Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [17]
“That’s all in the past, Prince-Admiral.” Isard’s arctic eye sparkled. “I’ve sent them a message, one that will confuse and distract them. It is bait and, as they follow it, they will move into my trap. You’ll see, you’ll see I’m right. And, when the time comes, your score with them will be settled as well.”
5
Wedge Antilles shivered, and he knew it wasn’t just because the morgue was kept cool. Beyond the big transparisteel viewport that separated him from the stainless steel and tile room where droids performed autopsies, Wedge saw row upon row of little doors behind which the dead waited for someone to have the sad duty of claiming them. Two droids, a Two-Onebee and an Emdee-One, slid Urlor Sette’s shrouded form into one of the refrigerated drawers and shut the door with a faintly audible click.
Wedge turned away from the viewport and looked at the other two of the room’s occupants. Corran Horn sat hunched over on a chair with his hands covering his face. Blood droplets stained his jacket front and a small crescent of blood decorated each cuff, as well as the knee on which he had knelt next to the body. Corran’s reaction to Sette’s death didn’t strike Wedge as at all wrong—the death had been shocking and the loss of a friend was never pleasant.
He also knew Corran well enough to know there was more to it than just shock. Sette’s death is a defeat for him. Before Thrawn, before we freed Thyferra, Corran gave his word that he would free the people who had been imprisoned on the Lusankya with him. Sette’s death is a failure, and opens up for him the possibility that he might continue to fail in this quest.
The woman sitting next to Corran rubbed her right hand along his curved back. She wore her light brown hair up and had on a cerulean dress with a short black jacket over it. She’d been at the party, too, and had immediately taken charge of the situation. Wedge marveled at her calm strength in the midst of such an incident, but that sort of strength was something he had come to expect and admire in Iella Wessiri.
“Corran,” she said softly, “there is no way you can accept responsibility for this man’s death. You didn’t kill him.”
Corran looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “That’s not what the droids said.” He pointed at the small box-and-wire device that the Emdee-One that had performed the autopsy had deposited on the room’s stainless steel table. “The second I said his name, I doomed him. I might as well have put a blaster to his head and pulled the trigger.”
“Listen to me, Corran Horn, you know that’s nonsense.” Iella’s voice developed an edge and anger sparked in her brown eyes. “The person who put that device together, the person who implanted it into your friend, that person killed him.”
Corran’s green eyes narrowed. “I know that in my head, Iella, but my heart …” He tapped his chest with a fist. “My heart still feels the guilt. If we’d moved faster to find them and free them, maybe—”
Wedge shook his head. “Listen to yourself, Corran. You know as well as I do that we’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to locating the Lusankya prisoners. While I was off with Wraith Squadron, you Rogues worked hard on that problem. You had Iella and a lot of New Republic Intelligence resources working with you. You did all you could, the best you could.”
“But we didn’t find them.”
“No, you didn’t find what, two hundred, maybe three hundred individuals in a galaxy with thousands and thousands of planets to each one of them? The New Republic barely communicates with three-quarters of the Empire’s old worlds, and you know as well as I do that much of those communications are hollow formalities. When Isard scattered the prisoners, she did so because she knew we wanted them, and she was sharp enough to take steps to make sure we never found them.”
Wedge frowned. “The secret of where she placed them died when you and Tycho blew up her shuttle at Thyferra. You didn’t know that