and fire it off at her. “What is it?”

Her gaze fixed on him, she took a deep breath and held it until he was sure she would begin to turn even more blue. He recognized her expression: a reluctance to injure. He gestured, not impatiently, for her to go ahead.

“Wedge,” she said, her words all in a rush, “I think our time together is done.”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to say it so that it doesn’t seem cruel.” She gave him a helpless shrug. “I think we must go our separate ways.”

He remained silent, trying to restructure what she’d said into something he understood.

It wasn’t that her words were confusing. But they were the words he was supposed to be saying. How they’d defected from his mind to hers was a complete mystery to him.

He tried to remember what he’d thought she would say when he spoke those words to her. All he could manage was “Why?” At least his tone was neutral, no accusation in it.

“Because I think we have no future together.” Her gaze scanned his face as if looking for new cuts or bruises. “Wedge, we are good together. You bring me happiness. I think I do the same for you. But whenever I try to turn my mind from where we are to where we will be someday, I see no home, no family, no celebration days special to us. Just two careers whose bearers keep intersecting out of need. I think of what we feel for one another and every time it seems ‘affection’ is the proper word, not ‘love.’ ”

Wedge sat transfixed. Yes, those were his thoughts, much as he had been marshaling them all day long. “If not love, Qwi, what do you think this relationship meant to us?”

“For me, it was need. When I left the Maw facility where I designed weapons for the Empire, when I was made to understand what sort of work I had been doing, I was left with nothing. I looked for something to tractor me toward safety, toward comfort, and that tractor beam was you.” She dropped her gaze from his. “When Kyp Durron used his Force powers to destroy my memory, to ensure I could never engineer another Death Star or Suncrusher, I became nothing, and was more in need of my tractor beam than ever.”

She met his gaze again. “For you, it was a simulator run.”

“What?”

“Please, hear me out.” Distressed, she turned away from him to stare at the cloud-mottled sky and the distant sunset. “When we met, I think your heart told you that it was time for you to love. And you did, you loved me.” Her voice became a whisper. “I understand now that humans, in their adolescent years, fall in love long before they understand what it means. These loves do not usually endure. They are learning experiences. I think perhaps that you, shoved from your childhood home straight into a world of starfighters and lasers and death, missed having those learning loves. But the need for them stayed with you.

“Wedge, I was the wrong one for you. Whatever your intent, whatever your seriousness, I think that all you have felt for me has been a simulator run for some later time, for some other woman. One with whom you can share a future.” Her words became raspy. She turned her attention back to Wedge, and he could see tears forming in her eyes. “I wish I could have been her.”

Wedge sagged back against his chair. At last her words had become her own again.

“And I am at fault,” she continued. “I have—oh, this is hard to say.”

“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.

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.”