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The Mon Calamari turned his head enough to watch Wedge with one eye. “And Ysanne Isard does not want to surrender Coruscant to us. We all have to do things we don’t want to do, Commander. Let us hope we can just make the best of them.”

9

Wedge hit a button on the datapad, causing the holoprojector in the center of the pilot’s briefing room to recreate the long-distance view of Kessel he’d first seen at the Provisional Council meeting. “All right, people, let’s get this briefing under way.”

The various members of Rogue Squadron took their places. Wedge noticed that Corran Horn and Nawara Ven, a Twi’lek who had been a lawyer before he joined the Rebellion, were sitting together in the back. When going over the initial planning stages of the operation with Captains Nunb and Celchu, he’d anticipated the greatest resistance to the operation coming from those two. One sent people to Kessel; the other tried to keep them from being sent there. They’ve both got connections to the population there, and that could mean some complications for me.

Wedge shifted his shoulders around to loosen them, then began. “This operation is going to be accomplished in three distinct parts. Each one has to go according to plan or we abort the whole thing. Admiral Ackbar is leaving the decision to proceed or stop to me. I may not like what we’re being asked to do—and I don’t—but the Provisional Council wants this done, so we’re doing it. But we’re doing it our way.”

He pointed to the moon orbiting Kessel. “The Imps used to keep a base on that moon. It is supposed to be abandoned, but we don’t know what the Imps may have left behind in the way of automated defenses or booby traps. Our first step is to run a flyby on the base, neutralize automated defenses, and knock down anything launched at us from there. Lieutenant Page and his commandos will then come in and secure the base. Alliance Security will follow up and relieve his troops. That’s phase one. Everyone got it?”

The pilots before him all nodded with degrees of enthusiasm going from great to none.

“Phase two is a repeat of phase one, but it takes place on Kessel. We do a flyover and clear a landing zone for Page’s people. The commandos will secure the LZ. When they do, Horn, Ven, and I will land. Captain Nunb will be in charge of the rest of you and you’ll fly cover for the LZ and for Tycho. He’ll be using the shuttle Forbidden to ferry our people from Kessel to the moon. On the moon the people will be processed, then shipped out on a number of different ships for insertion into Coruscant, or for repatriation to their own worlds or exile communities.

“The processing and out-shipping is phase three. It will run concurrently with phase two. Trouble with outbound people will cause the termination of the operation.” Wedge crossed his arms. “Two key points here. The first is that this is an extremely sensitive and dangerous mission. The people we are dealing with will be very dangerous. Our rules of engagement will be simple: We offer a general warning when we come in, then we use whatever force we need to preempt problems.

“The second point is this: We’re getting some of the good along with the bad. We have our want list of scum, but they won’t know who it is that we want. Our job is to ransom as many people from political lists as we can for those on the criminal list we’ll be taking away. Doole is the key to this strategy working. We’ll be taking his enemies away and lowering the general population. This will ease his resource strain and increase his control over the spice operation. He’ll see this plan as better for him than it is for us.”

In the back Corran raised a hand. “Commander, what will we do in the very real situation of some of these people threatening to kill innocents if we don’t take them? Lujayne Forge had … has family on Kessel. The people sentenced to Kessel are likely to do anything to get off that rock. For all we know, Doole wants to leave, too.”

“That’s all possible, but there