Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [72]
“If I weren’t sure I was only half-crazy,” Donos said, “I’d be certain I was hallucinating.”
“Your logic is faulty,” Lara said. “If you were zero percent crazy, you’d be certain you weren’t hallucinating. If you were one hundred percent crazy, you’d be equally certain this was real. Only at your current state of fifty percent insane do you doubt what you see.”
“No fair. If I take you back to the pilots’s lounge and dance with you again, will you stop picking at my flaws in logic?”
“Sure,” she said. “That was my motive in the first place.”
• • •
The mutiny endured from early evening to late evening of the next calendar date, with a pair of sabacc games the last to break up, and galley workers grumbling only halfheartedly as they swept up the trash left behind by a day of blissful, if intermittent, irresponsibility.
Solo and Wedge were among those who abandoned the last surviving card game. Solo rubbed tired eyes and said, “Not bad, man-who-looks-like-Wedge. What’s Stage Three?”
Wedge gave him a smile he might have learned from a toothy Bothan. “In Stage Three, we track down Zsinj and blow him up.”
“Good plan. I like it.”
9
The next morning, once hangovers were shaken off and infusions of caf had taken hold, the crew of Mon Remonda moved more briskly, with weeks of frustration and bone weariness at least partially shaken loose.
At a briefing of the Rogues and Wraiths late in the day, Wedge said, “For those of you who were curious, tomorrow’s mission does not seem to have been endangered by the mass amnesia that seems to have struck my pilots—no one seems to be able to recall what he was up to yesterday.” That drew some chuckles. “Assuming our brains are working correctly again, we can probably get through a preliminary operational briefing now.”
He tapped keys on the lectern keyboard and a holoprojection sprang into existence beside him. It showed a solar system—medium-sized yellow sun and a dozen planets around it. Their orbits were indicated by glowing dotted lines. “This is the Kidriff system. It’s along what we think of as the Imperial/Zsinj border, as far coreward as Zsinj’s influence extends. Its occupied world, Kidriff Five, is a very wealthy one, a heavy trade depot that develops and exports metal alloys—several improvements in Sienar TIE fighter hulls in recent years came about because of Kidriff developments.
“Kidriff Five’s government patterned the world’s building and expansion plans very heavily on Coruscant, as a way of becoming more attractive to the Empire and the Imperial court.” Wedge activated another image, and the holoprojector displayed a city vista—a seemingly endless sea of skyscrapers that would not look out of place if dropped whole onto Coruscant. The sky, however, was not as hazy or as thick with storm clouds as Coruscant’s typically was. “It wouldn’t have been a bad site for Ysanne Isard to set up her government seat in exile—except, by the time the Rogues threw Isard off Coruscant, Kidriff had already fallen to Zsinj.
“We’ve recently received a lot of data on Kidriff and other Zsinj-occupied worlds in Imperial sectors. Analysis showed that the data had been scrubbed of certain types of information useful to the New Republic. But the scrubbing seems to have been hasty, and did not entirely eliminate the fact that there had been activity by a pro-New Republic faction in the months before Zsinj took over.” Wedge called up another image, this time of a region seemingly divided equally between stretches of skyscrapers and stretches of heavy rust-colored foliage. “Kidriff Five’s Tobaskin Sector. Seat of their rebel activity, which may or may not still exist. That’s our target.”
Janson spoke up. “And what do we do there, chief?”
“Very little, actually.” Wedge brought up the image of a Corellian YT-1300 freighter. “This is not the Millennium Falcon. It’s our simulacrum, which Chewbacca and a few unlucky mechanics have been transforming into a likeness of the Falcon. They painted false rust on good hull and put good paint on rusty hull so the blotches match up, and have