[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(38)

“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 could be rescued from a hostile neglect by the Skywalker name. Perhaps the reputation of those who had been driven from there could even be rehabilitated.

But that would have to come later, when there were fewer secrets to protect. For now, Luke would have to count on the shame of the Fallanassi to shield Ialtra from being further disturbed.

Let the nackhawns take the bodies, he thought, and the shadows keep Ialtra undisturbed. Let her memories sleep until I can return to awaken them.

When Luke heard Akanah moving in the bunk behind him, he planted a bare foot on the control console and pushed off, spinning the couch around to face aft.

“Hey—are you awake?”

“It’s hard to sleep,” she said, invisible behind the privacy curtain.

“Perhaps we should change places.”

Luke looked back over his shoulder at the displays.

“It’s only two hours to the end of the jump,” he said.

“And there’ll be plenty of chance for me to rest up during the crawl to Teyr.”

“Couldn’t we use your military waiver, now that you’ve disconnected the interlock?” Her voice was clear and unmuffled, and Luke pictured her lying on her back.

“We could microjump right in, couldn’t we?”

Luke’s surprised laugh was a loud noise in the confined space. “Not in this bucket. The navigator won’t take microjump parameters. And even if it would, chances are the resonances would shake her to pieces.

There’s an entry shock wave in hyperspace, and when you microjump you have to let it catch you just when it’s at its strongest. We’d arrive at Teyr as a bright smudge in the sky.”

“Oh,” she said. “But we could have jumped all the way in if we’d planned to back at the last waypoint.”

“Right. If we were willing to answer all the questions and deal with the extra attention. I hate the crawl as much as you do, but, trust me, this is better.”

Akanah sighed. “I’ll try to sleep, then. It’s the easy way to make the time pass.”

“Good luck,” he said, and started to turn back to the console.

Then he realized it had almost happened again—the conversation he had started for a specific purpose had wandered away and disappeared before he could get to his question.

“Akanah?”

“Yes?”

“Before you fall asleep—there’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

“What is it?”

“Back at Ialtra—was there a date in that message you found?”

“A date? No.”

“Could you tell how long it had been there? Maybe scribing fades with time, or something like that—” “No—not if it’s done well. I can’t tell you when the message was left—except that I’m sure it was left before the Fallanassi left Lucazec. Why?”