The Liberator grew closer to home, insofar as a planet to which it had never once been could be considered home.
Home, however, it would have to be, until the Empire found it and drove them out, as they were wont to do. When that happened, they'd find another useless world, dig a hole in it, and call that home. Rinse, repeat, as often as necessary until the Empire were the ones doing the digging.
Arkwright sat in the Chair, feet propped up on a console, eager to see what this home they'd worked so hard to foster actually looked like. From what Darktrayn, Him, and the Widowmaker told him, 'digging holes' held more than a few grains of truth.
The matter didn't concern to him outside of a general sense of curiosity at what lay ahead, though. As he whiled away the last ship's watch before they arrived in Da Soocha, he welcomed a change from some other things pressing on his mind.
Rince's disappearance was going to be hard to explain to Wolfe.
There was the matter of Kyan Thriest, and the Imperial scout ship loaded with sensor and intelligence gear that was trailing them, presumably all the way from Albion. They had been foolish to assume that they could flee to the Rim so easily - the necessity of working out some fairly major flaws in their bastardized main engine had rendered their clever escape flight plan sloppy at best, and Flynn was content chalking it up to sheer dumb idiot luck that they hadn't been caught before they even hit the Colonies.
Apparently, shady individuals at the top of the Ubiqtorate chain handing out what orders eventually made their way to Thriest's docket had seen opportunity in the latest of the Liberator's embarassing victories. If it weren't for the keen observations of some of their sensor crew, the Liberator may very well have led the Empire straight to Thila, effectively undoing the entire Core campaign.
The mistake shook Flynn hard, as well as much of the crew. They went to such great lengths and sacrificed so much, nearly losing the ship in the process, to distract the Empire's attention and take pressure off the Alliance. With word of the Alliance's success regaining its footing and cobbling together a new secret base coming on the heels of their escape from Ralltiir, they'd all been infected by a note of finality. The job is done, so let's head home as fast as we can.
They were going to have to live with the glaring error of letting their guard down before they left the Core, and nearly handing the Empire a crushing blow against the Rebellion. With any luck, though, it would simply be viewed as a footnote victory on the end of a long and victorious tour.
So what of the Intel scout?
Something seemed missing from the explanation. The way Thriest kept turning up in the path of their goals spoke of something more at work. Arkwright couldn't know what exactly, but he felt sure it involved the Widowmaker somehow, and Rince's entirely wordless and unexplained pursuit of Thriest's cutter, solo, did nothing to dissuade him of it. The Intel scout, of course, could answer a lot of questions, had Rince not taken the damn thing with him. Flynn was hesitant to suspect Rince of anything, as he'd become a most trusted comrade. His link was too strong to be ignored, though, and his theft of the scout did leave Flynn conveniently in the dark.
He idly scanned the boards to make sure nothing was amiss before sitting back again, thinking, It wouldn't be the first time I'd turn out to have trusted the wrong person.
The business with Black was hard to explain, period. Or McCathan, or Draco or whoever the hell he was. His old First Security Officer had been trustworthy and reliable in any situation, and Flynn found it all too easy to resist having to change his worldview to one where Draco couldn't be trusted at all.
Distrusted, however, he would have to be, until Arkwright could corner him and finally wring out an explanation for any number of the other wierdnesses they'd encountered recently. He'd have done so a week ago when word first reached him that the twitchy demolitions expert calling himself Clyde Black was indeed Draco, as he'd suspected for a while, if Draco weren't so adept at avoiding him. From what a few scattered crew members had recounted, Draco's skill at dodging any encounters with him bordered on extrasensory.
They were now only in each other's presence on away missions, which wasn't the ideal forum for an interrogation, but eventually Arkwright was thinking he'd have no other choice but to pull him aside on some mission and force answers out of him in stern tones of voice. His apparent importance to the wierd cultists was a likely threat that needed a better explanation, as was their technology. Their possible connection to the underground burial monument they'd found, and their possible theft of something from it, was wierder still. Arkwright was willing to write it off as a large and bizarre misunderstanding, except for Draco's decidedly odd behavior as they explored the tomb.
He'd been slow to catch up as they left, and Flynn kicked himself for not having the presence of mind to check up on it, but at the time he was more concerned with not letting anything eat his face as long as he was still standing on Ceylon Kappa.
All in all, his list of important questions without answers was unacceptably higher than his preferred limit, which was zero, and it gave him the terrible premonition that lots of things would be blown up before the questions were laid to rest.
Such events, however, couldn't be set in motion for a few days. From what Him had told them they were to be received as conquering heroes upon their return, and a turnout of what ships were at the base for a military parade as the Liberator hobbled back to port was in order. It would doubtless be followed by at least one stuffy and uncomfortable dinner with important people, to reward them for work well done. Him had hinted, with a twinkle in his eye to Arkwright in particular, that other accolades could be store for them.
If Auriga gets the Commodore pins he's always wanted, Arkwright thought, I might find myself in this seat a lot more often in the future.
He put that distracting thought away for the time being, tantalizing though that it was. The questions still pressed on his mind.
As it turned out, they were right about the holes.
Arkwright walked down a crudely lit circular tunnel bored through one of the many tall and pointy rocks on Thila. The base had grown quickly, and bustled with activity, Rebels of every make and species filling chambers and hallways with activity that reminded Flynn very much of an ant colony.
Sheetmetal tossed on the ground made for a temporary floor, and it bowed ever-so-slightly as Arkwright clanked across it in full dress. He wished he'd taken the time to try and jam himself into his dress uniform a bit earlier, since that might have given him time to acquire one with a little more room about the waist.
Clanking to a halt at his apparent destination, from the directions he'd been given at least, he futher wished he knew why the ship's command staff had all been called to separate sessions with Commodore Wolfe, rather than as a group. However, this at least avoided the awkwardness of Wolfe noting their detachment leader's notable absence.
"Commander Arkwright?" the young soldier at the door asked stiffly.
"Yes."
"You're expected - go right in, sir."
"Thank you."
He felt a fervent twinge in his stomach as he stepped into the chamber on the other side. He hadn't seen or heard from Auriga after his meeting, so nothing was yet confirmed for him about what he was prepared to receive. Was Wolfe really about to make him a Captain? He felt the gentle, weighty tug of the medal he'd always regarded as a 'consolation prize' on his uniform fabric.
Wolfe was standing at the head of a sizeable auditorium room lit by floodlights mounted on the chamber ceiling. Flynn looked up at them as he descended the long aisle between rows of benches chiseled from the rough brown rock, and noticed that whoever had set up this room had done a very good job. The four Alliance banners were hung in a manner that almost kept him from noticing that the room was just an amorphous cave with a new floor, and not a rectilinear meeting hall as it appeared.
The benches were empty, and as Arkwright approached the platform at the head of the chamber he noticed only two other men in the room - a tall senior officer and a Rodian as big as Flynn was, standing behind Wolfe in the shadows.
Then he noticed that Wolfe was wearing his trademark scowl.
Good, Flynn thought, scowl all you want. You know the Liberator is the best ship in your fleet, and a little recognition from you is long overdue. Knowing that Wolfe didn't want to give it to him only made Arkwright happier inside.
He strode to a halt and snapped to proud attention, Wolfe two steps up the platform in front of him. "Commodore."
"Commander," Wolfe grumbled, hands folded behind his back.
High Command was officially out of excuses for disliking him, it seemed.
"Words cannot express," he began promisingly, "how much I regret Captain Reshak's decision to promote you to executive officer of his ship."
That didn't sound right.
"I've gone over the logs and reports of Auriga's march that were taken off the Liberator shortly before we mothballed her in the Albion system. The efforts of your crew and their results were commendable, up to the point where you were forced to take command. After that I can hardly blame them."
One hand appeared from behind his back with a datapad. "As soon as Auriga was incapacitated and handed command of the ship over to you, the ship was promptly caught in an Imperial trap, which cost you the lives of 21 marines and one pilot, and discovered by the Imperial fleet after two straight months of undetected operation in the Core and Corellian sectors. After exhausting the losing strategy of simply running from system to system, which cost you the lives of two more pilots, twelve more marines, and fifty-three naval and medical crew including seven officers, you ignored all warning from your Chief Engineer with the result of overloading your reactor in some damn fool heroic display I had the displeasure of witnessing."
Wolfe paused his tirade long enough for Flynn to open his mouth and breath in.
"I should add that I put my own ship and crew at great risk to save your lives once we'd caught word of your impending capture from the Imperial networks, only to arrive in time to find you nearly destroying the Liberator by treating it like a damned toy!"
Flynn had kept the breath, and spoke quickly before Wolfe could turn any more red. "Perhaps if you'd shown up sooner we wouldn't have had to run so hard."
Wolfe's face quivered briefly as if it were about to explode from sheer anger, and Flynn instantly regretted speaking.
"Perhaps if you posessed an ounce more capacity in that skull than any wet-behind-the-ears Ensign, your ship would have lasted longer than seven days!" he howled. "You are extremely lucky that ... certain other members of High Command see fit to leave you as XO, because if it were up to me I would bust you down so far Lieutenant Darktrayn would give you orders and not suggestions!"
Flynn's mouth was crunched into a tiny slit, hiding gritted teeth.
"It is my decision that you are therefore to be stripped of all decoration exceeding tour of duty bars, in the presence of Captain Resvar as witness. Have you anything to say?"
Flynn burned with anger as the Rodian stepped forward and began roughly removing the Seal of Isis from his uniform.
"Plenty," he said, "depends how many more shinies you want to pluck off."
"I see," Wolfe said simply. "I have given Captain Auriga your new orders. The Liberator will stay here at Thila for three weeks while we fix the mess you made of her. A small detail of her crew will be dispatched aboard the corvette for light raids of Imperial infrastructure in the Colony sectors in the meantime."
"Have you even looked," Arkwright asked, "at my reports on the shady organization interfering with our -"
"As a matter of fact I have, Commander, and I was not amused. They are not a threat to Alliance fleet operations and are therefore neither my concern, nor yours. I trust you won't give me the satisfaction of disobeying orders."
Flynn said nothing.
"You always knew your father couldn't get you everywhere in the Fleet," Wolfe said. "Now you get to see how it is without him."
It took an incredible force of willpower for Flynn to continue saying nothing.
"That's it. Dismissed."
He stalked out in silence as the Rodian handed Wolfe his medal behind him.