ranking Imperial here among us."
Corran immediately realized that a secondary reason for
the lack of titles among the Rebel prisoners was to allow
them to further differentiate themselves from the Imps in
Lusankya. "I'm Corran, and I was at Borleias."
"Then you saw me smash the little invasion fleet you
sent against me."
"Yeah, I did, and I lost friends at that battle." Corran
balled a fist and arced it toward Derricote's bullet head, but
it never landed. Urlor lunged forward, grabbed the collar of
Corran's tunic, and hauled him backward. Corran's feet left
the floor and the canvas rasped against the flesh of his arm-
pits as the big man held him up. "Hey! That hurts!"
Urlor kept his voice even. "There's a rule--if we beat up
on Imps, the staff here beats up on the Old Man."
What I almost did. Corran's mouth hung open as if to
let the twisting sensation in his stomach a chance to escape.
He nodded once and Urlor put him back down. Corran
turned to Jan and bowed his head. "I won't let it happen
again."
"Spirit is good, Corran, very good." Jan coughed lightly
into his hand. "The general here was the one who told us of
Rogue Squadron's defeat at Borleias. He left out your appar-
ent return and victory."
Derricote sniffed. "Had I still been on Borleias there
would have been more Rebel blood shed."
"Not likely. We pinpointed the power generator at the
Alderaan Biotics facility and severed the conduit that sent the
auxiliary power to your shield generators and ion cannons. A
handful of TIEs survived our second raid, and those pilots
surrendered when they flew home and found their base in
our hands." Corran shrugged. "And as for Coruscant, the
fact that you use the word 'inherit' to describe what we did,
well, it means that the world is ours now. It might be sick,
but it's better off in our hands than it ever was in yours."
"I doubt the dying think that."
"I doubt the dying blame the Rebels for their problems."
Derricote shrugged, and a shiver ran through the layer
of fat around his middle. "It does not matter to me who they
blame. When the histories are written, this shall be but a
momentary disturbance in the Empire's epic."
Jan rocked to his feet. "That will be up to the historians
to determine, won't it, General?"
"When I get out and put together my memoirs, you will
fare well, Jan." Derricote ducked his head and slid his body
back out through the doorway. He paused halfway through,
and Corran thought for a moment he might have been stuck,
but the fat man turned to look at Jan again. "Before I forget
what I came here for, a batch is ready."
"Thank you. I'll have Urlor organize a party to help you
decant it." Jan nodded at Urlor and the large man stooped to
force Derricote from the doorway, then followed him out.
The older man smiled. "The general is a recent addition to
our population, but he has proved himself useful in that he's
good with biotics. He's managed to ferment a relatively mild
ale here, providing us with a forbidden pleasure that many of
us had forgotten."
"You trust him and drink it?"
Jan shrugged. "He drinks enough of it that if it were
lethal, he'd have long since been dead. Despite being proud
of his Imperial service, he seems somewhat perplexed by his
imprisonment here. He thought he had fulfilled the parame-
ters of a project for Iceheart, but she disagreed and he's
here."
Corran nodded. "I can understand his confusion. I don't
know why I'm here either."
"It may be temporary. We get a lot of transients who are
transferred out in bulk. Traffic into and out of Lusankya
seems to be relatively rare."
"That's not good news. If this place is truly a backwater
planet, the chances of our being found by the Alliance are
tiny."
Jan fingered the knots in the braided canvas cord that
gathered his hair into a ponytail. "I've been here for, as
nearly as I can determine, seven years, and no one has found
me yet." His laugh came warm and natural, not tinged with
the sort of madness Corran had heard in Derricote's laugh.
"There's always tomorrow."
"Right." Corran sighed and looked around the small
chamber. "Urlor's acquainted me with one rule. Are there
others?"
"We do what we're told when we're told to do it. Ra-
tions are not great but are not starvation fare, either. Pro-
duce is seasonal but not so peculiar as to let us pinpoint
where we are. I think there's an agrocombine maintained to
supply us, though none of us down here ever see it. We as-
sume there are lower grade prisoners who are used to main-
tain it, but we're in the deepest level, which has the highest
security. At least that's where we think we are. Could be
there's something more stringent, but I've not seen it."
"What do they have us do?"
"Hard labor make-work." The old man sighed. "Big
rocks are made into little rocks, little rocks are made into
gravel, and gravel is moved from one point to another. It is
painfully and mind-numbingly boring, designed to crush
hope and make the days meld one into another. It drives
some of the men insane."
Corran lowered his voice. "Anyone ever escape?"
"Not quite that insane, son."
"No one has tried?"
"Few have tried, no one has made it."
"To your knowledge."
Jan's mouth opened, then he shut it and nodded. "To my
knowledge--you are correct. At any rate, no one has made it
since I've been here."
Corran frowned. "Those who have tried, they get
brought back here?"
"Parts of them, anyway." The old man pointed vaguely
off deeper into the caverns. "The Imps have a chamber
where they keep the skulls and other relics of their dead. We
smuggle ours into the mines where we work and bury them."
"So escape is impossible?"
Jan winked at him as he dropped his voice into a con-
spiratorial whisper. "I never said impossible, I just said it
hadn't been done successfully."
Corran laughed quietly. "I'm with Rogue Squadron. Im-
possible is our stock in trade, and success is what we de-
liver."
Jan slapped him on the shoulder. "Now I'm thinking it's
a pity I didn't know your grandfather. With a grandson like
you, I'm sure we would have gotten along famously."
"I have a feeling you're right, sir." Corran nodded sol-
emnly. "And being his grandson, I'm going to do everything
I can to get out of and off of this rock."
The old man smiled. "From the moment I saw you, Cor-
ran Horn, I somehow expected nothing less."
18
Wedge felt more trapped by wearing a dress uniform and
being in the witness box than he ever had in action against
tile Empire. He didn't see Halla Ettyk as a simulacrum of
Ysanne Isard or an ene
my warrior with whom he would be
doing combat. The pleasant expression on her face belied
either of those descriptions. Moreover, Wedge knew he had
entered her arena--for him to think about defeating her here
was as foolish as for her to imagine she could best him in a
dogfight.
This is all about survival--mine and Tycho's survival
The prosecutor looked up from her datapad. "Com-
mander Antilles, how did you come to be on Coruscant be-
fore our forces had taken possession of it?"
"My squadron and I were inserted into Coruscant in a
pathfinder capacity. We were here to evaluate the world from
a number of points of view to determine if, how, and when
the Alliance might want to attempt to take it."
"I see. What was the security classification on this oper-
ation?"
"The highest. If it had been known that we were coming
or that we were here, we would have been dead."
Halla nodded sagely. "In preparation for sending your
squadron out, what role did Captain Celchu play?"
Wedge shook his head. "He played no part."
"Why not?"
"Objection." Nawara stood at the defense table. "Calls
for a conclusion."
"It goes to the witness's state of mind, Admiral."
Admiral Ackbar shook his head. "Counselor Ven, please
do not object to questions calling for answers that Captain
Celchu's commanding officer should know. Overruled. You
may answer the question, Commander."
Wedge nodded. "Captain Celchu was seen as a security
risk by General Cracken, so he was not involved in the prep-
aration for the mission."
"Then how did Captain Celchu end up on Coruscant?"
This is not going to sound good. Wedge sighed. "I do
not like covert missions. The things you don't know always
seem to be the things that get you into trouble. If any of our
people got picked up on the mission, it would be logical for
the Imps to conclude there were more of us present, and hunt
us down. I wanted someone on Coruscant whom I could
trust to get me out of difficult situations."
"So you chose someone that Alliance Intelligence did not
trust."
"I chose Tycho for a number of very good reasons, Com-
mander Ettyk. He had been to Coruscant before and knew
his way around."
"But he was captured on Coruscant, correct?"
"Yes."
"And imprisoned in a place the Empire uses to create
covert operatives, correct?" "So I have been told."
Halla smiled slightly and gave him a slight nod. Wedge
felt it was the sort of salute one pilot might toss another for a
good shot--the sort of salute that came with the promise of
destruction on the next pass. A wave of heat washed over
him and he wanted to loosen the collar of his dark green
jacket. Can't. Don't want to let her know she's beginning to
get to me.
"Commander Antilles, why did you feel you needed
your own person operating independently on Corusca nt?"
"If things went bad and some or all of General
Cracken's operation here on Coruscant was uncovered, we
would be in dire straits."
"Did you have a reason to suppose there was a chance
the operation would be compromised?"
'Tm not certain I understand the question."
"What reasons did you have to fear your operation
might be compromised to Imperial Intelligence?"
"There is always a risk of such betrayal with any covert
operation. Certainly the fact that we were going to be on
Coruscant had to suggest that was a possibility."
"And you knew, as you just told us, that Captain Celchu
had been captured on Coruscant, so that was certainly in
your mind, yes?"
Wedge frowned. Where is she going with this? "Yes."
"And there were other incidents involving Rogue Squad-
ron where betrayal had been previously mentioned, cor-
rect?"
"I am not certain I understand what you mean by that."
"Please characterize for the court the first mission to
Borleias."
"It was an unmitigated disaster. I lost people, the Alli-
ance lost people, and we didn't take the planet."
Halla glanced down at her datapad. "And there was an
investigation conducted upon your return to determine if
your mission had been betrayed to the enemy, was there
not?"
"Yes, but Tycho was never implicated, never under sus-
picion."
"I know---still, your mission to Coruscant was staging
from Noquivzor, which was where the mission to Borleias
staged from, was it not?"
"Yes."
"So the spectre of a chance that whoever might have
betrayed your first mission to Borleias could betray your mis-
sion to Coruscant certainly existed, did it not?"
"Yes."
"Hence your precaution."
"Yes."
"And yet you would tell us that you had no cause to
suspect Captain Celchu of collusion with the enemy?"
Wedge blinked as Halla shifted her aim to a new target.
"I had no reasons to suspect Tycho of anything."
The prosecutor's head came up. "You did not find the
circumstances of Bror Jace's death the least bit suspicious?"
"Excuse me?"
Halla folded her arms across her chest. "I believe, Com-
mander Antilles, you were present in the courtroom for the
testimony of Captain Uwlla Iillor in regard to the mission to
capture Bror Jace. At the time of his death did you not con-
sider the possibility that news of his travel to Thyferra had
been leaked to the Empire?"
"No."
"Not at all?"
"Well, not in any substantive way, and certainly not
with Tycho being the source of the leak."
Halla narrowed her eyes. "Who obtained the permis-
sions and filed the flight plan for Bror Jace's trip to
Thyferra?"
"Tycho did, by my order."
"Did you approve the flight plan?"
Wedge hesitated as he felt pressure building up in him-
self. "No."
"Did you know the flight plan?"
"No."
"To the best of your knowledge, did anyone in your
squadron outside of Captain Celchu and Bror Jace know that
flight plan?"
Wedge's hands pulsed into fists. "No."
"Captain Iillor testified that her ship, the Black Asp, had
been given specific orders as to where to go and when to be
there to encounter Bror Jace. How could they have gotten
that information, do you think?"
"A spy, I suppose. I don't know. Espionage is not really
my stock in trade."
"So you would have a difficult time determining if some-
one was a spy or not?"
Wedge glanced down. "You're good at twisting my
words, Commander. I know Tycho wasn't working for the
Empire."
Halla's eyes narrowed. "You may have felt that, Com-
mander Antilles, but tell me truthfully, when Corran Horn
told you he'd seen Captain Celchu speaking to an Imperial
Intelligence operative, tell me y
ou didn't wonder, just for a
heartbeat, if everything General Cracken and others had said
about Tycho Celchu wasn't true."
Wedge closed his eyes. When Corran had come to him
on Coruscant and reported what he had seen, Wedge had
been unable to cover his shock. I said to him, "That's impos-
sible, Corran." I followed up with the explanation about
Warlord Zsinj having attacked Noquivzor, but the first thing
out of my mouth had been a denial of what I feared might be
true. Just for a second I allowed myself to accept what he
said. I refused to let myself believe what he had said, but I
knew I could not prove his statement to be absolutely false.
The leader of Rogue Squadron nodded and refrained
from looking over at Tycho. "Yes, for a heartbeat, I did al-
low myself to consider what Lieutenant Horn said. I rejected
it just that quickly."
"On what grounds?"
"I knew Tycho wasn't a spy."
Halla raised an eyebrow. "You didn't know Zekka
Thyne was working for the Empire, did you?" "No, but I never truly trusted him."
"Your opinion of him and his treacherous nature was
based on what?"
"His history and . . ." Wedge caught himself.
"And?"
"His demeanor when ! saw him."
Halla Ettyk opened her hands. "Were there no other
factors in your forming your opinion of Thyne?"
Ven stood. "Objection, relevancy, your Honor."
Admiral Ackbar looked down at the prosecutor. "Corn-
mander, this does seem a bit far afield from where you
started."
"It is relevant, your Honor. I'm closing in on my point."
"Proceed, but be aware I will strike this line of inquiry if
you don't bring us to that point quickly." "Yes, sir."
"The objection is overruled."
Ettyk nodded toward Wedge. "Commander, were there
no other factors in your forming your opinion of Thyne?"
"Not really."
"Lieutenant Horn's opinion of Thyne was not important
to you?"
"It was, and it was a factor, though Thyne's hostility to
Corran was more indicative of trouble than anything else."
"But you felt your observations of Thyne justified
Horn's opinion of the man?"
"Yes."
"So, when Thyne turned out to be an Imperial plant you
had not detected, but whom Horn had warned you about,