Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [40]
Then why was he so annoyed? Why had he been ready to drop kitchen duty on either of them, had his warning been protested?
He passed through the third set of motorized doors, leading deeper into the shaft, into what Wraith Squadron called the Trench.
It had been a squarish tunnel bored out of solid stone, a straight shaft notable only for its featurelessness. Now its two walls were lined with medium-sized locking cargo modules stacked three high and stretching for some distance down the shaft. Some had been outfitted as living quarters, some as refreshers, others as conference chambers or communications offices or storage lockers. Roll-away staircases gave pilots easy access to the upper tiers of modules.
Face had been the first to note that if you flew a toy X-wing down between the rows of modules, the shaft would look a little like one of the deadly surface trenches of the original Death Star. Then, a few days later, when returning from a scouting mission to the surface of Halmad, Wedge had discovered that some joker had painted the shaft’s ceiling black, except for the lights, and had strung strings of miniature twinkling lights here and there, creating an illusion of star-filled sky.
Wedge had let the decoration stand. It was a bad idea to interfere with things his pilots did to make a gloomy place like this more inhabitable, or, so long as it didn’t interfere with morale or efficiency, with things they did to make their lives happier.
Yet he’d been ready to do just that a few moments ago, and he grew increasingly annoyed with himself because he couldn’t figure out why.
The main conference module was on the second tier of the left-hand bank of modules. He took the stairs up and found Runt still there, still sweeping bottles and wrappers from someone’s impromptu meal into a bag. The long-faced alien gave him a salute before finishing up.
Wedge settled into a seat beside the main table. “Runt.”
Runt straightened. His ponytail swayed. “Sir.”
“Do your minds ever confuse one another?”
The alien grinned. At least, that was how Wedge and the others had learned to interpret it when Runt pulled his lips back over his enormous teeth in an expression that looked more like a prelude to a biting attack. “Yes, Commander. Often. If they were meant to be the same, and therefore easily comprehensible to one another, none of us would have more than one.”
“Right … What do you do when one acts in a confusing manner and its answers don’t really explain why?”
Runt sobered and thought about it for a moment, taking the opportunity to pick up one last piece of wrapping. “We have to remember that there are many paths to every answer. The thought path. The emotion path. The memory path. The biology path—we cannot rule out hormones and natural cycles. And every problem might be made up of combinations of those four things.”
“Good point.” Wedge gave him a nod, his leave to depart.
And Runt might be right. He couldn’t think of a logical reason to protest Tyria’s show of affection. Nor had witnessing a kiss ever caused him emotional turmoil in the past. He ruled out biology; he was not irritable with fever, had experienced nothing to unsettle him.
That left emotion, and he already knew what emotion he’d felt.
Or did he? He’d recognized irritation. Had it masked something else? He thought back over the incident, Tyria’s unthinking affection.…
Jealousy.
He shook his head, trying to dismiss the thought. Nonsense. There was nothing for him to be jealous of.
He’d never entertained any notions about Tyria. She was, to be sure, physically attractive, but she was a very junior officer under his command, and he preferred to steer clear of the extra complications a relationship like that might bring. Too, she was just not the type of woman he was drawn to; she was a little too unsure, too self-critical.
Nor had he felt any jealousy when it became obvious that Kell and Tyria had fallen in love. If any time were the time to be jealous, that would have been it. So it wasn’t jealousy.
Except that was what he was feeling.