“Teyr is—um, that way,” Luke said, pointing up and to the right.
“More or less,” she said, and reached out to raise his arm slightly.
“That’s closer. I was planning on a double jump, in case anyone is thinking about following US.”
Luke nodded his approval. “That’s one of the worlds the children were sent to.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Didn’t you say you’d already been there, looking for them?”
“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.