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“Our fathers openly hated each other, sir. Not the best foundation for a lasting friendship.” Corran shook his head. “Besides, she’s your friend …”

“But just a friend. More like a sister, since she stayed with us when her father was on dangerous runs.”

Like a “sister” to the commanding officer, now there’s incentive to get to know her. Corran smiled. “I’ll take that under advisement, sir.”

“Do that, Lieutenant. Having friends never hurts.”

“Sir, sir!”

Both men looked up as Emtrey materialized out of the Talasean fog. His dark color on this dim world—I don’t envy the Commander trying to avoid dealing with the droid here.

Wedge looked over at Corran and in an instant Corran knew they had been thinking the same thing. “Emtrey, good, I’ll leave you to discuss the condition of his X-wing with Lieutenant Horn. Find me after that.” Corran read an “if you can” in Wedge’s smile as the leader of Rogue Squadron turned and walked away.

“As you wish, sir.” The droid aborted a salute, then shuffled his feet around to face Corran. “About your X-wing. Sir, the damage is not that extensive.”

“What about Whistler?”

“Ah, your R2 unit.” The droid canted his clamshell head to the side ever so slightly. “Your Whistler will be fine. He shut himself down before the ion blast could do it—this by virtue of the near miss. I must say, sir, that I thought …”

“Yes, Emtrey, I appreciate that, but he’ll be fine?”

“I should think so, sir, though it was a near thing.”

“Near thing?” Corran asked, instantly regretting his invitation to Emtrey to explain.

“Well, sir, a power coupling was negatively polarized, precluding an auto-restart. Many would consider this a minor problem. The coupling will have to undergo thermo-reconditioning, but we have the facilities for that here since the colonists used to use agrodroids and this world has some fierce thunderstorms in the rainy season.”

“Fascinating, really, Emtrey.” Corran smiled easily. “You should ask Commander Antilles to let you brief the squadron on the climatology of this world.” Use me to escape the droid, will you? “Demand it, really.”

“Demand? Oh, my.”

“Insist absolutely. Fifteen or twenty minutes of reasoning with him should convince him of its necessity.” Corran nodded solemnly. “Now, about my X-wing. I blew a phi-inverted lateral stabilizer.”

“That is correct, sir.” Emtrey handed Corran a datapad. “I have downloaded the requisition forms for the part into this datapad. If you will fill them out, along with an incident report, I’ll get Captain Celchu to review the forms and get Commander Antilles to sign off on them. We’ll relay the information back to General Salm. We should have the part in a month or two at the most.”

Corran’s jaw dropped. “A month or two?”

“Provided they have the part and you don’t get pushed back in the priority list.”

“Priority list?”

“Yes, sir. You brought your X-wing with you and have never formally signed it over to the Alliance. To prevent individuals from using the Alliance as a maintenance depot, regulation 119432, subsection 5, paragraph 3 states ‘Non-Alliance craft that are allied with or working under the command of an Alliance leader will be provided with parts and maintenance at the discretion of the commanding officer and/or the senior officer in charge of parts and supply for said craft. If said craft are damaged in any actions that were not planned or sanctioned in advance (see Sec. 12, para 7 for a list of exceptions), all damage is considered non-Alliance related and to be repaired only after authorized repairs to sanction-action-damaged craft have been completed.’ Now the exceptions …”

“Hold it, Emtrey.” Corran massaged his temples. “Is this the only way to get a new stabilizer?”

“Sir, I am conversant in the regulations of over six million different military and paramilitary organizations and there is nothing that …”

The pilot rapped a knuckle against the droid’s black breastplate and that stopped the litany. “Emtrey, there have to be more phi-inverted lateral stabilizers in existence than we have in all the Alliance ships and stores.