X-wing_ Iron Fist Part 4

"Just a thought. Anyway, if we're not here to help Lara through the endgame, we'll put her in the hands of a friend who is. And that will be the end of it."

"Except for her career."

Both of the other pilots nodded.

Wedge leaned back, away from them. "All right, you two. I'll give you this. If she carries out this operation, I'll consider her for transfer to one of my squadrons. And I'll base my acceptance or refusal of her completely on my own evaluation of her skills and her character. Not on her academy records, not on her partic.i.p.ation in your operation. She has to be fit to fly as a Rogue or a Wraith... but if she is, the next time I have a slot available I'll take her. That's the best I can do."

They took that as a signal and rose. "That's the best we could hope for,"

Phanan said. "Thank you, sir."

"Dismissed."

When they'd gone, Wedge said to the empty air, "Wes, they're doing it to me again."

3.

"I think it's all wrapped up in the symbolism of the Iron Fist," Face said.

The Wraiths were in the officers' lounge of Sivantlie Base, their temporary station on Coruscant. Once a hotel catering to mid-level Imperial bureaucrats from offworld, it now housed units of the armed forces that were in transition: soldiers awaiting transport to their a.s.signments, squadrons in rotation between bases, new units being a.s.sembled. Two stories down, where the base's tower just began to extend above the surrounding buildings, there were hangar accesses large enough for small cargo vessels. The lounge itself had vast viewports that gave the Wraiths and other officers present a clear view of the limitless sea of Coruscant's building tops, as well as storm clouds concentrating only a few kilometers away. Tiny dots like insects, actually shuttles and other craft, buzzed above the cityscape and beneath the clouds.

Face was at the viewports, staring down into the dark depths of Coruscant's streets, trying to s.h.i.+ft his tastes around, trying to become the sort of man who would look upon this world as a thing of beauty.

Trying to become a loyal Imperial officer, if only temporarily, to understand how they thought, reacted.

"You're saying the Iron Fist is his hammer, symbolically as well as effectively?" That was Janson, stretched out on one of the lounge sofas, a tumbler of brandy on the table at his head.

Face nodded absently. "He uses it for strikes against high-profile targets. Not targets that are easier than the others, nor harder, just more visible. Such as the a.s.sault on Noquivzor, designed to destroy Rogue Squadron - what a coup that would have been. He named Iron Fist after his first command, an elderly wreck of a Victory-cla.s.s Star Destroyer. It's a symbol to him, of his rise from obscurity to power. It's the key to him, I think." He glanced over at Runt, who leaned lazily against a support pillar on the other side of the main viewport. "What do you think?"

The brown-furred nonhuman turned toward him. Face felt his own spine stiffen. This wasn't Runt's usual body language, and the long-faced pilot's eyes drooped almost closed.

Runt said, "Did I give you leave to speak?" His voice was rich and deep, without his usual melodious tones and odd inflections.

"Your pardon," Face said. He felt oddly formal. "Iron Fist? Zsinj's primary and most important act of symbolism?"

Runt shook his head, sending his long, glossy ponytail swaying. His smile showed his large teeth but did not seem in the least friendly. "You don't understand Zsinj," he said. "To Zsinj, symbols are for others. Zsinj uses them as simple controls. k.n.o.bs and b.u.t.tons by which he can cause his lessers to do their duty. Dials and gauges by which he can measure their fear. No, Zsinj's tool is that fear itself, fear and respect. Zsinj smashes with one hand and feeds with the other. One act impresses the unaligned governors who used to support the Empire. The other hand beckons them. As more and more feed from that hand, still more will be forced to." Runt finally looked fully at Face.

"It is the governors. It must be. Zsinj will do whatever it takes to draw them into his camp, one by one or ten by ten. Smash them, entice them, seduce them, terrify them."

Face glanced back at Janson. The squadron's second-in-command grinned at him, obviously amused by Runt's performance, then c.o.c.ked his head to one side and froze-near-universal pantomime of a droid whose power has just been shut off, pilot's shorthand for someone whose brain is receiving no power.

One of the lounge's simulators hissed as its canopy opened. The new Twi'lek pilot, Dia Pa.s.sik, bounded out as though she were partially made of springs. She had a smile on her face, nearly a smirk, and she headed straight for the bar. Face watched her closely; there was something odd about the way she moved...

That was it. Hers was the strut of a Corellian pilot. A male Corellian pilot, to the extent that her build would allow her such motion. She, too, knew something about body language and simulated manners.

The adjoining simulator opened and Phanan climbed out more sedately. He came over to Face.

"Well, she dropped the heavy end of the hammer on me," he said.

"Vaped you?"

"Three times out of three. I don't think she's up to Kell's level, and certainly not up to the commander's, but she's deadly." Phanan added, a hopeful note in his voice, "Perhaps she'd show me some mercy on account of my physical appeal and personal charm."

"I'm sure she would if you had any."

They joined Dia at the bar, flanking her, and ordered a nonalcoholic fruit fizz to match hers. Squeaky, the 3PO unit with mismatched gold and silver component's, drew their drinks, uttered a sigh, and murmured something about the scarcity of fresh fruit in the Coruscant market.

"Ton says you're a pretty hot shooter," Face said.

"It won't work," she said.

"Eh?" Face glanced across her at Phanan, who returned his confused expression. "What won't work?"

"You wouldn't have said that to a male pilot unless it had been a real run. Which means you only said it to ingratiate yourself with me. You want to provoke an emotional response, grat.i.tude, that a lowly flight officer might find worth under the eyes of the famous Garik Loran. At some point I'm supposed to swoon into your arms, aren't I?"

Face blinked. "That actually hadn't occurred to me."

"I didn't see your holos, Face. When you were acting your heart out as a child star, I was a slave dancer in training, not permitted choice rewards like seeing entertainment holos. You don't occupy a place in the adolescent quadrant of my heart the way you do with most females my age.

I am immune to your alleged charms."

Face glanced at Phanan again. The other pilot was turning red with the effort not to laugh. Face modulated his voice to low, resonant, romantic tones. "I am so glad I met you," he said. "I've been looking for you all my life."

"You have?" Her expression turned to confusion.

"Why?"

"The one woman in all the galaxy immune to my charms? Do you know how often I've said, 'Where is she, does she truly exist?'"

Phanan got himself under control. "It's true. I raised Face from the time he was a cub, and since almost the day he could talk, he's been saying, 'Find me the one woman who can withstand me. Who can loathe me for who I really am.' He's had a long, lonely life until today. Now you can abuse him and give me a rest."

Face nodded sagely.

Dia's face twitched into a smile, which she quickly sup-pressed. "Now you're making fun of me."

Face let his expression and voice return to normal. "Oh, we've barely gotten started. Anyway, after a casual remark about your skills to open up the conversation, my plan actually was to ask you how you fouled up."

"Fouled up." She looked between the two men. "I don't recall fouling up."

"Then what brings you to Wraith Squadron?"

"I volunteered. After the story broke on your destruction of the Implacable, I wanted to join a unit as savage as that. Why? Are you supposed to be screwups?"

Phanan whistled. "She doesn't even know. We didn't even have time for our true reputation to circulate before another reputation swam up and swallowed it."

Face gave Dia a stern look. "I'm sorry, you appear to have been transferred here under false pretenses. We're a hard-luck squadron. If you're not a real screwup, we're just going to have to make you an honorary screwup. Keep that in mind."

"I will," she said, her voice solemn.

"She'll do," Phanan said.

"Even if she doesn't swoon."

"How did you get into Starfighter Command?" Face asked.

She looked between them as if evaluating them, then shrugged. "My...

owner... was a very rich man of Coruscant, founder of a firm that made communications equipment. Very reliable HoloNet receivers, for example.

He and his preferred advisers lived on an enormous yacht called the Violet Hernia reference to the Emperor's robes. Anyway, over the years I was able to persuade several of his personal pilots to teach me how to control their vehicles. Few things make a male feel as grand as the opportunity to teach a young, fascinated female." She opened her eyes wide in an expression of innocence.

Face snorted. "So you stole a vehicle ?"

"My owner was visited by a pilot with an armed shuttle. I stole it and turned it over to the New Republic."

"And the Violet Hem?"

This time her smile was not that of an innocent. "Before I left, I locked her s.h.i.+elds down so they could not be brought up. My first combat action of any sort was to blow Violet Hem out of s.p.a.ce."

Face suppressed a shudder and decided to change the subject.

"I wonder if the other new pilots are just as unaware of our true nature.

Hey, Castin!"

The blond pilot, seated in a stuffed chair nearby, looked up guiltily from the datapad in his lap. "I wasn't doing anything."

Face grinned. "I'm not monitoring you. I just wanted to know what you did to end up with the Wraiths."

"I volunteered."

"Why?"

Castin looked thoughtful. "I wanted to be where things happened. And things always happen around Commander Antilles. I want to go after enemies like Zsinj and eliminate them. Erase them. Overwrite them to the point that no one in the galaxy even remembers them."

"Well, that's admirable... but again, why?"

"People like Zsinj, they have to be squashed as hard and as fast as you can. Because the next thing they do is going to be something awful. They never do anything that isn't awful, and ordinary people get killed."

Castin's tone was bitter, and other Wraiths perked up to listen.

"You're speaking from personal experience."

"Oh, yes." Castin looked around blankly, staring not at his fellow Wraiths but at some point in the past. "The day the Emperor died-what were you doing?"

Face didn't have to think back. Most people recalled exactly what they were doing the moment they heard that Palpafine had been killed at Endor.

"I was in civilian flight school on Lorrd. In cla.s.s studying astronautics. Why?"

"I was in one of Coruscant's plazas. A little one, couldn't have held more than a couple of hundred thousand people, way up high where only a half-dozen buildings cast shadows down on it. The word spread like fire through an old building. The New Republic HoloNet broadcast was being rebroadcast on a wide band so that every personal comlink would pick it up. All holoprojectors were showing the second Death Star exploding.

"The crowd went crazy. Loyalists were turning white. Some of them fainting dead away. Rebels and people with Rebel leanings were going berserk. Before very long, they were actually tearing a statue of Palpatine down. A big one. It took cables and skimmers to knock it over."

Castin shrugged. "And then stormtroopers came."

"To restore order."

"If you want to call it that. They opened up on the crowd pulling down the statue. And their blasters weren't set on stun. You could smell the burning-meat odor all over the plaza. I was right next to a young mother who took it right in the head. I grabbed her baby on the way down so he wouldn't be trampled in the stampede." He shook his head, his expression bleak, and fell silent.

Face said, "The Imperial HoloNet wouldn't have transmitted the news of the Emperor's death over normal channels like that. Not before they'd had time to sweeten up the story and turn it into some sort of Imperial victory."

Castin shook his head, not meeting Face's eye.

"So someone else, someone technically proficient, had to have intercepted it and rebroadcast it like that. You?"

Castin nodded. "My group was one of them, yes."

"So Zsinj is another Imperial killer, and if you don't stop him personally, it's the plaza all over again. Is that it?"

"Maybe."

"Well, that's as good a reason as any." But that was an answer for Face.

Castin might have volunteered for this duty without a blemish on his record, but there was still a possibility of volatility there. Now he had to wonder if Dia and Shalla were also carrying around emotional demolition charges just waiting to go off.

"Pirates," Piggy said, interrupting. The Gamorrean settled into a stuffed chair situated between Janson's sofa and the bar, near Donos and Castin.

"Pirates to you, too," Phanan said. "Is that a new greeting? Something Gamorrean? 'Scabrous pirates to you this morning.'"

"'And bleeding pirates to you.' "Face gave his wingman a formal bow.

"Zsinj was negotiating with the pirates on M2398, trying to enlist their services," Piggy continued. In spite of the me-chanical simplicity of Piggy's voice translator, Face thought he could detect a contemplative quality in the Gamorrean's tones. "It's a tactic we haven't seen with him before. Is he in such dire need that he must rely on pirates? I don't think so. He's a.s.sembling a second navy, perhaps a disposable one."

Runt shook his head again. "Zsinj needs such sc.u.m only to hear what their prattling mouths have to say. To obtain news, intelligence, that he cannot derive from some more le-gitimate source. The pirates are nothing."

Piggy grunted a laugh. "You'll need plenty of cleanser for that sc.u.m when it a.s.sembles and comes at you. At all of us."

"A minute of your time, sir?" Castin Donn stood at the door to Wedge's interim office. Rather, he leaned against it, his body language suggesting a man who'd prefer to be elsewhere-definitely anywhere but a military base. He was unshaven, his eyes tired.

Wedge would have accepted this pose and manner from one of the established Wraiths, but not from a newcomer. He merely cleared his throat and looked expectant, as though the pilot hadn't spoken.

Castin apparently got the hint. He straightened, slowly enough to demonstrate reluctance, and threw a salute.