"No. I said I couldn't find them there," Akanah corrected.
"I was never able to make the journey. I made inquiries, from
Carratos, when I could." She looked up then. "But the Fallanassi
change names, styles of dress, habits of speech, even the way we groom
our hair, to blend in, to disappear. Unless I can be face-to-face with
them, exchange the signs, let them feel me beside them in the Current,
they would not reveal themselves, out of fear that I was not what I
seemed to be."
"You think they're still hiding?"
"After what just happened, can you not say we have reason?"
Luke nodded. "I think we need to talk about what just happened."
"So do I," she said. Her eyes flashed darkly. "But I would prefer not
to have that conversation with an Imperial interrogation team. Can't
you do something so we can jump out of here sooner rather than
later?"
"I don't really want to. I think so far, we've managed to slip out of
here without attracting any special attention," Luke said. "But if we
suddenly blast out of a
Flight Control Zone, especially in this bucket, we're going to go right
to the top of the alert list. And when we arrive at Teyr, they're
going to insist on talking to us.
They might even insist on inspecting our ship and pulling its
license."
"I had not thought of that," she said, frowning.
"But what if you're wrong, and six hours from now an Imperial warship
comes out from behind Lucazec, or drops out of hyperspace in front of
us? Wouldn't you like--" "To be able to show them our tail? Yes." He
squeezed his eyes shut, as though trying to visualize something without
distractions. "Maybe there's a way to do this without getting near the
motivator. What do you have for tools?"
"I--I'm not sure. I thought you would use the Force somehow," she
said. "Bend a contact, or break a trace--" Luke shook his head. "You
have to know exactly how something's put together before you try that
sort of trick' and I've never even had my hands inside the access panel
of an Adventurer."
"You're destroying all my illusions about the all-powerful Jedi,"
Akanah said with a hint of a smile.
Laughing lightly, Luke climbed out of the pilot's seat. "The truth is
that, most of the time, the Force is no substitute for a tech droid or
a tool kit. And I've never known a Jedi who wanted it to get around
that he could fix broken appliances."
Her smile broadened at that.
"Did you get a key to the equipment bay when you bought this thing?"
"No," she said, suddenly worried.
"It's all right," Luke said, touching her shoulder as he slipped by
her. "I can handle an idiot lock without a tool kit. Stay here and
keep an eye on the nav scanner.
I'll see what I can do about giving us another option."
Luke sat on the edge of the open drive compartment, his feet dangling
inside, just above the fuel pumps for the realspace thrusters. It felt
both strange and pleasantly familiar to be tinkering again. It took
him back to the hot breezes of Tatooine, to surprisingly fond memories
of his years in the Lars household.
"Boys and machines," he could hear his Aunt Beru saying with
bemusement. "What is it about boys and machines?"
His life then had consisted of little more than tinkering.
The greater part by far of his chores on the farm had been trying to
keep Uncle Owen's motley collection of secondhand droids and
second-quality moisture v aporators running. After chores, Luke had
invested his free time in coaxing a little more speed from the XP-30
landspeeder he had rescued from the Anchorhead salvage yard, and
tweaking the performance of the family's T-16 skyhopper for those races
in Beggar's Canyon.
Teenage impatience had made him view Tatooine as a wasteland and the
farm as a prison. But that world looked better seen through a filter
of time and experience.
And he realized belatedly just how much he had enjoyed those hours with
his head and hands inside an engine service panel, in a simple,
knowable world of which he was the master.
"You look happy," said Akanah softly. She had returned from the flight
deck without his noticing.
"I am," he said, twisting and looking up at her. It was a surprising
discovery.
She nodded toward the drive. "Do you think you'll be able to fix it?
Or break it--I suppose that's more descriptive."
"It's already done," he said. "It wasn't that hard once I got into
it.
The lockout doesn't go into the drive at all--it's here at the nav
controller, see? If it doesn't get a signal from the FCZ interface,
the controller can't enable the drive--" He saw her expression and
stopped himself.
"Anyway, I'm just studying up for the next problem now."
"Already done? That's wonderful!" she said. "I'm terribly
impressed--I've never had so much as a single home tech course, and
when I look down in there, I have no idea what I'm seeing. You could
probably tell," she added.
"Well--we should test it before we need it. I need to know if any of
this was important," he said, letting a small handful of metal plugs,
clips, and wires cascade to the deckplate.
When he saw the sudden alarm in her eyes, he laughed and quickly said,
"Just kidding. About the parts, anyway. We ought to test it,
though.
I was thinking we could jump out just a little early. Even fifteen
minutes would be enough."
"What about the alert list?"
"The boundary of the FCZ isn't a hard line--there's a yellow zone. We
can jump out of there without attracting any attention, but it'll still
be a fair test. I'm sure it'll work, though."
"So you do fix appliances," she said mischievously, sitting on the deck
in a spill of skirt. "What were you thinking about when I came in?"
"Home," he said simply.
She settled back against a wiring panel. "It's funny--I spent most of
my life on Carratos, but 'home' always means Lucazec to me."
"Tatooine," Luke supplied. "Which I always said was a better place to
be from than to be. I'm not so sure about that now."
"Almost all of my memories from Ialtra are good ones," Akanah said. "I
suppose tha t's one reason what you did there upsets me so much. Now I
have that memory, too, and I would rather not."
"At least you're here to have it," Luke said. "I'm sorry, but I'm not
going to feel guilty about saving you."
"What about killing those two men--do you feel anything about that?"
"One of them killed himself," Luke said, pulling his feet up out of the
hatchway and turning to face her.
"Commander Paffen."
Luke nodded. "He said something about poison, remember?
I didn't want him dead. I was trying to question him."
"And the other? The one you eviscerated with your lightsaber? Were
you trying to kill him?"
"He had a personal shield," Luke said. "It takes a lot of force to get
through one--and when your blade does pop through, it's hard to stop it
before it does a lot of damage."
"I understand. Were you trying to kill him?"
"Didn't I just answer that?"
"I don't think so," she said with a shy smile.
Luke eased himself back against the bulkhead on his side of the
compartment. "I guess the truth is that, at the moment, I wasn't
particularly worried about whether I killed him or not."
She shook her head slowly. "That is so hard for me to understand how
you could not be aware of the power in your hands."
"The power that mattered to me was the power to protect you from them,"
said Luke. "You told me afterward that you weren't in any danger, but
that wasn't how it looked."
"Yes," said Akanah. "I understand that. But, Luke, there's something
I must ask of you that you never again kill to save me. I am glad that
you cared about me, but it makes my heart sick, my spirit heavy, to
have the screams and the blood of those men in my memory, in the ruins
of a place that I loved."
"I don't know if I can make you that promise," Luke said. "I have my
own conscience to satisfy. And sometimes it demands that I fight for
my friends."
"That you kill for your friends."
"When it's necessary."
"Is that how you see the Jedi? Are they ready to kill to protect their
friends on Coruscant?"
Luke's gaze narrowed. "What are you trying to say?"
"I'm trying to understand," Akanah said. "I want to know what your
Jedi mean to the New Republic, and what the New Republic means to
you.
Are you training the Jedi Knights to be Coruscant's warrior elite?
What are you willing to do when the commander-in-chief calls on you?"
"That isn't the way it works," Luke said. "Leia doesn't give orders to
the Jedi. She can ask us for help--one of us or all of us--but we can
refuse. And sometimes do."
"But the Republic supports your academy. You had a military spacecraft
in your hangar. Can you afford to offend them?"
"The Jedi aren't mercenaries," Luke said, an edge in his voice. "When
we fight, it's an individual choice--and it's in defense of the
principles of our creed. Coruscant supports the academy because the
memory of the Jedi is a powerful force for stability. Our presence is
what they want most."
"That's the part of the tradition that concerns me," said Akanah. "The
guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic for a thousand
generations, or so the legend has it. But if you cannot have both
peace and justice, which will you choose?"
"Which would you have me choose?"
"I would choose for you to keep your great gifts beyond the reach of
politicians and generals," she said.
"For you to owe them no debts, and take on no causes--" "I've been
careful to protect our independence," said Luke. "Despite
appearances."
"You aren't sworn to uphold the government on Coruscant? You've taken
no oaths of allegiance?"
"No. Only those few who've chosen to serve in the Fleet, or the
ministries. It's not forbidden. But it's not common. The Jedi aren't
the Republican Guard. And never will be."
"That's something," she said. "But how much better it would be if the
most powerful symbol of your order--the very emblem of that long
traditionmwas something other than a deadly weapon."
"We didn't ask for that," Luke said. "It just happened.
Old weapons have a cachet."
"All weapons have a cachet," said Akanah with sorrow.
"Too many men want to either conquer the world or change the world.
The second is nearly as dangerous to living things as the first. Can
you tell me why is it not enough to find a safe and comfortable place
in the world, or--at worst--to find shelter from the world?"
Luke frowned. "No. I can't." He nodded toward the work bay. "But I
can tell you how to disable the FCZ lockout on a Verpine Adventurer.
Which I couldn't have told you this morning. Maybe tomorrow I'll
figure out something else."
She smiled ruefully at him. "I guess that will have to do for now."
In the end, three days of watching the nav scanner like a nervous mouse
watching for the predator in the dark yielded only a handful of wholly
innocent contacts.
No warships appeared, and the few private and commercial craft that
left Lucazec after them or passed the Mud Sloth inbound took no
apparent interest in the little skiff.
"Whoever Commander Paffen was reporting to must have been far enough
away that his controller simply wrote him off," Luke said, leaning
forward over the controls.
"But they'll be looking for us everywhere now," said Akanah from
behind. "For you in particular."
"Looking and finding are two different things. I've had to make a
habit of disguising myself in public just to be left alone, to go where
I please without being gawked at," Luke said.
"How do you do that?"
"Oh--I make myself look older where youth is honored, and younger where
age is honored, female where males are the ones who strut, male where
they aren't. It's the nearest thing there is to being invisible, being
unattractive."
"Show me."
Akanah saw his shoulders rise and fall, heard the deep breath that came
out almost as a sigh. When he turned his couch toward her and looked
up, she saw a sixty-year-old face that reminded her at once of everyone
and no one. The eyes were unguarded but vacant, the expression open
but bland. There was nothing distinctive about his features, nothing
at all to remember him by or for.
"Very good," she said. "May I try something?"
He gestured silently with open hands.
Drawing a shuddery breath, Akanah closed her eyes and moved the focus
of her senses behind where Luke seemed to be, groping for an anchor in
what was real.
When she found it, she opened her eyes again and blew away the illusion
with the soft breath of disbelief.
"There you are," she said, and smiled.
"Very good," he echoed. "It takes a strong mind to penetrate the
illusion."
"I wanted to make certain I could find you, if we had to separate on
Teyr. Do you change your voice, too?"
"I can. It requires more concentration, because the ear isn't as
easily fooled. I'm not sure why that is, but it is--with humans,
anyway. Speaking of Teyr--we're in the yellow zone."
"Is it safe to jump out now?"
"I don't see why not," said Luke. "And we'll pick up almost an hour,
jumping from this point. Assuming that I didn't break more than I
meant to back there."
She smiled. "Let's find out."
"Let's," he said, turning back to the controls. "Do you still want to
make a misdirection jump, or shall we go directly to Teyr?"
"I still want to," Akanah said, letting one hand settle lightly on his
shoulder. "Someone could still be watching us from Lucazec. But a
short one, please. I want to get to Teyr as soon as we possibly can.
I just know that we'll find something more than ruins there."
Her touch caught Luke momentarily unguarded and made
her mind open to
his as well. He felt the barely restrained urgency of her need for
reunion, the brightness of her hope, the depth of her anxious fears.
"Well, better strap in, then--just in case," he said.
The jump-out was reassuringly uneventful. By the time the Mud Sloth
would have been released from the FCZ, it had already completed its
first jump and turned to the heading for Teyr.
Then there was time to think, in the quiet, undisturbed hours while
Akanah slept and nothing could touch them. Luke thought most about
Ialtra, returning to his mother's dusty, crumbling cottage, searching
his sense-memories again for her presence.
Luke knew he would have to return there when it was safe to do so, and
wondered if something should be done to preserve the site. He wondered
how the authorities on Lucazec would react if he asked them to protect
his mother's onetime home. If the burned-out ruin of the Lars farm
could be rebuilt as a historic monument, perhaps the ruins of Ialtra
Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies Page 12
