“Uh, you might not want to do that,” Ghent interrupted. Luke frowned. “Why not?”
Ghent frowned back. “Didn’t I tell you that the omnigate is pretty …” He glanced at R2-D2, then apparently decided it would not be wise to mention how deteriorated the gate was in front of the droid. “… that it was used?”
“Yes,” Mara said. “That doesn’t explain why we shouldn’t view the next file, though.”
“In fact, it tends to suggest we should,” Jacen said, “while everything is still working.”
Ghent just stared at them blankly.
“Well?” Luke asked impatiently.
Ghent shrugged. “It’s your omnigate, I guess.”
Luke furrowed his brow, waiting for an explanation, but Mara-who knew the slicer far better from their days working for Talon Karrde-said immediately, “You’ll have to tell us the problem, Ghent. Why is a used omnigate so risky?”
“Oh.” He knelt beside R2-D2 and deactivated the droid again, then said, “You don’t want to overheat a deteriorated gate. It’s too easy to melt it.”
“So we just have to wait for it to cool off?” Jacen asked.
“That would help,” Ghent said.
“Only help?” Mara asked.
“Well, we’re probably overheating the gate every time we use it,” Ghent said. “It was in pretty bad shape.”
“You’re saying it’s just a matter of time before it goes?” Mara clarified.
“Yeah-it could go the next time you use it, or the time after that,” Ghent said. “I don’t think it will last three times.”
Luke exhaled in frustration. “Is there anything we can do about that?”
Ghent thought for a moment, then nodded. “I could try to copy its architecture.”
“How risky is that?” Mara asked.
“It’s not,” Ghent said. “Unless, of course, I make a mistake.”
“But then we’d have a backup in case the first gate melted?” Luke asked.
Ghent looked at him as though he had just asked a very foolish question. “Well, that is the idea of making a backup.”
“Then why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” Jacen demanded, growing uncharacteristically impatient with the communicationally challenged slicer. “What’s the drawback?”
“Time,” Ghent said. “It takes a lot of time-especially since I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“Time could be a problem,” Luke said.
So far, he had been content to let the Jedi continue on the sidelines of the war, trying to rebuild Chief Omas’s confidence in the order by hunting down pirates and adjudicating quarrels among the
Alliance’s member-states. But he was not willing to continue that approach forever. Sooner or later, the Jedi would need to take action … and a deepening tickle in the base of his head was beginning to suggest it would be sooner.
Luke hated to let his personal history interfere, but before the Jedi went into action, he needed to be free of his doubts. Mara had assured him that she had never been involved in anything concerning Padme Amidala, and Luke believed her. But the possibility remained that the Dark Nest’s insinuations were true: that Padme might have lived under an alias for fifteen or twenty years, and that Mara-then Palpatine’s assassin-might have been sent to track her down without knowing her true identity. If Luke were to have any chance at all of defeating Lomi Plo, he needed to know what had happened to his mother-to banish utterly from his heart the last ghost of doubt about Mara’s involvement.
When Ghent merely continued to look at him without speaking, Luke sighed and asked, “How long would it take to build the backup?”
Ghent shrugged. “It’ll be faster than trying to figure the algorithm and original variables for the universal key you used last-“
“Okay, I understand.” Luke closed his eyes and nodded. “Copy it-but don’t do anything that would prevent me from taking the original hack and using it in an emergency.”
“Emergency?” Ghent seemed confused. “How could looking at a bunch of old bolos be an emergency?”
“It could,” Mara told him. “You don’t need to know why.”
Ghent shrugged. “Okay.” He flipped his magnispecs down and reached for his micrograbbers. “No problem with the emergency thing.”
Luke waited until the slicer had started work, then turned to Jacen. “Let’s move to the outer office and leave Ghent to his work.”
“Oh yeah-the conversation.” Jacen started toward the door, then stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Aren’t you coming, Aunt Mara? After all, you’re the really angry one.”