[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(53)

Luke looked back over his shoulder and extended his senses to confirm that Akanah was asleep. “Yes,” he said on impulse. “I’d like a comprehensive pulled on a skiff, a Verpine Adventurer, registration number NR80-109399, no name currently profiled, owner and home port unknown—” “I have it, sir. Would you like this report forwarded with the other?”

“No,” Luke said. “Hold this one for me.”

“Very well, sir. Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Clear to close link.”

“Closing link,” Luke said, and reached for the controls.

Then he wondered why what he had just done made him feel so unclean.

Akanah’s nap lasted more than three hours, but the report from Ship Registry had not yet arrived when she stirred. She said nothing to him when she emerged from the sleeper, disappearing for several minutes behind the privacy screen of the refresher unit.

When she emerged, she had forgone the more flowing, multilayered garment she had worn on the planet for the simple, close-fitting, long-sleeved one-piece she had worn for much of the jump to Teyr. When she joined him at the flight controls, he caught the faint scent of the freshener cabinet on her clothing.

“So, have we a shadow?”

“None clumsy enough to give itself away yet, anyway,” Luke said.

“There are eighteen ships—make that nineteen, now—in this outbound corridor. In theory they’re all heading for the Foless Crossroads, or for Darepp.”

“In theory?”

“Under free-navigation rules, they don’t have to file flight plans and announce their destinations—they just have to announce themselves as they leave here and when they get there.”

Akanah leaned forward to study the navigational display. “How did you make it display those identifiers?

When I was coming into Coruscant, all it showed me were those green bars- -it didn’t tell me what they were.”

“The display options are on the command menus.

But the basic display really tells you all you need, most of the time,” Luke said. “A green bar means a ship that is a safe distance away on a noncollision course. Yellow bar, a ship that’s closer than the standard spacing, but not on a collision course. Red bar, something on an intercept course. Same rules for rocks, except the symbol is a circle—like that one.”

“So any red symbols mean danger.”

Luke nodded. “I’m sure this ship has some fairly obnoxious alarms, and collision-avoidance protocols.”

“What if someone fired a missile at us? Would it show up as a red bar?”

Frowning, Luke considered. “Probably as a circle, as though it were a fast-moving asteroidal body. Missiles don’t send out recognition signals, and skiffs don’t have threat-recognition modules in their scanners.”

“I have never been in a warship,” Akanah said.

“Tell me—how does this compare with the cockpit of a

military spacecraft?”

“Oh—worlds apart,” Luke said.

“How, exactly?”

“Well—in a military ship, the automated systems are there to support the pilot—most everything that matters is done with your hands on the controls,” Luke said.

“A ship like this is designed to have the expert systems take over as much as possible, to protect casual pilots from making mistakes.”

“So there are more controls in a fighter.”

“A lot more. Heck, a combat flight stick has almost as many controls on it as there are on this whole panel,” Luke said. “Most of what this ship will let you do by yourself is buried three levels deep in the command option displays.”

She nodded. “Tell me, if we were pursued by a warship, or intercepted by a fighter how much could you do?”

Luke ran his fingers back through his hair. “Less than you’re probably hoping,” he said. “It’s not a test I’d look forward to.”

“Not even with your reputation as a pilot?”

“She’s underpowered for realspace, which means we can’t run away. She doesn’t have true vector thrusters, which means she’s not very agile, despite her low mass. The nav shields would pop on the first hit, and the hull would breach on the second—unless the second hit was from an ion cannon.”

“What would happen then?”

“All the systems would sizzle, and we’d be dead in space.” He showed a rueful smile. “Piloting ability doesn’t count for much then. And reputations count for even less.”

“So our only hope would be to jump to hyperspace before we were hit.”

“That’s about the size of it.”