Star Wars_ X-Wing 08_ Isard's Revenge - Michael A. Stackpole [88]
The desk across from the door had likewise been fashioned of heavily patterned wood and seemed as if it had grown up out of the floor. The back of the chair behind it rose above the head of the person seated in it and matched the wood designs of the wall. It took Wedge a moment to recognize who he was looking at, then that realization tightened his guts and threatened to drop him to his knees.
He couldn’t remember ever having seen her in the flesh, but her image had been burned into his brain during the years after Endor. She still wore the scarlet uniform that had been her trademark, though her hair had gone completely white and her face and figure had thickened slightly. She was still a handsome woman, but had slipped beyond middle age toward becoming a matron.
Any thought that she might have softened was banished by her eyes. One, a bright, icy blue, reminded him of the coldest day on Hoth, when ice screamed and cracked. The other, a fiery red, burned into him, searing his spirit. He’d thought her dead at Thyferra and even though the Commenor prisoners had said they’d seen her, he’d refused to believe she lived until he saw her now.
Wedge’s brown eyes narrowed. “General Wedge Antilles reporting.”
Ysanne Isard stood slowly behind her desk. “You know who I am. It is interesting that we have not met before, you and I, having been foes for so long. I expected you to be taller.”
“I expected you to be dead.”
She nodded. “Defiant, I like that. It makes you an interesting enemy and, I trust, a more interesting ally.”
Wedge blinked. “Me, an ally? After what you did with the prisoners on Commenor, leaving them to starve like that?” He turned to Colonel Vessery. “You can take me away from here now.”
Isard raised her hand. “If you will indulge me, General, I will explain a great many things to you. You owe me at least that much, since I sent Colonel Vessery to save you.”
That remark brought Wedge’s chin up. “After all you have done, the debt I feel to you for saving us is still very small.”
“Of this I have no doubt.” Isard leaned forward on her desk. “After I had taken control of Thyferra and you began your campaign to oust me, I realized that if you succeeded, I wished to rob you of the goal you truly sought: the prisoners from my Lusankya. I decided to scatter them. This was a mission I felt I could entrust to no one—it was one I wanted to handle myself, but I was needed on Thyferra. What I did was activate a clone of myself, lead her to believe she was me, and charge her with the task of scattering the Lusankya prisoners. When she returned to Thyferra with her task complete, I had her killed—or so I thought.”
Isard’s face hardened as scorn entered her voice. “Your assault on Thyferra meant the job was not completed and the clone survived. How and why she was not recognized as me, I have no idea, but she believes she truly is me. She spent the time during the Thrawn crisis gathering the Lusankya prisoners back up and now has them ensconced on Ciutric.”
Wedge shook his head. “Explain the prisoners on Commenor.”
“Bait, for a trap.” Isard shook her head. “She wanted to lure Rogue Squadron to Distna so you could be ambushed, but she did a poor job of layering her clues into the site. She was trying to be too smart and too clever. Mirax Terrik and Iella Wessiri returned to Commenor and discovered the clues she’d left there, but you were already in the Hegemony and involved in the war against Krennel, so the Lusankya rescue became of secondary importance. She never saw that.”
“But we went to Distna because of the Pulsar Station problem.”
Isard smiled and Wedge decided that her smile was not a pleasant thing to see. “Yes, and Krennel’s protestations of innocence sounded genuine because they were. The lab you discovered on Liinade Three was one I had constructed there. I wanted you to go to Distna because