Chapter Text
Despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that he’d returned so late to his quarters, Wedge actually slept soundly for the few hours he was in his bunk. When he woke, his mind felt settled. He could sense the end of something.
“You’re looking…better,” Wes said to him in the mess, sounding halfway between relieved and nigh concerned. But he’d seen Wedge worn to a thread far too many times over these past few days. This change had to seem unlikely, to say the least.
“I feel better,” Wedge replied lightly, setting his caf on the table. “I don’t think Draven will be asking for my help any longer.”
“Good,” Wes said, slipping out a grin. “How did you manage that?”
“Oh, you know…” Wedge stalled. He’d known there were going to be questions from Wes on this, but that didn’t mean he’d figured out how to explain them. “Let’s just say Draven and I got a little sick of each other, as we sometimes do.”
“Well, good for you for lasting as long as you did. Between you and me, I think anyone would get sick of that man with enough time.” It was a jab meant to make Wedge laugh, and it did.
“I suppose so,” Wedge agreed, still amused but with his leadership responsibilities slowly starting to come to the forefront of his mind. “Well, in any case, I think we should speak with Command, see which planets they want us to check out next.”
“Agreed. I think…”
And just then, a tremor shivered through the ship, so quiet and small it could almost have been construed as a shift into hyperspace.
But after Yavin, they all knew better.
Wes trailed off, eyes narrowing in anticipation. Wedge tensed. Around them, others spiralled into whispers or else went silent completely.
The alarms began, trilling insistently for attention, and then a voice echoed on the ship-wide comm, directing specific personnel to make their way to the upper hangar, while everyone else was ordered to return to their quarters and await further instructions.
With well-worn practice and implementation, people instantly rose from the tables and marched to their ordered places.
Wedge stayed where he was, feeling something bitter in the back of his throat. That hangar was where his X-wing was, where pilots of all sorts regularly congressed and traversed through. And notably, it hadn’t been pilots who’d been requested to come up to that hangar. It had been medics.
“Han told me Luke was coming back today,” Wedge blurted out. Wes’s eyes widened, and that only made Wedge’s burgeoning terror grow. His feet finally found purchase and he scrambled up from the table to push through the crowds as much as the narrow corridors would allow. He wasn’t certain on what he was planning to do, but he sure as hells wasn’t going to simply retreat back to his quarters.
When he saw Col running past, panicked, eyes wide, Wedge knew this was his chance. He latched onto Col’s arm and tightened until Col finally looked at him. “What’s going on?” he snapped with every drop of commander within him over the chaotic din of the crowds.
Col paused, still panting from wherever he’d fled. It was only this close that Wedge realized that the hard edges around his eyes weren’t panic, they were anger. “Luke and Leia,” he spat out. “They’d just returned to the hangar when a bomb went off near their shuttle. Who does something like that?”
“You’re sure it was Luke?” Wedge demanded. As if he hadn’t already known back in the mess that this was going to be the result. But he still wanted it to be a mistake.
Col nodded. “I only saw the aftermath, but Conn was there. Well, anyway, the medics cleared me out, but I figure they’ll be taking all of them to medbay, so that’s where I’m headed.” Suddenly it was Col tugging his arm now, something more fragile entering his eyes. “Let me take you there.”
Wedge would be going there anyway, regardless of Col’s offer. But this meant something to him. Col, of all people, was trying to help him. It put all of Wedge’s previous thoughts about him to shame. “Sure,” Wedge agreed numbly. He could already see Wes, still staunchly beside him, turning to push out the crowds ahead. “Let’s go.”
Medbay was filled with an overload of patients—largely pilots, but also techs and officers and even a couple of pathfinders—being treated from everything to tiny scratches to shrapnel embedded in their stomach. And these were the ones who hadn’t even been on the shuttle. Wedge looked around, recognizing most of the pilots, but he saw only one that was from Red Squadron. That was Conn with a cut above his eyebrow and a few mismatched bruises, but thankfully nothing else too serious.
“I suppose you’ve heard,” he said quietly to Wedge, glancing away and kicking his leg against the chair he’d been left in when all the beds were filled with far worse off victims. “I didn’t see what happened to Luke or Leia after the blast.”
Wedge wanted to comfort him, to tell him that at least he’d survived and that was just as important, but he couldn’t get the words out of his mouth. This felt like a nightmare.
Wes and Col came forward, leaning down and speaking rapidly with Conn. Good. Maybe one of them would be able to provide the comfort that Wedge couldn’t.
He turned around, walking past more beds and stretchers and chairs filled with bleakly injured people, but he saw no one who resembled Luke or Leia. He moved back again towards the entrance, watching with rapt eyes every new patient they pushed in, each with increasingly more horrifying injuries than the last.
And then, a sudden burst of activity rounded the corner—several people hovering around two stretchers being rushed forward. Wedge reacted instantly when he saw the familiar shine of blond hair. “Luke!”
Luke didn’t respond. His eyes were glassy, his hair and clothes matted with blood. He looked so fucking young. The same age Wedge had been when he’d entered Skystrike Academy. The Empire always got their claws in them so early.
“Lieutenant,” the medic closest to him said gently. Too gently. “I’m sorry, but we need to move quickly. He’s hemorrhaging in his brain, and he needs to be put in bacta immediately.”
Wedge’s eyes were still fastened on Luke. “Will he live?”
“It’s likely, but he needs to be put in bacta now if he’s not to have permanent brain damage.”
Every primal instinct within Wedge screamed at him to pull Luke into his arms and snap at anyone who dared come near. Instead, he stepped back and watched until they pushed him deep into medbay and out of sight.
Leia was next. She was more lucid, with eyes fixated on Han and tightly gripping his hand in hers. “Didn’t see…” she murmured, breathless. “Happened when we…we had just gotten off…another moment and we…the flash was so bright…reminded me of…of…” Her eyes fluttered and then her head sank.
Han released her hand. Medics started rushing forward, pulling her into medbay as well.
Wedge didn’t know what to do now. Everything felt distorted. Slowed. From somewhere near him, he heard a medic say with thankfulness that at least the hull of the shuttle had shielded Luke and Leia from the worst of the blast, as if anything they’d just seen was something to be thankful for. He heard another medic say to someone—him?—that if he wasn’t injured then he needed to leave.
And all the while, Han just stood there in the entrance, fiddling with his scratched up hands and suddenly looking very young.
If Wedge had any residual doubt that Han didn’t care about Leia, about their cause, it ended here.
Wedge took an uneven step forward. “I’m going to find the bastard who did this,” he said to Han. He recognized, distantly, the coldness in his voice from his time in the cockpit. The stranger thing was to realize that he didn’t care. “I’m going to find him, and then I’m going to kill him.”
Han nodded, the same sort of anger starting to glow in his eyes. They had an agreement now.
Wedge left medbay, his feet tracing a path to the only place he knew he could get the answers he was looking for: Command.
In comparison to most other parts of the ship, Command was eerily silent when Wedge entered. Only Draven and Dodonna were there, standing near the holoprojector and conversing together quietly. Draven, ever alert, especially in this quiet space, caught Wedge’s presence immediately. With some sort of parting remark to Dodonna, he rounded the holoprojector and came over to where Wedge stood.
“Antilles,” he greeted, his voice sounding very weary, “I realize what’s happened affects you personally, but I’m very busy right now.”
“I’m sure you are,” Wedge agreed. “But I don’t think either of us is too busy to go back down to Brecks and find out some answers.”
Draven’s stance shifted, but something in his eyes still seemed sharp. “Perhaps not, but how do I know you won’t become just as squeamish as last time?” His tone was cold. Yesterday apparently still laid heavily on both of them.
“Because I’m doing this whether you help me or not,” Wedge replied, just as cold. “We use your drug, or else I go in there myself and beat him senseless.”
Draven looked ridiculously uneasy at this statement, but at the least the bitterness was gone. “Well, I’m not going to be happy if you end up killing him before we get anything out of him, you know.”
“Understood,” Wedge concurred. It was a fair point. “I promise to take your lead in there.”
Draven snorted. “Well, I’ll believe that when I see it.” He was a silent for a moment, tapping his foot in this silent space. “Fine, let’s do it. I’m sick of all his secrets, and clearly today has proven we need to find out what they are.”
He turned for the door, and Wedge followed him obediently, quietly, as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats last night, as if Wedge hadn’t just seen Luke in a pool of his own blood. He watched as Draven returned to the interrogation control room, took out his silvery bottle of liquid and slid it into a syringe. “Last chance to turn back,” Draven murmured, as he placed his new tool into a metal box.
Wedge didn’t want to know what was on his face to make him say that. He moved back towards the corridor. “Let’s go.”
They walked down the hall until they reached a row of doors tightly packed together. Draven thumbed the lock for the nearest one, and a startled and slightly terrified looking Holn Brecks blinked back at them from his bare cot.
His shocked form had its advantages. In one swift movement, Wedge and Draven already had Holn in binders and dragged back over to the interrogation room.
“What is this?” Holn sneered once he’d been thrown into a chair. Clearly he’d recovered some of his composure, even if his wide eyes betrayed his fright. “Starting to realize you daintily coming in one at a time isn’t all that intimidating?”
“Just shut up,” Wedge hissed. Holn flinched.
Draven raised a warning hand, a reminder that Wedge had promised to obey him in here. So Wedge took a step back and forced himself into silence.
Draven turned his attention back to their prisoner. “If I were you,” he said, only sounding a shade friendlier than Wedge, “I’d start thinking hard on talking. Something happened today, and none of us are in the mood for your games.”
Holn’s eyes skittered between the two of them. “I heard the alarms going off,” he murmured, for once sounding slightly uncertain. “But I don’t know anything about that.”
“Maybe not,” Wedge put in, trying for Draven’s sake to be slightly less hostile, “but we both know that you’re likely to know the cause of it. The same cause that had my squadron ambushed.”
For a moment, Wedge genuinely did think Holn would talk. He finally seemed frightened enough and weary enough to give in to the inevitable.
But then his eyes hardened, that damned stubbornness rearing its head once again. “No. I’ve already told you. I’m not betraying the Empire.”
Draven placed the metal box in front of him, opened it so that Holn could see the syringe. “Last chance,” he said in his coldest tone.
Holn glanced down at the silvery mixture and then back up. Silence.
Draven swivelled to Wedge. “Keep him still.”
Wedge obeyed instantly, placing his hands tightly on Holn’s shoulders as their Imperial prisoner began to thrash and scream in some final protestation for what was about to happen. “Fuck you! Long live the Empire! Long live Emperor Palpatine!”
With a ruthless efficiency Wedge didn’t want to think on how he’d gained, Draven plunged the needle where neck met shoulder. Finished, Wedge released Holn, feeling oddly drained.
There was no going back now.
“Give him a moment,” Draven said, closing the container. “It’s going to take a few minutes to run through his system.”
Wedge waited. He watched as Holn started to shiver and pant and sweat. Almost as if he were going through withdrawal once more. But whatever sympathy Wedge once held for him in this was gone.
“Fuck you,” Holn muttered again. “The Empire’s going to crush you, you know. The Empire’s going to crush all you terrorists and eradicate you from the galaxy. You’ll regret the day you went up against us.”
Draven blinked, apparently unfazed by this diatribe. “Tell me where you were born,” he asked in a neutral tone.
Holn’s restless gaze latched onto his. “Coruscant,” he spat. “You already fucking know this. You already have all of my files. Though I’ll tell you something you don’t know: I was born at my parents’ residence. They couldn’t get to a medcentre in time.”
This odd rambling was clearly the drug starting to take effect, and evidently Draven knew it. Wedge took a step closer. “Okay, now tell us about my squadron. How did you know where we were going to be? What did your CO tell you?”
Holn’s blown pupils started twitching. “No. No, no, no, please, nothing you need to know about. Please, just leave me alone. I want to protect the Empire.”
Again, it was the sort of thing that would have had Wedge’s heart bleeding yesterday. But that was before he saw Luke hanging by a thread. “Tell me what Jovik knew,” Wedge pressed relentlessly.
Holn was shaking his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I won’t betray the Empire. Not like you.” Venomous and desperate eyes latched onto Wedge. “I still can’t understand how you could do that.”
“Very well,” Draven said curtly, before Wedge could say anything. “You don’t want to talk about this? Then let me ask you something else. Because unlike Antilles here, I’m actually very interested in why you ended up at Skystrike and then the Outer Rim. What happened?”
Holn closed his eyes. He was still trembling. “Because,” he said simply, managing to stem his words for a moment. Then they came out in a rush: “Because I was different from them. My parents knew it. The ISB knew it. But you didn’t, Wedge.” His eyes opened, searing Wedge again with their gaze, with that desperation and venom and something else Wedge only now recognized buried deep beneath. “Somehow, out of everyone, I managed to hide it from you.”
Wedge felt an uneasiness sink into his stomach. “And what’s that?” he asked quietly.
“Who I like,” Holn replied, a hysterical tone creeping into his voice.
And finally, Wedge understood. “You’re attracted to men,” he realized. “That’s why you signed on to become a pilot—either your parents cast you off or else you willingly decided flying was the better option. And it worked, right until Hobbie, Rake, and I left the Academy. Because that’s when they brought in those loyalty officers to discover any secrets each of you had, and that’s when they found out about you. After that, your career in the Empire was essentially over.”
Holn’s mouth was set, but his eyes were shining. Wedge didn’t know whether to feel pity or anger that, even after all this, Holn was still willing to defend the Empire to the last.
“But there’s something more to this, isn’t there,” Draven murmured. Wedge looked at him, puzzled. What more could there possibly be?
But clearly Wedge was wrong to think that. “No,” Holn said, a sudden new panic in his voice. He was shaking his head, already preemptively trying to deny whatever Draven was scratching at. “You already know enough.”
“Why was it so important to you that Antilles not know about this?”
Holn was still shaking his head, muttering something so quickly that Wedge couldn’t hear it. Not that he wanted to. “Draven,” he murmured. They’d already done all manner of things to Holn today that Wedge was willing to justify. This peeled back something he felt should be left alone.
But Draven didn’t even look at him. His entire focus was on Holn. “We can talk about this, or we can talk about what your commanding officer knew,” he continued ruthlessly. “Which is it going to be?”
Holn was still muttering incomprehensibly to himself, but his gaze was drifting back to Draven, and when it did that stubborn fire within him had clearly been extinguished. “What do you think?” he whispered, then shivered again. “There’s a spy in your midst.”
Wedge was not terribly surprised by this revelation, and he doubted Draven was either. Even if the other accidents could be passed off as faulty intel or Imperial interception, that explosion could only have been caused by internal sabotage. “Who?” Wedge murmured. This was the final piece they needed.
Holn’s glance didn’t quite reach Wedge. “All Jorvik ever told us was that someone in the infamous Red Squadron was feeding us intel,” he said softly, and Wedge felt a frisson of horror. “Our transponders were supposed to make a certain noise when he flew near so that we wouldn’t kill him. I don’t recall it ever going off during the skirmish, though. That’s all I know, I swear. I don’t know anything else.”
For once, Wedge believed him. He staggered away, wanting to get out of this suffocating interrogation room.
This had suddenly become very personal.
The instant they were back in the corridor, Wedge said, “The spy has to be with my part of the squadron, not Narra’s. Think about that battle we had beside a black hole. Or Stardust. Or…” He swallowed, forcing his voice to remain steady. “Or the bombing in the hangar.”
“I know,” Draven replied curtly, marching them out of the detention level at record pace. “Gather your squadron mates up and bring them over to Command. We’ll confine them and interview them one by one until we can isolate who this bastard is.”
It wasn’t as if they had a better plan, Wedge supposed. Still, it made him uneasy to think of his friends and fellow pilots being subjected to a shadow of what he had just put Holn through.
Even if one of them evidently deserved it.
“Some of them should be discounted,” he tried to argue. “Brecks said his transponder didn’t go off during the skirmish. Janson and Skywalker were the only ones with me by then.”
Draven jammed the lift button for the higher decks. “I don’t care. They’re all suspects. We only cross Skywalker off the list because he was mortally injured in today’s attack.”
“I would trust Janson with my life.”
“The only person I trust in that squadron is you.”
The lift whirred. Wedge looked over at Draven, incredulous.
“Which I shouldn’t, really,” Draven added a beat later, looking right back at him. “You’re insubordinate and incapable of following simple directions, and you seem to take no small amount of pleasure in arguing with me any chance you get, but I know for a fact that you’d never do anything to betray the Alliance.”
This declaration of faith meant more to Wedge than he was willing to admit. “I’m glad you see that,” he said instead. “Just like I’m trusting in your ability to find the culprit in my squadron.” Which was still as horrifying to contemplate as when Holn revealed their identity a few moments ago.
“Believe me,” Draven said grimly, “nothing will give me more joy.”
The lift pinged, and they raced down the new passageway. The alarms had stopped, but the corridors were still desolate. Perfect for an escape attempt. “I just wish we had some clue,” Wedge murmured. “Holn did say he.”
“Don’t be too quick to use that. The Empire presumes gender and species too heavily. This spy could be anyone.”
Anyone. Any gender. Any species.
Kell’i.
Kell’i, who had been so distant from the moment she’d first joined Red Squadron. Kell’i, who just last night had been working in the very hangar where the bombing had happened. Kell’i, who’d looked positively petrified when Wedge had innocently questioned her on what she was doing.
Oh gods.
“I think…I think I might know who it is,” Wedge managed to get out.
“Good.” Draven waved a hand. “But we can go over your hunch later. Right now, I need you to round your pilots up. And I need to tell Command what’s going on.”
This time Wedge brooked no complaint at Draven’s order. “Understood, sir.”
They split off. Cracken, to Command. Wedge, the hangar. He had a creeping suspicion that even during a time when people were being ordered to quarters, some of his pilots would sneak off and want to see the damage for themselves. As did Wedge.
He got his wish. The melted, mangled, charred wreckage was still there, being combed over assiduously by droids and several senior organic personnel. Smoke still drifted from larger chunks and shards of metal were embedded in almost every part of the hangar.
Someone did this to Luke. And worse, it was someone they both knew.
Wedge had been right about his pilots, though. Standing nearby were Wes and Col, who were not remotely supposed to be here and who were looking as overcome as Wedge felt.
Wes saw him first, immediately running to his side. “Wedge! What happened? One moment you were in medbay, and the next you were just gone.”
Wes’s eyes were a maelstrom of emotions and questions. “I’ll explain later,” Wedge promised, though he knew his undercurrent of panic was probably not soothing in the slightest. But he didn’t have the time nor the energy to explain everything that had happened, and Draven wouldn’t have allowed him to anyway. This was the best he could do. “Look, I know this seems strange, but I need you to head up to Command. Both of you,” he added, as Col drew near. “Draven wants everyone in the squadron up there right now.”
“Why?” Col asked, tone wary.
“Because Command is ordering it. I’m not any happier about it than you are.” Which was the truth. Wedge didn’t believe Wes or Col was capable of this, and he didn’t envy them the interrogation they were about to receive. But he’d meant what he’d said in the lift. He trusted Draven to figure that out for himself.
They still looked uneasy but both of them murmured their agreement, not even Col willing to disobey an order from Command.
Good. Wedge gave the hangar another cursory glance. But beyond the forensic crew, it was just the three of them. “Do either of you know where Nes, Conn, or…Kell’i might be?”
“Well, Conn was still in medbay last I saw him,” Wes pointed out.
“And Nes,” Col cut in, “like the little goody two shoes he is, I think went straight to his quarters to await further instructions. As for Kell’i…” He looked over at Wes, who shrugged, and then back at Wedge. “Good luck. She hates all of us. She could be anywhere.”
Of course she could be. “Well, thanks anyway. And if you see any of them—”
“We’ll drag them back to Command with us,” Col added wearily. “I got the message.”
Wedge smiled tightly. “Glad to hear it.”
He’d already turned away, ready to continue his search, when Wes grabbed his arm. “Wedge, listen,” he murmured so that Col couldn’t hear him. “I don’t know everything that’s going on, but be careful, all right? There’s too much going on in this ship, and you have a penchant for getting into trouble.”
Probably true, but Wedge felt more fear for his squadron right now than for himself. “I will. I promise.” He tried to sound reassuring for Wes’s sake.
Wes’s expression remained uncharacteristically grim. “Good. You do that.”
Wedge left the hangar. Back in the desolate corridors, he felt again the intense suffocation of time passing that he couldn’t afford to lose, that he’d already lost by spending so much time in the hangar. He knew his next stop should probably be Nes or Conn when he knew where he was likely to find them, but all his mind could keep reminding him was that Kell’i likely knew she’d overplayed her hand and was trying escape.
Wedge slowed to a stop as a sudden new thought occurred to him. Because, true, her ultimate plan was always going to be to escape, but what about Holn? She either suspected or else knew for certain he was a liability who would keep on spilling secrets long after she’d left.
And this way, if she went down there, regardless of whether she killed him or set him free, she’d be giving one final gift to the Empire.
Wedge turned, retracing his steps back to the lift, slipping in just as the doors slid shut. He didn’t even notice that the other occupant was Conn until they started moving. A lucky coincidence. “Hey listen, Conn, I need you to head up to Command. Draven wants us to…”
It was only then that Wedge glanced down and saw that Conn had already pressed the button for the detention level.
He was a nanosecond too late reaching for his blaster. He’d only gotten a grip on his while Conn already had his pressed against the small of Wedge’s back.
“Put it down,” Conn said in a newly authoritative voice. “Now.”
“All right,” Wedge murmured, knowing that any resistance at this point would simply get him killed. The moment his grip went slack, Conn snatched the blaster into his own hand.
“I really wish you hadn’t decided to come down here, Wedge,” he said quietly, almost confessing, almost as if he were going to let Wedge go. But there was a ring a viciousness to his voice that Wedge couldn’t recall ever hearing before. “I did honestly like you, even if you are a terrorist.”
“We can talk about this,” Wedge said, trying to sound reasonable. All he could think about was surviving long enough so that he could alert Draven to what was going on. “You know me, Conn. Just put down the—”
“Why? So you can rat me out to your friend Draven?” Conn snorted. “Not happening. I know enough about what you two have been up to this past week, what you’ve been doing to your former fellow cadet. You might pretend we’re friends, but you and I both know that your first loyalty is to your terrorist group.”
Wedge shut down. He didn’t know what to say, what he could say, to this new Conn who seemed entirely intent on protecting the Empire.
The lift opened on the detention level. Empty. Conn started prodding him forward with his blaster. Wedge knew he desperately needed to think of something clever, but everything was moving so fast.
Conn jerked them both to a stop in front of the control room. “Open it.”
Wedge stared dully at the shiny surface. From here, Conn would have access to all the cells. “It might not recognize—”
“I don’t care. Try. Or else your usefulness to me ends here.”
And Wedge knew well what that meant. Despite Conn’s earlier professed distress, Wedge didn’t see this new version of Conn as having too many qualms about killing him if he needed to. And Wedge was still not planning on dying until Draven knew what was going on. He pressed the readout for the door. It buzzed then beeped its assent. The door slid open. An agent standing near the holoprojector suddenly looked up.
Wedge looked back, feeling both guilt and a spark of hope that this was the moment he’d been waiting for.
Conn raised his blaster and fired.
Wedge took his chance. He shoved backwards into Conn, grappling frantically for the blaster. He hoped that Conn would be caught off guard by the sudden move, especially when he was so focused on this new interloper.
But no, Wedge still wasn’t anticipating how quick Conn could actually be. Wedge had only just wrapped a finger around the base of the blaster when Conn slammed an elbow, hard, against the side of his head. Wedge stumbled backwards, reeling, but still trying to fight. A loud bang echoed.
The next thing Wedge was aware of was the hard floor pressed against him and that operative next to him, as still and cold as the vacuum of space. And then a pain, white hot and fiery, shot through his leg.
Then he knew what had happened. Because he might have crashed out of the sky multiple times, broken his leg in three places, and had a myriad of other injuries before this, but this was the first time he’d been shot with a blaster. And it was worse than he could have possibly expected. Never mind putting weight on his leg, the pain was so intense that for a moment he genuinely thought he’d black out.
He breathed, forcing his eyes to stay open, forcing his mind to stay alert. Tilting his head, he could see Conn standing nearby, leaning over a control panel, completely ignoring Wedge after injuring him. Evidently he didn’t see Wedge as a threat any longer. And evidently he also didn’t need Wedge’s help for this part. He apparently knew exactly what he was looking for. After flipping a switch, he walked briskly back into the corridor without a second glance.
Which meant Wedge was finally alone.
Forcing down another wave of blackness, Wedge sat up to get a better view of the array of instruments. But unlike Conn, Wedge didn’t know most of their uses. And he was running out of time.
And then Wedge saw it. Not some precise instrument, but an all purpose alarm near the door.
Good enough.
Using his last dregs of strength, Wedge dragged himself over to the wall and stretched upwards to yank down the latch. Instantly an alarm started to wail, higher-pitched than the one from earlier, but no less insistent. It would take time for Command to realize why it had been activated, but it at least gave them somewhere to start looking. And it would certainly hinder Conn and Holn in their escape.
They realized it, too. Hardly a moment after the alarm sounded, Conn re-entered the control room, followed by a pale looking Holn. Both of them had anger and something of a question in their eyes.
Wedge just smiled. “Good luck getting out of here alive.” At least now his death would mean something.
Conn shook his head. “It didn’t have to be like this, Wedge,” he muttered, raising his blaster once again.
“No, wait,” Holn burst out. His face was hardened, no glimmer of mercy or pity. Whatever reticence he’d held towards Wedge earlier today was clearly gone. “I have a better idea.”
He took the blaster from Conn. And then the darkness finally claimed Wedge.