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sign saying ‘I’m a wonderful person and I give money to the needy.’ What’s the point?”
    “I see.” Wedge tried to discern some hint of anger, pride, regret, anything in the pilot’s expression or attitude, but he could not. “Well, then, for now, welcome to the squadron of candidate trainees.” He shook Donos’s hand. An exchange of salutes later, the lieutenant was gone.
    “He used to wear the Bloodstripes,” Janson said. “I didn’t notice until you mentioned it. This isn’t the Myn Donos I trained.”
    “Interesting. How long was it from the time Talon Squad left on its last mission to the time he returned? Was there enough time for him to have been grabbed by the enemy, to have been programmed?”
    “No, there’s not enough time unaccounted for in his report for him to have stopped into a cantina for a drink. No sign he ever left his cockpit. It’s him, but it’s not him. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes.”
    “Well, we’ll see how he performs. If he shows the slightest sign of cracking up, or of needing a protracted off-duty rest for psychological reasons, I’m going to scrub him.”
    “Understood.”
    “Hypercomm signal detected, Admiral!”
    Admiral Apwar Trigit looked down from his command chair into the bridge crew pit. His expression was mild. “Its origin?”
    “Header code indicates that it’s straight from Zsinj at Rancor Base!”
    “I’ll take it in my private comm chamber.” He rose, aware that with his graying black hair and beard, his lean form, and the silver and black uniform he’d designed himself, he was an imposing figure. He kept his walk graceful and casual as he departed the Imperial Star Destroyer’s bridge—true, he served the Warlord Zsinj, but his chief officers must understand that he merely hired out his services and those of the Implacable , that he was his own master.
    In the spherical chamber reserved for his private communications, Trigit hit a switch on the main console. Immediately, a three-dimensional image appeared before him—Zsinj, twice human-sized, sitting in a black command chair, doubtless the one aboard Iron Fist . Zsinj wore the crisp white uniform of an Imperial grand admiral, a rank he had never truly attained—yet his current power was such that no one could protest this presumption on his part.
    Trigit smiled at the ego Zsinj routinely manifested. “My lord, you’re going to twist my neck from staring up at you.” He slowly turned a knob and Zsinj’s image shrank until it was just over human-sized. He kept from his face the sheer delight the action of shrinking Zsinj brought him; in the Imperial armed forces, it would have been construed as an expression of pure insolence. He would have been lucky merely to have been demoted to garbage scow pilot.
    The warlord—a corpulent man, balding and graying, with a florid complexion and drooping mustachios that gave him an exotic look—favored him with a smile. “I’ve just read the report from your last transmission. I wanted to congratulate you on the destruction of Talon Squadron.”
    Trigit gave him a sardonic little bow. “Thank you. The code-slicer who planted the false information about the security of the Gravan system later reported that they have decommissioned Talon Squadron entirely.”
    “The pilot who escaped the ambush—was that by your design? Or an accident? The report doesn’t say.”
    “No, we made every effort to kill him. His reflexes were just good enough to save him. In the final analysis, I consider it to be just as good as a clean sweep. He’s doubtless told his tale of woe to his superiors; now they can begin to fret about forces cunning enough to wipe out X-wing squadrons without significant loss or effort. A few more such missions, and they’ll begin to develop a supernatural dread about us.”
    Zsinj smiled. “What about your code-slicer? What if he’s caught and broken?”
    “Impossible. She has already left her Rebel station. I’m having her