[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(70)

Inexplicably, Akanah giggled. “Did your tracking report mention a visit to Golkus?”

“Yes!” Luke said. “On your way to Coruscant.”

“And did it say why I went there?”

“No. I didn’t think about it much, either,” Luke admitted. “I guess I figured that, it being your first trip in the skiff, there was either some little problem you needed fixed, or you just didn’t like being alone out here. “

“Well—the second is true, absolutely true. But so is the first. The problem I needed fixed was the ship’s identification transponder. I told you— we leave no trail that an outsider can follow. There was someone on Golkus who could help with that.”

“Someone? Altering ID profiles is no mean trick.”

“His name would mean nothing to you but could harm him,” Akanah said.

“I believe he once worked with–or for—Talon Karrde.”

“How do you know him?”

“He came through Carratos once, years ago,” she said. “When I heard why, I arranged to meet him and to do him a favor. But the price was still dear. I paid him with most of the credits I had, plus favors I had collected from others.”

“So he changed the profile—what, to some other Adventurer? So some other ship left Coruscant.”

“Oh–he did more than change it,” Akanah said.

“If that’s all I’d asked for, it wouldn’t have been quite so dear. No, he put what he called a smuggler’s kit in the transponder.”

“This ship’s black-boxed?” Luke stared wonderingly.

“I guess that’s what it’s called. Every time we jump, the profile changes—to something that looks legitimate but isn’t. If I’d had the price, I could have bought bootleg IDs instead of counterfeits.”

“And I suppose the system doesn’t activate until after you’ve jumped out from wherever the work was done, so the trail doesn’t point back to this gentleman.”

Luke frowned. “Stang, the days we’ve wasted—we could have jumped out from Lucazec, or Teyr—” “I encouraged you to,” she protested. “I’m the one who asked you to disable the interlock.”

“Yeah, but you neglected to mention that it’d be safe to do it,” Luke grumbled. “We blast out of one system under one ID, tiptoe into the next under another—and no one connects the two. Very sweet. This fellow on Golkus is going to do a brisk business.”

“He chooses not to,” Akanah said. “I had the impression he considers himself retired. He says he’s very selective about who he’ll do this kind of work for.”

“Well—I guess the fact he’s on Golkus and not in Tatos backs that up,” Luke said, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did,” she said. “Just now.”

“That’s a cheat,” Luke said.

“Yes,” she said. “The truth is I wasn’t ready to trust you with that information. I didn’t really know whether I might need to hide myself from you at some point. I have a lot to protect.”

“But you’re ready to trust me now.”

“If I don’t trust you, I’m completely alone,” she said, a hint of an old sorrow in her eyes. “And I can’t do that anymore. I never wanted to, and now I just can’t. I can’t hold you out when what I need is to be close to someone again.”

“Akanah—” “Secrets are like walls, aren’t they? They separate people.

And I’ve been alone behind these walls for as long as I can bear,” she said. “I’ll teach you to read scribing, Luke. And if you want it, and you allow me enough time, I’ll teach you the rest. You will become one of us in full measure—an adept of the White Current.

You will finally walk your mother’s path.”

Luke understood the significance of what he was being offered. “Thank you,” he said in a voice drawn tight by emotion. “Even the chance that I might find her—I want to bring as much of her into my life as I can—I want that balance—” “But you still have questions,” she supplied.

“Yes.”

“Please don’t hold them back because you don’t want to seem ungrateful.

Ask them.”

Her words captured the flavor of his reluctance exactly.

“Is telepathy one of the adept’s skills?”

She laughed lightly. “Are people now so afraid to ‘look closely at Luke Skywalker that ordinary attentive-ness seems remarkable?”

Luke’s smile was rueful and faintly embarrassed.