Iella slipped into her small cabin on Lusankya and inserted her comlink into the room's comm unit holoprojector. "This is Iella Wessiri calling Starweb."
The image of the disk freighter she'd seen from the reception hung above the projector pad for a second, and then it shifted to Asyr Sei'lar's head and shoulders. "I left a message for you and for Mirax to let you know I'm leaving."
"You don't have to, Asyr." Iella glanced out the room's viewport and saw the freighter hanging off the starboard bow. "You can come back, we can explain things."
"No. I'm better off dead."
"But, Gavin, he's...you can tell he hurts inside."
The Bothan looked away from the holocam for a moment, and then sniffed and turned back. "I know, Iella. I know how much he must hurt, but he will get over it. He's a strong man. He will mourn, and then recover and thrive. I know it. You have to remember what I told you from the start, when you recovered me at Distna, about why you had to tell no one I lived."
"Borsk Fey'lya isn't the Emperor." Iella opened her arms wide with exasperation. "You said he told you he'd never allow the two of you to marry and adopt, and that he would make your lives miserable. That's a gross abuse of power. He can't be allowed to get away with that."
"I know that, Iella, and I won't let him." Asyr's lips peeled back in a smile that revealed sharp white teeth. "I'll go to one of our colony worlds and assume a new identity. I'll work to make changes within Bothan society that will guarantee politicians like Fey'lya cannot ruin other lives. If I come back to life now and expose what he's done, I will take one individual down. The system still fosters that sort of power, and I need to work to change it."
"Gavin would be a great help to you in all that."
"I know, but it will be a dirty battle, fought the way only Bothans can fight." She blinked her violet eyes. "It will consume my life, but I won't have it consume his. Gavin is a good enough man that he would devote himself to helping me, but I can't do that to him. He deserves better. Help him through it."
"I will, we will."
Asyr nodded. "Thank you. And I apologize for putting you and Mirax through the pressure of keeping my survival hidden. Spouses shouldn't keep secrets from each other." Iella raised an eyebrow. "Never been married, have your
Surprise showed on Asyr's face, and then she laughed. "No, perhaps someday. Well, I'm clear on a vector to hyperspace. Let Booster know this ship will be waiting for him at Com-menor, as we discussed. Good-bye, Iella, and thank you."
"Bye, Asyr, until we meet again."
The Bothan's image blinked out as the freighter shot into hyperspace. Iella brushed a tear from her right cheek, and then took her comlink and headed toward the door. It slid open, with a man standing there, his hand poised over the door buzzer button.
"Wedge!" -
"Iella, good, I did find you." The leader of Rogue Squadron gave her a sloppy, boyish grin. "I saw Corran and Mirax. They said you'd come down here."
"And you came to find me." Iella grinned. "Looking to have me recommend to General Cracken that we make you an intelligence operative based on this tracking experience?"
"Ah, um, no." He raised his head. "I was wondering, I mean, I thought of this before, but never got a chance to ask you... They said they would be saving a place for you at their table, but I'm having to sit with a bunch of Senators who I don't know..."
"And you want someone on your wing?"
"Yeah, someone on my wing." He extended his arm to her. "Interested in the job?"
"Sounds like a dangerous assignment." She squinted at him for a moment. "Think I can handle it?"
"Definitely, Iella. You're Rogue material." Wedge smiled as she slipped her hand on his arm and laid his left hand over hers. "We both eliminated a Ysanne Isard from the galaxy and, after that, together, there's nothing that can beat us."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael A. Stackpole is a writer and game designer who wasn't born in a galaxy far, far away, but was born a long time ago. He grew up in Vermont and then moved to Arizona to pursue a career in writing. He could have pursued that career in Vermont, of course, but shoveling snow would have taken up a lot of time in the winter, cutting his output, (hard's Revenge is his twenty-eighth published book since 1988.) He lives in Arizona with Liz Danforth and three Welsh Cardigan Corgis: Ruthless, Ember, and Saint. In 1998 he took up the hobby of white water rafting and lived to tell about it.
He's just completed The Dark Glory War, which will be available from Bantam Books in January 2000 (or, for those of you working with Windows, January 1901).
His website can be found at http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/stackpol.htm (Please note that there is no "e" on stack-pole there, and the extension is.htm, not.html.)
The End
Michael A. Stackpole, Star Wars - X-Wing 8 - Isard's Revenge
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