What can I do for you?"
"We have a flight of four eyeballs orbiting. They've left
Zsinj's service and need a ride out of here. Will you?"
"Sure. Not the first time I've hauled a ship for you."
No, the first one was Corran. "Thanks, Mirax. Mynock
is sending you their corem unit frequency, so I'll leave the
arrangements to you."
"It will give me something to do while I'm waiting."
"I copy." Wedge glanced at the chronographic display in
the corner of his monitor. "When we get back home, you
and I will sit down and talk, yes?"
Weariness washed through Mirax's voice. "I'11 have to
offload the cargo first. Then maybe I can sleep. Haven't been
doing much of that lately. I will call you when I'm functional
again."
"Promise."
"I promise."
"And keep that promise, or I talk your father into com-
ing out of retirement by telling him you're moping over the
death of his worst enemy's son."
"Oh, Wedge, that's cruel." Light static hissed in Wedge's
ears as Mirax's voice broke. "There's no reason I shouldn't
mourn for Corran."
"Agreed, but you don't have to do it alone. That's a
burden we all share, got it?"
"I copy." Resignation tinged with relief fooded her
words. "See you back on Coruscant."
"I am counting on it." Wedge looked out at the station
and his squadron patrolling around it. And, miracle of mira-
cles, it looks like everyone is going to make it back home
again.
8
Corran knew that once again being in the cockpit of a fighter
should have made him happy, but it did not. He could find
no fault with the fighter nor with being given a patrol mis-
sion. He'd done enough of those to expect boredom, and yet
even that wasn't giving him a problem. Just to be flying again
was enough to override boredom.
The fact was, he realized, that he was unhappy. Some-
thing was gnawing away at him inside. Something was
wrong, and there was no way he could ignore it. It created an
anxiety in him that was out of all proportion with what he
was doing. It felt as if he weren't involved in a patrol at all,
but in some other mission with a hidden agenda he knew
nothing about.
"Nemesis One, report."
"One is clear, Control."
The voice coming through the comm unit betrayed no
hint of deception or urgency, but Corran couldn't shake the
sickening feeling that he was being manipulated. He had a
natural aversion to being used, and he could feel unseen
hands all over himself, pointing him in a certain direction,
for reasons he could not fathom. He was surprised to find
himself less resentful of their agenda--whatever it was--than
of being manipulated.
I'm reasonable. I don't shy away from difficult tasks. I
do what I am asked to do, within reason. Didn't I do
that... ? His thoughts dead-ended as he realized he
couldn't summon up specifc memories to back up his argu-
ment. He knew he had performed many dangerous missions,
but he couldn't pinpoint them. His inability to do so
wouldn't have concerned him, and in fact almost did not,
except that he kept feeling like a hologram being processed
by someone else's computer.
"Nemesis One, we have two contacts on the heading of
270 degrees. They are ten kilometers distant. They are hos-
tile. You are free to engage and terminate them."
"As ordered." Corran punched up the data on the in-
coming ships and displayed it over his monitor. Two TIEs.
The starfighters inspired no fear in him, and he would have
viewed them with utter detachment except that a random
thought shot off through his brain.
Two T1Es aren't nearly as deadly as a single Ty-cho. The
connection seemed entirely logical to Corran the similar
an Imperial pilot who flew TIEs reinforced it. Corran knew
Tycho had betrayed Rogue Squadron, and Corran had been
determined to see him pay. If I weren't here, I'd be there,
taking care of Tycho.
Before he could begin to wonder where there was, Con-
trol's voice came through the comlink again. "We have addi-
tional information on the incoming ships. Transmitting
now."
The image on the monitor shifted from a TIE starfighter
to an X-wing. An additional line of data beneath the fighter's
image informed Corran the ship was flown by Captain T.
Celchu. A jolt of adrenaline pulsed through his body, then
slammed into his brain. He couldn't believe his luck--the
coincidence of being able to fly against Tycho and avenge
Rogue Squadron was incredible. And I will make the most
of it.
Corran inverted the TIE Interceptor he flew and dove.
The X-wings started to come after him, vectoring in on his
belly, so he inverted again, then pulled through a climbing
loop to starboard. He soared as the X-wings dove, neither
side wasting laser energy when the chances of hitting were so
small. Corran kept tightening the loop into a spiral that em-
phasized the squint's greater maneuverability, then streaked
away to underscore its superior speed as well.
A light flicked on within the head's-up display, indicat-
ing one of the X-wings was trying for a proton torpedo tar-
get lock, but a quick climb, roll, and twisting dive broke the
lock and brought Corran out on a vector toward Tycho's
X-wing. Corran sideslipped the Interceptor to starboard,
then rolled up on the left wing and climbed in toward Tycho.
He flipped his lasers from quad- to dual-fire, assuming he'd
have to use multiple shots in multiple passes to bring Tycho
down. He led the X-wing, anticipating Tycho's break, then
hastily snapped off a shot that splashed energy over Tycho's
shields as the Interceptor overshot its target.
No reaction. That isn't like Tycho at all. Corran rolled
up on the right stabilizer, climbed into a loop, then rolled
over and out to port. Another inversion took him into a dive,
but his scanners showed the X-wings hadn't stayed with him
past the first maneuver, much less through the second.
Corran shivered. Tbey're bandling like TIE starfighters,
not like X-wings, and tbe pilot flying tbat first one isn't
Tycbo. He switched his targeting computer over to the sec-
ond ship and saw that X-wing was listed as being flown by
Kittan Loor. An immediate desire to rape that ship filled
him, but it did not deflect him from thinking. In fact, the
vehemence of his feelings about Loor swept him past the fact
that Loor and Tycho had been in collusion on Coruscant.
It carried him far enough that he recalled Loor didn't
know how to fly any space ships at all, much less starfighters.
Loor can't be tbere. Tbe chance that Tycbo and Loor
would show up where I couM attack and kill them is unbe-
lievable. Whereas before he had taken great delight in the
coincidence, now it became evidence that he was being
manipulated. The !ink between a TIE and Tycho had been
made in his mind before Tycho showed up as a pilot. While
he knew inferring causality from that relationship was not
strictly logical, his being manipulated meant it was more
than possible.
Tycho is an enemy, so he was placed in one fighter. An-
other enemy was plucked from a list of my enemies and
placed in the second fighter. More anger flared through Cor-
ran and battered aside the blockages in his brain that had
kept him thinking of nothing outside the cockpit. The appar-
ent insertion of personal enemies into his situation told Cor-
ran two things. First off, I'm in a simulator, and second,
someone knows enough about me to know who my enemies
are. Pitting me against my enemies gives me some wish ful-
fillment, which is a good thing. It rewards behavior, but I
have to ask myself, is flying an Interceptor against X-wings
behavior for which I want to be rewarded?
His stomach shrank and hardened into a rock that
threatened to explode volcanically. I'm flying an Imp ship
against Rebels. I don't want to do that. Corran immediately
realized that only his enemies--the remnants of the Empire--
would want him to feel good about attacking Rebels, yet few
Imps would take the time or make the effort to manipulate
him that way. Some would imprison him and the rest would
just kill him.
Except one.
Ysanne Isard.
Injecting her into the jumble of thoughts bouncing
around his brain immediately started to impose order on his
mind. She was known and feared for her ability to warp
Rebels and turn them against friends and family. She had
been successful with Tycho Celchu, and he was not the only
success story to come out of her Lusankya prison. Her al-
tered agents had wrought havoc among the Emperor's ene-
mies, and his death had done nothing to cau se Iceheart to
curtail her operations.
The fog in Corran's brain began to evaporate. He re-
membered having met Isard after his capture. She'd vowed to
transform him into a tool of the Emperor's vengeance. This
simulator run--and the one before it---clearly was designed
to get him to attack Rebel symbols. Subsequent sessions
would further crush his resistance, training him to greater
and greater levels of efficiency while turning him against ev-
eryone he knew, loved, and respected.
She would make me over into the human equivalent of
the plague she unleashed on Coruscant.
Corran shook his head, then raised his hands from the
simulator's steering yoke and yanked his helmet off. Elec-
trodes taped to his head pulled away rather abruptly, taking
some hair with them, but he ignored the pain. The electrodes
fed my brain wave patterns to a computer. The patterns were
compared to data gathered from interrogations, so the com-
puter could recognize what I was thinking about and project
the proper clues into the simulation. Very good.
He pulled the respiration mask from his face and let it
dangle against his chest. "This is Nemesis One. The game is
over. I won't betray my people."
The star field on the screen in front of Corran vanished.
In its place he saw Ysanne Isard's head and shoulders. Her
mismatched eyes, the left one a fiery red and the right one an
ice blue, added venom to the woman's steely expression. Her
sharp, slender features might have made her seem beautiful
to some, but the fear her anger stabbed into his heart made
her more than ugly to Corran. Her long black hair had been
pulled back into a ponytail, yet she had let her white temple-
locks remain unbound as if that girlish affectation would
somehow soften her image.
"You are under the impression, Corran Horn, that this
little victory is significant and hampers my efforts in some
way. It does not." An eyebrow arched over her arctic eye.
"You worked with the Corellian Security Force, so you can
understand how powerful certain interrogation techniques
can be. What you have endured so far is little more than
testing."
"And I passed."
"From your perspective that might seem true." Her eyes
sharpened. "From mine it merely means you have reclassified
yourself. You will require more time than others I have
worked with in the past, but here at Lusankya, time is abun-
dant."
Corran shrugged. "Good, then I'll have abundant time
to plan my escape."
"I doubt it." She sighed as if what she was about to say
hurt her in some way. "Were you easy to train, you would
find your stay here pleasant. As you are difficult, the next
step is for me to determine if you know anything I consider
valuable. Unfortunately this means sifting through a lot of
things I don't want to know. I hope your life has been inter-
esting, because my technicians have been known to resort to
cruelty when they are bored."
"They'll learn nothing from me."
lsard frowned. "Please, Horn, skip the bluster. We will
start with a level four narco-interrogation and work our way
down to level one if we must. You know you'll tell us what-
ever we want to know."
Sheer terror froze the lump in Corran's stomach solid.
With a level four interrogation session he'd be remembering
things his mother had forgotten while she was carrying him
in her womb. ! will have no secrets. Hundreds of images
flitted through his mind as he sorted valuable memories from
the casual ones.
This process, while agonizing, also brought a smile to
his face. Gil Bastra, the man who had created a series of
identities for Corran to use after he fled from CoreIlia, had
made sure the identities took Corran out into the outlier
worlds. From Loor they know everything about my days
with CorSec. Thanks to Gil there's very little valuable infor-
mation I can give her. I was out of circulation until I joined
Rogue Squadron, and I don't know enough about the Rebel-
lion to hurt it.
"I see your smile, Horn. You may feel bold enough to
smile now, but things will change." Isard herself smiled, and
Corran found it a most forbidding thing. "When we are fin-
ished with you, smiles will be but a memory, and a painful
one at that."
9
Wedge laughed aloud, telling himself he was laughing at the
irony of feeling nervous, not because of being nervous. Here
he was, a celebrated hero and the sole survivor of both Death
Star runs, conqueror of Cornscant and leader of the most
feared fighter squadron in the galaxy, and at leila Wessiri's
door he felt nervous. Enough ice water ran in his veins, so the
rumors went, to replenish Coruscant's polar caps, yet he
found himself clearing his voice and hesitating before he
pushed the buzzer button at her door.
On the way over from squadron headqu
arters he had
convinced himself he wasn't going to be asking her out on a
date, really. He'd spent the previous hour being harangued
by Erisi Dlarit concerning the Vratix terrorist and his where-
abouts after the raid on Warlord Zsinj's bacta store. He'd
done his best, over and over again, to explain to her that he
had no reports about the Thyferran native, but promised to
pass notice of her interest up to General Cracken. That really
was all he could do, but Erisi took a lot of convincing on that
point.
The experience had been draining. There had been mo-
ments when he considered just cutting her off and ordering
her out of his office, but he could tell her concern about the
Vratix was based on her conviction that the insectoid crea-
ture was a terrorist and a potential hazard to anyone who
came in contact with it. He thought Erisi's reaction might
have been born from her frustration at not having been able
to do anything to prevent Corran's death. By making the
terrorist her responsibility, she might prevent another trag-
edy, thereby atoning for her lack of action in Corran's case.
Wedge found her motive noble, but her insistence exhaust-
ing. Corran's death and the misery of millions on Coruscant
had everyone in the squadron worn thin, and being dismis-
sive of Erisi's concerns would not help the situation.
Corran's death had likewise affected Iella deeply. She
had been Corran's partner in the Corellian Security Force
and had fled CoreIlia at the same time he had. Her flight had
brought her to Coruscant, where she joined up with the
Rebel underground. Her reunion with Corran had been a
joyous occasion. It had been easy for Wedge to see how they
complemented each other and must have worked well as a
team.
Those qualities that made her well-suited to working
with Corran were qualities Wedge found attractive. She was
thoughtful and stable, yet possessed of a good sense of hu-
mor and a fierce loyalty to her friends and to justice. Unfor-
tunately, her loyalty made her most zealous in helping the
prosecution find evidence against Tycho Celchu, but she ap-
proached the search so openly that Wedge couldn't find fault