[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(66)

Akanah wore her horror openly. “How could you make such a choice?”

A smile spread slowly across Joreb’s face. “Bliss beyond imagining,” he said. “I could show you.”

“No,” she said firmly.

Joreb shrugged. “I find your choice as puzzling as you find mine. Do you have memories worth treasuring?

It seems I did not.”

“I would have treasured them,” she said, and tears ran freely from her eyes. “I came here to find my father.

What am I to do now?”

“You can stay if you like,” he offered. “There are rooms open on the upper levels. Or, at least, I think there still are. Trass will know for certain. But I’m afraid I will never be able to add anything to the story your mother told you. You may be my daughter, as you say,” Joreb said, then shook his head regretfully. “But I am not your father.”





(Chapter 9


Akanah returned to Docking Bay A13 twenty-two hours after she had left it, her face pale, her clothing dirty, her eyes dull.

“They aren’t here,” she said wearily as she climbed into the skiff, waking Luke from an unplanned nap in the pilot’s couch. “We can go.”

Then, without saying anything more, she tried to crawl into the bunk and draw the curtain against Luke.

But he followed close behind her, unwilling to settle for so little after so long.

“Go where?” he said, catching the curtain with a hand and throwing it aside. “Did you find anything?”

“I found enough,” Akanah said, turning her back to him. “I’ll tell you when we’re outbound.”

“You said you’d come back for me. I’d like to see the scribing. I’d like to see where they lived. There might be something I can pick up.”

“I’m too tired,” she said.

“You’re a mess, too, but I’m not keeping score,” Luke said. “Look, I paid to have the shower cleaned. I think you should go make it dirty again, and we’ll talk after. You’ll feel better, no matter what comes next.”

To Luke’s surprise, Akanah allowed herself to be directed. She lingered a long time under the water, longer than Luke himself had.

When she emerged, she was standing a bit straighter, with better color in her face and a little life in her eyes.

But it seemed to Luke that whatever strength the shower had returned to Akanah went directly into stubbornness.

She flatly refused to take him back out into the city, or to talk about what she had done and where she had gone.

“I want to sleep,” she said, standing at the foot of the mounting ladder with her soiled dar-cloak draped over one arm, the sun glistening in the last drops of water beaded on her bare shoulders.

“I’m going to sleep, or I’m going to fall down where I’m standing.”

“I’ll hire a speeder—” “No!” she said sharply. “We’re finished here—I didn’t miss anything, and I can tell you everything I found when I’m rested. Just take us away from here. Lift ship and jump us a few hours toward the Core. I should be human again by the time you’re done doing that. But right now, I need to be alone, and I need to sleep. And that’s what I’m going to do. “

Brushing close enough past him that he caught the scent of soap on her hair, Akanah clambered back up the spindly ladder into the skiff.

Frowning resignedly, Luke walked to the bow of the skiff and started his preflight inspection. By the time he made his way up the ladder into the flight compartment, the bunk was sealed as tight as a cocoon, with as little clue to what would eventually emerge.

He slipped back into the pilot’s couch with a sigh, switching off the datapad and tucking it under a tie-down. “Mud Sloth to Talos tower,” Luke said. “Departing A-Thirteen, requesting clearance to orbit.”

“Talos tower. Please hold, Mud Sloth. There’s traffic ahead of you.”

Luke glanced at the chronometer and shook his head with a wry expression. They had been on Atzerri a few minutes short of a full day. His reply was far more Luke than Li Stonn.

“Talos tower, copy, I have the traffic on my sensors, and it looks from here like a slow accountant making an extra pass,” he said. “Do you think it’d help him along if I rattle the walls with my thrusters while I’m waiting for him to count to one?”

Clearance to lift came a few moments later. But Luke was not greatly surprised to find that the final bill, transmitted to him as he cleared the atmosphere, still assessed him for two days’ berthing.

Free Traders, Luke thought with disgust. Thieves with business cards.

Just before jumping the skiff out from Atzerri, Luke remembered to retrieve the report on the Mud Sloth from the New Republic Ship Registry on Coruscant.