Star Wars_ X-Wing 01_ Rogue Squadron - Michael A. Stackpole [16]
“Oh, my being from Kessel had nothing to do with it?”
He almost dismissed her question with a glib denial, but he caught himself and she clearly noticed his hesitation. “Maybe, just maybe, it did have something to do with my flying. I guess I decided that if you were from Kessel and could fly, you had to be a smuggler, and it was important for me to fly better than you could.”
She nodded once, but her expression did not shift from one of concern to smug triumph as he had expected it would. “I believe that, and I can understand it. Still, there’s something more there, right?”
“Look, I’m sorry if what I did made you look bad in the exercise, but I really don’t have the time to talk about this now.”
“No time or no inclination?”
Whistler hooted something in an utterly carefree manner.
“You stay out of this.” Frustration curled his hands into fists. “You’re not going to let this go, are you, Ms. Forge?”
With a smile blossoming on her face, she shook her head. “If you’d gotten this far in an interrogation, would you give up?”
Corran snorted a laugh. “No.”
“So, explain yourself.”
He definitely heard a request for more than an explanation of his conduct in the Redemption scenario in her voice. For a split second he flashed on the times at CorSec when his human partner, Iella Wessiri, had made similar demands of him. Iella had been a conciliator—always the one to be patching up the disagreements between folks in the unit. That’s what Lujayne is trying to do, which means I’ve managed to alienate a number of the other pilots trying to get into the unit.
“Concerning the exercise, I really just wanted to see how good you were. I’d been able to figure out where some of the other pilots stood in relationship to me, but I’d not flown against you. You know, you’re not bad.”
“But I’m not in a class with you and Bror Jace.”
Corran smiled quickly, then covered it with a frown. “True, but you’re still very sharp. I’d like to think the rest of the pilots are going to be at least that sharp. I’d even be set up to fly against that Gimbel kid in his Redemption scenario tomorrow but Jace volunteered before I could.”
“His name is Gavin, Gavin Darklighter.”
“Gavin, then.”
“And you didn’t want to be following Jace’s lead?”
“Would you?”
Lujayne smiled. “Given a choice, no, I guess not. Next to you, he’s the most standoffish person in the group.”
Corran felt uneasy inside. “I’m not as bad as he is.”
“No? At least he has the good graces to deign to join us in DownTime for some recreation. He’s a sliced and blown datafile compared to you.”
Corran turned to the left and pointed his finger at the astromech droid. “Don’t even start.”
Lujayne raised an eyebrow. “So your droid thinks you should get out more, too?”
Something halfway between a snarl and a growl came from Corran’s throat, but it lacked the power to make it menacing. “Whistler has the ability, from time to time, to be a nag. His problem is that in the time since I left CorSec I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to be very careful. I moved through a number of identities that didn’t allow me to be very open with people. For example, most recently, I spent over a year as the confidential aide to a succession of incompetent Imp officials governing a Rim world. One slip, one crack in my identity, and I’d have been caught. And when you get out of the habit of trusting folks and relaxing around them, well …”
“I understand.”
“Thanks.” Corran gave her a grateful smile. “On top of that, I’m learning a lot of new things here and I’ve been trying to concentrate on my flying. That’s not easy—there’s a whole new set of slang to get used to and people from species I barely knew existed that I now have to work with and even share living quarters with.”
“That is difficult—my roommate is a Rodian.”
“That’s rough, but I’ll bet she’s less idiosyncratic than my roommate.” Corran