“Great. Thanks.” He released Mirax and gave Iella a hug. “Yet one more time you’ve had to watch me bobbing in bacta.”
Iella smiled. “As long as you keep coming out whole, hale, and hearty, I don’t mind.”
“Thanks.” Corran let her go, then nodded to Elscol and Sixtus. “Sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
The big man just shrugged. Elscol’s eyes narrowed. “The crossfire was a bit more inconvenient than this. We’ve gotten some work done while we’ve been waiting.”
“And good work it has been.” A tall, slender man came through the archway and gave Corran a once-over. “I’m glad to see you healed. You were in a bad state when I first saw you.”
Corran hesitated. While he’d floated in the bacta he’d mulled over the identity of the man he’d seen standing above him in the spaceport. He’d looked like Bror Jace, but Corran knew that was impossible because Bror Jace had been killed by the Empire. Corran had decided that the man he’d seen was someone affiliated with the Zaltin corporation, as Jace had been, and perhaps was even closely related to Jace. That solution made perfect sense to him and seemed to satisfy all the facts in his possession.
But there’s no mistaking that tone of voice. Corran’s jaw hung open. “You are Bror Jace.”
“Indeed I am.” Jace bowed his head, then graciously waved Corran toward one of the day beds. “You’d like an explanation on why I’m not dead?”
Corran sniffed. “I’ve been reported dead myself. Those things happen.”
Mirax slapped him playfully on the belly. “You’re dying to know what happened to him, just like the rest of us.”
“Well, if the rest of you want to indulge him, then I think the only polite thing for me to do is listen.” Corran sat and adjusted the towel to preserve his modesty. “Go ahead, Bror, knock us out with the story.”
Jace, whose blond hair picked up green highlights from the bacta tank, smiled easily. “I hardly think the tale engrossing enough for you to endure a second telling of it, so I beg your forbearance.”
Corran glanced at Mirax. “You’ve heard this before.”
“Yes, and I’d rather have him tell you instead of having you get it out of me later.”
Corran winced. “Right. Okay, Bror, do it.”
The Thyferran began to pace, clasping his hands behind his back. The short pants he wore and the thin shirt rustled with his movements—and Corran found the whole ensemble a little hard to reconcile with the pilot he’d known and competed with in his early days with Rogue Squadron. The pacing is right, as is the imperious tilt of the chin, but the clothes are what kids wear.
“I joined Rogue Squadron for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to maintain parity between Zaltin and Xucphra. This was important because Xucphra had Imperialistic leanings. They’d been the first of our two companies to be given an Imperial license to be an exclusive producer of bacta, establishing the cartel. Zaltin had been brought in by the Empire to serve as competition for Xucphra—Zaltin had no real desire to become part of the cartel, but the choice we were given was to join or be put out of business. In effect this was no choice, so we did what we had to do to survive.”
Corran raised an eyebrow. That was as close as he’d ever heard any human from Thyferra being critical of the corporations with which they were affiliated. Despite the fact that Jace was attempting to paint Zaltin in a good light in comparison with Xucphra, the honesty was welcome and sparked in Corran a willingness to trust Jace further than he ever had before. How much I trust him depends on the rest of this story.
“The intention behind my joining the squadron was for me to become known and trusted within the New Republic. Zaltin officials had come to the conclusion that the Empire was doomed and wanted to make agreements with the New Republic to provide bacta and the means to expand bacta production back along the lines of the system that existed before the cartel was created. Altruism was not their motivating factor—prohibiting the production, sale, and distribution of something is much more difficult than managing the same. The cartel only worked because of the Empire—with its death, the back of the cartel would be broken. The only way Zaltin could profit was to work out a deal with the New Republic which allowed us to oversee the expansion of production throughout the New Republic.
“Zaltin officials also realized that the Vratix, through their terrorist organization, the Ashern, would make a case to the New Republic for independence. They would ask for help throwing off the yoke of their human masters. Since bacta production is all but impossible without the Vratix, Zaltin began to court them. We supplied money and hiding places for them. We began an alliance that would eventually make Zaltin the agents for the Vratix in spreading bacta production throughout the galaxy, enriching us all.”
Bror Jace stopped and closed his eyes for a moment. “The Vratix do not think the way we humans do. Whereas we would incorporate reports and data produced by someone into our plans, they incorporate such individuals into their planning groups. It is as if they don’t disassociate the report from the person making it. Realistically, this is a societal way of ensuring the spread of information and stimulating more creativity within groups, though its efficiency can be questioned.
“The Ashern, who were being given reports on my impressions of the New Republic, required me to return to Thyferra to join their main planning group.”
Corran nodded. “So you were sent a message telling you that your patriarch was dying.”
“You remember. My course home was set by Captain Celchu. Erisi asked about it, and I told her my itinerary because I wanted her people watching for my return. In my trip I made one deviation—an unscheduled stop. I transferred from my X-wing to a freighter that brought me back here. Into my X-wing we placed a bomb meant to mimic the accidental discharge of a proton torpedo. The X-wing was slaved to a shuttle and dragged off toward Thyferra. We intended to enter the system from quite a distance out, send the X-wing in, then have it blow up where everyone could see it.”
“But the Imps had an Interdictor Cruiser waiting for you, thanks to Erisi.” Corran scratched at his upper lip. “Reports we got said there was no Imp debris where you died. I knew something was up then, but I didn’t think you’d lived. Did the shuttle survive the ambush?”
Jace shook his head. “No, so we had no idea what happened until my family received a hologram from Commander Antilles explaining the circumstances of my death. At that point I’d already returned and had gone underground, so it didn’t really matter how I’d died as much as it mattered that both the New Republic and Xucphra thought I was dead.”
Mirax frowned. “Something just occurred to me—you’re the reason Qlaern Hirf came looking specifically for Wedge.”
Jace nodded. “Wedge is intelligent, resourceful, and respectable, so he was my obvious choice. Corran would have been my second choice, but by the time we sent Qlaern Hirf out, news of Corran’s death had reached Thyferra.”
“You would have sent him to me?” Corran wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. He’d never had the impression that Jace had seen him as having the same attributes that he ascribed to Wedge.
“Corran, though we established that I was a better pilot than you, this does not mean I have no respect for your skills or experience.” Jace’s tone of voice lightened ever so slightly. “Your long association with the Empire’s criminal class means you understand a host of methods necessary for eluding authority and surviving, which were things I thought would prove useful in keeping Qlaern safe.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“I meant that as a compliment.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Mirax glanced over at Iella. “Too bad the bacta can’t cure annoying personality traits.”
Iella shrugged. “Congenital defect, I’m afraid. Corran’s always been competitive and contrary.”
Corran gave Iella a hard stare. “I always got along with you.”
“Because you knew you’d lose if we ever we
nt head to head where our skills overlap.”
He could have protested her observations, but he knew it was more true than false. “Okay, you made your point.” Corran forced a smile on his face. “Where do we go from here? What’s been decided while I’ve been floating?”
Elscol folded her arms. “Sixtus, Iella, and I will be staying here—taking Jace’s place in the Ashern planning councils because he’ll be going back with you to liaise with the squadron. We’re bringing in expertise on how to take a planet away from its government and how to deal with counterintelligence operations.”
Corran looked at his former partner. “Are you ready for this?”
Iella thought for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll probably get the cleanest shot of any of us at Isard. Diric’s death still hurts, but if I’m to honor his memory, I can’t do it by sitting around and mourning. You made that point very succinctly.”
“Yeah, but here you won’t be among your friends.”
Iella smiled gently and caressed Corran’s cheek. “True, but that means I’ve got fewer things to remind me of Diric and distract me.”
“I don’t think being away from friends would have made it any easier to get over my father’s death, but I understand what you’re saying.” Corran winked at her. “Don’t do anything stupid—especially in the name of revenge. Promise?”
“Sure, as long as you make the same promise.”
“Done.” Corran got up and gave her a big hug, then reluctantly let her go. Looking back at Mirax he asked, “So, what about the rest of us?”
“Our job here’s done. We’ve delivered our charges, and we’ll be safeguarding our liaison officer back to the base, so we’re going home.” Mirax smiled at him. “At least we’ll be doing that as soon as we get some clothes on you, that is.”
“As long as I don’t have to use Jace’s tailor, I’ll be happy.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“I hate shorts.”
“On you, who’d notice?”
Jace’s riposte stunned Corran, then he smiled. “I was thinking I spent a long time in the bacta tank, but I have a feeling that’s going to be like nothing compared to the trip home. I’m glad you’re alive, Jace. Life’s been much too easy since you’ve been gone.”
Chapter Sixteen
Wedge exerted the effort to wipe the smile off his face as his X-wing hurtled through hyperspace. Bror Jace’s return from the grave had been a most pleasant surprise, both because he wasn’t dead and because of the insight into Thyferra he provided. Zaltin had long kept tabs on Xucphra, and Isard had not changed procedures so much that Jace’s intelligence reports had been completely invalidated.
He was very happy to have Jace back in the squadron. Zraii had put an X-wing together out of parts for Jace. The Thyferran had it painted red with green trim—the corporate colors of Zaltin—and had been checked out on it within three hours of his arrival at Yag’Dhul. Jace had been a hot hand in an X-wing when he was first with the squadron, and his time off had not seemed to dull his skill very much at all. With as few pilots as we have, they all need to be sharp.
Wedge had been less than pleased with learning that Corran had been injured on Thyferra. He’d have been angry with Corran except that the smaller man gave him a full report on what happened, including an analysis of his mistakes. Corran had been quite frank concerning what he had done, reminding Wedge of Corran’s attack on stormtroopers on Talasea. When Corran finds trouble, he never seems to have difficulty just diving in, especially when the lives of others are at stake. Nice trait to have in a friend.
Information Jace had brought with him set the basis for the run the squadron had headed out on. Isard had initiated escort service for the bacta convoys, moving them to centralized locations where the client worlds would come to get their bacta. Wedge saw immediately that if he hit the covered convoys he’d be in serious trouble, but Jace’s people had initiated an operation to get them some of the bacta anyway. The Ashern had sliced new code into the navicomps on three of the freighters that would produce a course deviation in the final leg of the trip. The freighters would fly out from under their cover and be in a position for the squadron to make off with them. The navicomps would remain useless until the squadron sent them the key code or until the crew stripped the computer down and reloaded all of the software.
Wedge knew the operation was chancy, but to refuse to go after the ships would mean that the Ashern’s effort had gone for naught. The risk of the operation had to be weighed against the good that could be done with the supplies of bacta the ships carried. Halanit could still use more, as could several other small settlements that found the Thyferran price prohibitively high. More important, Coruscant needed more bacta to supplement the rylca treatments for the Krytos virus.
He couldn’t discount the possibility of a trap entirely, but for the Imps to ambush him meant they would be leaving another of their convoys open. The freighters that were coming to him were from a small convoy that was being watched over by the Victory II-class Star Destroyer Corrupter. Though the smallest of the ships Isard had in her fleet, it carried two TIE squadrons, equaling his force, and bristled with enough weaponry to be able to lay siege to whole planets.
Complicating matters, Wedge knew less about its Captain Ait Convarion than he wished he did. Convarion was supposed to have served both at Derra IV and Hoth before being given the Corrupter and being sent off on suppression missions—government-sanctioned campaigns of terror against populated worlds on the Outer Rim. Convarion was rumored to be calculating and cruel, with a penchant for quick action that had won battles despite the odds being against him. That was a combination that could cause a lot of trouble for the squadron.
If Convarion knows in advance of the defection, we could be in severe trouble. If he has to deal with having three missing ships from his convoy upon his arrival at the Rish system, he’ll be searching for an atom in a nebula. Depending on the reluctance of the freighter crews to follow us, we’ll need a maximum of an hour to move the convoy farther on. If we have been betrayed, we’ll have to jump back out of the system as fast as possible
Wedge glanced at his primary monitor. “… and hope against hope that Isard hasn’t convinced any Interdictor cruisers to join her side.” He shook his head and sighed. He knew he was worrying about events that were very low on the scale of probability, but the chance of a problem still niggled at him. He knew he’d have felt better if he’d been in on planning the operation from the first, but he wasn’t in a position to refuse the help the Ashern offered.
“I’ll just make the best of this situation and hope Captain Convarion isn’t as sharp as rumors make him out to be.”
A pinpoint of black expanded up and engulfed the snubfighter as it reverted to realspace in a system with a red dwarf star surrounded by a dust disk. Three bacta freighters hung in space just above the plane of the disk. The captains had oriented the ships so their bellies pointed inward and the two dorsal turbolasers they sported overlapped their fields of fire.
Wedge opened a comm channel. “One and Two Squadrons, S-foils in attack position.” Both the X-wings and the Deathseeds responded to his order, causing their stabilizers to split and lock. The fighters spread out on their previously assigned approach vectors, but they held back from closing with the freighters.
He shifted the comm unit over to the frequency the Ashern indicated the Thyferrans used. “This is Wedge Antilles. I have two squadrons of fighters here. We intend to have your cargo. If you cooperate you will be given a course, be able to drop your cargo, and then go back home unharmed.”
Nervous tremors shot back through the voice that answered him. “Antilles, we were told that if we went with you, we’d be destroyed. We have family back on Thyferra.”
That comment sent a chill down Wedge’s spine, but he fought against the ideas it planted in his head. “Your families will not be harmed. Isard can’t kill families of pilots and expect any more shipments of bacta
to go out. It’s a bluff that I have to call. If you decide not to go back to Thyferra, I’ll help you get your people to safety. You’re going to lose your cargo, you might as well save yourself some pain.”
One of the tankers began to move away from the others. Mynock, Wedge’s R5 droid, tagged it as Xucphra Rose. “This is Bors Kenlin in the Rose. We’re yours, Antilles.”
“Kenlin, don’t go. You have a wife back on Thyferra.”
“Isard will be doing me a favor if she kills her.” The Rose drifted further from the other two ships. “Where am I going?”
“Stand by, Rose.” Wedge shifted his comm unit over to the squadron’s tactical frequency. “Nine, you and Ten and your two Deathseed friends will escort the Rose to Halanit. Isard has threatened dependents on Thyferra if the crew goes along with us, so find out who their people are so we can transmit the data to the Ashern and try to save them.”
Corran’s voice came back strong. “As ordered, sir.” Two X-wings broke from formation and made a quick flyby on the Rose. In the first pass they downloaded to the Rose’s navicomp the course for their run to Halanit. As they came back around, the Rose moved on the exit vector with them and two Deathseeds fell in behind. In the blink of an eye all five ships went to lightspeed and vanished.
Wedge looked back at his monitor again. The remaining ships were Xucphra Alazhi and Xucphra Meander. Wedge suspected the first voice he’d dealt with was on the Alazhi. Since the ship was named after a key component in bacta, he assumed the captain had seniority over the other two. Wedge shifted his comm unit back to the Thyferran frequency. “Meander, what is your decision?”
A woman’s voice answered him. “Meander is unconvinced the crew will be safe from Isard’s reprisals.”
“Meander, your cargo will be bound for Coruscant. If you can’t lose yourself there, you can obtain transport to anywhere you want to go from there. I guarantee you that your cargo will alleviate an incredible amount of suffering.”