There are a few things I'd like to say before you read the story. First of all, I do not intend any respect to Michael A. Stackpole. I actually am a big fan of his works. This was just something that I had to write, and a lot of it actually wrote itself. Second, there are spoilers for many other Star Wars books, especially anything that Stackpole had a hand in writing. This includes a couple of references to his New Jedi Order duology. Third, I own none of these characters; Lucasfilm does. Just to cover my butt, I do not own anything else that may be referenced in this work either. And with that, onward!
GOOD GUYS: Wow, Thrawn's a genius! I can't believe we survived! He sure had our butts kicked. Wasn't it lucky for us he was assassinated? Man, was he a genius!
BAD GUYS: Yep, we'd have to agree, Thrawn was a genius. Of course, since he was an alien and he didn't fight the wars the way we've been doing for years, he was inferior to us. And his tactics! How could he even think of waging a war without the use of overwhelming firepower on a few planets? It's unthinkable! But we're not jealous or anything, even though he came closer to success than any of us ever did. We still hate him. But, man, was he a genius!
ZAHN TRILOGY READER: We already know Thrawn's a genius. Now can we get on with the story?
NON-ZAHN TRILOGY READER: I don't know who this Thrawn is, but man, was he a genius!
ROGUES: Yippee! We've been promoted! Let's go have some caf and talk about how smart Thrawn was.
CORRAN: I know that Thrawn was a genius and all, but what about those Lusankya prisoners? Now that he's dead, shouldn't we be thinking about them?
IELLA: I will, after this pot of caf. After all, there is that stiff in the morgue. I'll spend the night following up that lead.
WEDGE: Do you want any help with him?
IELLA: Do you have more caf? (Wedge nods). Then it's a date.
CORRAN: You two are having a date in the morgue? That's creepy. I think I'll walk back home through the worst neighborhood I know so I can get myself beat up. That may sound weird, but at least it's not creepy.
IELLA: (to Wedge) Meet me at the morgue at 2100. Don't forget that caf!
READER: Can I switch their caf with Folger's Crystals? I wanna see if they'd notice!
(Krennel's office)
KRENNEL: Isard! You're alive!
ISARD: Yes, I am, and Thrawn's dead.
KRENNEL & ISARD: Man, was he a genius! But we still hate him!
ISARD: I'm here to help you kick out the New Republic and put yourself up on the Imperial Throne.
KRENNEL: Haven't we had this conversation before?
ISARD: Yes, but that was in the comics. Now we have to have this conversation for the novels. As well as discuss our diabolical new plan and how much we hate Rogue Squadron.
(Rogue Squadron finds a hole in the space-time continuum and end up flying a mission in WWII Germany. They find a small concentration camp, liberate it, and go home.)
CORRAN: Hey, Mirax, we're back! We found some of the prisoners!
MIRAX: Oh, good. You know, you're so good at finding people that I know that, if I ever were to go missing, you'd tear this galaxy apart looking for me.
CORRAN: This may be my latent Force talent kicking in, but something in me tells me that you may be giving out vague spoilers.
READER: No, she's not. We've already read I, Jedi!
CORRAN: Cool, then we can go on in this vein for awhile and not really give anything away.
MIRAX: I can't, I gotta go get some more caf.
(Mirax gets up for some more caf, and Gavin takes her place at the table.)
GAVIN: Hey, are we at the foreshadowing part yet? We are? Oh, good. Then I can ask you about your feelings on fatherhood.
(Meanwhile, in another meeting...)
ASYR: Councilor, I'm planning to get married, and we'd like to adopt a Bothan child.
BORSK: You know, because you're so celebrated, that we'd let you do anything you want...
ASYR: Yes! I'm going to be a mother!
BORSK: Wait, let me finish. But because you're a Bothan, that means we can make you do anything we want you to do. So, no, you can't adopt a Bothan child. And you know why not? Because I am a certified @$$hole, and that means that, in every scene in which I appear, I must do everything I can to keep my position as the most annoying jerk in the entire Star Wars universe. So I'll give you an hour-long dissertation about your Bothaness, his non-Bothaness, how most Bothans are extremely prejudiced, and definitely make sure you understand that I'll do everything in my power to see to it that your happiness is ruined forevermore.
ASYR: Well, fine, be that way. Excuse me, I've got to go and set up the beginning of a plan that will hopefully come to fruition years later in the New Jedi Order books.
READER: We hate you, Borsk. Go, Asyr!
(The Rogues are in the middle of a briefing.)
WEDGE: We're going to fly a simple mission to the moon of Distna.
HOBBIE: Simple? Does that mean we should be updating our wills?
KHE-JEEN & LYYR: Oh, no! We're doomed!
WEDGE: Yes, you heard me right, it's a simple mission. And do you want to know WHY it's a simple mission? That's because we simply have little to no intel on our objective. Our mission is to go out and gather the intel so we can plan a much harder mission later on. To do this, we decided to bring back one of the old Rogues for a cameo.
CORRAN: Who'd you get? Bror?
WEDGE: Nope, you've never met him. I have the pleasure of introducing Nrin Vakil.
(Nrin stands and bows, to the applause of Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie.)
WEDGE: I've asked Nrin to come back because he's the only Rogue, past or present, who can fly a scout and pout, I mean a snoop and scoot mission, without complaining. Since he has this endearing quality, and since it is vital that he get back to the NR with the data we hope to collect, I consider the rest of us expendable.
WES: Yep, he's a general now.
ASYR: Cool! I get to fly a kamikaze mission. This'll show Borsk!
WEDGE: Uh, Asyr, I'd like at least some of us to survive this mission so there'll be people around to fly the harder mission next week.
ASYR: Well, Gavin will be around.
GAVIN: Wait a minute! If you die, I have no reason to live! I might as well die, too.
NRIN: Gavin, the other reason I was brought into this story is to tell you about Ibtisam.
READER: No, please don't!
GAVIN: Who's Ibtisam?
READER: He had to ask!
NRIN: (singing) There's a story...of a lovely lady...
(He spends the next hour telling Gavin and Asyr the tragic love story of himself and the Mon Calamari pilot Ibtisam straight out of, you guessed it, the comics.)
GAVIN: That's so sad, Nrin. But, despite all the parallels between our lives, my story's going to have a different ending.
NRIN: Yeah, I'm the one who has the cross-species marriage, and you don't.
ASYR: Hey, Gavin, I've got the perfect name for a little girl. What do you think of Jeanne D'Arklighter?
(The Errant Venture shows up at Distna to find lots of debris, including part of Corran's fighter.)
MIRAX: No! Emperor's Black Bones, NOOOOOOO!!!!!
BOOSTER: Yippee!! CorSec's dead! (raising his voice) Hassla'tak, get me a bottle of Whyren's Reserve. You know the one.
HASSLA'TAK: You mean the one with the note on it saying, "To be opened on the death of Corran Horn?"
BOOSTER: That's the one.
MIRAX: (tearfully) Daddy! How could you?!
IELLA: Uh, I hate to break this to you, Booster, but it looks like Wedge is dead, too.
BOOSTER: Wedge? Oh, Sithspit. (yelling once again) Hassla'tak, forget the Whyren's. I want every piece of debris picked up and brought in. A hundred million credits for any body found. Then we make those bastards pay!
(elsewhere)
VESSERY: General, I need you to promise me that you won't kill the person who saved your life, even if it happens to be the Devil herself.
WEDGE: Kill the person who saved my life? I'd have to be crazy to do that! (They enter a room and see Ysanne.) Iceheart! By the Force, you will pay for what you've done! (He pulls a blaster.)
VESSERY: General, you promised!
YSANNE: Pay? For saving your life? Are you that ungrateful, Antilles?
WEDGE: Aren't you supposed to be dead?
YSANNE: You thought I was flying that shuttle? Now that's funny! I thought everyone knew that I don't know how to pilot a landspeeder, let alone a shuttle.
WEDGE: Sithspawn, Face was right!
YSANNE: Face? You can't mean Face Loran, the one-time child actor. I thought he was dead.
WEDGE: The rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated, as with you, I guess. Never mind that. I'm still not getting this. You've been working with Krennel all this time, trying to kill us. You've professed your hate for us numerous times. And now you save our lives? Why?
YSANNE: I saved you because I need you to kill me.
WEDGE: My pleasure. (He aims his blaster at her.)
YSANNE: Not ME, you idiot! The other me!
WEDGE: The other you? I think you've lost me.
YSANNE: While I've been lying low, relaxing on the beaches of Jamaica, plotting the death of Rogue Squadron and my eventual repossession of the Lus...uh, that is to say, thinking things over, my clone's been hanging out with Krennel and making trouble for you guys. I thought she'd died a long time ago, but I guess she takes too much after me. She is, after all, an Ysanne Isard.
WEDGE: Uh, shouldn't that be YSAANNE Isard?
YSANNE: Maybe it should be, but this isn't a Timothy Zahn book. I personally prefer to think of her as "her," if you get my meaning.
WEDGE: Ok, so you want her dead. So?
YSANNE: Don't you want her dead as well?
WEDGE: What I'd really like is for the both of you to be dead.
YSANNE: Well, too bad. This isn't a two-for-one special. It's either one or nothing. So, are you in or are you out?
WEDGE: Well, one's better than nothing. I'm in.
READER: (in Neimoidian voice) This is getting out of hand. Now there are TWO of them!
(Booster's office on the Errant Venture)
BORSK: Tell me what happened at Distna.
BOOSTER: How many more times are you going to ask me the same question?
BORSK: I'm going to keep asking until I get an answer that I like.
BOOSTER: Well, you can ask me for the next millennium because the answer's not going to change. Look, doesn't the phrase "reduced to their constituent atoms" mean anything to you?
BORSK: But surely we could go back and look for Asyr's body?
BOOSTER: I've already flown this ship twice into a war zone looking for bodies because my daughter insisted that we could find her husband's. Trust me, there is as much left of Asyr as there was of him.
BORSK: But I know that, if you were to go back one more time, you would find it.
BOOSTER: (exploding) She is GONE, Borsk! Everybody's gone! Everybody is gone, Borsk! There was nothing left besides what I already showed you! Now quit asking me the same question!
BORSK: Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody's gone? (At Booster's murderous glare, he sighs in resignation.) Ok, but I can't go home without a body to put in her tomb. Go get me one.
BOOSTER: Got one right here. I'll send them yours.
BORSK: How dare you...
(Booster throws Borsk up against the bulkhead and proceeds to beat the living daylights out of him.)
READER: Yes!!! Go, Booster!
BOOSTER: I would love to space you here and now, let you float around out here for a few days, and then "find" you again and take you back home. But you're so dishonorable, slimy, and downright annoying that any world I brought your body back to would declare war on me for trying to dump toxic waste on it. Speaking of which, I want you to take your foul carcass and get the hell off of my ship before I change my mind.
BORSK: You will rue the day you ever maligned the name of Councilor Borsk Fey'lya!
BOOSTER: Yeah, yeah, I'm shaking in my boots.
BORSK: (to himself, under his breath) Dishonorable, slimy, and annoying. Wow, I would make a great President someday!
READER: Aww, you should've spaced him, Booster.
(Borsk leaves Booster's office. About a minute later, Iella enters.)
IELLA: You've just made a very dangerous enemy, Booster.
BOOSTER: I'm not too concerned. I figure, if worst comes to worst, one of Asyr's future students can offer me my own planetary system to rule.
READER: Wait a minute, she's alive?
JANSON: And she's not the only one. Man, this is going to be the best practical joke I've ever played on Wedge. Yub, yub!
(Weight room)
YSANNE: Stop sending messages out of here.
CORRAN: No. I won't stop, and you can't make me.
YSANNE: Why are you even bothering to send them out? None of them have gotten out, and none of them WILL get out. You know that.
CORRAN: Because I love my wife, and it's driving me crazy to know that she thinks I'm dead. Of course, that's something you'd never understand.
YSANNE: Oh? I was in love once, but I would never think of wasting my time telling him things he already knew.
CORRAN: You were in love with Darth Vader? I heard he could know things like that.
YSANNE: Of course not! What would I want with a horribly-scarred, pasty-faced guy on life support? He was ugly!
CORRAN: Whew! You had me wondering for a minute. You know, I find myself agreeing with you on something. It's a really weird feeling.
YSANNE: No, I was in love with the Emperor.
CORRAN: The... I'd heard the rumors, but I never believed they were true. What could any woman have seen in HIM?!
YSANNE: He had a way of looking at a person that still sends tingles down my spine. Oh, the sheer power of the man...it's as if little electrical sparks of energy filled the room, setting my nerve endings on fire...
CORRAN: Stop, I don't think I want to know any more! It's obvious to me that power was what drew you to him, because he sure had nothing else.
YSANNE: That's it! I will not tolerate slanders against the best man that ever lived. You will not send any more messages out of here or badmouth Palpy again, or I will dismantle your droid.
CORRAN: Yes, Your Highnessness. (She glares at him, then storms out the exit. After a minute, he laughs.) To dismantle Whistler, first you have to find him, you idiot.
READER: She could stand to be with the Emperor? She must've made love with her eyes closed!
(On board the Errant Venture)
KARRDE: (waving and walking up to Booster) Hidey-ho, neighbor!
BOOSTER: Why, you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler! You've got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled.
KARRDE: What?
MIRAX: That's not your line, Dad.
BOOSTER: Oh, whoops. Ok, Karrde, so what DO you want? And for how much?
KARRDE: Let's talk price later. For now, I'd just like to deliver the news I have. I think you'll like it.
BOOSTER: I will? Why, are you retiring from the business?
KARRDE: No...
BOOSTER: (eagerly) Did you happen to come across Councilor Fey'lya's floating corpse in your travels?
KARRDE: You wish. Nope, what I have to tell you is even better than that. (turning around) You can come out now.
(Whistler and Gate come out of Karrde's ship. Gate is dressed in a miniature white robe, and has two brown cinnamon buns stapled, one to each side of his head.)
MIRAX: Whistler! Gate! You're alive! But that means....Corran has to be alive, too! (She hugs Whistler and begins to cry.)
BOOSTER: What?! CorSec's alive? (turning on Karrde) I thought you said you had good news. Why, I oughtta pound you into....
KARRDE: Hey, Booster, this does mean the rest of the squadron is alive as well. Not to mention Wedge.
BOOSTER: Oh, yeah, right. Wedge...(shouting) Hassla'tak, give Karrde whatever he wants. Get Iella to join us in my office immediately. Oh, yeah, and make sure there's plenty of caf. It's payback time!
(Ciutric. Alarms are going off in the background.)
MYN: What's that?
TYCHO: We're under attack. Ackbar and his fleet must be here.
MYN: I figured that out, but isn't Isard supposed to be here about now?
TYCHO: Well, let's hope that she's just running a little late.
YSANNE & VESSERY: You thought we would actually show up? Boy, did we sure fool you!
YSANNE: Set course for the Lusankya.
INYRI: Sithspit! Now what?
WEDGE: Don't forget, there's another Isard around here. Let's go get her!
TYCHO: You heard the general. Let's go!
(aboard Lusankya)
YSANNE: Ahh, Lusankya. We have been apart for FAR too long. But now that we're together again, nothing can stop us from taking over and ruling the galaxy in the name of my beloved Palpatine. Mwuhahahahahaha!!
IELLA: Not so fast, Isard. You're going down, girl.
YSANNE: Oh? Just like I took down your beloved Diric? Oh, but wait a minute, you're the one who killed him, aren't you?
IELLA: Funny you should mention him. He had a message for me to give to you when this day came. He said, "From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
YSANNE: Like I care what he thought of me. This is what matters. (She draws out a comlink.) You can take over when you're ready.
BOOSTER: (over comlink) Thank you so much for your permission, Madam Director. Iella, get this scene over with so we can end this book. I just realized that I get to beat on CorSec in the next book, and I can't wait for that scene to come.
IELLA: Will do, Captain Terrik. Well, Ysanne, regardless of what Diric may have wanted, I don't think you deserve death. That'd be too easy and too quick.
YSANNE: So what are you going to do to me, huh? Put me on trial?
IELLA: No. You'd like that too much. Let me see...Ah, I know! Since you seem to love this ship as much as you do, and the ship's the only thing that can tolerate your presence anyhow, I think we'll marry you to it, then lock you in one of its rooms for the rest of eternity. Since the Lusankya is all you care for, that's the only thing you'll see for the rest of your life. I hope the wedded bliss doesn't wear off too soon!
YSANNE: Why, that sounds absolutely wonderful! But, since I know you'd never be that kind to me, I might as well attack you and have you kill me, because I have nothing to lose anyway. (She raises her blaster and is shot by Iella.)
IELLA: Why, thank you for giving me the excuse I need to make your ultimate fate ambiguous. Are you dead, or are you alive? Will the priest be performing a marriage ceremony or a really quick funeral? Well, in either case, I have something to give you from my current boyfriend. I hope you're alive so you can enjoy every minute of it. (She reaches down and proceeds to give Ysanne a wedgie.)
(Party aboard Lusankya)
ROGUES: Yippee! We're all alive!
OORYL: The prisoners are free, and all the Isards are dead!
HOBBIE: I didn't crash this time!
WES: Yub, yub, General! Man, that was an awesome practical joke! How am I ever going to top this one?
ROGUES: (singing) Ding, Dong, Ysanne's dead...
GAVIN: Yeah, and so is Asyr.
IELLA: Oh, that reminds me, I'll be right back. (She exits.)
CORRAN: Where's she going?
MIRAX: Nowhere important. Now, I want you to drink your caf and tell me more about how you'd tear the galaxy apart looking for me if I were to go missing.
(Iella's quarters)
IELLA: Asyr, are you sure you have to go?
ASYR: Yes, I am. My disappearing now will enable me to set up stuff that we'd better see in the New Jedi Order series.
IELLA: But by going away and not marrying Gavin, you're giving Fey'lya exactly what he wants.
ASYR: In the short run, perhaps. But hopefully it'll all pay off in the long run and I'm the one who comes up with the most satisfying way of getting rid of Borsk Fey'lya once and for all.
IELLA: Well, good luck in your quest, and may the Force be with you.
READER 1: Yeah, go kick some butt, Asyr! We can't WAIT to see what you're gonna come up with!
READER 2: I can't believe it ended that way. She just leaves Gavin without even saying goodbye, without even telling him she's alive? I know what she wants to do, but I still feel that Iella was right and that she did give in to Borsk. Darn!
Copyright May 31, 2000 by Kelly M. Grosskreutz