Star Wars: X-Wing I: Rogue Squadron (6 page)

“Well, I did.”

“And tell me that didn’t make a difference to you.”

“It didn’t, honest.”

“I bet.”

The firm set of her jaw and the way she folded her arms across her chest told Corran she didn’t believe
him. There was a fair amount of anger in her words, but also some hurt. Anger he could deal with—there wasn’t a smuggler or criminal who hadn’t been angry when he was around. The hurt, though, that was unusual and made Corran feel uncomfortable.

“What makes you think I hold your coming from Kessel against you?”

“The way you act.” Lujayne’s expression softened a bit, and some of the anger drained away, but that just let more anxiety and pain bleed into her words. “You tend to keep to yourself. You’re not associating with the rest of us—beyond a narrow circle of pilots you think are as sharp as you are. You’re always watching and listening, evaluating and judging. Others have noticed it, too.”

“Ms. Forge, Lujayne, you’re making meters out of microns here.”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t want to be judged for things over which I had no control.” Her chin came up and fire sparked in her eyes. “My father volunteered to go to Kessel under an Old Republic program where he taught inmates how to move back into society upon their release. My mother was one of his students. They fell in love and remained on Kessel—they’re still there, along with most of my brothers and sisters. They’re all good people and their work with inmates was designed to make your job easier by giving criminals other skills so they’d not return to crime when they were released.”

Corran sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I think that’s great, I really do. I wish there were thousands of people like your parents and kin doing that sort of work. The fact is, though, that even if I’d known that, I’d still have gone after you in the exercise.”

“Oh, my being from Kessel had
nothing
to do with it?”

He almost dismissed her question with a glib denial, but he caught himself and she clearly noticed his hesitation. “Maybe, just maybe, it
did
have something to do with my flying. I guess I decided that if you were from Kessel and could fly, you had to be a smuggler, and it was important for me to fly better than you could.”

She nodded once, but her expression did not shift from one of concern to smug triumph as he had expected it would. “I believe that, and I can understand it. Still, there’s something more there, right?”

“Look, I’m sorry if what I did made you look bad in the exercise, but I really don’t have the time to talk about this now.”

“No time or no inclination?”

Whistler hooted something in an utterly carefree manner.

“
You
stay out of this.” Frustration curled his hands into fists. “You’re not going to let this go, are you, Ms. Forge?”

With a smile blossoming on her face, she shook her head. “If you’d gotten this far in an interrogation, would you give up?”

Corran snorted a laugh. “No.”

“So, explain yourself.”

He definitely heard a request for more than an explanation of his conduct in the
Redemption
scenario in her voice. For a split second he flashed on the times at CorSec when his human partner, Iella Wessiri, had made similar demands of him.
Iella had been a conciliator—always the one to be patching up the disagreements between folks in the unit. That’s what Lujayne is trying to do, which means I’ve managed to alienate a number of the other pilots trying to get into the unit
.

“Concerning the exercise, I really just wanted to see how good you were. I’d been able to figure out where some of the other pilots stood in relationship to me, but I’d not flown against you. You know, you’re not bad.”

“But I’m not in a class with you and Bror Jace.”

Corran smiled quickly, then covered it with a frown. “True, but you’re still very sharp. I’d like to think the rest of the pilots are going to be at least that sharp. I’d even be set up to fly against that Gimbel kid in his
Redemption
scenario tomorrow but Jace volunteered before I could.”

“His name is Gavin, Gavin Darklighter.”

“Gavin, then.”

“And you didn’t want to be following Jace’s lead?”

“Would you?”

Lujayne smiled. “Given a choice, no, I guess not. Next to you, he’s the most standoffish person in the group.”

Corran felt uneasy inside. “I’m not as bad as he is.”

“No? At least he has the good graces to deign to join us in DownTime for some recreation. He’s a sliced and blown datafile compared to you.”

Corran turned to the left and pointed his finger at the astromech droid. “Don’t even start.”

Lujayne raised an eyebrow. “So your droid thinks you should get out more, too?”

Something halfway between a snarl and a growl came from Corran’s throat, but it lacked the power to make it menacing. “Whistler has the ability, from time to time, to be a nag. His problem is that in the time since I left CorSec I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to be very careful. I moved through a number of identities that didn’t allow me to be
very open with people. For example, most recently, I spent over a year as the confidential aide to a succession of incompetent Imp officials governing a Rim world. One slip, one crack in my identity, and I’d have been caught. And when you get out of the habit of trusting folks and relaxing around them, well …”

“I understand.”

“Thanks.” Corran gave her a grateful smile. “On top of that, I’m learning a lot of new things here and I’ve been trying to concentrate on my flying. That’s not easy—there’s a whole new set of slang to get used to and people from species I barely knew existed that I now have to work with and even share living quarters with.”

“That
is
difficult—my roommate is a Rodian.”

“That’s rough, but I’ll bet she’s less idiosyncratic than my roommate.” Corran whistled at the Gand pilot entering the hangar. “Ooryl, come over here, please.”

The pilot’s grey-green flesh clashed with the bright orange of his flight suit, and the knobby bits of his exoskeleton poked bumps in odd places from beneath the fabric as he walked. “May Ooryl assist?”

“I’ve been curious about something since we were assigned the same quarters, but didn’t think to ask you about it until right now.” Corran frowned. “I hope you don’t mind—you might take it personally and I don’t mean to embarrass you.”

The Gand just watched him with multifaceted eyes. “Qyrgg would hope to avoid embarrassment as well, but you may ask.”

Corran nodded in what he hoped was a friendly manner. “Why do you speak of yourself in the third person?”

“Qrygg is embarrassed by not understanding your question.”

Lujayne smiled. “You do not seem to refer to yourself with the pronoun ‘I.’ ”

“And you alternate the names you use.”

The Gand’s mouth parts clicked open in what Corran had decided was a Gand’s best approximation of a human smile. “Ooryl understands.”

“And?”

Ooryl crossed his arms, then tapped his trio of fingers against his body’s deltoid armor plates. “On Gand it is held that names are important. Any Gand who has achieved nothing is called Gand. Before Ooryl was given Ooryl’s name, Ooryl was known as Gand. Once Ooryl had made a mark in the world, Ooryl was given the Qrygg surname. Later, by mastering the difficulties of astronavigation and flight, Ooryl earned the right to be called Ooryl.”

The woman frowned. “This still does not explain why you do not use pronouns to refer to yourself.”

“Qrygg apologizes. On Gand only those who have achieved great things are permitted to use pronouns for self-designation. The use of such carries with it the presumption that all who hear the speech will know who the speaker is, and this assumption is only true in the case where the speaker is so great, the speaker’s name
is
known to all.”

Corran found the system curious, but somehow satisfying.
It always does seem that those who use
I
the most are the ones who have the least in the way of accomplishments to justify it. The Gands have formalized a system we should have come up with long ago
. “So Ooryl is the equivalent of Corran, and Qyrgg is the same as Horn for me?”

“Exactly.”

“Then why do you sometimes refer to yourself by your family name, and sometimes by your own name?”

The Gand looked down for a moment and his mouth parts closed. “When a Gand has given offense, or is ashamed of actions, this diminishes the gains made in life. Name reduction is an act of contrition, an apology. Ooryl would like to think Ooryl will not often be called Qyrgg, but Qyrgg knows the likelihood of this is slender.”

Whistler tootled jauntily at Corran.

“People would know my first name was Corran even if we did use this system.” He rolled his eyes. “And any droid who wanted to keep his name would have run his little diagnostic program and told me if the extractor was adjusted correctly or not by now.”

Lujayne glanced over at him. “Trouble with the engine?”

“Nothing major.” Corran pointed down into the hole. “I had to replace an extractor a while back and keeping it trimmed up over the first fifty parsecs is important.”

Lujayne nodded. “Until it seats itself properly. Looks like you’re working on the housing when you really ought to be just putting a spacer on the axle.”

“You know about fixing these things?”

She shrugged. “Landspeeder repair was one of the trade skills my father used to teach. The T-47 uses virtually identical debris extraction systems for the engine. What you’re doing will work, but you’ll keep making adjustments for another six months. I can measure up a spacer and have it ground down to size for you in a half an hour or so.”

“Really?”

“Sure, if you want the help.”

Corran frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You’d owe me a favor and you’d have to trust me.”

Trusting someone he did not know did feel odd to him, but not so much so that he could not do it. “I see your point. I think, though, I can trust you.”

“We have a deal then.”

Ooryl looked up at Lujayne. “You will need a spacer and laser calipers? Ooryl will obtain them, if you wish.”

“Please.”

Corran leaned back on the S-foil. “I appreciate this help.”

She smiled slyly. “I hope you think that after you hear what my favor is.”

“Name it.”

“After we fix up your X-wing, you come with me to DownTime and get to know some of the others who are likely to make it into the squadron. We’ve all got the thing pretty well figured out—Gavin’s a wild card, but Bror Jace thinks he will probably knock him from the running. A few of us are at the lower edge of what we assume will be acceptable scores, but we hope to make it. Anyway, we congregate down there, swap stories, and get to know each other. Since you’ll undoubtedly be in, you should join us.”

Corran nodded. “Okay, I’ll do that, but that’s not the favor I owe you.”

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“Definitely.” Corran smiled at her. “I owe you for more than just helping with the engine. Asking me to become friends with folks I should already be getting to know isn’t a favor I’d be doing you, but one I’ll be doing myself. One thing though, I’m not going to have to get along with Bror Jace, am I?”

“Why should you be the first?”

“Good.” As Ooryl returned with the part and the tool, Corran winked at Lujayne. “Well, let’s get this engine working, then we can see if there’s a way to fix up my relations with the rest of Rogue Squadron.”

Corran Horn tried to kill his smile as he entered the white briefing amphitheater, then he saw all the other pilots who
could
smile were absolutely beaming.
Not a one of the nervous expressions we were all wearing the other night in DownTime
. The first message in the queue on his datapad had informed him that after breakfast he was to report for Rogue Squadron’s first briefing. The message itself had been neutral and routine in wording—even though it was the first official notification that he’d made it into the squadron.

He’d had a pretty good idea that he’d make it, but despite assurances from the other candidates, he’d never allowed himself to
assume
he would make it. In the past he’d been burned by making unwarranted assumptions. Granted those assumptions had eventually led him to join the Rebellion, which was not a wholly bad thing, but it took him well away from where he had imagined he’d be at this time in his life.

Even though he’d not allowed himself the luxury of believing he’d make the cut before he actually
made it, he was proud of his being selected for the squadron. Corran had never been one to hold back. He’d gone into the Corellian Security Force Academy straight out of secondary school and continued the Horn family tradition by establishing new records in the training there. One of the last marks he surpassed had been set by his father, Hal, twenty years earlier, and Hal had beaten the record set by Hal’s own father.

And now I’m a Rebel, an outlaw. What would my father and grandfather have thought?
A cold sensation raised goose bumps on his skin.
Whatever, they would have thought much worse things if I’d become an Imp
.

Rhysati Ynr waved Corran over to the bench where she sat. “We made it, we actually made it.”

“It was nice of Commander Antilles to agree with our group consensus.” He mounted the steps up to Rhysati’s row and slid in next to her. “It hasn’t sunk in yet in some ways.”

The Gand, sitting behind them, leaned forward. “Ooryl learned your
Redemption
run had the highest score of our training cycle.”

Corran flashed the Gand a big smile—he’d found exaggerating his expression did indeed help Ooryl catch its import. “Who came in second? Bror Jace, I bet.”

The Gand shook his head. “Gavin Darklighter beat the Thyferran.”

“The kid beat Jace?” Corran glanced over at where the tall, brown-haired pilot from Tatooine sat talking with the black-furred Shistavanen wolfman, Shiel. Corran, with years of experience in the spaceports and stations on Corellia, had spotted Gavin as being young despite his size.
It’s in the eyes—the years just aren’t there but apparently the piloting skill is!