Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [111]
Face watched the couples gather on the floor and join in the sweep of the Alderaanian waltz. Then he felt hands against his back and was propelled into their midst.
He turned to face his attacker. It was Lara, advancing purposefully. He put up his hands in mock fear; she seized them and pulled him into the pattern of the dance. “That’s mutiny,” he said.
“Put me up on charges. Then I won’t have to be part of this mission against Iron Fist.”
“Good point. Maybe I’ll mutiny, too.”
“Besides, I have a special right to push you around. It was you who brought me into this unit.”
“True,” he said. Then what little cheer he still enjoyed evaporated. “Well, it was me and Ton.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad. I know you were very close to him. You almost haven’t smiled or made a joke since he died.”
“I only met him a few weeks ago. But by the end of the second day, we were finishing one another’s sentences and being obnoxious enough to drive everyone around us crazy.”
“Well, you’ll have to be obnoxious enough for both of you now. Phanan would want that.”
“He would.” Face smiled down at her. “You dance very well.”
“So do you.”
“Well, I was trained to. For the holos. Where did you learn?”
“A long time ago, on Coruscant.”
“A long time ago?”
She tensed, then relaxed and smiled. “Well, it seems like such a long time ago. Pilot training seems to last for years.”
“I know what you mean.”
“This dance I learned on Coruscant. But on Aldivy we danced all the time. It was an important part of social life. Dances were where youngsters met and families dickered.” Oddly, in spite of these thoughts about the life she could never return to, she did not seem sad.
“So, why did you launch me out onto the floor? Just looking after your wingman?”
“Partly that. And, partly, I’m maneuvering you.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but you’re far from the first woman to do that to me.”
Her smile broadened. “Ah, but how many women maneuver you to abandon you?”
It was the point in the dance where conservative couples would form a circle, where more proficient ones would raise their hands together and spin in relation to one another, males to their left, females to their right, coming around to face one another on the same beat of the music. Lara signaled the more elaborate move by raising her hands.
But while they were in midspin, he felt too many fingers on his for just one moment, and when he finished the maneuver he came face-to-face with a startled-looking Dia Passik. Lara and Janson, now partners, looking very pleased with themselves, pulled away and waved.
Dia’s posture and the tension in her arms suggested that she was not too comfortable with the dance, but she gave him a game smile. “I think we have been fooled.”
Face adjusted his pace and the flamboyance of his maneuvers to her more tentative motions. “When did they arrange that?”
“Lara was signaling something to Lieutenant Janson before she started dancing with you. I thought she was flirting.”
“Well, we both appear to have been enticed and abandoned.”
“I don’t think so. I think it was because of something I said.”
“Which was what?”
“That I—” She paused, apparently to consider her words. “That I wanted to talk to you, but that I was afraid to.”
“I didn’t think I was that fearsome. Especially to someone who’s never seen my holodramas.”
That elicited a smile, a little one. “No. I mean I didn’t know how to phrase the words. When to speak to you. I didn’t know who to be when I spoke to you.”
“Who to be? Who were your choices?”
“Dia Passik and Diap’assik.”
“The pilot you’ve become and the little Twi’lek girl kidnapped off Ryloth.”
She nodded, her expression somber. “The day after we returned from Iron Fist I woke up and I wasn’t either one of them anymore. Somewhere in between a girl I thought was long dead and a woman who was too bloodthirsty for me to particularly like. But I thought about all that had happened the day before and decided that I liked being alive. So I wanted to thank you for not letting me die.” The words came out all in a rush. She