Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [17]
Hobbie offered up a rare smile. “Not a bad metaphor for the early days of the Rebel Alliance.”
Tycho offered him a mock glower. “Cynic.”
They were four very different men as they walked toward the Outer Court of the Royal Residence, or palace, of Cartann.
Wedge had chosen green for most of his outfit—boots, hose, belt—and had chosen a tunic in a creamy off-white. He chose to remain bareheaded. His service blaster was holstered at his hip; Tomer seemed to think that wearing weapons was more than appropriate in a social situation, though he had said Wedge would have to surrender it when in a chamber occupied by the perator.
Beside it hung a device Tomer had said was commonplace in Cartann, the comfan. It was a small hemisphere with a handle. On the flat side of the hemisphere were numerous little vents; at the bottom of the handle were an on-off switch and an intake vent. When switched on, the device would draw air in through the intake vent, cool it, and expel it through the other vents, making it a handy personal comfort device. Tomer had said that handling the comfan was itself an art form, with every possible gesture assigned a meaning by the Cartann court … but outsiders such as Wedge would be known not to understand the language of comfan manipulation. The warmth of Wedge’s tunic suggested to him that he’d be better off carrying such a thing.
Tycho’s tunic was a material that shimmered and changed color as it moved; depending on the angle at which one viewed it, portions ranged in hue from sky blue to a pearlescent royal blue. Most of his other garments, including a rakish-looking hip cloak, were black, but he also wore a skullcap in the same material as his tunic. The skullcap came forward in a peak over his brow, an extension that looked like the sharp beak of a bird of prey, a comparison Wedge decided was apt, and the semitransparent visor over his eyes lent him a distant, mysterious look.
Hobbie was a riot of lines and angles. His boots, tights, and belt were a basic blue, his tunic a glorious red; but every hem of every garment was decorated with trim of eye-hurting yellow, making it almost a dizzying experience to look at him walk. “There are three types of dress clothing,” Hobbie had said. “The kind that offends the wearer, the kind that offends the viewers, and the kind that offends everybody. I’m going for the third type. Fair is fair.”
Janson had chosen what Wedge had first misunderstood as a minimalist approach. His tights, his tunic, all his accoutrements were black—most of them a matte black, though the tunic offered a little shine. He wore no headgear. But then he capped it off with a hooded cloak that made up for the rest of his outfit’s lack of drama. Nearly floor-length, it was a curtain of nebular red-purple shot through with crystalline stars that blinked on and off with internal light.
He carried his service blaster on his right hip, but also carried a new weapon. On his belt at his left hip was a sheath carrying the Adumari blastsword, “preferred weapon for settling personal disputes in Cartann,” as Tomer had explained. It looked much like a vibroblade the length of a man’s arm, but the hilt was protected by a curved metal guard. The blade was sharp starting a few centimeters above the guard, but the tip of the weapon was not a sharp point; rather, it was a small flared nozzle. When the device was powered up—by turning on a switch at the pommel, the knob at the very base of the hilt—the tip would fire off something like a blaster bolt whenever it contacted