[Black Fleet Crisis(89)

“There’s one more thing, ” she said. “You need to go inside your mother’s cottage. “

He shook his head sadly. “There isn’t time. “

“Take the time, ” she said. “I’ll hide us, so you can stay open while you’re there. “

“Akanah-“

“A few minutes won’t matter to the outcome, ” she said. “The nearest friend of the men you killed is either very close already, or a very long way away. But those few minutes may matter a great deal to you. GO. “

Luke sat in the middle of what had been the floor of the ruined cottage and whispered his mother’s name, as if to ask the broken stones whether they remembered it.

“Nashira, ” he said, but the sound fled into the dark corners and vanished.

“Nashira, ” he called, but the echoes escaped out through the cracks and fissures in the walls.

He brushed the litter aside and pressed the palms of his hands to the floor, drew the dusty air deep into his nostrils and tasted it on his tongue, slowly scanned all around him for anything that might have belonged to the last person to make a home of that space.

“Mother, ” he said, and the reality of the moment welled up inside him.

It was a point of contact, after so many years without one. She had been where he was NOW.

It did not matter that he could not find her touch lingering on the rude substance surrounding him. The knowledge alone was enough. Where before he could only pretend, now he could imagine, and imagination overleaped the time that separated them.

She had slept here, laughed here, retreated here for sanctuary, cried and sought peace here, perhaps loved and grieved here, moving through this space as real as life and as human as the rush of longing Luke felt in that moment.

He could not see her face or hear her voice, but, even so, she was more real to him in that moment than she had ever been before.

It was not enough, not by half, but it was a beginning.

The village was in shadow by the time Luke emerged from Nashira’s cottage and rejoined Akanah. The sun had dropped below the hills, and the breeze had a softer edge.

“How long was I in there? “

“It doesn’t matter, ” she said. “Are you ready? “

Luke nodded. “You were right, ” he said. “Thank you. “

“I knew it was important. But we’d better hurry now. It’ll be dark before we reach the airfield. “

Neither had anything more to say as they returned to the cart and climbed atop it for the return trip. Luke checked it closely for any sign of a tracker or tampering, then raised the vehicle a meter off the ground.

“No bumps this trip, ” he said with a small smile. “But I’d still hold on. What do they call those carrion birds here? “

“Nackhawns. “

“That’s what we are, then. A big, ugly nack hawn. ” Luke swung the cart in a wide circle over the hills enclosing Ialtra, scanning for any other vehicles.

He found none, and wondered how the Imperial agents had followed them there.

But Luke shook off the thought, and sent the cart arrowing toward the southeast and the airfield. Their passage was silent but for the air tearing past the contours of a vehicle that was never meant to fly.

Not long after, back in the ruins of the village of Ialtra, the bodies of two dead Imperial agents merged with the shadows that had enveloped them, and vanished as though they had never been.





Chapter 13


Near a brown dwarf star on the edge of the Koornacht Cluster, the New Republic astrographic probeAstrolabe dropped out of hyperspace.

The broad flat underside of the small unarmed ship was heavily studded with scanners. Four scan platforms carried everything from stereo imagers and neutron dippers to quark detectors and wide-band photometricons. Many of the instruments were duplicated as a hedge against malfunctions. The combination of the thin, wide profile and the scanner configuration had given the Astrogator-class probes the nickname “flatfish, ” which in turn had given rise to an unofficial logo popular with the crews.

“Your tour operators, the Astrographic Survey Institute, welcome you to Doornik-1142, ” the pilot called back to his survey team. “Be sure to take in all the recreational opportunities of this undiscovered gem of Farlax Sector-look out the viewports! Then later, you can look out the viewports! And whatever else you do during your nineteen-hour stay, make sure you take the time to look out the viewports! “

It was an old, familiar joke, and drew no more than ritual chuckles from the survey team. ASI vessels were the restless, peripatetic travelers of the stars—Professional tourists on breathless sightseeing expeditions through the galaxy. Capable of exceptionally high speeds in realspace, a flatfish rarely took more than a day to complete a mapping and survey pass across the top of an entire star system.