Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [69]
Lara shook her head to clear the memories. Kirney was distant, Kirney was dead. Once her usefulness as a training tool had ended, she’d been forbidden to assume that name, that manner, that mentality again.
If it has practical application, retain it. If it has only sentimental attraction for you, abandon it. He, her mystery teacher, was not just talking about details of false identities. He meant emotional attachments. Even memories. She was supposed to scrape away everything that did not pertain to her profession, to her current mission.
She missed being Kirney. So carefree.
Before her service with Admiral Trigit under her true name, she’d spent some time as Chyan Mezzine, a communications officer for the New Republic frigate Mother Sea. Lara remembered, almost word for word, the secret communiqués she’d passed on from the frigate to her Imperial controller, then to Admiral Trigit. Yet she couldn’t remember her life as Chyan Mezzine. What had she done? Who had she known? Had she had friends?
There was something very wrong in her head, something her teachers had done to her starting when she was just a child. She wanted that wrongness out. But she had no idea where to begin to look for it.
She belatedly realized she was looking at a pair of booted feet. She looked up into the face of Myn Donos. The lieutenant was in a pilot’s suit and had a rifle case slung over his back.
“Are you all right?” Donos extended a folded handkerchief to her.
She took it and looked at it stupidly.
“For your eyes.”
“Oh. Thank you.” She dabbed away tears she hadn’t remembered crying.
“I heard you had some happy news. But you don’t look happy.” He shrugged. “Not my business. But if you want to talk …”
She did. It was wrong, she knew. Her trainers would never approve. But she had to talk. “I heard from my brother. He was supposed to have been killed when my town was destroyed by Implacable. But he survived.”
Donos set his case down and sat against the wall opposite from Lara. “And that’s not good news?”
“Not really. I … really don’t care for my brother,” she said. “He was a criminal. He should have been in jail when New Oldtown was destroyed, but he’d managed to sneak off under an assumed name. That’s the sort of man he is. So, I suppose I’m glad he’s alive, but if you knew him the way I did, you’d know that his letter to me … well, it dripped with sarcasm and irony that no one but me could have seen. He wants to drag me back into his habits of deceit, into his confidence games. He has no other reason to get in contact with me. He wants something.”
Donos rubbed his chin while he mulled over that. Finally he said, “Could Zsinj have gotten hold of him?”
“What?”
“No, bear with me. We know that Zsinj has a considerable level of interest in Commander Antilles and Wraith Squadron. Let’s say he finds your name on the unit roster and checks into your background, then finds this scofflaw of a brother of yours alive when the man should be dead. Would your brother turn you over to a man like Zsinj for money?”
Lara’s mind whirled. Try as hard as she might to keep her fictitious background separate from her current life, they continued to threaten collision. “In a Coruscant second,” she said.
“So maybe this is just him wanting to graft some credits from you … and maybe he’s angling to lead you into a Zsinj trap. Possible?”
“Possible,” she admitted.
“I think we need to find out. I mean, that’s intruding into your family business … but if Zsinj is taking a run at you through your family, he might do the same with the rest of us. We need to know.”
“You’re right. But I have to do this myself. He wouldn’t trust anyone but me.”
“Not all by yourself, no. What if it’s a trap? As in,