Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [50]
Solo whistled. “Good point. The data we’ve been getting has been so fragmentary, so difficult to piece together, that we haven’t had any reason to believe any of it was fabricated. But if we assume that Zsinj demands a pretty high level of performance even of enemy analysts—”
“He does. If you’d like, I can have my intelligence specialist—Shalla Nelprin, you met her in the hangar—”
“Yes.”
“I can have her analyze the data you’ve been getting and your responses to it to see if you’re exhibiting any sort of pattern.”
“I’ll have it sent to the terminal in her quarters.” Solo now no longer looked uncomfortable. He looked serious and intent, and finally seemed the officer his uniform said he was.
Face came out of the turbolift behind Dia and one of the Rogues, a Twi’lek who had been introduced as Nawara Ven, and overheard the Rogue try to start up a conversation. Face didn’t understand the words, assumed they were in Twi’leki, the language of Ryloth, homeworld of the Twi’leks.
But Dia’s response was not in the same tongue. Her voice was emotionless. “Speak Basic, please.”
Nawara Ven took a second to compose himself. “I’m sorry. I said, we must get together sometime at your convenience to talk.”
“About what?”
“About home. About our experiences as Twi’leks in the armed forces.”
“Ryloth was where I was born, but then it spat me out, made me property of an Imperial crime-syndicate leader. Ryloth is not my home. I don’t have a home. And I doubt our experiences have been similar. Unless you’ve been a slave.”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then we’ve probably exhausted available topics of conversation.” She picked up the pace and moved up away from the Rogue.
Nawara turned to the other Rogue Twi’lek pilot, a larger man with the upright, aggressive posture of a warrior. Face remembered that he had been introduced as Tal’dira.
Tal’dira shrugged and gave Nawara a little smile. “I think you lost that case, Counselor.”
“I don’t think I was ever even in the courtroom.”
Face was just getting settled into the quarters he’d be sharing with Myn Donos when his comlink blipped. It was Wedge’s voice: “Lieutenant Loran, report to Commander Antilles.”
“Yes, sir.”
When he arrived in Wedge’s quarters, his commander was seated behind a fold-down desk and scowling over a datapad. Face saluted. Wedge returned it absently and gestured for him to sit, all without looking up.
Wedge said, “The Lara Notsil situation seems to be … resolved.”
Face felt a little coldness settle in his stomach. “That sounds pretty ominous, sir.”
Wedge finally met his eyes. “Well, not as ominous as all that. She appears to have dropped the heavy end of the hammer on Colonel Repness … without involving you or Phanan. Or indicating in any way that this was a setup.”
“Sir?”
“I’ve just received her record, because she has put in applications for transfer to Rogue Squadron or Wraith Squadron. According to this document, Repness attempted to recruit her to his unit of black-market thieves, she refused, he assaulted her and had her drugged out of commission, a prisoner in the infirmary … but a mystery code-slicer aboard Tedevium caught Repness’s activities in recordings and forwarded them to Intelligence. They moved in and seized Repness before any further harm could come to her.”
Face thought that over. “But if she otherwise kept to the plan, then her scores would probably not let her graduate.”
“Right. According to this, when she was recuperating from Repness’s attack on her, she told Tedevium’s commanding officer that deciding to oppose Repness had settled some problems she’d had, some issues remaining from the destruction of the colony where she’d grown up. She insisted on a chance to demonstrate those changes, and the training officers decided to give it to her. She went through an accelerated training regimen and vaped it. Even averaging those results with her earlier scores let her graduate—and her efficiency profile puts her within the range suitable for inclusion in my units.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Both Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron are at full pilot