[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(43)

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Oh—I’ve just done it again, that’s all,” said Li Stonn. “The lines on either side are moving faster than ours. I shouldn’t ever pick.

You pick the line next time, all right?”

She slipped her hand into his. “Be patient, dear,” she said with an affectionate smile. “We’re almost there—and maybe this will be the last line we have to stand in.”

Someone behind them chuckled deeply. “This is your first time on Teyr, isn’t it?” the stranger called out.

“You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until you get near the Rift.”

“Oh, it’ll be worth it, I’m sure,” Akanah said brightly, tightening her grip on Luke’s hand. “I just know it will be worth the wait.”





Chapter 6


Luke and Akanah rode the Rift Skyrail as far as Cloud Bridge, the southernmost of the West Rim stops. That treated them to a breathtaking view of the last eighty kilometers of the Rift—one of the narrow-est sections, and consequently one of the most spectacular.

The elevated track was perched right on the edge of the chasm, leaping across side canyons that would have been major attractions in their own right anywhere else.

At Cloud Bridge, Li Stonn rented a bubbleback, a local landspeeder variant popular with visitors who wanted to explore the canyon bottom.

But instead of heading for the elevators at the Cloud Bridge Rift Access Point, Luke turned the bubbleback west along Flyway 120, toward the Greenbelt.

An hour and a half at the top speed allowed on the flyway brought them to the intersection with Harvest Flyway, which Akanah’s traveler’s aid card told them was an important cargo route connecting the heart of the Greenbelt with Turos Noth. There was no speed limit on the lightly traveled cargo route, which put the agricultural city of Griann not quite two hours away at the bubbleback’s top speed.

“Need to stretch?”

“No,” she said, pointing behind them. “I can manage.”

As “getaway” vehicles, bubblebacks featured a compact waste station and reprocessor, with a full set of standard humanoid fittings. “Do we need to refuel?”

” No. Griann has fuel stops, I assume.”

Akanah checked her aid card. “Yes. Though ‘local prices may vary from published visitor area rates.”

Please, let’s push on.”

They had nearly reached Griann when Akanah finally noticed the outline of the cylinder in the right thigh pocket of Luke’s walk-arounds.

“You brought your lightsaber?” she asked, leaning toward him.

“Yes,” he said. “You sound surprised.”

“How did you get it through Arrival Screening? You can’t fool a scanner with Jedi mind tricks. Can you?”

“You can fool the person whose job it is to respond to scanner alarms,” Luke said. “But even that wasn’t necessary. Lightsabers are still the rarest weapons in the galaxy. There’s only one model of general security scanner that’s programmed to recognize them, and Teyr doesn’t use it.”

“Then what do they think it is?”

Luke smiled. “Most scanners misidentify a lightsaber as a type of shaver. Which I suppose it could be, in a pinch—if you were very, very good with it.”

She settled back in her seat. “I wish you had left it in the ship.”

“That’s asking too much,” Luke said. “I don’t carry it every minute, but I don’t like to be that far away from it. I’ve gotten in more tough spots because of not having it close enough than I ever have for carrying it.”

Looking out her window at the gently rolling fields and the day moon that was setting over them, Akanah said, “Please remember what I asked of you—it’s important to me.”

“I remember,” Luke said. “I hope you remember that I didn’t make you any promises.”

“Is there that much pleasure in killing, that it becomes something difficult to give up?”

Luke shot a hard glance across the bubbleback at her. “What makes you think I take pleasure in killing?”

“That you won’t renounce it,” she said, turning to meet his gaze. “If I had caused a million deaths, I don’t think I could ever pick up a weapon again. I don’t understand how you can.”

With no ready answer, Luke turned his gaze back toward the flyway ahead. It wasn’t until years after the Battle of Yavin that Luke had first become aware that the Death Star he had destroyed at Yavin had a complement-officers, crew, and support staff—of more than a million sentients.

In retrospect, it was something he should have realized