[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(61)

“Three minutes later, he knew he’d made a mistake.”

“All right,” Luke said. “But I still don’t understand why you need three days.”

“I shouldn’t,” Akanah said. “That’s why you should come look for me then. I’m going to the Pemblehov District, north of the park.”

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“That’s all I can tell you,” Akanah said. “Good-bye, Luke. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.”

After Akanah left, Luke first took some time to explore behind all the doors of the docking bay.

The public showers and refresher were overdue for a cleaning, no doubt due to the fifty-credit cleaning fee.

But the prospect of a real six-head unlimited-water space”s shower was too appealing to resist. Luke vouched for the additional charge and secured the door so that the automated scrubdown and sterilization could begin.

Luke tried to get even on the day rummaging through the lockers of ship’s supplies. To his surprise, there were two K-18 food packs—both out of date, but not too badly so. He installed the older of the two in the skiff’s reprocessor and tested it, then found stowage for the other in the crowded belly bay. The portmaster would nick his account again for returning only one empty, but not enough to dissuade him.

When scavenging paled, Luke turned to tinkering.

The control systems terminal offered an extensive list of flight system upgrades, with a data card burner right beside it. Most of the skiff’s flight systems were out of date, but Luke located half a dozen aftermarket upgrades and coaxed Mud Sloth into taking them. All of them came up virus-free- something he hadn’t expected, considering the source. But the navigation upgrade spotted Luke’s handiwork on the FCZ interlock, forcing him to restore the original, blissfully unaware package.

In time Luke had done all the tinkering he could without risking having something crucial arrayed in pieces on the bench or the bay floor at an awkward moment.

He then took advantage of the open space inside the bay to work his first complete set of Jedi training drills since leaving Coruscant.

Working both with and without his lightsaber, he patiently went through the complex exercises which brought him to a profound state of restful clarity.

It was in this state that he felt most keenly the truth and the wisdom of the simple words: There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity.

There is no death; there is the Force. The peace, the knowledge, and the serenity were gifts that came with his surrender to the Force and with his connection through the Force to all that was.

Sustaining that clarity was always the challenge. In the isolation of a Dagobah, the Jundland Wastes, or a hermitage on a frozen shore, an experienced Jedi could preserve that inner state indefinitely.

But the chaos of the real world was another matter.

When ego returned, so did will. The surrender became tainted, the connection flawed. The clarity gradually slipped away under the continuous assault of elementary drives and passions. Even the greatest of the masters needed to perform the practice regularly lest they lose the discipline that made them what they were.

The drills were as much a test for the body as for the mind, and the docking bay’s newly sanitized shower brought a blissful peace to muscles that were telling Luke they had not been properly exercised in too long. He stood for a long time in the place where the six needle jets converged, letting the water flowing down his body become another meditation.

When Luke finally emerged from the shower and once again donned his clothes, he allowed himself to check the skiff’s chronometer and see how long Akanah had been gone.

Barely six hours had passed.

Standing beside the skiff’s bow, Luke looked around the bay.

Inexplicably, it seemed much smaller when viewed through the prospect of spending the next several days there.

Donning his hooded cloak, Luke secured the skiff, locked the docking bay- -bending a pin so that only he could unlock it again—and went out into the night.

As he looked out across the spaceport and at the lights of Talos beyond, his hand—out of habit—went to the place at his hip where his lightsaber usually hung.

His fingers found only air, which puzzled him for just an instant.

Then he drew the face of Li Stonn down over his own and walked on.

It was a much-remarked irony that very little was free on a Free Trader world. Walking and breathing were among the few activities without a price tag—though some said that was only because the Traders’ Coalition hadn’t figured out how to deny those amenities to those who wouldn’t pay.