Title: A New Path

Summary: Tycho Celchu's journey from the Empire to the Alliance.

Disclaimer: Star Wars is, quite clearly, not mine, and no copyright infringement is intended. This story is not written for profit.

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Chapter 8: A Force to be Reckoned With

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The next two days – two days in which Jesina was ordered to have no contact with Tycho, who was being held in a cell somewhere underground in the small base – passed very slowly. Jesina spent most of the time wandering around the outpost, familiarizing herself with it, and trying to figure out what she was going to say to Tycho. She'd talked to a few of the command staff there, and what they'd told her wasn't going to go a long way toward fixing things with her friend.

On the morning of the third day, Narra – who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet after her first meeting with him – knocked on her door. "Would you like to see the lieutenant?"

She nodded curtly, and picked a datapad up off her cot. "Yes, please." She didn't have a problem with Narra. He seemed nice enough, more like a professional officer than many of the Rebels. But she also didn't have any real desire to get to know the man, either. "Any word on the Red Squadron officers?" she asked as they walked toward the main building.

"The last I heard was yesterday. They should be here by mid-day, if not sooner than that." There was a formal, core-world edge to his voice, something she knew slipped through in her speech from time to time, and was blatant in Tycho's voice.

"Good." She was looking forward to seeing Wedge and Janson, and wanted to talk to Wedge about Tycho.

Narra stopped just inside. "Down the stairs, first door on the right. The door leads to a small cellblock, and there's a guard posted outside. He knows to expect you."

"Thank you, commander."

He gave her a brisk nod and turned to leave. Jesina watched him go. Narra would be an interesting man, she felt, if anyone got to know him. She doubted anyone did. He struck her as the type of commanding officer who distanced himself from his men to keep from feeling their loss.

She descended the old stairwell, wondering what this compound had once been – it was definitely something the Alliance had stumbled across, not something they'd haphazardly put together.

Nodding to the guard, she handed him her identification. "Blaster, please, ma'am," he said, holding out a hand. She handed it to him and took her ID back. "Do you have any other weapons, ma'am?"

"Yes." She leaned over and rolled up her pant leg, drawing her vibroblade, and straightened. She handed it to him handle first. "That's all."

He nodded. "Go ahead, Captain."

Jesina opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit cellblock. Tycho was, as she'd expected, the only person there. "Hello."

He looked up at her quickly, and then turned away. "What do you want?"

"I came to see how you were doing."

"I'm fine. For being a prisoner, anyway."

"You're not – well, yes, you are a prisoner. But it's not like that."

"Oh, really." The words dripped with sarcasm.

"Yes, really." She frowned at him in frustration. "Tycho, even you couldn't be so naïve as to think that they'd simply welcome you with open arms. You want to know why Eskrit was so difficult? Because the two people he's brought over since Yavin turned out to be traitors. They have to be careful. Do you really blame them?"

"No. I blame you, for not telling me, for not warning me." He finally met her eyes. "That's what the protocol thing was about, when we landed."

Jesina nodded. "I'm sorry. Eskrit only told me a few minutes before you came into the cockpit. And even if he'd told me in advance, I couldn't have warned you. Even once they found out for certain that you weren't a spy, they'd have been able to charge me, if they wanted to."

Tycho's eyes narrowed. "Just how long will it be until they find out that I'm not a spy?"

"I don't know." She handed him the datapad. "This isn't helping."

He glanced at it. It was a copy of an Imperial personnel record. He saw his name, listed as missing in action. "Missing?"

She nodded again. "Not defected. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it – Thyferra may be friendly to the Empire, but there are people there who hate it. It's possible they think you might have been kidnapped. It's also possible that they've taken to not identifying people as defectors, because they don't want anyone to realize how many they're losing."

"What does it matter how they identify me? It's perfectly reasonable," he put a snide twist to her words, "to think they would falsify records on me if I was a spy."

"That's true. It's just taking more time, Tycho. Not much longer, I don't think."

His reply was forestalled by the chime of her comlink. She pulled it from her vest pocket. "Dreis here."

"Captain, Red Squadron has begun approach."

"Thank you. Dreis out."

Tycho raised an eyebrow. "Captain?"

"Because of my ship," she replied. "It's not a military title." She hesitated. "I've got to go meet them. I'll do whatever I can to get this taken care of, Tycho. I promise."

"Go," he replied, still annoyed, but not as angry as he had been.

Jesina nodded and left the cellblock, collecting her blaster and vibroblade on her way out, and then made her way up the stairs.

She walked briskly through the mostly empty halls of the compound toward the hangar, and was there in time to watch as they landed. There were four fighters, and a small shuttle.

She made herself useful, guiding – with some effort – a ladder over to the nearest fighter as the pilot powered down. It was Wedge's ship, and she caught the look of surprise that crossed his face as he saw her standing at the bottom. "Escort duty, Antilles?" she called up to him.

He scrambled down the ladder, catching her in a tight embrace and lifting her off the floor. "How are you?" he asked her hair.

She laughed and pushed him back. "Talk to my face, not my head. I'm all right. Who are you escorting?"

"Not really escort duty. We ran into the general at our last stop, a few days back, and he was heading this way too, so we flew together."

"The general?" she repeated.

"He nodded. Cracken, the Intelligence guy?"

"I know the name." She'd also met him, but wasn't going to tell Wedge that. She glanced over at the other pilots, now that they were all out of their ships. She saw a man she didn't recognize. "That Skywalker?" She nodded toward a slim young man with a mop of light brown hair on his head.

He nodded. "I see you heard about Yavin?" It was the only way she could have known Luke's name. "I wanted to tell you myself. But we've spent the time since the battle – somewhere around three months – all over the place, without much downtime."

"Three months? Narra said one and a half."

"It's been almost three. It actually took a while for the news to get out, hard as that might be to believe. No one really knew what happened at Yavin until some time after the battle. Yavin's so out of the way that no one but the people who were there who knew what had happened, and we were all caught up in evacuating. And the Empire sure as Sith wasn't telling anyone." He paused, remembering she'd mentioned their new commander's name. "You've met him?"

She nodded. "He was here when I arrived. And don't feel badly about not being able to tell me. I heard about it from Eskrit on the trip here."

"Gil'fra?" Wedge asked, surprised. "Since when did you get into the recruiting business?"

"I'm not. I just bought a friend of mine over."

"Over?" he asked. "An Imperial?"

"Ex-Imperial," she corrected, and he looked properly abashed. "But they haven't figured that out yet. He's being held in a cell downstairs. I need to talk—"

"Dreis? Jesina Dreis?" Wes Janson's exuberant voice rang through the hangar. "Fancy meeting you here, milady." He leaned forward in a deep bow, but hadn't stopped walking yet, so he ended up flat on the floor. The two men walking behind him – Luke, and another pilot she'd met a handful of times – burst into laughter. Wedge was laughing so hard that a few tears fell from his eyes.

Jesina shook her head, stifling a laugh. "My hero," she remarked, taking a step forward and holding her hand out to him. "Want some help, Janson?"

He took it and pulled, hard, bringing her to her knees beside him. Then he took her face in his hands and planted a kiss on her cheek. "Good to see you again, Dreis."

She rolled her eyes and, leaving him to get up on his own, took Wedge's proffered hand and got to her feet. "Same old Janson," she remarked. But once he was on his feet and they'd all stopped laughing, she saw something in his eyes that seemed different from the last time she'd seen him, something that made her reconsider her assessment of the pilot from Tanaab.

"What have you been up to, Dreis?" the other man she'd recognized asked.

"Little bit of everything, Klivian. How about you?" Hobbie Klivian had flown with Red Squadron for a while – that was how she'd met him – before being temporarily reassigned to another squadron that was hurting for people.

"The same, I guess. But I've probably crashed more times than you have."

She laughed outright. The Raltiirian pilot was known for his less-than-stellar luck. He was a good pilot, but tended to have any number of problems keeping his ship intact just the same. "Probably."

Just then, the General she and Wedge had been talking about approached them. "Lieutenants," he acknowledged the pilots. "Captain Dreis, I presume?" Jesina could see in the man's face that he remembered her from their previous meeting, but that he had no intention of telling Wedge and the others that.

"Yes, sir."

He nodded, and turned back to the pilots. "Thank you for the escort, gentlemen. I'm sure I'll see you again before I leave." With that, he turned and followed his staff officer out of the hangar.

"I don't like that man," Hobbie commented as they watched him leave.

"Most people don't," Jesina replied. "But he's good at his job – the best there is, outside of Imperial Intelligence. Not a good idea to get on his bad side." She paused. "Never, ever trust him."

"How do you know so much about him?"

She glanced at Wedge. "You would, too, if you kept in touch with everyone in Booster's old empire. They all know the name. Intelligence people – no matter what side they're on – have the potential to be bad for business." She glanced back toward the door, and then returned her attention to the pilots. "He's the one who organized the resistance that held off the Empire at Contruum. Then he joined the Alliance, got into Intelligence, and rose pretty quickly through the ranks. He doesn't look like much, but he's a force to be reckoned with."