Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [36]
“I suppose so.” Then a wave of something like doubt hit him. “No, that’s not it. Listen, I haven’t seen you in months. And now that we’ve talked, I still feel as though I haven’t seen you. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” She presented him with a serene expression. For all he could read in it, she could have been all the way across the plaza.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t help you with that, Wedge.”
“Iella, have we stopped being friends?”
She was silent a long moment. “I suppose we have.”
Wedge felt his breath catch. It took him a moment to recover it. “When did that happen? How did it happen?”
“It’s not you, Wedge. It’s me.” Her mask of serenity slipped, leaving her expression tired, even dismayed. “I just had another direction to go. You’re not there.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s Intelligence gibberish covering up an answer.” It surprised Wedge, how hurt his tone sounded.
“I have to go.”
“Every time we’ve ever spoken, I’ve been straight with you. I want an answer from you.”
She put her hood up. Suddenly he could no longer see her features. “I have to go,” she said, and turned away.
As she moved off into the darkness, her bodyguard detached himself from the building’s shadow and followed.
Wedge stood there and watched her fade into the darkness of the plaza’s shadowy edges. It occurred to him that this departure was just the image, the reflection of something that must have happened long ago. He just didn’t remember when, and the mystery of it was like a little, stony knot of pain next to his heart.
5
That pain hadn’t subsided by morning. He thought about the situation with Iella, could come to no hypothesis that covered all the facts, and set it aside for the time being. He set aside thinking about it, anyway; the ache stubbornly refused to be set aside.
By the time breakfast was done, his datapad had still received no word from Tomer about appointments with the perator for the purposes of diplomacy. Nor was there news on the men who had attacked them last night. Once again the day was his.
He asked Cheriss to call ahead to the air base and order Red Flight’s Blade-32 aircraft to be loaded with weakened lasers and pigment-cloud missiles … and to spread the word that Wedge Antilles might be accepting challenges this day, but only from fighters similarly equipped.
They were already on the wheeled transport and heading toward the air base when she concluded that call. Out of the corner of his eye, Wedge saw her pocket her comlink, look at him, look toward the transport’s controls, and look at him a second time.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“Not a problem, no. Well, maybe.”
He turned toward her, but she looked forward along their travel route, avoiding his eyes. “Last night, when you slipped away … that was dangerous, you know.”
“The Adumari have no respect for someone who can’t confront danger.”
“True. But if you were to die when I was supposed to be acting as guide for you, I would lose considerable honor.”
“If I elude your attention, you have nothing to be ashamed of even if I get myself killed.”
Her expression tightened. “Still. When you left … was it to see a woman?”
The answer “It’s none of your business” rose to the top of his mind, he even heard it in his most snappish tone, but he restrained himself from saying it. He didn’t know how badly such a response might cut her. “Yes, it was.”
“If you slipped away just to avoid exposing me to something—”
“No, it was nothing like that.”
“I’m not as young as I look, you needn’t worry about shocking me—”
“Cheriss.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Listen. When I was your age, I borrowed a Headhunter, that’s a type of starfighter, from a friend, and used it to kill the men who were responsible for my parents’ deaths. A deliberate act of revenge. The whole universe changed. All the things that had surprised or shocked or offended me just the day before became nothing, instantly.” He opened his eyes,