x-wing: iron fist; by aaron allston
"Hey, Castin!"
The blond pilot, seated in a stuffed chair nearby, looked up guiltily from the datapad in his lap. "I wasn't doing anything."
Face grinned. "I'm not monitoring you. I just wanted to know what you did to end up with the Wraiths."
"I volunteered."
"Why?"
Castin looked thoughtful. "I wanted to be where things happened. And things always happen around Commander Antilles. I want to go after enemies like Zsinj and eliminate them. Overwrite them to the point that no one in the galaxy even remembers them."
"Well, that's admirable ... but again, why?"
"People like Zsinj, they have to be squashed as hard and as fast as you can. Because the next thing they do is going to be something awful. They never do anything that isn't awful, and ordinary people get killed." Castin's tone was bitter, and other Wraiths perked up to listen.
"You're speaking from personal experience."
"Oh, yes." Castin looked around blankly, staring not at his fellow Wraiths but at some point in the past. "The day the Emperor died -- what were you doing?"
Face didn't have to think back. Most people recalled exactly what they were doing the moment they heard that Palpatine had been killed at Endor. "I was in civilian flight school on Lorrd. In class studying astronautics. Why?"
"I was in one of Coruscant's plazas. A little one, couldn't have held more than a couple of hundred thousand people, way up high where only a half-dozen buildings cast shadows down on it. The word spread like fire though an old building. The New Republic HoloNet broadcast was being rebroadcast on a wide band so that every personal comlink would pick it up. All holoprojectors were showing the second Death Star exploding.
"The crowd went crazy. Loyalists were turning white. Some of them fainting dead away. Rebels and people with Rebel leanings were going beserk. Before very long, they were actually tearing a statue of Palpatine down. A big one. It took cables and skimmers to knock it over." Castin shrugged. "And then stormtroopers came."
"To restore order."
"If you want to call it that. They opened up on the crowd pulling down the statue. And their blasters weren't set on stun. You could smell the burning-meat odor all over the plaza. I was right next to a young mother who took it right in the head. I grabbed her baby on the way down so he wouldn't be trampled in the stampede." He shook his head, his expression bleak, and fell silent.
Face said, "The Imperial HoloNet wouldn't have transmitted the news of the Emperor's death over normal channels like that. Not before they'd had time to sweeten up the story and turn it into some sort of Imperial victory."
Castin shook his head, not meeting Face's eye.
"So someone else, someone technically proficient, had to have intercepted it and rebroadcast it like that. You?"
Castin nodded. "My group was one of them, yes."
"So Zsinj is another Imperial killer, and if you don't stop him personally, it's the plaza all over again. Is that it?"
"Maybe."
"Well, it's a good a reason as any." But that was an answer for Face. Castin might have volunteered for this duty without a blemish on his record, but there was still a possibility of volatility there.
[Castin], a native of Coruscant, had been a code-slicer since he entered his teens and had belonged to a rebel group not associated with the Alliance. Shortly after the Emperor's death, nearly four years ago, he had forged himself a false identity, arranged passage offworld, and had ended up in New Republic-controlled space, where his technical skills had served him and the New Republic well. After two years as a coder for the fleet, he'd transferred to Starfighter Command and entered pilot training.
[...]
There were citations for courage and ingenuity under fire, but also many punishments for failing to perform routine duties in a reliable fashion. That hadn't bothered Wedge; he knew Castin would either shape up in that regard or be kicked out of Starfighter Command altogether, a motivation that should keep him in line. But in the record was also a chronicle of personality conflicts with fleet bridge crew members, mostly Mon Calamari. Transfer from the fleet accepted after ... a fistfight with a Sullustan navigator. Hmm.
[...]
"Donn, this independent revolutionary faction you belonged to -- were there any nonhumans in it?"
"No, sir."
That was interesting. Most such factions on Coruscant had high proportions of nonhuman members. The factions that didn't include nonhumans tended to be just as anti-Imperial ... but had still supported Coruscant culture's legendary suspicion and dislike of nonhumans.
"So you've had very little protracted contact with nonhumans."
"Well ... that would be correct, sir."