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He pressed the door buzzer, then tugged at the cuffs of his jacket sleeves. I’m not asking her out. I’m just here as a friend visiting a friend. Wedge shook his head. For the past ten years, since the death of his parents and through his association with the Rebellion, he’d really given little thought to romance and relationships. He’d certainly found companionship with a number of Rebel women, but he’d not found a single companion, a partner, the way Han Solo or Tycho Celchu had. He couldn’t explain why not, nor did he let it bother him—the nature of the Rebellion and his assignments meant planning for anything long-term was silly, and avoiding relationships meant the chances of getting hurt when the unspeakable happened were much less.

He’d seen Leia over the time Han Solo had been encased in carbonite. She had been driven almost to the point of recklessness in her attempts to free her beloved. He laughed. Entering Jabba’s palace meant she was driven beyond recklessness. While he envied Han Solo the passion with which he was loved, he dreaded the idea of being plagued by the pain Leia had known.

The door to the apartment slid open and Wedge’s nervousness slackened when Iella smiled. “Wedge. This is a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope.” He glanced down at his hands for a moment, then back up into her brown eyes. “I should have called before heading over, but I was going to get something to eat and I thought, well, I hate eating alone and …”

The brown-haired woman’s smile widened for a moment and carried on up into her eyes, then shrank as if the corners of her mouth had slammed into walls and were rebounding. “I think you’d better come in.” She turned away from the door, and he followed the lithe woman down a short corridor to a modest-sized parlor. The door closed automatically behind him, cutting off the brightest source of light and sinking the room into a grey gloom.

The man sitting in the corner chair looked every bit as if he were constructed from shadow-threads and slivers of grey. The sharpness of his features accentuated the gauntness of his frame. His shoulders and knees poked like knobs against the grey fabric of the jumpsuit he wore. A few strands of black hair wove through the white and grey combed over his largely bald head but did nothing to disguise the shape of the skull beneath it. In fact, were it not for the spark of life burning in the man’s brown eyes, Wedge would have believed him to be a mummified worker resurrected from some tomb in the bowels of Coruscant.

Iella folded her arms across her chest. “Commander Wedge Antilles, this is Diric Wessiri. He is my husband.”

Husband! Wedge covered his surprise by taking a step forward and extended his right hand toward Diric. “My pleasure, sir.”

Diric inclined his head forward and shook Wedge’s hand with a long-fingered grip that was firm and even strong, though the strength faded quickly. “The honor is mine, Commander. Your exploits bring glory to your world and fellow Corellians.”

“Glory wasn’t our goal, sir.”

“Nonetheless …” The man smiled, then let his hand drop back toward his lap. “Forgive me, Commander. At another point I would engage you in a lively discussion, but now I am somewhat fatigued.”

“I understand.”

Iella walked to her husband’s side and gently rested a hand on his shoulder. “The Imps caught Diric up in a sweep about a year ago. They interrogated him, broke his identity, then imprisoned him. Six months ago or so they set up a bio-research project and made Diric part of the slave-labor force. They only used humans because the lab produced what we know to be the Krytos virus.” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “General Cracken’s people had Diric in quarantine, then debriefed him. I only learned he was alive when they brought him here four hours ago.”

“I should be going, then, and leave you two alone.”

“No.” The old man raised his right hand and gently patted Iella’s hand. “I have long been among Imperials and other slaves. It is good to have normal people