Star Wars_ X-Wing 09_ Starfighters of Adumar - Aaron Allston [84]
“Understood, boss.” Tycho stayed tight to him.
Then, on his lightboard, one of the two clouds of Blades looped toward the other, and the comm board was suddenly active with traffic: “Strike the Moons Flightknife issues a challenge to Lords of Dismay Flightknife!” “Ke Mattino, you madman, now is not the time—” “There is always time to crush incompetence and cowardice. Fire!”
The sky between the two flightknives, not so distant now, was suddenly lit up by lasers and ball-shaped explosions. A moment later there was no way to distinguish between the flightknives on the lightboard; they had merged into a single firefight.
“Red Two, we’re going to ground,” Wedge said. He switched to the standard Cartann military frequency. “Red Flight to Strike the Moons. Is that you, Captain ke Mattino?”
“It is I.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
“You have won your departure. I will not let some honor-grubber deprive you of it in this fashion. Confusion to your enemies.”
“And frothing disease to yours. Antilles out.” He pointed his nose toward the ground, toward the section of Cartann not so brightly lit by street illuminators.
It was hours later, the darkest and quietest hours of the night, when Wedge and Tycho arrived at the door of Iella’s quarters. Wedge could not remember ever having been so tired. But when the door opened to his knock and he saw her there before him, his exhaustion evaporated in an instant. He took her in his arms and she dragged him inside. He heard Tycho follow and close the door behind them.
“You almost killed me,” Iella said. Worry blunted the accusation in her tone. “Having to wait hour after hour to find out if you’d survived or not.”
“I’m sorry.” Wedge offered her a look of apology. “We needed to maintain comm silence as much as possible. To travel back streets and alleys and sometimes roofs and balconies to make sure we weren’t spotted, weren’t followed. Have you heard—”
The light in the apartment’s main room clicked on and Wedge discovered he had an audience.
Janson and Hobbie were lounging on the sofa, Janson with his feet up on a small table, a brightly colored datapad, of the sort usually optimized for children’s games, on his lap. His slicked-back hair suggested he’d recently had a bath, and his fresh clothes made Wedge long to be rid of the sweat-drenched garments he was wearing. Hobbie was similarly scrubbed, though his tunic was off to show a half-dozen places where his torso and arms were bandaged.
Cheriss stood at the wall, near the light control, and Hallis sat on another chair.
Wedge blinked at them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I seem to have interrupted a party.”
Iella smiled at him. “More like a conspiracy.” She led him and Tycho to additional chairs.
The room was crowded with more furniture than the last time Wedge had seen it; he supposed that she’d dragged it in off the balcony and out of other rooms. Wedge sat wearily and looked among the others. “You’ll excuse me, I hope, if I look a little confused. Cheriss, how do you come to be here? And how are you?”
Cheriss, in dark blastsword-fighter’s clothing, raised and lowered her left shoulder a couple of times, experimentally. “Better,” she said. Her voice was low, her tone somber. “I need some more time before I can fight again. But I was out of danger, and they brought me down to Cartann, where I learned of the air duel you’d had. I went to your quarters, where I found Hallis but not you or your X-wings. I knew if you were to go anywhere, you would come here, so I did.” When she finished, her expression suggested that she had more to say, but she bit back on it.
Wedge struggled with a way to suggest that bringing Hallis here was not a good idea, as it could compromise her identity, but Iella seemed to read his thoughts. She said, “After Cheriss came here and told me what she’d done and who she’d seen, I suggested