Star Wars: X-Wing II: Wedge's Gamble Read online

  “It doesn’t thrill me, either, Corran, but it’s not our fight and not one we can win, not right now anyway.” Wedge looked down at his fists, then opened them slowly. “Perhaps she will serve as a brake on him.”

  “And when the brake burns out?”

  “I expect you to have something arranged to cover that contingency.”

  “As ordered, sir.” Corran started going through the list of criminals on his datapad. The original list had been drawn from Imperial files and annotated with rankings that determined the value of each individual to the Rebellion. Out of thousands of convicts, only seventeen had been identified as useful by New Republic officials. Those seventeen—now reduced to sixteen since Doole had eliminated Arb Skynxnex from consideration—clearly had been rising stars in the Black Sun organization. While none of them had achieved upper-level status, they had shown the sort of initiative and drive that made it clear, had their careers not been interrupted by arrest and conviction, the best of them would have been on a rough par with Jabba the Hutt in terms of power and influence.

  Corran remembered his father having complained about the changing nature of organized crime. Once upon a time Black Sun had been an honorable organization—with its own morality, of course, but with a code that its members lived by. Black Sun had always been ruthless—dump a load of spice and blaster-packers would worry about collecting the cost, or its equivalent, from the smuggler in question. Members who informed on others would be killed in a most grisly manner, and law enforcement officers were legitimate targets for reprisals, but these things were all done on an individual basis.

  The new breed was willing to use a bomb in a crowded cantina just to get one individual. The idea of killing an informer and his family became standard. The spice that started to be sold was stronger than ever before and the assassination of political figures who opposed the crime cartel became the rule, not the exception. Hal Horn had assumed the Rebellion’s success in defying the Empire had contributed to a general easing of moral standards that carried into Black Sun and allowed savages like Zekka Thyne to thrive.

  Three silhouettes appeared on the other side of the airlock’s translucent inner seal. The soldier inside the tent opened the airlock and tugged Thyne through first. The hobbles on the man’s feet made him stumble, but Thyne managed to recover his balance despite having his arms bound behind him. He shook off his breathing mask, then held his head up defiantly. “I am Zekka Thyne.”

  Five years on Kessel hadn’t done anything to Thyne but make him a bit leaner and, as the hateful glow in his eyes suggested, a whole lot more malevolent. It’s as if the years here have distilled him down to his core essence. Only a couple of centimeters taller than Corran, Thyne had a wiry build that made him seem somehow even taller. Clean-shaven and bald—he appeared to be congenially hairless—his head and exposed flesh gleamed like polished leather.

  More remarkable than in its glow, Thyne’s flesh came in two shades of color. Most noticeable was the light blue because it seemed to have been layered on over the whitish-pink color, as if he had been splashed with midnight-blue dye that never quite washed out. The biggest splotch cut right down along the bridge of his nose, then back under his cheekbone to his left ear and on up to the midline of his skull again. It gave the impression that he had one massive black eye that was slowly fading.

  Aside from the color, his sharply pointed ears, and black, equally sharp serrated teeth, his eyes separated him from the realm of the wholly human. The orbs were red throughout, the color of arterial blood, except for where a slender diamond pupil bisected them. Flecks of gold outlined the black diamond and, in the dark, would reflect a little light. Those diamonds had betrayed him on Corellia, letting Corran and his father send him on his Kessel vacation.

  Wedge raised an eyebrow. “It is truly him?”

  Corran nodded. “It’s Patches all right.”

  “Horn, here?” Thyne hissed. “Perhaps you never got the message I sent you?”

  “What message was that?”

  “Your father’s dead, isn’t he?”

  The venom in the man’s voice combined with the surprise of the question to make it feel as if Corran’s heart had been slammed back against his spine. He wanted to shout something back at Thyne, but first his breath, then words failed him. Thyne had always been full of threats and intimidation, but Corran and his father had refused to acknowledge them. Thyne had not been the first criminal to threaten him, nor the last.

  And not the first to be blamed for my father’s death. With a moment of thought Corran realized that Thyne had probably heard of his father’s death and decided to claim responsibility just to get at him. Corran thought Thyne more than capable of ordering a murder, and Black Sun more than capable of carrying that order out, but Hal Horn had been killed over a year and a half after Thyne had arrived on Kessel. Black Sun preferred things a bit more immediate than that, as I recall.

  Corran’s eyes became green slits. “I suppose you could have been the one who had my father killed—after all, you threatened us both and left the whole job undone, which means it’s in keeping with your usual sloppiness.”

  The riposte had no visible effect on Thyne. He looked away from Corran, then watched Wedge for a moment. “Are you the Jedi?”

  “No, I’m just the man who decides if you leave here or not.” Wedge jerked a thumb toward Corran. “That wasn’t a good start.”

  “Oh, forgive me, I’ve forgotten the Rebels are all sweetness and light. That’s what they tell us, you know, all the pols who were sent here.” Thyne smiled carefully. “Then again, you’re here taking someone like me away from this place. Expediency wins over purity, it would appear.”

  The commando at the airlock brought Inyri Forge through and Corran saw the resemblance between her and Lujayne the second she removed her breathing mask. They both had the same brown eyes and trim bodies. Inyri wore her brown hair longer than her sister had and had dyed a forelock the same shade of blue as Thyne’s patches. She appeared shocked to see her parents, but her face closed up quickly as she turned away from them and rested her hands on Thyne’s left shoulder.

  Wedge studied the woman for a moment, then looked up at Thyne. “The New Republic has authorized me to give you transport from Kessel to a destination you will learn later. You will be given tasks to perform. If you succeed in performing them to our satisfaction, the New Republic will grant you a conditional pardon for your crimes. Do you understand?”

  “What if I decide to accept your offer, then I just go away.”

  Wedge smiled openly. “We’ll hunt you down and bring you back here.”

  “The galaxy is a big place.”

  “You might think that, but it’s getting much smaller all the time.” Wedge shrugged nonchalantly. “The Emperor couldn’t hide from us, don’t assume you could.”

  Corran nodded. “You weren’t that hard to find before, Patches, you won’t be again.”

  “You don’t scare me, Horn.”

  “I’m not interested in scaring, just catching, Thyne.” Corran bent down, retrieved Thyne’s breathing mask, and shoved it onto the man’s face. “No matter where you go, I’ll find those double diamonds of yours, just like last time. Count on it.”

  Wedge nodded to the guards. “Take him outside and prep him for shuttle transport.” Inyri started to follow, but a guard stopped her in response to Wedge’s hand signal. “Ms. Forge, I’d like to speak to you alone.”

  Inyri turned slowly and stiffly. “We’re hardly alone.”

  “You’re not required to go with Thyne.”

  She glared at her parents, then looked at Wedge. “I’ve made my choice to be with him. Leave it alone. It is no one’s business but my own.”

  “Look,” Corran began, holding a hand out toward her, “we can protect you from him.”

  “Oh, like you protected my sister?”

  Corran’s hand dropped back to his side. The same horrible sensation he’d felt when Lujayne had died rippled
through him. He knew the pain in Inyri’s voice had triggered the memory, but he felt he was also sensing the part of her that had died when she found out about Lujayne’s death. Asked to choose between the memory or Inyri’s pain, he couldn’t have decided which hurt him more, but the inability to redress either frustrated him like nothing else.

  “I did, we did, everything we could to protect Lujayne.” Corran tapped a hand against his chest. “We didn’t know her as long as you did, nor as well, but you know what your sister was like. You know how good she was at making people feel welcomed and at ease and valuable. She did that with us, too.”

  He pointed at the airlock. “It may not be my business what you do with Zekka Thyne, but I’m certain your sister wouldn’t have wanted you to go with him. Lujayne’s gone, but that’s no reason for the people who loved her and respected her to let you get into trouble. Thyne is everything your sister was not.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “And maybe you don’t either.” Corran held his hand out to her again. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do.” She folded her arms resolutely. “I am.”

  Wedge shook his head. “You will have time to reconsider—up to and including your final drop-off.”

  “Is that all?”

  Wedge frowned. “You might want to say good-bye to your parents?”

  “Why? That didn’t keep Lujayne safe.”

  “It didn’t get her killed, either.”

  Wedge’s reply seemed to soften Inyri for a moment. Her gaze flicked toward her parents, and for a heartbeat, Corran thought she was going to come to her senses. Then her eyes hardened and she fitted the breathing mask back over her face. Without a word she turned on her heel and stepped into the airlock.

  Wedge turned and looked wordlessly at her parents.

  Kassar hugged his wife. “You tried, Commander. That is all we could ask.”

  The rest of the exchanges went fairly smoothly. Wedge resorted to threats a couple of times when Doole balked at giving him the people he wanted, but by the end of things they had managed to pull 150 political prisoners from Kessel in exchange for picking up sixteen of the most hardened and despicable criminals the galaxy had ever known.

  And by the end of the process Corran had found someone they could use to keep Thyne in check. Wedge suggested a deal to Doole but the pretentious Rybet dismissed it as one where he got nothing. Wedge had suggested he consider it goodwill and after a flyover by the airborne portion of Rogue Squadron, Moruth Doole decided it was in his best interest to play along.

  “And this is the last time I deal with your Rebellion. Kessel stands alone from now on!”

  Wedge smiled at Doole’s image. “Then we won’t come back, unless we’re returning some of your friends to you.” He disconnected the transmission before Doole’s howl rose to painful levels.

  Ten minutes later two commandos escorted the last prisoner into the tent. The human was old, though not frail. The holograms Corran had seen of him had not had flesh quite so loose or sallow, but the dark eyes still sparked with life. While smaller even than Corran, the man exuded a certain power. A full shock of white hair crowned him and granted him some of the dignity his dirty jumpsuit stole.

  Even Wedge seemed impressed. “Moff Fliry Vorru, I am Commander Wedge Antilles.”

  Vorru smiled graciously. “Charmed. Do I detect a trace of Corellia in your Basic?”

  “You do.”

  “A loyal son come to free me from this prison?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Corran had never met Moff Vorru before, but his grandfather had told stories of the man. As the administrator in charge of the Corellian Sector under the Old Republic, Vorru had turned a blind eye to smuggling activities, which made Corellia a center for smuggling and gave it a reputation that had not changed over the years. When Senator Palpatine declared himself the Emperor, he found Vorru to be a rival of sorts. Prince Xizor betrayed Vorru to the Emperor, but the Emperor did not slay him. It was thought that Vorru had ransomed his life by causing his datafiles about others in the Imperial Senate and throughout the Empire to be doled out to the Emperor bit by bit.

  Though it had been decades since Corellia operated as an open sector under Vorru, many criminals thought of Vorru’s Corellia as a shining utopia of unparalleled prosperity. Vorru had become a legend in the Imperial underworld and at CorSec there always were new rumors about an attempt by someone to raid Kessel and free Vorru.

  The ex-Imperial Moff shrugged as much as his bonds would allow. “What do you want me to do for you?”

  “Do you know Zekka Thyne?”

  Vorru sighed. “I do. Aggressive and intelligent, though aggression is his default setting. Surprise him and he strikes out. Unpredictable beyond that.”

  “We’re going to use him against the Empire, but we do not want him to become excessive and hurt others.”

  The old man smiled slowly. “Using strategic weapons to gain a tactical advantage is a sign of desperation.”

  “These are desperate times.” Wedge nodded toward Corran. “Lieutenant Horn thinks you can control Thyne.”

  “Control him, no.” Vorru closed his eyes for a moment. “Control those he needs to be able to go too far, yes, I can do that for you.”

  “Will you?”

  “Gladly.” Vorru’s confident smile carried on up into his reopened eyes. “It will be dangerous, but seeing Imperial Center again will be worth the risk.”

  Corran blinked and looked at a stunned Wedge. How did he know he was going to Coruscante?

  The old man read the surprise on their faces, then laughed. “Don’t be astonished I was able to figure out where I would be used, rejoice in that fact. Were that simple a deduction beyond me, I would have no chance of fulfilling the mission you have given me.”

  12

  Walking through one of the long dark corridors built beneath the Imperial Palace would normally have depressed Kirtan Loor, especially as he was on his way to a meeting with General Evir Derricote. When Derricote had summoned him the General had seemed quite manic—a state Loor had seen crumble into a tantrum filled with demands on previous occasions, yet even that prospect could not dampen his mood.

  Corran Horn was on Kessel freeing prisoners. Loor allowed himself a laugh that echoed sinisterly through the passage. Over the past two weeks the freed criminals had been filtered back into Imperial Center. The Rebels had been careful in their insertion efforts—security was maintained at normal levels, which meant a substantial bribe could make almost any datafile look like it had never been sliced. Had he not been tipped to their arrival, Loor would have missed their reentry into Coruscant’s underworld.

  Loor even allowed himself to admire the Alliance for its plan. Criminals had a penchant for making themselves highly visible targets. The Empire did need to maintain order on the capital world, but their resources would only extend so far. By bringing to Imperial Center the people they did, the Alliance managed to breathe life back into the corpse that was Black Sun, causing some fairly alarmist reports to start filtering up from the constabulary.

  Somehow, though, even their dire predictions amounted to nothing against Loor’s mind’s-eye image of Corran Horn helping to escort criminals from Kessel. Three of those on the list had actually been arrested on Corellia during Horn’s time with CorSec. It must have killed him to let someone like Zekka Thyne escape justice. What I wouldn’t have given to be there and see it.

  Kirtan Loor forced himself to laugh again and willed himself to remain feeling triumphant, but could not. His basic fear of Corran Horn undercut his sense of superiority. Corran Horn, Gil Bastra, and Iella Wessiri had managed to deceive him long enough on Corellia that they were able to escape before he could have them arrested and jailed. He had found Gil Bastra after over a year and a half of searching, but Bastra maintained that’s because he had given clues to draw Loor after him. Prior to that he had thought he was close to Corran once, but that had been a mistake, and Loor had no
idea where Wessiri or her husband was.

  The fact that they had been able to fool him once meant he had to assume it was possible for them to fool him again. In the old days, before Ysanne Isard had summoned him to Imperial Center and pointed out his penchant for making unwarranted assumptions, he would have assumed he could not be fooled again. That would have guaranteed his being deceived. And that would have doomed me.

  Because he worked to no longer allow himself to assume too much, he had reassessed Corran Horn. From this reassessment his fear had grown. Loor had always known Horn was capable of being a killer, and he had labored under the assumption that Horn had actually murdered a bunch of smugglers in cold blood. When it became apparent that those murders were a sham—Loor’s face still burned as he realized he had based his assumptions about those murders only on reports created by Gil Bastra—he saw Corran Horn as someone capable of using violence, but also as someone who could control his temper. Horn emerged as more cunning and that trait became more dangerous when coupled with his relentlessness.

  To “motivate” Loor in his supervision of General Derricote’s project, Ysanne Isard had released the fact that Loor had killed Bastra into channels that would carry that data to the Rebel Alliance. She also let it be known that Loor was on Imperial Center. She had said at the time that she hoped such information would serve to distract Horn from looking into other matters very closely, but Loor knew it would just draw Corran to Imperial Center like vice draws Hutts.

  I will have to be very careful when he gets here. If he gets to me it will be because I want him to, but on my terms and to my benefit.

  As Loor neared his destination, the door to Derricote’s lab opened to an inrush of air and the General himself stood there beaming. Though cadaverously slender, there was no way Loor could squeeze past the General’s rotund form and enter the lab with the man just standing there. “I thought you wanted me to see something in the lab, General.”

  Derricote brushed a hand back over his thinning black hair, then clapped his hands. “I do. The Quarren were very helpful, very helpful.”