Star Wars: X-Wing VII: Solo Command Read online

  He found Han Solo in the vessel’s cockpit. He dropped into the copilot’s seat beside the general.

  “I thought you’d be at your pilots’s welcome-back party,” Solo said. He didn’t turn his attention from the forward viewport. Across the floor of the hangar, cluttered with tools and repair carts, was the rectangle of lights outlining the hangar’s magnetic containment field. Beyond that, dim because of the hangar’s light, were stars.

  “I stopped in,” Wedge said. “I didn’t stay too long. It tends to make the children nervous.”

  Solo managed a faint smile. “I know what you mean. I used to be one of the guys. Now I walk into a room and all conversation stops. I didn’t imagine, when I accepted this job, that I’d become some other thing. An outsider.”

  “Sometimes that’s what an officer is. Someone who’s ‘one of the guys’ can’t maintain discipline.”

  “I suppose.”

  A furious hail of metallic banging made conversation impossible for a moment. It was followed by an unusually lengthy and articulate stretch of grumbling from Chewbacca.

  Solo said, “He hates this wreck almost as much as I do.”

  “Why do you hate it more?”

  “Because, despite everything I said, it’s just enough like the Falcon to make me homesick.”

  “For the Falcon? Or for Leia?”

  Solo rubbed his face, easing away some of the lines of tiredness. “Yeah.”

  “I never really understood why you left the Falcon on Rebel Dream when she went on her mission. You could have stored her on Mon Remonda.”

  “It’s just … I’m not sure.” Solo stared off into the distance of space. “The Falcon is the thing I value most. Not the person I value most, but the thing. I think I left her with Leia so Leia would know.”

  “That you trusted her with what you valued most.”

  “Something like that. And I wanted her to remember me.”

  “As if she’d forget.”

  “Sometimes I think she should.” Solo was silent a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was quieter. “I don’t deserve her. And someday she’ll realize that. When she’s away from me, I think, ‘Maybe today’s the day. Maybe today she’ll figure it out and get on with her life.’ ”

  Wedge shook his head. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not. She’s the one with the goal, the plan for her life. She’s a driving force in the New Republic. Without her, I don’t have a place. I’m just a drifter with an irresistible dose of roguish charm. And someday she’ll get tired of the charm and there won’t be anything else for me to offer her.”

  “You know,” Wedge said, “I can’t do it myself, because you’re my superior officer. But I could call Chewie down here, and tell him what you’ve just said, and then he’d beat you nearly to death with a hydrospanner. Maybe then you’d figure out how wrong you are.”

  Solo managed a smile. “I think maybe that’s why I volunteered for this Zsinj assignment. I thought it was because of how I felt when I heard about his bombardments. His assaults on defenseless worlds. I could just see myself as a child on the streets, looking up to see the turbolaser blasts coming down to destroy the little bit of world I could call my own. But, really, it might have been just to show Leia, ‘Here I am, see, I can function in your world.’ But after months of it, I just get tireder and crazier. I find myself wishing I could leave Zsinj be, and Leia could come home right now, with her mission unfinished, so things could go back to the way they were. And if she knew that, she’d be ashamed of me.”

  “It’s a natural human emotion. And I have a three-stage plan to let you get back to the way things used to be.”

  That caught Solo’s attention; he looked at Wedge for the first time since he’d boarded the freighter. “How?”

  “Stage One.” Wedge opened a comm channel on the copilot’s control board. “YT-1300 to bridge. This is Commander Antilles. Please cut all lights in Bay Gamma One.”

  A few moments later, the overhead lights darkened. Chewbacca made a noise of complaint.

  Wedge said, “Including the magcon shield indicator, please, bridge.”

  The rectangle of light around the magcon field faded. Now they sat in near-perfect darkness, illuminated only by the stars outside the field. They hung there, perfect, not blinking because there was insufficient atmosphere to make them twinkle, a perfect space vista.

  Solo fell silent, just staring at the view for a long moment. “That’s nice,” he said. “I think you’re right. I could use more of that. What’s Stage Two?”

  “Well, you’re not the only member of the crew who could benefit from some blissful irresponsibility right now. So I’m going to stage an insurrection and seize control of Mon Remonda.”

  Solo gave a curt laugh. “Wedge Antilles, mutineer. That I have to see.”

  “Bring your Wookiee and I’ll show you.”

  Donos and Lara walked into the officers’s cafeteria and stopped short. It didn’t look the way it was supposed to.

  Tables, normally arrayed in neat rows, had been dragged out of line into zigzags, into four-table rectangles. Though the chamber was sparsely occupied, even that was different; normally the diners would be scattered across the chamber, but now they were concentrated at three or four tables.

  Donos and Lara approached the closest table. The one where their commander sat with General Solo and Chewbacca. Sabacc cards were laid out on the table before them.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Donos said, “I hate to interrupt—”

  Wedge looked up. “What did you call me?”

  “Uh, sir.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  Donos glanced at Lara, but she seemed as puzzled as he. “Commander Wedge Antilles, New Republic Starfighter—”

  Wedge shook his head. “No, no, no. I just look like him. If I were Antilles, wouldn’t I be wearing appropriate rank insignia?”

  It was true; he wore none. For that matter, neither did General Solo.

  “In fact,” Wedge said, “what’s that you’re wearing? Lieutenant’s insignia?”

  “Uh, yes—”

  “Off,” Wedge said.

  “Off,” Solo repeated.

  “Off off off off,” Wedge said.

  Donos pulled the rank insignia from his jacket. Lara followed suit with hers.

  Wedge visibly calmed. “That’s better,” he said. “Wait. Where’s your astromech?”

  Donos’s mouth worked for a moment as he considered responses. “I don’t think I have an answer that will please you. Sir. Or Not-Sir. Whoever you are.”

  “You certainly don’t. The astromechs are the backbone of Starfighter Command. Hardest-working beings in the galaxy. They need some rest and recreation, too. Don’t you agree?”

  “I, uh, I do.”

  “Good. Get out. Don’t come back without your astromechs.” Wedge gathered up the sabacc cards. “New hand. Who’s in?”

  When Face wandered in, his R2 unit Vape wheeling along behind him, the cafeteria was more than half-full. It was also loud; card games and conversations dominated most of the tables. Some of the kitchen staff appeared to be on duty, bringing out drinks and various sorts of snacks, but they cheerfully exchanged sharp words with the officers present in a way they’d never do under ordinary circumstances. Officers sat with enlisted men and women, and, though uniforms suggested which was which and the services being represented, there were no rank insignia to be seen.

  Chewbacca waved him over. Face and Vape moved up to his table.

  Over his hand of cards, Wedge gave him a cool appraisal. “It’s the one who looks like Captain Loran. But he has his astromech and no rank. He’ll pass.”

  “Thank you, uh, one who looks like Commander Antilles.”

  “He catches on quickly,” Wedge said. “One second. Vape, cold one.”

  A trapezoid-shaped plate at the top of Vape’s ball head slid open. There was a chuff of compressed air, and a condensation-dewed bottle leaped up int
o the air. Wedge caught it with his free hand and set it down on the table before him. “Thanks, Vape. Thanks, one-who-looks-like-Face. That’ll be all.” He turned back to his game.

  Face said, “You weren’t supposed to know about that. And it certainly shouldn’t have worked for you.”

  “I look just like the group leader. That gives me special privileges.”

  “Besides, it was my last one.”

  “Well, come back when you’re fully stocked.”

  The others at the table—men and women who looked like General Solo, Chewbacca, Captain Todra Mayn of Polearm Squadron, Gavin Darklighter and Asyr Sei’lar of Rogue Squadron, laughed.

  Face turned away. “Run along and play,” he told Vape. “This is going to be an interesting evening.”

  Wedge’s mutiny of anonymity spread through the ship with a sort of quiet persistence. No officers on duty abandoned their tasks to join it, but crewmen coming off duty gravitated to the officers’s cafeterias and, when the mutiny became too populous, into adjoining noncommissioned crew cafeterias, briefing halls, and auditoriums as well.

  And nowhere in the mutineers’s sections of Mon Remonda were name tags or rank designations to be found. Donos, walking the perimeter of the mutineers’s sections with Lara in a state of baffled good humor, saw Rogue mechanic Koyi Komad win a week’s wages from Captain Onoma in a card game as bloodthirsty as any TIE fighter vs. X-wing engagement. He saw Chewbacca simultaneously arm wrestle a naval lieutenant and a civilian hand-to-hand combat trainer so vigorously that both humans were thrown to the floor; they arose laughing and massaging wrenched arms.

  Astromechs huddled in corners, exchanging chirps and trills that few organisms could interpret but that apparently kept them highly amused. Donos and Lara had to stop short of a portion of floor bounded by lines of observers; a group of R2 and R5 units sped through a twisting, winding course marked by colored tape on the floor. Corran Horn’s Whistler was in the lead, Wedge’s Gate was in second place, and both units were tweetling in the excitement of the moment.

  Whistler and Gate maintained their one-two standings across the finish line and a crowd of bettors erupted in cheers and catcalls. Donos heard Horn’s voice rise above the crowd noise: “I told you, I told you. Next time, make it an obstacle course with security measures. Whistler will still smoke them all.”

  “If I weren’t sure I was only half-crazy,” Donos said, “I’d be certain I was hallucinating.”

  “Your logic is faulty,” Lara said. “If you were zero percent crazy, you’d be certain you weren’t hallucinating. If you were one hundred percent crazy, you’d be equally certain this was real. Only at your current state of fifty percent insane do you doubt what you see.”

  “No fair. If I take you back to the pilots’s lounge and dance with you again, will you stop picking at my flaws in logic?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That was my motive in the first place.”

  • • •

  The mutiny endured from early evening to late evening of the next calendar date, with a pair of sabacc games the last to break up, and galley workers grumbling only halfheartedly as they swept up the trash left behind by a day of blissful, if intermittent, irresponsibility.

  Solo and Wedge were among those who abandoned the last surviving card game. Solo rubbed tired eyes and said, “Not bad, man-who-looks-like-Wedge. What’s Stage Three?”

  Wedge gave him a smile he might have learned from a toothy Bothan. “In Stage Three, we track down Zsinj and blow him up.”

  “Good plan. I like it.”

  9

  The next morning, once hangovers were shaken off and infusions of caf had taken hold, the crew of Mon Remonda moved more briskly, with weeks of frustration and bone weariness at least partially shaken loose.

  At a briefing of the Rogues and Wraiths late in the day, Wedge said, “For those of you who were curious, tomorrow’s mission does not seem to have been endangered by the mass amnesia that seems to have struck my pilots—no one seems to be able to recall what he was up to yesterday.” That drew some chuckles. “Assuming our brains are working correctly again, we can probably get through a preliminary operational briefing now.”

  He tapped keys on the lectern keyboard and a holoprojection sprang into existence beside him. It showed a solar system—medium-sized yellow sun and a dozen planets around it. Their orbits were indicated by glowing dotted lines. “This is the Kidriff system. It’s along what we think of as the Imperial/Zsinj border, as far coreward as Zsinj’s influence extends. Its occupied world, Kidriff Five, is a very wealthy one, a heavy trade depot that develops and exports metal alloys—several improvements in Sienar TIE fighter hulls in recent years came about because of Kidriff developments.

  “Kidriff Five’s government patterned the world’s building and expansion plans very heavily on Coruscant, as a way of becoming more attractive to the Empire and the Imperial court.” Wedge activated another image, and the holoprojector displayed a city vista—a seemingly endless sea of skyscrapers that would not look out of place if dropped whole onto Coruscant. The sky, however, was not as hazy or as thick with storm clouds as Coruscant’s typically was. “It wouldn’t have been a bad site for Ysanne Isard to set up her government seat in exile—except, by the time the Rogues threw Isard off Coruscant, Kidriff had already fallen to Zsinj.

  “We’ve recently received a lot of data on Kidriff and other Zsinj-occupied worlds in Imperial sectors. Analysis showed that the data had been scrubbed of certain types of information useful to the New Republic. But the scrubbing seems to have been hasty, and did not entirely eliminate the fact that there had been activity by a pro-New Republic faction in the months before Zsinj took over.” Wedge called up another image, this time of a region seemingly divided equally between stretches of skyscrapers and stretches of heavy rust-colored foliage. “Kidriff Five’s Tobaskin Sector. Seat of their rebel activity, which may or may not still exist. That’s our target.”

  Janson spoke up. “And what do we do there, chief?”

  “Very little, actually.” Wedge brought up the image of a Corellian YT-1300 freighter. “This is not the Millennium Falcon. It’s our simulacrum, which Chewbacca and a few unlucky mechanics have been transforming into a likeness of the Falcon. They painted false rust on good hull and put good paint on rusty hull so the blotches match up, and have made some other modifications. We’ve dubbed it the Millennium Falsehood. We’re given to understand that it’s approximately spaceworthy.”

  From the back of the briefing hall, Chewbacca uttered a sustained grumble that left the pilots no doubt that the Wookiee didn’t think much of the freighter.

  Wedge continued, “Chewbacca and I will pilot the Falsehood to Tobaskin Sector and land in one of those forest tracts. We’ll let off a couple of intelligence operatives who are going to try to make contact with any surviving pro–New Republic factions there. But our main job is to wait there until we’re seen, then take off for space.”

  “Which accomplishes what?” Janson asked. “Actually, I know the answer. But I thought you ought to have at least one shill in the audience.”

  “Good to see you’re developing a skill you can use in civilian life,” Wedge said. “This allows the apparent Millennium Falcon to be seen well within Zsinj’s territory on a world where Zsinj knows there has been pro-Rebel activity. It’s one piece of data that will pique his interest. We’re going to do this again and again. At a certain point, when the Falsehood has developed a predictable pattern of mission activity, Zsinj will, we hope, show up to destroy her.”

  Lara raised a hand.

  “Notsil.”

  “Um, I don’t know whether this has entered your mission planning, sir, but if you go to an Imperial world, they’ll probably want to kill you. And if you do land and let yourself be noticed later, they’ll probably want to kill you then.” She gave him a look as though she were an ingenue full of pride in her sudden tactical realization. Pilots around the amphitheater laughed.

  �
�This had occurred to us. Data on the Kidriff system suggests that their security is very lax in order to promote fast, efficient trade—they’re far more interested in making sure cargo gets taxed than in protecting government and military installations, which tend to be buried very deep and hard to hit. So our belief is that we can just fly the Falsehood in. We’ll kill our transponder stream once we’re low enough, so they won’t know where we landed. They’ll assume it’s a smuggler’s ploy and look for us. We’ll be going in with Captain Celchu’s X-wing coupled to our hull, and he’ll detach to act as our escort on the trip back out. But before we go in, the Wraiths who are assigned TIE interceptors will go in and make a preliminary landfall. If their security queries are more difficult than we suspect, they can signal us and wing out of there. Otherwise, they’ll be on hand to join Tycho for escort duty on the flight out. The rest of the Rogues and Wraiths will be orbiting the planet’s primary moon to offer additional support when they chase us off-world.”

  Wedge looked among the seated pilots. “We’ll be taking out targets of opportunity, mostly enemy starfighters, on the way out. Our mission is to disengage with as little loss as possible. Does anyone see any specific flaw in this operation?”

  Runt sneezed. He looked around, embarrassed. “Sorry. No flaws. Just bacta tickle in our sinus cavities.”

  “Which brings up another point,” Wedge said. “The medical reports of the Wraiths who sustained burns look good. I don’t see a sign that any Wraith has not recovered sufficiently to be part of this operation. But if any of you does still feel that he’s not up to the mission, let me know privately. Believe me, no one will hold it against you.”

  There was silence.

  “Any more questions? No? Tomorrow morning we’ll get the final flight data, drop out of hyperspace outside the Kidriff system, and execute this thing. Until then, get some rest. Dismissed.”