For his part, though he had said nothing of it, Luke had already concluded that hailing the other ship without Akanah’s cooperation could only be counterproductive.
And since he had reluctantly accepted her decision and resigned himself to taking Mud Sloth to Atzerri, he resented her vigilant scrutiny.
Her scrutiny also prevented Luke from collecting the report on the Mud Slotb’s history, which was surely ready for him in Ship Registry’s Pending queue. His discoveries in the Star Morning report and Akanah’s stubbornness over Atzerri made him more curious than ever to see it.
But that curiosity was being thwarted, leaving him doubly resentful and harboring some suspicions of his own.
When the time came to jump out from Teyr, Luke handled the details without announcing them to Akanah, then climbed into the bunk to sleep through the short hop he had programmed. When he did, he purposefully left the Star Morning report open on the flight station’s secondary display. Whether Akanah was tempted by that invitation, he did not know. Opening wide his connection to the Force, Luke allowed the discordant emotions to bleed away, and he was asleep within minutes.
Three hours out from Teyr, the Verpine Adventurer dropped out of hyperspace as programmed. Climbing out of the bunk, Luke found a friendly smile for Akanah, who managed a quick, somewhat tired smile in return.
less you know some reason not to,” Luke said, sliding into the pilot’s seat.
“No,” she said. “Do you need privacy?”
Luke shook his head and keyed the hypercomm.
“Nothing secret here—just limited access.” He tried another smile and found it still felt sincere. “There’s a shortage of privacy here, anyway.”
It took only a few minutes to put in his requests, and the responses started coming back immediately.
Luke chose not to mention that all seven additional worlds for which he requested backgrounders were onetime ports of call for Star Morning.
If she recognized the names from reading the report, she would know his reason.
If not, it would never be an issue.
“I’m going to start my inspection,” Luke said, standing.
“May I look at these files?”
“Of course,” Luke said. “It’s better if you do, in fact. As I said, no secrets. I’ll be in earshot—feel free to talk to me if you find something you think I should know.”
The interior inspection took nearly an hour. Beginning at the rear of the skiff’s small service compartment, Luke systematically opened every removable panel and access door inside the ship, searching for anything that looked as if it might not belong. His examination turned up a clumsy retrofit to the water recycler that accounted for one of the Adventurer’s eccentricities, and half a dozen lost objects of the slipped-through-the-cracks variety, but nothing more.
“I don’t understand why the spaceport wouldn’t allow service work in the parking area,” Akanah said when he rejoined her.
“Probably protecting the interests of the ship services licensee. Have to keep those maintenance bays full, you know.” Luke gestured toward the displays. “Interesting reading?”
“There’s no Flight Control Zone at Atzerri,” she said. “We can jump right into orbit if we like and pick our own landing site—all the spaceports are indepen dent. There’s not much government of any kind there, it seems.”
“I’ve been on Free Trader worlds before,” Luke said. “Free Traders are the closet anarchists of the galaxy.
If they could figure out how to do without any government at all and not risk losing their finer things to bandits, they wouldn’t hesitate.
Even as it is, they tend to tolerate a lot of fighting over the scraps.
You don’t want to be poor or slow on a Free Trader world.”
Luke missed the look that crossed her face, but he felt the shiver of revulsion. “Carratos was a lot like that, after the Imperial garrison left,” she said. “I should feel right at home.”
“But would the Fallanassi?”
“What do you mean?”
“It just doesn’t strike me as any more your people’s sort of place than Teyr was,” said Luke. “Did you find anything in the background to suggest why they would go there—much less stay there?”
“They’re your people, too,” she said with a sad little smile. “I don’t have an answer to your question. Perhaps being what it is made it a better place to disappear.”
“I suppose that could be an answer.”
“Let’s not guess,” she said. “Is the ship clean?”
“I couldn’t find anything.”
“Then let’s go. Let’s go directly to Atzerri.”