The Bacta War (5 page)

Corran walked forward and slid onto the bench next to Iella. She didn’t look over at him, but melted against his shoulder and chest as he put an arm around her. “It’s going to be okay, Iella, really.”

“He never hurt anyone, Corran, never.”

“I don’t imagine Kirtan Loor would agree, but I’ll concede the point.”

He felt her chest convulse once, then she looked up at him with red-rimmed brown eyes. “No, you’re right.” Her mouth made a weak attempt at twisting itself into a smile. “As much as he admired your drive, Corran, Diric really appreciated your sense of humor. He said it marked your resiliency. He thought that as long as you could laugh, especially at yourself, you’d always heal from any trauma.”

“He was a wise man.” He tightened his embrace a bit. “You know he’d hate to see you like this, to think he was causing you this much pain.”

“I know. That hasn’t made it any easier, though.” She dabbed at tears with a handkerchief. “I keep thinking that if I’d seen something there, I could have prevented what happened. He wouldn’t have been a traitor.”

“Whoa, wait, Iella, that is
not
your fault. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could have detected or done to help him.” Corran shivered and felt his flesh pucker. “I know what Isard did to those she wanted to warp and convert into her puppets. I resisted, I don’t know how. It could have been personality or genetics or training or anything.
Tycho and I both proved unsuitable for her—as did a few others, but I think she would have had an easy time of breaking Diric down.”

“What?” Iella’s hissed question carried with it undercurrents of betrayal. She tried to pull away from him, but he held on.

“That’s not a strike against Diric, honestly it isn’t. Diric was a victim, and you have to know that he resisted her mightily because even after his capture Imperial Intelligence didn’t find you. I think he built a mental reserve around you and was willing to sacrifice everything to protect you. Even altering her orders at the end was designed to protect you, and in his mind, sacrificing himself to do so was not too much to pay.”

Corran frowned. “The one thing about Diric that characterized him was his curiosity. We both saw it in the way he’d ask us about cases and push us to look at other explanations. He was thoughtful and thorough—espionage was a natural place for him. You said yourself that Isard first placed him in Derricote’s lab to spy on the General. She probably suggested to him that his success in that role determined whether or not she’d let you live. She undoubtedly told him that lie concerning
any
actions he took after he rejoined you.”

Iella’s defiance melted into despair. “Great, now you’re telling me that he’d not have been in that position except for me.”

“No! You had nothing to do with where he ended up—that was entirely due to Isard and no one else.” Corran sighed. “Look, think about the good Diric did. Aril Nunb pointed out that he was the only person in Derricote’s lab that was kind to her and who helped her through her recovery from the Krytos virus. And after he came back, he was a great comfort to Tycho through the trial. He even pushed you to look for evidence to break the frame Isard had settled around Tycho. And, like it or not, he did kill Loor, and I can’t fault him for that.”

“He thought he was shooting Derricote but knew it wasn’t him. He was happy he’d gotten Loor.”

“Well, I
did
kill Derricote and I’d have been more happy
to kill Loor myself.” Corran brushed a hand along her cheek and wiped tears away with his thumb. “Diric wasn’t happy existing the way he did, but he regained himself in defying Isard and doing all the little things that sabotaged her plans. In the end he won. He’d often complained his life had no meaning …”

“But it did.”

“Agreed, and at the very last he finally got to see how much it meant. He’d saved you, he saved Aril, he saved Tycho. He’s at peace, and he’d want you to be at peace with his death, too.”

“I know, but it’s just not going to be that easy, Corran. I was there, I held him as he died from wounds
I’d
inflicted.” Iella sniffed, then swallowed with difficulty. “Your father died in your arms. How did you get through it?”

Corran felt his own throat thicken. “I won’t kid you, it wasn’t,
isn’t
, easy. There are things you expect, like seeing him again in the morning or at night or being able to call him to tell him about your day or to ask a question, and then he’s not there. You know you feel hollow inside, but you don’t know just how hollow until things like that help you define the edges of the void.”

She nodded slowly. “There are things I see or hear and I think, ‘Diric would like that or would be intrigued by that,’ then his death comes crashing back in on me. It seems to me that such things will never stop happening.”

“They won’t. They go on forever.”

A tremor shook Iella. “Great.”

“The thing of it is, Iella, they become transformed. Now you feel the loss and the grief, and part of that will always be there. In addition to it, though, shining through it will be the triumph of having known Diric. When I hear that stupid Lomin-ale ditty or eat part of a ryshcate, I remember my father. I remember his booming laugh and that secret smile of contentment he could flash you when things were good.”

“And the way that smile would carry on up into his eyes and how, with a slight shift, it would harden into something that would make the most fearless of Black Sunners begin to
tremble in interrogation.” Iella gave out a little sigh. “I can see it with your father, but not Diric.”

“Not yet.”

“No, not yet.”

“But you will.” Corran kissed her forehead. “It won’t be easy, but the only way I got through it was because of you and Gil and my other friends.”

“You didn’t have any other friends.”

“Yeah, well, that may be, but you
do
. Mirax and Wedge and Winter and all of us, we’re here to help you. You’re not alone. We can’t feel the same depth of pain you do, but we can help you bear it.”

Iella nodded. “I appreciate that, I really do.” Her brows arrowed in toward each other as she concentrated. “I have decided I can’t remain here on Coruscant. The memories are mostly bad and overpowering. I have to get away—even if it means leaving all my friends.”

“I understand. I wanted to run after my father’s death, too.” Corran smiled. “The trick of it is, for you, that your running doesn’t mean you lose your friends.”

Iella’s eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”

Corran looked around the Sanctuary, then lowered his voice into a whisper. “We’re leaving Coruscant, and we want you to come with us. You’re part of our family, part of the squadron. We’re going after the monster who warped Diric. We’re going to make sure she doesn’t do that to anyone else. We need you to come along and help us get her.”

Iella pulled back and sat up straight. “The odds against success are astronomical.”

“About the same as taking Coruscant from the Empire.”

Iella nodded coolly. “Odds are for those who want to minimize their own risks. I want to maximize Isard’s risks. Count me in.”

5

Brushing brown hair out of his eyes, Wedge looked up at the people seated in the small, amphitheater-style room and smiled. “I want to thank you all for showing up for this meeting. This is our first organizational meeting, but some decisions have already been made. They will stand unless they meet with overwhelming protest. No one should hesitate to voice a question or make a comment—this is going to be a bit more democratic than the squadron was, primarily because plans and orders are originating with us, not being passed down from above.”

Everyone nodded in assent with his remarks, so Wedge continued. “Corran Horn began this whole thing by resigning from Rogue Squadron first, but he’s agreed to let me lead this group. I’ve appointed Tycho Celchu as my second in command. Lady Winter is our Intelligence Officer as well as handling part of the Quartermaster duties. Mirax Terrik is handling the other half of those duties. Tycho will let you know what we’ve got in the way of supplies.”

Tycho turned around in his seat. “We have a fair number of credits—approximately seventeen million, give or take.”

Gavin laughed. “Seventeen million, I’ll take.”

“So would a lot of other folks, which is precisely what they want to do.” Tycho frowned. “Rumors of what happened at the reception, despite the spin the New Republic Information Ministry tried to put on it, have spread quickly. While we are getting a lot of support, the folks who deal in the things we need to accomplish our mission know how desperate we are. Right now we have one X-wing—Corran’s ship—and the services of Mirax’s
Pulsar Skate
. Other ships are fairly dear. I would imagine, to get the fighters we need, we’ll probably end up hiring mercenaries who come with their own equipment. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, though the prices might. All the little Warlords out there are looking for fighters, so its a seller’s market.”

Standing at the front of the room, Wedge nodded. “That’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but it’s worth keeping in mind. We’ve got some basic data to mull over first, concerning our objectives. Winter has put them together.” Wedge pointed to the holoprojector toward the front of the room. “Winter, if you please.”

Winter stood and walked to the front of the room with a stately grace that left no question in Wedge’s mind why people on Alderaan had frequently mistaken her for Princess Leia Organa. Though Winter wore her white hair long and, today, in a thick braid, she carried herself with a nobility that matched her exquisite features. Slender and stunning, she seemed somehow incongruous with the dangerous missions she’d been on during her career as a covert agent for the Rebellion.

Which is exactly why she was never suspected
.

Winter picked up the datapad that was connected by a cable to the holoprojector. She hit one button, dimming the glow panels in the room and bringing up a holographic projection of a planet. “This is our objective: Thyferra. It is a fairly normal terrestrial planet with a breathable atmosphere and two moons, neither of which has atmosphere or is inhabited. Thyferra is covered with rain forests and enjoys a day that is roughly twenty-one point three standard hours long. The axial tilt is negligible so there are really no seasons. Because of its proximity to the system’s star, a yellow star, and
the mildly elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it maintains a tropical climate year round. The way Coruscant felt after the storms that took down the power grid is pretty much what this planet experiences all the time.”

Wedge frowned. To take the power grid down and eliminate the defense shields on Coruscant, Rogue Squadron had caused a lot of water to boil off into the atmosphere, creating a huge thunderstorm. For a week and a half following that storm the air had been thick and heavy.
No wonder the plant that goes into bacta thrives there
.

“Thyferra has three stellar-class spaceports—one at what is now being called Xucphra City. The other two are located on separate continents and are primarily used for the loading and unloading of bacta. Inbound ships stop at Xucphra City first for Customs and Immigration inspections, then are sent on to the spaceports to do business. They leave from those spaceports and head directly out to the destinations.”

Nawara Ven raised a hand. “I presume the metropolis’s name change came about when the Xucphra corporation took over. What was it called before that?”

“Zalxuc City, which really is not much better.” Winter directed the computer to zoom in and supply an aerial view of the city. “As you can see, it’s not really a metropolis at all. The human population of Thyferra was only ten thousand before Isard took over. Many Zaltin families fled, and their housing is being used for Imperial Army and Navy officers and enlisted folk on leave from their ships. The
Lusankya
alone carries twenty-five times the human population of the planet, so there is no question about the possibility of occupation when or if Isard orders it. So far she has refrained and is using Imperial personnel and equipment to train and supply the Thyferran Home Defense Corps.”

Winter nodded to the six-limbed, insectoid alien standing in the back of the room. “The native population of Thyferra refers to themselves as the Vratix. The production of bacta—literally the brewing together of alazhi and kavam—appears to produce an almost mystical amount of satisfaction for the Vratix. Qlaern Hirf here is a
verachen
—a master blender—who commands subordinates and creates bacta. A
verachen
is
very much equivalent to a brewmaster at any Lomin-ale brewery, though a
verachen
also has highly defined rights and responsibilities within the Vratix society.

“I should also note that the Vratix are neither male nor female—those roles are played at different times in the life cycle, so referring to Qlaern as ‘he’ or ‘she’ is inappropriate. Moreover, since the Vratix do constitute something of a low-grade hive mind, they are more comfortable with a plural pronoun, so
they
and
them
will have to suffice.”

The Vratix in the back clicked its curved mandibles. “Your dissertation honors us, Lady Winter.”

“Thank you. Because of their desire—even
need
—to produce bacta, the Vratix welcomed the influx of humans who were willing to set up and run businesses that created a demand for more bacta, allowing and even compelling the Vratix to do more of what they enjoyed doing. While individual Vratix are part of the corporate ownership for both Zaltin and Xucphra, Imperial laws made it necessary to remove them from active leadership and decision-making roles in the companies. Zaltin and Xucphra were given Imperial monopolies on the production of bacta, presumably in return for bribes paid to the local Moff and the Emperor. This has made Thyferra a very rich planet and the humans who live there very wealthy. The Vratix, on the other hand, live very modest lives in tribal groups within the rain forests.”