Chapter Seven

Wedge Antilles pulled his helmet off and tossed it to the side, then pushed his hands through his hair. Gate whistled from the astromech socket behind him and the X-wing's cockpit released. Wedge pushed it up, climbing out and then down the ladder that the maintenance crew brought in. Ession Strike's hangar was cramped, and as soon as he was down the crew maneuvered the fighter deeper into the hangar to create more space for the remainder of Rogue Squadron's X-wings.

What of them are left, he thought bitterly. Half my pilots are out of action after today.

They hadn't lost any pilots and that was no small consolation, but Gavin, Nrin, and Myn had lost their X-wings, and Inyri, Hobbie, and Corran's fighters were going to need some time in the shop before they could be considered combat ready (though Corran's probably would only take a few hours). That left just Wedge, Tycho, Wes, and Ooryl ready to fly on a moment's notice (their now total lack of proton torpedoes notwithstanding). And the Squadron had never gotten fully up to strength even before it had been assigned to Bel Iblis.

He was down to a mere third of a typical twelve fighter squadron.

Not good enough.

His pilots were rattled, he knew. Corran was one of the most level-headed men he knew, and Corran had sounded strained even when announcing the good news that he and the other Rogues on the ground had managed to retake control of Cracken's droid-operated prison and shut its shields and guns back down.

The thought of Cracken made Wedge scowl. This was the last time he would let the head of NRI send him and his squadron blind into combat. They were the New Republic now, not the Rebellion, and desperation was no longer justification for an overreliance on grit, skill, and luck! That overreliance had gotten more than a few of his pilots killed, including some of the best.

Wedge took a breath. In the last few years Luke had often told him—on the rare occasion the two of them spent any time together—that serenity came from proper breathing. He exhaled, and then inhaled again slowly, letting his stomach inflate as he did, mindful of Luke's brief lessons.

It helped, a little.

His Rogues were arriving now; Tycho was bringing them in one at a time. Inyri's X-wing was blackened from laser fire that had come too close to puncturing her cockpit, and a quick glance told him that she was probably going to need both of her dorsal engines replaced. Corran's green-and-black X-wing came uneasily through the hangar next, the fighter pocked and marked from shrapnel strikes. Whistler, Corran's astromech, offered a relieved whoop as the snubfighter settled to the deck. Gate whistled back as the techs extracted him with a crane.

The cockpit of Corran's X-wing opened and Corran clambered down the ladder quickly wheeled into place. He hit the ground with a two-footed thump, gave the tech a thumbs-up, and waved to Whistler. "Take care of the X-wing, Whistler, I'll be back to check on it in a little bit." When he saw Wedge watching him, he strode over. "General."

"Corran," Wedge nodded back. "What news of the prison?"

As Corran came closer, Wedge could see the toll the battle had taken on him. His face was streaked with grime and blood, and his lightsaber—which Corran usually kept carefully out of sight, very protective of the fact that he had Force talents—hung openly from his belt. He pushed his brown hair back, dried sweat making him look even more miserable. He gave Wedge a serious expression and tossed a casual salute. "Cracken didn't keep many prisoners here, and we're pretty sure there was only one escapee. A Drall; the prison records just have him listed as Eliezer." Corran shook his head. "There's something familiar about that name, Wedge, but I can't quite place it. I think I must've came across it at some point during my time in CorSec, but..." he shrugged helplessly. "Whistler doesn't remember him, so it wasn't one of my cases. I do know who got him out, though, and you'll recognize her. Nrin recognized her immediately from the prison security footage."

Corran handed him a datacard, and Wedge glanced down at the series of images. He felt his lips contort into an annoyed scowl. "Leonia Tavira," he muttered.

"Moff Leonia Tavira," Corran corrected. "At least from the uniform she was wearing."

"She was Moff of the Ado Sector when the Rogues first encountered her on Eiattu. That was about five years ago, not that long after Endor," Wedge mused, wearing an expression that was a cross between a smirk and a frown. "Hobbie and Wes will be thrilled, she captured and threatened to execute them."

"Nrin told me a bit about that while we waited for Nawara to pick up Gavin. Gavin has a broken arm, by the way, but he'll be fine after a quick bacta dip. Oh, and we recovered Gavin's astromech; Tycho managed to get him out of that ravine he got stuck in." Corran took back his datapad. "We've got a bigger problem than Tavira, though."

Wedge frowned. "What do you mean? Do you know why Cracken had this Eliezer locked up?"

Corran shook his head and frowned. "No, I don't, and that's frustrating. Eliezer's prison wasn't what I would've expected; he had computer access and HoloNet access, which Cracken had quite deliberately provided him. You'll have to ask NRI about that." He paused for a second, then shrugged. "I wonder if Iella might remember his name. She always had a better memory than I did for minor details while we were partners in CorSec." He held up his hand. "But, back to the problem." Corran put his hand on his lightsaber. "Wedge, Tavira was accompanied by a Force-wielder, someone skilled with a lightsaber. He deflected Nrin's blaster bolts back at us during the lightfight, and took the door to Eliezer's cell off its hinges. We found it still smoldering on the floor where he left it."

"A Force-wielder?" Wedge asked slowly.

"One with a lightsaber," Corran confirmed. "He was wearing some kind of bizarre bronze armor, too, and his face was covered with a mask. We never got a look at him."

Wedge's blood was steadily getting colder. Leonia Tavira had been a formidable foe in the past, and her principal weakness had been an impetuosity that might have been a product of youth. Five years older, was she also five years wiser? Five years more experienced? She clearly had access to a Star Destroyer, but a Star Destroyer and a Force adept? And now also a prisoner that General Airen Cracken, the New Republic's intelligence savant, had deemed sufficiently dangerous to stash in a fully unmanned prison in a system so unremarkable that their star charts hadn't even given it a name?

"Not good," Wedge murmured.

The conversation subsided under the scream of a snubfighter's engines. They both looked behind them and saw Hobbie's X-wing nosing its way cautiously into the hangar. The fighter had seen better days; it was missing one full S-foil and half of another one, and the whine of the craft as it settled to the ground was the sound of two engines straining to do a job that would normally have been done by four. The engines sounded almost relieved as Hobbie let the wounded snubfighter rest.

Hobbie popped the fighter canopy and gave Wedge a tired wave. "Hey, Boss. Good news, I'm not dead," he called dourly.

"Glad to hear it," Wedge called back pointedly. "What happened?"

"Lucky turbolaser blast," Hobbie scowled. "I would've hit their bridge if they hadn't clipped me, too." He shook his head. "I get no luck."

"You're lucky you're still alive," Wedge pointed out, then clapped Corran on the back and adopted some forced cheer. "Well, I'm sure Zraii will be thrilled at the excellent state you two have brought your fighters back in."

The two men both grimaced. Zraii, Rogue Squadron's Verpine chief mechanic, was notoriously protective of his X-wings and seemed to like them more than he liked their pilots. "I think I'll go see if Whistler managed to get anything else useful out of the prison computer," Corran said.

Hobbie just looked mournfully at his crippled snubfighter, hung his head, and sighed.

Unlike most Corellian corvettes, the bridge of Ession Strike was buried in the heart of the ship. Wedge climbed up one of the ladders to reach it. Inside was the corvette's bridge crew, all alert for a potential return of their Star Destroyer friend. Atril was huddled next to a Bothan at the communications station. She looked up as she saw Wedge approaching and folded her arms behind her back. The Bothan, distracted and failing to notice his approach, did so much more hastily once Wedge had joined them. "As you were," Wedge nodded at them the way senior officers had once nodded at him. "Anything new?"

Atril shook her head. "No. We've finished our survey of the base defenses and there isn't much left here." She frowned. "We might have to stay and picket the system ourselves for a while."

Wedge scoffed and shook his head. "I trusted Cracken and agreed to do him a favor and come here and check it out for him because no one else was available. I've done that. I've no intention of being stuck on guard duty."

"Very well, General," Atril replied formally, the formality giving her Coruscanti accent some additional bite. "Orders?"

"I need a secure communications link to Coruscant," he replied. "And by secure, I mean as well encrypted as we have available. I need to report to General Cracken." He handed the Bothan a datapad. "It doesn't need to be a live communication, though. Take this, transmit it to NRI as soon as we have a HoloNet encrypt prepared."

Ession Strike's furred communications specialist took the datapad and nodded. "I'll begin working on it right away." He turned to his station.

Atril stepped closer to Wedge, lowering her voice. "That Star Destroyer, Invidious. My people have found two mentions of her in the ship's intelligence records. The most recent one has her as part of Admiral Teradoc's little fiefdom in the Deep Core. If Teradoc has sent any kind of reinforcement to Rogriss out here, it could radically alter the balance of power; our numerical advantage over Rogriss isn't that great."

Wedge frowned. That was true, though Leonia Tavira working for Teradoc seemed unlikely. She had always been out for herself, not for the Empire. But that had been years ago now, and Tavira could have changed... "It's definitely something to be concerned about," he agreed. "Put together a report and send it off to General Bel Iblis as soon as it's ready."

"It's already written," Atril replied, her grey eyes watching him with some concern. "Are you all right?"

Wedge shook his head, his expression a rather pointed command to drop it. He turned towards the exit back into Strike's main spinal hallway. "Let me know when we hear from Cracken," he ordered, leaving Atril watching him as he left.

Atril tracked Wedge down a few hours later. Ession Strike's bridge had once been located at the bow of the ship, but at the Battle of Talasea it had taken a direct hit, killing then-Lieutenant Tabanne's immediate predecessor and leaving her in command of the corvette. She still wished she hadn't gotten Ession Strike only because Choday Hrakness had been killed, but battlefield promotions were hardly rare.

Wedge was sitting in the forward lounge that had replaced the ship's original bridge area. It was compact and not particularly comfortable, but it presented a nice view of the nameless planet they orbited and the numerous metallic rocks and moons that orbited that planet. Wedge was looking over a stack of datapads, each containing a different report: maintenance, tactical, strategic, intelligence. He was reading each one, adding his own notations and shortcuts to get back to important data quickly. Next to him his astromech, Gate, whistled softly as he integrated the most important information into his databanks so Wedge could access it even while piloting his X-wing.

Atril bit her lip, sure this wasn't a good idea, then sat on the couch next to him. "Going to answer my question now?" she asked.

He didn't look at her. "I thought I told you to drop it."

"Well, you haven't talked to Tycho or Wes, Wedge. I know, I checked. So whatever it is that's bothering you you've decided to stew on it rather than actually talk about it." She shrugged. "Besides, in the forward lounge you agree to leave your rank at the door."

Wedge sighed and put the datapad he was holding—a summary report on what was left of Cracken's secret prison's defenses—down and turned to her. "Congratulations on your engagement, by the way."

Atril raised a hand at him, showing off the engagement ring she wore on her ring finger. "Thanks." She offered him a small smile. Years before Wedge had been there for her when she had needed to talk. The Battle of Ession had been a decisive victory, and the New Republic had even re-named the captured corvette Night Caller in its honor. But for Atril, the memory of Ession would always be mixed with trauma and regret.

Being stuck in a dying, endlessly spinning out-of-control TIE fighter after she'd blasted open the bridge of a Star Destroyer to begin battle had left her shaken. And then, to return to her ship and promptly be expected to resume command, when she'd only days before become captain after Choday's death…

There were times she wished she hadn't let Fleet Command rename Night Caller in honor of that battle. It had been a few years, though, and the dreams weren't as common as they had been.

When she'd needed help, she turned to Wedge. Now she saw him bundling his fears and hiding them away, even from his most trusted confidantes, and she knew that it was her turn to reach out. "But that's not going to distract me."

"I'm mad at Cracken," Wedge said stiffly. "And I'm mad at myself for letting him talk me into flying this mission."

That was true, she had no doubt, but it wasn't what was really bothering him. "All your pilots came back."

"Barely," Wedge retorted. "And we could easily have lost Gavin and Hobbie if things had gone just a little bit differently." He shook his head. "What was I thinking, taking an understrength squadron of X-wings in against a Star Destroyer all by ourselves, and without even a full load of proton torpedoes?"

"It was a good plan and it worked," Atril countered him, her voice cooling noticeably. "We did a lot of damage to that Star Destroyer and we came out of the fight with valuable intelligence. And none of us is dead." She crooked a finger at him. "And once you sit down and talk with Tycho he'll tell you exactly the same thing."

Wedge rubbed his face, looking more tired than she remembered him, even during the doldrums of the Thrawn campaign.

"As for your understrength squadron," she continued, "there have got to be great X-wing pilots out there you've flown with before who would be happy to fill in your vacancies, at least for a while."

That prompted him to look up, and his brown eyes were suddenly thoughtful.

"Personally, I think you need a vacation," she continued, debating whether to bring up Iella. "And—"

The door to the lounge slid open and Tycho stepped in, still wearing his orange Rogue Squadron flightsuit. In his hand he held a datapad, and his expression was grim. He glanced between them for a moment, then his eyes met Wedge's. "We just got Cracken's response," he said simply. "You're not going to like this."

When the New Republic liberated Coruscant, it also captured the headquarters of the Imperial Security Bureau. The ISB was still the self-proclaimed chief defender of the Emperor's New Order from perceived internal threats, and proud of being vicious and ruthless about it. For that it had been funded extraordinarily well, lavished with an inordinately large share of the Empire's yearly budget. Much of that money was siphoned into the private accounts of corrupt bureaucrats, Iella Wessiri knew, but some of it went to producing extraordinarily fine covert intelligence vessels.

Iella attempted to rest in a passenger seat of one of those vessels, which had been captured intact along with ISB headquarters and had been repurposed for NRI use. With its help getting into Ukio had been relatively easy, but getting out had been far more dangerous. After the battle at Hishyim, the Empire had instituted a sector-wide security crackdown to find the insidious mole that had leaked their strategic maneuvers to the enemy, and as she had been that insidious mole Iella had been more than a little concerned that they would be caught.

Three hyper-jumps out of Ukio, she finally allowed herself to relax. "I think we made it," she groaned, running her hands through her light brown-blonde hair and offering her companion a tired smile.

"Was a bit dicier than I wanted it to be, but yes," her fellow passenger, Kapp Dendo, agreed with a grin. A red-skinned, horned Devaronian with a long history working in New Republic Intelligence, Kapp was one of NRI's more skilled commando operatives, having been trained at one point by General Crix Madine himself. He and Leia's aide Winter had famously been one of Rebel Alliance's better covert teams during the years right before and after Endor. "This is the last jump before Druckenwell."

"Good," Iella sighed, brushing her hands over her slacks. Had the Imperials realized they hadn't come to Ukio to pick up a food shipment for transit to the Imperial regional headquarters at Linuri, they would almost certainly have been interdicted by now. Assuming they'd gotten away clean, or even with just a few hour lead, it was unlikely that the Imperials would be able to stop them before they reached Druckenwell. She relaxed a bit; that meant they were (almost certainly) safe. "Once we get to Druckenwell we can unload that shipment of foodstuffs and check in with Cracken for our next assignment."

"I wonder if we'll get any details about how Hishyim went," Kapp mused thoughtfully.

Iella wondered the same. Wedge and Corran would almost certainly have been at Hishyim to fight Rogriss' two Star Destroyers. She knew the two men had both flown dozens—hundreds even, in Wedge's case—of combat missions, most of them far more dangerous than that one would have been. That didn't prevent her heart palpitations at the thought of it. You knew what you were getting yourself into when you finally gave in and kissed him, she scolded herself. He's a pilot. An X-wing pilot. He does dangerous things sometimes.

Wedge had been so patient and loving, even before they'd been a couple. How many functions had they attended together, arm-in-arm? How many times had they found an excuse for a quiet dinner that they both had known was a date, even if neither had ever used the title? He'd waited more than a year after her husband's death before approaching her for a date-they-hadn't-called-a-date.

She smiled. He'd been so… shy. She clung to that memory, and the memories that had followed, wishing fervently in that moment that she and Wedge had chosen different careers.

She could feel Kapp very carefully not saying anything. He had learned not to, as she had a tendency to snap at him when he interrupted her out of a moment of reverie. Corran had learned that lesson too. She pushed herself out of the copilot's seat, not looking at Kapp. "I'm going to go shower and try to take a nap," she said. "Wake me when we get to Druckenwell."

What little sleep Iella got was plagued by dreams of Rogue Squadron debris and houses in the Coronet City suburbs, leaving her not-quite-rested when she returned to the cockpit. "What is it?" she asked, yawning, gathering her mussed blonde hair back into a loose tail after her restless sleep. Outside the spinning stars of Hyperspace were gone, replaced by the slowly spinning ugly grey, brown, and green of the highly polluted industrial world of Druckenwell. It had been a major Imperial weapons supplier once; after Endor, it had been one of the first worlds the New Republic had wrested from the Empire. The New Republic garrison fleet in orbit featured multiple Mon Calamari Star Cruisers. Iella felt relief sag through her; if the Empire had been chasing them, it couldn't catch them now.

"Cracken is calling," Kapp informed her.

She stiffened. "Right now?"

"Right now," Kapp confirmed and ushered her into the copilot's seat. Next to her, the ship's pilot—one of the four Noghri commandos that was under Kapp's command—kept the ship in close contact with the local HoloNet node.

She tiredly pushed her hair out of her face, and then the green eyes of her superior appeared on the large console monitor. "Agent Wessiri, Colonel Dendo," Airen Cracken said, his expression stiff and unhappy. "Good work on Ukio. Unfortunately, I have a new assignment for you."

Iella and Kapp glanced at each other, frowning. "Yes, sir?" replied Kapp.

Cracken's expression was pinched and there were more lines in his face than usual. Whatever had happened since they had been last in contact, it hadn't been good. "There's been a jailbreak at a secret NRI facility in the Albrion Sector. I sent the Rogues to investigate—"

She sat up, her breath catching in her chest.

"—and they engaged a Star Destroyer, the Invidious. Our most recent intelligence reports suggest that Warlord Teradoc gave her to Moff Leonia Tavira in exchange for a substantial bribe." Cracken's expression darkened. "The Rogues drove her off, but not before she made off with the facility's prized prisoner—the Drall slicer Eliezer."

Iella's heart ached with worry, but surely Cracken would have told her if something happened to Wedge, and that name… She forced her mind away from the Rogues and back to the matter at hand, closing her eyes and thinking back to her time with CorSec. Drall were native to the planet Drall, which was in the Corellia system and under CorSec jurisdiction, and the name was definitely familiar. "My old boss in CorSec mentioned him a few times," Iella murmured, visualizing Gil's face and her old CorSec office, putting herself back in the past for a moment.

"At least I was never the one CorSec sent to try to get Eliezer," she remembered Gil saying. "He never left evidence we could pin on him. I wish we knew how he did what he did." But what was it Eliezer had done…

Cracken just nodded, interjecting into her thoughts. "He was a CorSec dreamstalker for a long time, decades ago. He was seemingly always able to extract information from even some of their most secure communications." Cracken's expression darkened. "Just having this conversation is probably unwise with him loose, but I doubt he's been able to get any equipment up and running so quickly."

"How did he end up in a NRI prison?" Kapp asked.

The expression on Cracken's face was one of a temporarily satisfied predator. "That's a long story and not one worth sharing. Eliezer was … an asset, of sorts. He agreed to extract certain information on people, places, or ships for NRI, and I agreed to keep him comfortable in his confinement. He's provided several vital pieces of information over the years." Cracken's smile thinned. "One of the reasons he was so dangerous was no one knew I'd flipped him, and most thought him dead."

"If he worked for you, then you must know how he does what he does?" Iella asked, curiosity finally fully overtaking tension.

"I know the basics. During the last years of the Old Republic Eliezer was a historian and traveling scholar; he studied in Corellia, at the Mrlsst Trade and Science Academy, and at the Arcanum of Ghel Daneth, among others. His specialty was the history and inner workings of the HoloNet."

The HoloNet permitted all long-distance galactic faster-than-light communication, Iella knew. It was also a relic of the past: first built and implemented by the Old Republic at least four thousand years ago, the actual technology of the HoloNet could be replicated, but was no longer fully understood. It was commonly believed to be effectively unsliceable because of the esoteric functioning of the underlying technology, barring direct infiltration of one of the relay nodes (which could and did happen, but was relatively easy to spot). But if that wasn't true…

"He can exploit the HoloNet?" she asked carefully.

Cracken nodded. "How he does it I don't know, he's extraordinarily protective of those secrets. Unsurprisingly, I suppose. All I gave him while he was in custody was limited HoloNet access, he always refused to share anything about how he did what he did, but was otherwise cooperative." Cracken's cheek twitched angrily. "He had a very similar, somewhat less amicable agreement with Imperial Intelligence for a brief time, and before that he was usually employed by criminal elements on Corellia."

Iella nodded slowly. Yes, that would make sense, and matched what she remembered of the way Gil talked about him. She met Cracken's eyes, acutely aware that the live-communication between NRI headquarters on Coruscant and their ship in orbit of Druckenwell was only possible thanks to the HoloNet. "What do you want us to do?"

Cracken nodded, businesslike. "I'm sending you everything I have on Eliezer. Every rumor, every case report, every job he did for me in captivity. Needless to say I want you to keep it all very close, as there are things in there that are so classified that I'd erase them from my own mind if I could. I want you to take all of them and find him for me." His expression grew very, very serious. "I don't know what his agenda is, but I do know what he can do. If he's free, and he decides to go back to working for the highest bidder, then no secret we have is safe. Every military maneuver, every battle plan, every classified communication, every political secret… all of it could be had for the right price. Or, alternatively, we forego all use of the HoloNet and cripple ourselves, turning every routine communication into a slog requiring hundreds or thousands of courier vessels and delays for travel time." He shook his head. "Eliezer has been my secret weapon for years, Iella. Now he's someone else's, and we can't let it stand."

She rubbed her cheek with a sigh. So much for spending time with Wedge after the liberation of Ukio. "Yes, sir." She gave a slow, resigned nod. "We'll get to work."