Shield of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “Just because we choose to live simply doesn’t mean that we’re without resources,” Akanah said. “To be poor is to be powerless. The Fallanassi are as old as the Jedi, and we’ve hidden and husbanded our resources well.”

  “Then why were you left on Carratos?” Luke asked. “I can see that they might not want to risk bringing their ship there to pick you up, but why couldn’t passage be bought for you?”

  “You forget that Carratos fell under Imperial control soon after I was sent there,” she said. “There were head taxes that had to be paid at the port by anyone leaving—high taxes, to discourage people from fleeing the planet.”

  “Then why couldn’t the tax have been sent for you?”

  “I don’t know that it wasn’t,” said Akanah, her eyes misting. “I don’t know that Talsava didn’t keep it for herself.”

  “Your foster mother?”

  “My custodian. She was never more than that.” She tried a smile, which fell short of conviction. “There was a morning, you see, when I woke up and she was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  Bitterness owned her voice. “Her clothes, her little precious geegaws, every personal possession small enough to pack in a bag and carry away in the night, all gone. I never saw her again. She abandoned me there to fend for myself—at fifteen, in a port city that made your Mos Eisley look quiet and genteel.”

  The unvoiced suspicions behind Luke’s questions left him feeling ashamed.

  “We’ll find them,” he said firmly as the Rift Skyway appeared ahead of them. “When we get back to Mud Sloth, I can access the New Republic Ship Registry’s traffic logs. We should be able to find out where Star Morning has been, and when. We can surely find out where she is now.”

  “That isn’t necessary,” Akanah said. Reaching out, she laid her hand across his, as though she were trying to reassure him. “Atzerri. We need to go to Atzerri now. And I know that it may not, but I pray this ends there.”

  Chapter Seven

  For hours after Mud Sloth lifted from Teyr, Luke sat at the pilot’s station studying the traffic leaving the planet behind them. The traveler’s aid card helpfully informed him that there was no direct regular service between Teyr and distant Atzerri by any commercial spaceline. So Luke concentrated on the private vessels, monitoring and logging the ID profiles their transponders sent as they passed the inner Flight Control buoys:

  Star Hummer, RN80-440330, owner Joa Pqis, registry Vobos, Tammuz-an—

  Rode to Ruin, RN27-382992, owner Fracca, registry Orron III—

  Amanda’s Toy II, RN18-950319, owner Unlimited Horizons Inc., registry Kalla—

  “What are you looking for?” Akanah finally asked him. “No one bothered us on Teyr. No one saw me in the commonal.”

  “I’m just being cautious,” Luke said, keeping his eyes on the code reader. “Just because no one confronted us doesn’t mean no one was aware of us.”

  “Aware of us—what does that mean?”

  “Whoever those men on Lucazec were working for, they wanted what you know as much as they wanted you. I don’t know what they think they can do with you, but the Fallanassi are the prize.”

  “I would never betray the circle. And there is nothing anyone could do to compel me. Not even you.”

  “But you’re taking me there,” Luke said. “And if they simply keep touch with us, you’ll take them there, too. All they have to do is follow us, and be patient. That’s what I’m looking for—someone following. If any of these ships leaving Teyr now show up at—show up later, we’ll have to do something about it.”

  “The circle can protect itself.”

  “I’m sure the Jedi thought they were safe, too,” said Luke. “But they were wrong.”

  “The Jedi faced a terrible enemy, and the betrayal of one of their own,” said Akanah.

  “There are enough enemies left,” Luke said. “All the assorted dictators and warlords in the Imperial sectors—including Admiral Daala, who isn’t likely to have found a new hobby. Then there are the hundreds of thousands of inhabited systems in the Borderlands, the Corporate Sector—”

  “And there is the New Republic.”

  Luke turned toward her. “What?”

  “The New Republic stands now where the Empire stood—as the single great power in the galaxy,” said Akanah. “They have the most to lose if their power is successfully challenged. And their power is the greatest threat to those who choose to stand apart, who take a different view.”

  “You can’t think that the New Republic is hunting the Fallanassi.”

  “Why not?” she asked calmly. “It was you who decided those men on Lucazec were Imperial agents. How do you know they weren’t from Coruscant? How do you know they weren’t from your NRI?”

  The suggestion was absurd, laughable—but it silenced Luke all the same. He looked back to the controls, trying to sort out his thoughts. For some reason, he couldn’t now remember why it was he had been so sure the men at Ialtra were Imperial sleepers. And Akanah’s suggestion offered an explanation for something he had no explanation for—the Elomin were so principled that the prospect of one’s working for an Imperial spy network was beyond imagining. But the NRI—

  Out of Touch, RN40-844033, owner Tok-Foge Pokresh, registry Bothawui—

  “They would have to have been tipped off by me,” Luke said finally, then shook his head. “But I only spoke to Leia and Han that night. And Leia didn’t even give me a chance to tell her what little I knew. No one knew I was going away, or why.”

  Akanah touched his shoulder. “Please don’t think that I suspected you,” she said. “The men at Ialtra were not expecting you—and if the NRI could count on your assistance, they would have no need to shadow us.”

  “I don’t know that anyone is shadowing us,” Luke said. “I just want to make sure that no one tries—and if they do try, that they don’t succeed. We can jump out of here at any time if we need to. And before we make our final jump, I’m going to go over this ship from bow to baffles and make sure we didn’t acquire a tracking device while we were parked on Teyr.”

  “I trust you to take the right precautions. I know you have as much at stake as I do,” she said. “Do you mind if I go lie down? I did not sleep well on the Skyrail.”

  Adela, RN32-000439, owner Refka Trell, registry Elom—

  “Sure,” Luke said. “Go ahead. I’ll call you if anything unexpected shows up.”

  Akanah squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, and started to turn away.

  “Akanah?”

  “What?”

  “How much do you know about our destination?”

  “I know it’s a Free Trader world—not much more.”

  “I didn’t even know that much,” Luke said, turning toward her. “I’d like to query the Ministry of State atlas on Coruscant and request a diplomatic backgrounder.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I think so,” Luke said. “I’d be using a point-to-point channel, not broadcasting, so no one else will be listening in.”

  “But they’ll be listening in on Coruscant,” Akanah said. “You might as well be announcing where we’re going.”

  Luke shook his head. “I know what you just said, but I can’t treat those people as the enemy,” he said. “But I could make a series of queries, so the one for Atzerri is just one in the crowd. Would that make you feel any more at ease?”

  “Do what you think is necessary,” she said with a small, quick smile. “There are risks in ignorance, too. Balance them against the risks of showing our hand. If you think the weight falls in favor of making the query, and you’ll wait until we’ve jumped out from Teyr to do so, I won’t question your decision.”

  Shortly after the reorganization of the government, Nanaod Engh had given Luke keys to most of the real treasures of the New Republic—the central data libraries maintained by various branches of the General Ministry. Thanks to Admiral Ackbar’s intervention, Luke also carried the highest-grade secu
rity clearance held by any civilian.

  Between the two, Luke had—potentially—a great deal of information at his fingertips. But the access he had been granted was a courtesy, not a necessity. Luke’s most urgent curiosities were in areas of little interest to bureaucracies, and he had never found reason to make much use of the favors extended him.

  But he found himself with reason now.

  So far, it seemed, his contribution to the expedition had been modest to the point of invisibility. Luke was completely dependent on Akanah for information, and it was difficult to see what she needed from him. Companionship, perhaps, and a bit of piloting, but not protection—she was emphatic about that.

  She had offered him a gift of great value by coming to him, and had gone to some lengths to do so. Luke felt himself not only uncomfortably dependent, but also involuntarily in her debt. And he had little to offer to right the balance.

  But the lead on Star Morning gave him an opportunity to make himself more useful.

  If asked, he would have said that suspicion had no part in his decision to contact the New Republic Ship Registry under his military access code. Even though Akanah had plucked their next destination from the Current, a great deal of time had passed since the Fallanassi had left Kell Plath. The prospect of another Griann causing them to lose the trail was reason enough to follow up on his discovery.

  Still, Luke waited until Akanah was asleep to open the hypercomm link, and his reason for doing that wasn’t entirely clear to him. True, he didn’t want her to think he was checking up on her. But Luke was also aware that he didn’t want to think he was checking up on her. He had to be able to trust her. Everything he had done, his very presence, was predicated on that.

  “Ship Registry.”

  The Adventurer had no secure-entry touchpad, so Luke had to offer the voice codes.

  “Authorization verified,” said the registry clerk. “Go ahead.”

  “I need a report pulled on a private vessel.”

  “Yes, sir. Quick or comprehensive?”

  “The difference is—”

  “The comprehensive includes everything that’s in all of the linked databases—taxes, transfers, ports of call, whatever we have. On anything but a brand-new ship, that can be quite a bit.”

  “Comprehensive,” Luke said. “The ship is the Star Morning, Teyr registry, owned by—”

  “I have it on my display, sir,” said the clerk. “It takes up to an hour to pull a comprehensive. Would you like it forwarded to your current hypercomm identifier when it’s ready, or held here for your next call?”

  “Forward it,” Luke said.

  “Very well, sir. Is there anything else?”

  Luke looked back over his shoulder and extended his senses to confirm that Akanah was asleep. “Yes,” he said on impulse. “I’d like a comprehensive pulled on a skiff, a Verpine Adventurer, registration number NR80-109399, no name currently profiled, owner and home port unknown—”

  “I have it, sir. Would you like this report forwarded with the other?”

  “No,” Luke said. “Hold this one for me.”

  “Very well, sir. Is there anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Clear to close link.”

  “Closing link,” Luke said, and reached for the controls.

  Then he wondered why what he had just done made him feel so unclean.

  Akanah’s nap lasted more than three hours, but the report from Ship Registry had not yet arrived when she stirred. She said nothing to him when she emerged from the sleeper, disappearing for several minutes behind the privacy screen of the refresher unit.

  When she emerged, she had forgone the more flowing, multilayered garment she had worn on the planet for the simple, close-fitting, long-sleeved one-piece she had worn for much of the jump to Teyr. When she joined him at the flight controls, he caught the faint scent of the freshener cabinet on her clothing. “So, have we a shadow?”

  “None clumsy enough to give itself away yet, anyway,” Luke said. “There are eighteen ships—make that nineteen, now—in this outbound corridor. In theory they’re all heading for the Foless Crossroads, or for Darepp.”

  “In theory?”

  “Under free-navigation rules, they don’t have to file flight plans and announce their destinations—they just have to announce themselves as they leave here and when they get there.”

  Akanah leaned forward to study the navigational display. “How did you make it display those identifiers? When I was coming into Coruscant, all it showed me were those green bars—it didn’t tell me what they were.”

  “The display options are on the command menus. But the basic display really tells you all you need, most of the time,” Luke said. “A green bar means a ship that is a safe distance away on a noncollision course. Yellow bar, a ship that’s closer than the standard spacing, but not on a collision course. Red bar, something on an intercept course. Same rules for rocks, except the symbol is a circle—like that one.”

  “So any red symbols mean danger.”

  Luke nodded. “I’m sure this ship has some fairly obnoxious alarms, and collision-avoidance protocols.”

  “What if someone fired a missile at us? Would it show up as a red bar?”

  Frowning, Luke considered. “Probably as a circle, as though it were a fast-moving asteroidal body. Missiles don’t send out recognition signals, and skiffs don’t have threat-recognition modules in their scanners.”

  “I have never been in a warship,” Akanah said. “Tell me—how does this compare with the cockpit of a military spacecraft?”

  “Oh—worlds apart,” Luke said.

  “How, exactly?”

  “Well—in a military ship, the automated systems are there to support the pilot—most everything that matters is done with your hands on the controls,” Luke said. “A ship like this is designed to have the expert systems take over as much as possible, to protect casual pilots from making mistakes.”

  “So there are more controls in a fighter.”

  “A lot more. Heck, a combat flight stick has almost as many controls on it as there are on this whole panel,” Luke said. “Most of what this ship will let you do by yourself is buried three levels deep in the command option displays.”

  She nodded. “Tell me, if we were pursued by a warship, or intercepted by a fighter—how much could you do?”

  Luke ran his fingers back through his hair. “Less than you’re probably hoping,” he said. “It’s not a test I’d look forward to.”

  “Not even with your reputation as a pilot?”

  “She’s underpowered for realspace, which means we can’t run away. She doesn’t have true vector thrusters, which means she’s not very agile, despite her low mass. The nav shields would pop on the first hit, and the hull would breach on the second—unless the second hit was from an ion cannon.”

  “What would happen then?”

  “All the systems would sizzle, and we’d be dead in space.” He showed a rueful smile. “Piloting ability doesn’t count for much then. And reputations count for even less.”

  “So our only hope would be to jump to hyperspace before we were hit.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Just then a sweet-toned signal sounded from the console, startling Akanah. “What is it? What’s that?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Luke said as he leaned forward. “Incoming hypercomm file transmission. A report on the Star Morning. I requested it from Coruscant while you were napping.”

  Her eyes flashed angrily. “I asked you to wait until we’d jumped.”

  “You also asked me to use my judgment,” Luke said. “We can’t do a quick jump-and-go if we’re sitting out there somewhere waiting for a report to come in. And I thought this report might have information we’d want in hand before we commit to Atzerri.”

  “We’re already committed to Atzerri,” she said stiffly. “That’s where the scribing at Teyr told us to go.”

  “I want to loo
k at the report,” Luke said. “The way I see it, the more information we have, the better.”

  “All it can do is mislead us,” Akanah said. “I told you that we leave no trail an outsider can follow.”

  Another, low-pitched tone signaled the end of the transmission.

  “Then I’ll count on you to keep me from getting lost,” Luke said, bringing up the secondary display panel. “You can look at this or not—but I have to. I never have liked making decisions in the dark.”

  Luke had anticipated two possible reasons for the delay in the report’s arrival—and either a very thin or a very thick file, depending on which was to blame.

  It was a thick file, almost overwhelming with detail. Star Morning, a.k.a. Mandarin, a.k.a. Pilgrim, a.k.a. Congere, had had a long history before passing into the hands of the Fallanassi and a busy history since.

  Built by the Koqus Design Syndic as a variation on an even older Republic Seinar design, it was classed as a short-route liner despite the sleeper configuration of its fifty-eight-passenger main cabin. At forty-four meters long and twenty-eight meters across the spade-shaped twin-deck main hull, it was readily capable of planetary landings at even the smallest spaceports—and a good pilot might even try a dirt-field touchdown and get away with it. The hyperdrive was a rather ordinary Block I, with dual fusion generators. But the ion engines, a pair of SoroSuub Viper 40s, would have been adequate for a ship with a keel mass half again greater.

  With legs like that, she could give the Falcon a run for her money, Luke thought.

  More interesting than the specifications, though, was confirmation that Star Morning was still the property of Kell Plath Corporation of Teyr, and had been so continuously for the past fifteen years. The port call list for that period ran to more than two hundred entries, with no single port appearing more than three times, and most entries unique.

  You’ve tramped around, Luke mused as he skimmed the list. I haven’t even heard of most of these places.

  The list was spotty, obviously incomplete. There were many stretches of a month or longer—well more than the ship’s rated stand-alone endurance—with no port calls listed. But a footnote explained that early records from some Alliance worlds were unavailable, records from worlds heavily involved in the war were incomplete or had been destroyed, and some recently acquired records hadn’t yet been processed.