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“Good.” Wedge looked among his pilots. “For me, this is technically a diplomatic matter and not a military one. I can’t ask you to be part of it.”

“You can’t keep us out,” Janson said. “We’ll just overpower you. Two majors plus one colonel equals one general at least.”

“I’m part of it, too,” Iella said.

Wedge gave her a mock scowl. “You can overpower me?”

“I tickle.”

“Maybe you can.” Wedge stretched and yawned. “We’ll begin strategic planning immediately. I’ll need data on all available military resources—continuously updated if, as Escalion suggests, we’ll be able to swing more nations over to our side. I need data and advisors on Cartann’s forces and standard tactics. I want—”

“No,” Tycho said.

Wedge stared at him. “What?”

“Go to bed, Wedge.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have a lot of time, and—”

“And you’ve had less sleep than any of us.” Tycho approached to loom over Wedge where he sat. “Meaning that you’ll do all your planning, then we’ll hop into our fighters and roar off to meet the Cartann forces. And because you’re exhausted, your reflexes are shot and your thinking processes crawl along like a dying Hutt, and some twenty-year-old twit will flame you down and be able to brag about it for the rest of his life. No, Wedge. Get some sleep.”

“But who’ll—”

“I will. I’ve plotted a few missions, you might remember. I also know how you think. No, you go get some sleep. You’ll wake up fresh, you’ll examine my plans, you’ll fiddle with them to your satisfaction.”

Janson and Hobbie flanked Tycho and stared down at Wedge with identical expressions of obstinacy.

“Mutiny,” Wedge said.

Iella smiled at him. “I think it’s time you learned how to do something.”

“Which is what?”

“Delegate authority.”

“You may be right.” Wedge rose. It made him feel light-headed. His pilots were correct; if he did manage to force himself to endure several hours of planning and organizing, he’d be no good for anything else. “All right, mutineers, you win.”

• • •

Eleven Coruscant hours later, freshly bathed and shaved, Wedge joined his party and the military leaders of the Yedagon Confederacy in their planning chamber. Like the meeting room where he’d met Escalion, this room was circular, but it was deep beneath the ground under Escalion’s palace. The chamber was dominated by a table shaped as a broken ring; men and women could stand around its exterior and within the open space at its center. Its surface was dominated by flatscreen displays that glowed in the chamber’s dim light.

Tycho waved him over to the portion of table surrounded by the New Republic representatives and several uniformed Yedagonians. “The nations of Thozzelling and Tetanne have come on board,” Tycho said. “And a half-dozen smaller nations. Escalion was right—your name is like a bank full of credits here, especially after that four versus thirty fight.”

Wedge smiled at Iella and got a smile in return. Then he turned his attention to the flatscreen on the table. It was a map showing an area reaching from the heart of Cartann to all of Yedagon. Military units of both sides were indicated with blinking colored dots. Wedge supposed that tapping on a dot would bring up information about it, as was the case with the lightboards on Blade-32s.

Tycho gestured at various units as he spoke. “Squadrons of Blades. Scythe-class bombers. Meteor-class Aerial Forts. Cutting Lens-class reconnaissance/intelligence craft. Farumme-class haulers configured as troop transports. The numbers are continuously updating on the main board as we get word of new units being added to our resources. Cartann’s forces are similar to ours in composition—just superior in numbers and age.

“Here’s Yedagon City.” Tycho gestured at the grayish blob on the map indicating their current location. “If history is any judge, the forces of Cartann will be heading here and to the capitals and other major cities of all ‘rebellious’ nations. The perator of Cartann has demonstrated that he has a pretty limited agenda and consistent deployment