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He nodded and sat back in his chair. “Hallis?”

She shrugged. “I robbed your quarters.”

“Ah.”

“Actually, when they said they’d taken your X-wings, I knew they’d ransack your quarters eventually. I went there intending to get Whitecap’s remaining parts. But I overheard the two men who were packing up your belongings; they were stealing things like they were in a contest, laughing about the four of you like it was good entertainment that you’d been shot down, so I got mad. When they were apart, I hit them both with a hydrospanner and took all the stuff they’d gathered up.”

Wedge couldn’t help but laugh. “I was always under the impression that a documentarian shouldn’t get so close to her subjects.”

“Well … well … I was angry.”

“What did you get?”

“Your civilian clothes, pilot’s suits, Janson’s fancy cloak, helmets, datapads, some datacards, four comlink headsets, your blastswords—one of them belonged to Cheriss so I gave it back to her—a whole pile of love notes Janson had been collecting …”

Janson looked up, his expression outraged. “Hey! You didn’t look at any of them.”

“No, certainly not.”

He relaxed, a little mollified.

“Except for the ones that had been opened, that is. The one from Lady Marri was very poetic, I think.”

Janson stood, his face flushing red. “I can’t believe you—” Then his expression changed. “I don’t recall any note from a Lady Marri.”

Hallis grinned at him.

Janson sat again. “I’ve been had. General, I request permission to jump from an upper-story balcony, to ease my shame.”

“Granted,” Wedge said. “Now, Iella. You’re the one in the most tricky situation here. I hate to be a demanding houseguest—but what can you give us without ruining your life?”

She gave him a wan smile. “Good question. I’m still bound by my orders and my duties, so the answer is ‘not much.’ But since my superior doesn’t know of any direct connection between us, I have some latitude … for the time being. I can put you up, unless my superior asks a direct question whether I’ve seen you. And until the searches going on for you turn into door-to-door searches. You’re going to have to get out of Cartann. I can get you Adumari money, some comm and computer equipment. Unfortunately, I don’t have many contacts; the team that followed me here was responsible for setting up that sort of thing.”

“How about a holocomm transmission back to the New Republic?”

She shook her head. “The holocomm unit was eventually moved to a site set up by my superior. I don’t know where it is.”

Wedge considered. “Still, the rest is very helpful. Is there any way you can find out what the status is of Allegiance? We need to know that before the next time we try to get up there.”

Iella glanced over at one of her cabinets. “My comm gear picked up and recorded your open transmissions to Allegiance.” Her expression grew bleak. “And their lack of a reply. But I know they’re still up there. My comm unit has picked up coded transmissions from them continuously since before you went on your gauntlet run. There’s been no irregularity to their comm traffic. No sort of activity to suggest they were captured, for instance.”

Hallis said, “Iella, I need to talk to you. Privately.”

Iella gave her a quizzical look.

“I’m going to persuade you to abandon your mission, to go with Wedge and the others. And to shoot your superior right in the guts if you ever happen to see him again.”

“That’ll take a lot of persuading.” Iella gestured toward one of the side doors. “But I’ll give you the chance. After you.”

They were gone only a couple of minutes, long enough for Wedge and Tycho to wearily drag their boots off and accept cups of water from Cheriss. Then Iella came slamming back through that side door, her face pale, her expression set and angry.

“Change of plans,” Iella said. “I’m abandoning my post and my mission. I’ll figure some way to get you out of Cartann. And if I see Tomer Darpen, I’m going to burn him down where he stands.”

Wedge stared at her in shocked silence for a moment. Then he turned to Hallis. “How did