[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(50)

“I do not expect to need anyone killed,” she said, clambering out. “Do what you just said wait. And try not to attract the suspicions of any droids in this neighborhood.

Our ship is halfway around the planet, and it might be difficult to get back to it if we’re criminal fugitives.”

He stared after her as she strode back down the street, wondering how many different women he was traveling with, and whether he would ever learn all their stories.

“Let’s go,” she said as she climbed in.

“Did you get inside?”

“Let’s go,” she repeated insistently.

Luke looked back along the street. “Is someone following you?”

“I got inside. No one is following me—yet. Now, can we go?”

The landspeeder surged forward. “And?”

“I found it,” she said. “We’re done here.”

“Are you going to tell me this time?”

“When we’re away from here, and I know it’s safe.”

“So it’s not me you don’t trust.”

“These things are never to be spoken to one who cannot read them,” Akanah said. “To tell you at all violates an oath. To tell you now, here, when there are so many ways a secret can escape, compounds that offense with needless risk.”

Luke frowned. “Is there any reason we can’t return by Skyrail?”

“No,” she said, looking out her side viewpane. “I wasn’t seen.”

She seemed determined not to talk, but there were things Luke needed to say before they reached the terminal.

“You weren’t the only one who was successful,” he said. “I turned up some information, too. And I’ll even tell you now.”

“Please don’t. Whatever it is, it will keep,” she said.

“All that matters now is to get away from here.”

“Knowing where we’re going next matters a tiny bit,” Luke said. “I got curious about how your friends left.”

“It’s of no consequence. We leave no trail that an outsider can follow.”

“You may think so,” Luke said. “But I found out some interesting things, all the same. Like the reason they sold the commonal.”

She looked at him disdainfully. “That’s no mystery-to buy passage.

They had no more use for it except for any value they could take with them.”

“Akanah, they bought a starship.” Luke waggled the traveler’s aid card. “Can’t judge things by their size.

In addition to the maps, the food guides, the attraction lists, and the ads, this has a wireless link to the Teyr Commerce Bureau and an information hotline. Your friends may be long gone, but there’s still a corporation registered here called Kell Plath. And it owns a starship named Star Morning.”

“It must have taken everything they had,” Akanah said.

“And a little more,” Luke said. “Star Morning is a Koqus liner—the better part of fifty years old, mind you, and too small to compete with the big Expo ships, but still no small purchase.”

“How many could it carry?”

“A Koqus? Maybe sixty, depending on the cargo allocation.”

Akanah nodded. “That would be enough.”

“You don’t seem overly surprised by this,” Luke said, raising an eyebrow. “I was. I thought we were trying to track down refugees, not stockholders.”

“Just because we choose to live simply doesn’t mean that we’re without resources,” Akanah said. “To be poor is to be powerless. The Fallanassi are as old as the Jedi, and we’ve hidden and husbanded our resources well.”

“Then why were you left on Carratos?” Luke asked.

“I can see that they might not want to risk bringing their ship there to pick you up, but why couldn’t passage be bought for you?”

“You forget that Carratos fell under Imperial control soon after I was sent there,” she said. “There were head taxes that had to be paid at the port by anyone leaving—high taxes, to discourage people from fleeing the planet.”

“Then why couldn’t the tax have been sent for you?”

“I don’t know that it wasn’t,” said Akanah, her eyes misting. “I don’t know that Talsava didn’t keep it for herself.”

“Your foster mother?”

“My custodian. She was never more than that.” She tried a smile, which fell short of conviction. “There was a morning, you see, when I woke up and she was gone.”

“Gone?”

Bitterness owned her voice. “Her clothes, her little precious geegaws, every personal possession small enough to pack in a bag and carry away in the night, all gone. I never saw her again. She abandoned me there to fend for myself—at fifteen, in a port city that made your Mos Eisley look quiet and genteel.”