6

Corran slipped into his darkened apartment and let the door close quietly behind him. A couple of lights blinked, then a softly rising tone greeted him.

“It’s me, Whistler. Keep it down.” Corran peeled off his jacket and dropped it beside the door. “Is Mirax asleep?”

The R2 unit tootled affirmatively, but a glow panel clicked on in the bedroom. “Corran, is that you?”

He kept back from the slender bar of light streaming through the narrow crack between doorjamb and door. “Yes, it’s me. Don’t get up, I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Are you okay? Corran?”

And I’m supposed to be the one with latent Jedi skills. “I’ll be fine.” He pushed open the door to the bedroom with his right foot, then leaned against the jamb with his left shoulder. Looking at his wife as she lay there on her side, her black hair up, wearing a light blue nightgown, he smiled.

Smiled as much as his split lip would let him.

Mirax sat bolt upright in bed. “What happened to you?”

“It was nothing.”

“Nothing? Your lip is split, your right eye is almost swollen shut.” She threw back the covers and padded over to the refresher station. Corran heard water running, then Mirax returned bearing a wet washcloth. She raised it to dab at the blood on his chin, but he caught her hand.

“Mirax, I’ll be fine.” He took the washcloth from her and scrubbed away at the blood. “I decided I needed to get my head clear, so I walked from the morgue. I ran into a little trouble.”

Mirax planted balled fists on her hips. “A little trouble? You came out of the Lusankya looking better.”

He snorted a laugh and followed it with a smile that tugged at the split in his lip. “Well, these are more Lusankya-based injuries. I can’t get the image of Urlor dying like that out of my head. Wedge and Iella have already told me it’s not my fault that he died, but the fact that he wasn’t free yet is the reason he died. I promised to free him, and I’ve failed.”

She canted her head slightly. “So you went looking for trouble and let someone beat you up?”

Corran brought his chin up. “Trouble found me all by itself, I didn’t have to go looking. It was a little gang of kids. A Rodian was leading them. I wasn’t paying attention, so they decided to take me.”

Mirax took his right hand in hers and led him over to the edge of the bed. She made him sit there, then she knelt at his feet and started to unbutton his tunic. “I think I can get the blood out of the shirt. Where’s the jacket?”

“By the door. Most of it, anyway. One of the little glit-biters made off with a sleeve.” Corran pressed the wet cloth to his swollen right eye. “The Rodian swung a pretty good left. He came up on my right side from behind and clouted me. Spun me around, then he split my lip. Another of them grabbed my sleeve and for a second, I thought it was all over.”

He shook his head. “I started to feel sorry for myself, then I saw Urlor lying there in the morgue and I realized that as bad as I felt, at least I could feel. I thought of you, and of Jan Dodonna, and the other Lusankya prisoners, and whoever it was that sent Urlor here to Coruscant. I realized I had more important things to be doing than worrying about myself and that’s when things began to get a bit weird.”

Mirax tugged Corran’s shirt off his left arm, then unbuttoned the right cuff and quickly slipped it past the wet cloth in his right hand. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’d felt it before, a couple of times, flying with the squadron or when I was with CorSec. Everything slowed down, I knew what the Rodian was going to do, what the others were going to do. I could just feel them there. I knew which way to move to avoid their punches. It felt as if they were puppets going through a series of highly choreographed moves, and I just slipped in and out between them. I didn’t have to hit anyone or anything. I just got away.”

Mirax tossed his shirt to the floor and pulled off his right boot. “Sounds very Jedi to me.”

“Yeah, maybe it was a Force thing. I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, though. What does is this: I need to focus on finding Jan Dodonna. Somehow, with Thrawn running loose and everything, it was easy to get distracted. No longer.”

Corran’s left hand curled down into a fist and Mirax quickly took it in her hands. “Corran, I know you’re disappointed in yourself for not having kept your word to General Dodonna about coming back to the Lusankya to free him, but you have to remember that you did do that. Your resignation from Rogue Squadron is what led everyone to go after Ysanne Isard and bring her down. You did get to the Lusankya, just as you said you would.”

“Sure, but they weren’t there.”

“No, they weren’t, but I think you need to stop seeing them as complete victims.” She reached up and tapped a finger against his temple. “I remember what you told me about Jan Dodonna, how he followed you and stopped Derricote from killing you. He was a smart man, and you have to know that he was fully capable of interpreting the move from the Lusankya. Isard’s moving him and everyone else out of there told them that you were succeeding. If you weren’t, if you weren’t going to make good on your promise, Iceheart never would have moved them. They know that.”

She let her hand come down to stroke the left side of his face. “If I were ever to go missing, I’d have no fear. I know you’d turn this galaxy inside out to find me. You’d do whatever you had to do to find me.”

Corran’s left eye narrowed. “No question, whatever it took.”

“Jan Dodonna knows you’re a man of your word. He also knows the move will have complicated things, but he’s not going to doubt that you’ll keep your promise.”

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. The conviction in Mirax’s voice pierced the veil of self-doubt that had sprung from his feeling that he’d failed Urlor. He knew Wedge and Iella had been right in pointing out that the death was not his fault, even though his voiceprint had been used as the trigger. Even so, he knew he couldn’t duck full responsibility for it, because Urlor had been chosen as a weapon to get at him. Had he never escaped from the Lusankya, Urlor never would have been sent to him. By doing what he had done, Corran had made an enemy, and that enemy clearly felt no compunction about using whatever tools were at hand to make a point.

But making a point and attaining a goal are two different things. Using Urlor’s death to taunt him and point out that he’d failed to keep his promise was one thing. That couldn’t be the only desired result of that move, however, because it was far too modest an outcome for the expenditure. Clearly the person wanted to hurt me. To distract me, keep me from focusing, but focusing on what?

“Mirax, see if this scans for you. Killing Urlor at that party, in that way, pretty much guarantees Rogue Squadron has its honor bounded up in freeing the prisoners, right?”

He felt her lie down on the bed beside him. “The first jump of your course seems well plotted.”

“Okay, so then it would seem that our enemy expects us to be thinking a bit more with our emotions than our brains. The enemy has made a move, now we will react to it.” He opened his left eye and turned his head to look at her. “Urlor is bait for a trap meant to destroy Rogue Squadron.”

“That also seems to follow.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “You’ll have to assume a trap is waiting for you no matter what you decide to do. You’ll have to plan in some safeguards.”

“So, tell me, am I just being egotistical by assuming this enemy wants a piece of me and Rogue Squadron?”

“Corran, you’re a pilot who used to be a member of CorSec. Ego gets issued with the uniforms.” Mirax gave him a quick smile. “In this case, though, I don’t think you’re wrong. Whoever is behind this is cruel and evil—and there’s a list of ex-Imperial leaders we could run down and find plenty of candidates who fit that description.”

“This person isn’t going to be on that list.” Corran frowned. “We’re dealing with someone who was close to Isard, who sees Rogue Squadron as the folks who destroyed Isard. They’re focused on retribution. I don’t think they’ll win, in the long run, but I am afraid lots more people will die, as did Urlor, before they’re stopped.”

Gavin Darklighter swirled the golden Corellian brandy in the small tumbler, then tossed it off. He felt a small bead of brandy leak from the corner of his mouth and work its way down through his goatee. The rest of the fiery liquid burned its way down his throat, but none of its warmth radiated out to dispel the chill that had settled over him.

He idly swiped at the droplet with his left hand, then sighed and shook his head. “The way that man died tonight, it took me back to when we were helping the victims of the Krytos virus here on Coruscant. They bled, too, bled and died.”

Asyr Sei’lar nodded mutely from the chair opposite him. After coming back to their apartment from the party, she’d changed into a purple silk dressing gown. Sitting in the blocky chair, she had drawn her feet up so they disappeared into the robe. Of her body he could only see her white-furred hands and her head, with the diagonal blaze of white fur that ran from her forehead down over her left eye and across her cheek. Her markings made her somewhat unique among Bothans—as did her attitude.

Gavin set his glass down on the arm of his chair. “I guess I was hoping, with Thrawn gone, that things would begin to settle down. I mean, I know I’m not even twenty years old, but there are times I feel positively ancient.”

Asyr gave him a half smile. “Battles and death act as force-multipliers when it comes to time. Always having to be alert and ready to deal with violence wears you down. It’s wearing me down, too.”

Gavin’s head came up. “Really?”

“That surprises you?”

“Well, yes, I guess it does.” He hesitated a moment, letting his thoughts order themselves. “You graduated from the Bothan Martial Academy, so I would have thought you would have training in how to handle this sort of thing.”

Asyr barked a little laugh. “Gavin, military schools and training are long on teaching you how to destroy things, but they don’t much deal with the aftermath of that destruction. Everyone assumes that if you win you’ll feel good and if you lose you’ll be dead, so how you feel doesn’t matter. By the time war begins to grind you down, it’s pretty much had that same effect on everyone, so the war slows down and stops.”

“Or you get rolled over and killed and your feelings don’t matter.”

“Right.” She turned her head and looked at him with her violet eyes. “Are you saying you want to resign from the squadron, start a family, do something else?”

Gavin frowned. “The squadron is my family, you’re my family. I don’t want to walk away from that. We both know that someone is going to have to do something about the guy who died, and Wedge and Corran will push for it to be Rogue Squadron. I don’t want to sound silly, but that death was a shot taken at us, and showing the person who took it that they were wrong seems to be the right thing to do.”

“Agreed.”

He sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “As for the other stuff, like starting a family, I think I’d like that. I’d like to start a family with you. We could get married, make this permanent, and bring children into our lives.”

Asyr froze for a second and Gavin feared he’d somehow insulted her. Bothans were a proud species and very much tied into complex relationships involving kin and clans. Despite having been Asyr’s companion for the past two years and joining her at a number of social functions, he’d yet to meet another human-Bothan couple. And I know there are plenty of Bothans who don’t like the fact that we’ve managed to stay together as long as we have.

She glanced down at the hem of her gown and picked a piece of lint from it. “I like the idea of being married to you, Gavin, but there’s a lot to consider. You do know that it is impossible for us to have children together.”

Gavin nodded. “Yeah, both friends and enemies have clued me into that situation. Strikes me, though, that there are plenty of children who need adopting. I mean, we have those two little brothers who live in the alley near the squadron’s hangar. They’re just one example. Adopting would give us a chance to help heal some of the damage the Empire has done, you know?”

She looked up and nodded solemnly. “I agree. There is something else you have to know: If we adopt, I want us to adopt at least one Bothan child.”

“Sure, no problem.”

Asyr held up a furred hand to stop him. “Listen to me, Gavin, because it won’t be that easy. You know we Bothans set great store by our families. Political power flows from the networks we build up with alliances and everything. My family sees me as a disappointment because, while I have garnered acclaim in service with Rogue Squadron, I have not presented them with children. Those children would be well loved, but they would also be fodder for future alliances. I’ve managed to amass what Bothans recognize as a certain amount of power. I’m a political battery in that sense, and my family is disappointed that I’ve not provided them with a means to bleed some of that power off.”

“So you’re saying that if we adopt a Bothan child, your family will want to exert some control.”

Asyr laughed aloud. “How can you have lived with a Bothan for so long and yet be so polite when referring to our possessiveness?”

Gavin smiled. “Your possessiveness isn’t that bad from my perspective. Look, this would be our child. I wouldn’t be looking to interfere with the child’s assumption of his heritage. I wouldn’t want to try to substitute a human culture for Bothan culture, but I would want to provide some balance. I’d want to show him that different doesn’t mean bad. And I’d hope any other children we adopted—be they human or Rodian or Ithorian, whatever—would get that same message.”

Asyr blinked and Gavin saw a single glistening tear roll from her left eye. “How could I have taken you for an anti-alien bigot when we first met?”

“You didn’t know me.” He got up out of his chair and crossed over to where she sat, then knelt beside her. He reached out and held her left hand, stroking the fur. “Look, I know this won’t be easy, but I want to try to do something positive for the galaxy. Sure, flying off, stopping some Grand Admiral from reestablishing the Empire is noble and positive, but the way we rebuild the galaxy is by making lives better one at a time. We can do this, you and I. I want to do it with you.”

She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, then rested her chin on the crown of his head. “You realize, if the adoption goes through, one of us will have to leave the squadron. It wouldn’t be fair for both of us to risk our lives and leave some child orphaned again.”

“I know.” Gavin let his head rest against her breastbone. “That’s a decision we can make down the line. Neither one of us wants to leave, I know, but if that’s what it takes to make the galaxy better, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”