Solo Command; Aaron Allston
Wes Janson lurched into motion, charging in Shalla's wake, taking the left side of the hall where she ran along the right.
He had no wisecracks to offer now. He could only offer one of his other skills, one that might make him unfit for a normal life when this war was finally done. The skill that made him proficient at killing people.
In full stride, he raised his blaster pistol and fired, catching the lead stormtrooper in the chest. The man was thrown back into the arms of one of his companions, his armour now blackened and penetrated.
Janson didn't sight in--he aimed by instinct, by the natural point of his weapon, and fired again. The second stormtrooper took the shot in the dark visor material over his right eye.
Shalla wasn't firing--why not? Janson traversed right and shot at the lead stormtrooper on that side of the hall, catching him in the gut. Behind him was the big captain, now raising his own blaster. Janson fired again. His shot caught the man in the elbow, spinning him back into the wall, causing him to drop his weapon.
Janson traversed leftward again, targeting a stormtrooper with a blaster rifle, his shot catching the man in the throat.
Five steps. Five shots. Five hits. But the hallway was a natural channel for blaster bolts. Its straight lines would angle stray shots back into play. He'd never reach them--
He didn't. He felt fire again and suddenly the world was spinning, slamming into his head--
Dark.
"Why me?" Janson asked.
He lay on his bunk, hands behind his head, looking dubiously at his visitor.
"I can't go to a friend," said Donos. He sat in Janson's chair, leaning back on its rear legs so his shoulders rested on the wall. "I don't have any."
"Not since you shot at the last one."
Donos managed a mirthless smile. "I can't go to a subordinate officer. I'd just feel uncomfortable. Or to a superior."
"Which leaves the rest of us lucky lieutenants."
"Pretty much."
"So talk. I'm game. It's been years since I ruined the life of a fellow lieutenant. Well, weeks, anyway."
"I'm not sure where to begin. I don't know whether I'm crazy or not. I just know that before Talon Squadron was destroyed, I was a different man. Self-control, self-composure were easy. Afterward, I had to work so hard to manage everything. If I didn't..."
"If you didn't, what?"
"I don't know. I never found out. I was so good at managing everything. Except for that collapse. And the other day, with Lara."
"How many times did Lara slap you?"
"Slap me? Never."
"Why not?"
"I never gave her reason to."
"Right. Since you became a pilot, how many times have you been picked up by military police for being drunk and belligerent?"
"Never."
"But you drink."
"In moderation."
Janson sighed. "You see, I was operating under the assumption that you'd actually died with Talon Squadron but had failed to notice. But I was wrong! You've been dead since you joined Starfighter Command. Maybe longer, maybe since you were with the Corellian armed forces."
Donos frowned. "I'd appreciate it if you'd explain that.
With a single, fluid move, Janson sat upright, spun ninety degrees to his right, and set his heels on the floor. "Sure," he said. "It's simple. You're dead. I'm not. Let me demonstrate." He stood up on his bed, then began bouncing up and down. "Did you ever do this as a kid?"
"Of course."
"Did you ever do it as a grown-up?"
"Of course not."
"You say 'of course' a lot, and it's always wrong. Tell me, Myn. How do I look?"
"Well, stupid."
"Exactly!" With an exuberant bound, Janson leaped off his cot, smacked his head on the ceiling, and swore as he landed on the floor again. He rubbed his head and glared at the treacherous ceiling. "When was the last time you looked stupid?"
"I don't know."
Janson leaned in close to him. "Try to understand this. I'll say it slowly. I want you to remember it for the rest of your life.
"You can't look dignified when you're having fun."
"Assuming that's true--so what?"
"If you're not having fun, you're not enjoying your life. If you're not enjoying your life--why even bother being alive?" Janson gave an eloquent shrug. "Myn, I'm living on borrowed time. I've nearly been killed more times than, than, well, more times than you've been slapped, certainly. If I wait until some imaginary distant point in my life to start enjoying it, I'll be dead before I get there. But if I get killed tomorrow, at least I can be pretty sure that I enjoyed myself more than whoever's killing me. You understand?"
"Not really."
Suddenly deflated, Janson sat on his bed again. "Let's try it a different way. You want to be in control so you don't foul up some horrible way. But you're so in control that you're basically a walking dead man. Since you're so dead, you had nothing to offer Lara. You have nothing to offer Wedge--he's got plenty of dead pilots, doesn't need another one. Most of them are smart enough to stay where we plant them, though."
"So what do you recommend?"
"Get drunk. Get slapped. Do something you always wanted to do as a child, especially if it's something that would humiliate you today. If you're going to get kicked out of Starfighter Command, make it for something you can be proud of." Something beeped in one of Janson's pockets. He pulled it out, a comlink, and held it up to his ear to listen. He brightened. "Automatic signal. The Rogues and the Millennium Falsehood are back. No losses. Sorry, I have to run, have to figure out what to razz Wedge about." He darted for the door and was gone.
Donos shook his head. "I'm asking career advice from a nine-year-old."
[note: supposedly for intel purposes (the Wraiths' alter egos have an apparently genetically-modified Ewok pilot, which is really Wedge inna costume), Wedge has procured an actual Ewok that obviously needs looking after.
Apparently.]
The moment Donos was out of sight, Wedge slipped out from a second-level shelf full of foodstuff packages. "Well, that was interesting."
"Wedge! Why don't you scare the other half of my life out of me? How long were you waiting there?"
"About fifteen minutes. During most of which, Donos just sat there, waiting to decide whether or not to play his game."
"Well, he did. A good sign."
"I hope so." Wedge reached behind the first row of stacked food crates and dragged another one up front. This one, like the others, was labeled BANTHA STEAK, DEHYDRATED, 250 GRAMS RESTORED, INDIVIDUALLY PACKAGED. But the top was ajar and the smell wafting from the crate, something like fruit and leaf compost, was not reminiscent of bantha meat. Wedge reached into the crate's top and drew out a bowl full of brownish lumps Janson couldn't identify. "Now, you've fed Kettch before, correct?"
"No. You and whatever crew you've been using haven't brought me in before now."
"That's right." Wedge led Janson toward the forward doors out of the cargo area. "There are still some security concerns, since Kettch was supposed to be a Hawk-bat, not a New Republic pilot. So we're limiting the personnel who see him. He gets one bowlful like this, three times a day. We have him set up near an officers' mess that General Solo isn't using, since he doesn't entertain. So you'll get water for Kettch from the mess."
"Right."
They passed through a small door into a secondary cargo area, this one much smaller than the one they'd left, its shelves full of crates labeled BULK CLOTH. From the rear, they approached a larger crate, one two meters by two meters by one and a half tall, which had been laid out in the aisle between rows of shelves.
"And now," Wedge said, as they got to the front of the crate, "you meet -- uh-oh."
A door that had obviously been retrofitted onto the front of the crate lay on the floor, off its hinges. There was nothing within the crate but what looked like a bed of grass and cloth scraps.
"He's loose?" Janson said.
"He's loose." Wedge looked around. "But for how long? We've got to find him, keep to a minimum the number of crewmen who see him--"
There was a soft patter-patter of movement from the end of the chamber, the bow end.
"We're in luck," Wedge said. "He's still in here." He extended the bowl of food. "Here, take some. Maybe we can lure him back."
Janson grimaced as he grabbed up a handful of the smelly Ewok food.
They headed forward, only to hear the forward door out of the chamber hiss open, followed by the patter-patter of bare feet and the door hissing closed again. Wedge headed forward at a dead run, Janson at his heels.
The door opened for them, revealing dimness beyond, then Wedge was skidding to a halt and Janson ran into him. They toppled over together, crashing into containers of some sort, and fluid, liters of it, splashed all over them.
A sharp, poisonously clean smell forced its way into Janson's nose. "Sithspit, what's that?"
"Cleansing fluid of some sort. We must have hit a janitor droid's stash." Wedge sat up. Janson could see him wrinkling his nose even in the dim light. Somewhere else in the room, a door hissed open and closed again.
"Oh, this is no good," Wedge said. "He's running now because we're chasing him, and he's going to be able to smell us from kilometers away."
"So let's call in Kell and Tyria. They can hunt him down while we clean up."
"They're not part of our Kettch conspiracy." Wedge rose and moved away from the puddle. "Strip."
"What?"
"Get those clothes off. We'll rub some of the Ewok food over the parts of our skin that have the cleansing fluid on them. That should make it possible for us to get close to him." Wedge suited action to words, unzipping his jumpsuit.
"Oh, sure. Would you stand still if you were being approached by two naked men with Ewok food smeared all over them?"
"No, but I'm not an Ewok. Just do it." Wedge nodded right and left. "Looks like there are two doors out of here. I don't know which one he took, but they'll both go into General Solo's mess. You take that one, I'll take this one."
"Wedge, this is the last time I'm feeding Kettch."
"Me, too."
--
The door opened for Janson and he crept through into the dimly lit room beyond.
Not three meters ahead stood an Ewok, wearing the traditional bonnet-style headgear of the species, his back to Janson.
Janson took a careful, silent step forward. The Ewok didn't react. One more step and he was in range -- Janson lunged, grabbing the Ewok with his left hand, the one still uncontaminated by Ewok food. "Got you!"
The Ewok didn't struggle. Nor did it weigh much. Janson looked at it. It wasn't a live Ewok; it was the stuffed toy the Wraiths had brought with them from Hawk-bat Base, the one they called Kettch.
Then Janson realised that the room was full of people -- all the other members of Wraith Squadron. In the dimness, they stood like statues, in poses suggesting they'd been in the middle of a social gathering, in conversational groups of twos and threes, and then had been flash-frozen.
No, not frozen, exactly. They still breathed. Some swayed a little where they stood.
And none of them looked at Janson.
Janson stood still for a long moment, waiting for some reaction from them, or for some realisation to set in and inform him why they'd be standing stock-still in a dimly lit room. None came.
So he held the stuffed Ewok toy before him and backed to the door through which he'd entered.
His bare skin touched metal and he flinched. The door had closed and wasn't opening for him.
He scraped Ewok food off his hand against the doorjamb. Slowly, silently, his sense of unreality mounting, he walked sideways toward the other door into this chamber. To get there, he'd have to pass close to Piggy, Shalla, and Elassar, who were grouped close to the wall. As he neared them, he paused and reached out to touch Piggy, the Wraith nearest him.
His fingers encountered real flight suit and solid flesh beneath. He jerked his hand back. Neither Piggy nor any of the others reacted.
It was a dream, it had to be. And by the rules of dreams, doubtless there was to be some bad result if he failed to escape before the Wraiths awoke. In case he could short-circuit the process, he pinched himself, hoping to awaken prematurely, but he had no such luck. The scene remained before him.
Moving with less caution, he made it to the other door and backed into it ... and his bare rear once again contacted metal as the door failed to open.
Well, then. There was one more door out of this chamber, which should open up into a corridor -- a corridor that he could, with luck, duck down unobserved and perhaps reach the pilots' ready room, where he had another uniform in his locker. He continued sideways along the wall, around the corner...
He reached the doorway and turned into it. The door whooshed open. And beyond was Wedge, fully uniformed, bellowing, "Attention!"
The room lights blazed into normal brightness and Janson heard the Wraiths behind him snapping to attention. He felt his cheeks burn as he realised they had to be facing his bare backside.
Wedge looked at Janson, then at the Ewok toy he held protectively before him. "Lieutenant, you're out of uniform. And you know, wearing an Ewok as a swimsuit is a felony on some worlds."
Janson nodded. He could not keep a rueful grin from forming on his lips. "I have been so set up," he said.
"Good analysis," Wedge said. "You're showing real leadership potential, among other things. Lieutenant Nelprin?"
Shalla approached, standing beside Janson so he could see her without turning. In her hands was a folded mass of orange cloth. She unfolded it and displayed it before him. It was a cloak, in New Republic flight-suit orange, with the words "Yub yub, Lieutenant" stenciled on the back in black. She swept it across his shoulders and fastened it around his neck. Then she leaned in close and whispered, "Nice rear, Lieutenant."
Janson felt his cheeks burning hotter. "Thank you for noticing, Lieutenant."