Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [25]
“You’ve held the Gamorreans off by yourself all this time?” Luke carefully removed the respirator mask from his face, breathed deep, tasting the sweetness of the air. It still made him dizzy, but no longer hurt so much. It should hold him, he thought—he hoped—until they reached civilization again. He turned his head to survey the wide room, the simple clay dishes on the shelf, the traps wrought of reptile sinew and engine strapping, the monofilament fishing lines that had patently started life as part of standard Imperial equipment. A loom reared up near the door, constructed of various grades of engine pipe, with several yards of homespun woven on it.
“Oh, gracious, no.” Pothman handed him a cup of tea: herbal, spicy, warm, and, Luke sensed, healing. Luke had seen no kiln and wondered where he’d gotten the dishes, and the thread on the loom. Out of his white armor, Pothman wore soft-dyed green and brown clothing, embroidered on breast and sleeves and hem with meticulously accurate renderings of the local flowers and reptiles.
“I got caught early on. They took all the rifles and blasters, you see, and they needed somebody to fix them. But after the power cells died they didn’t bother keeping an eye on me. I figure the Emperor forgot the mission a long time ago. You ever hear what happened to it?”
“Mission?” Luke sat up a little and sipped the tea, and did his best to look innocent, something he’d always been good at.
“The Eye of Palpatine.” Pothman opened an equipment locker, brought out a utility pack, and started loading it with wire, cables, couplers, backup data wafers, tools. “That was the name of the mission. Scuttlebutt said there were about two companies of troopers in it, but scattered, so nobody would know, nobody would guess. They put us on the most out-of-the-way planets they could find, to be picked up in the biggest, most dangerous, most secret vessel of them all, a supership, a dreadnaught, a battlemoon … One the enemy wouldn’t see coming until it was too late.”
“What enemy?” asked Luke softly.
There was stillness again, save for the rustling of the trees outside, and the faint clunketing of Pothman’s much-mended machinery, a sound that brought back to Luke his childhood on Tatooine.
Pothman was silent, his back to them, looking down at the utility pack on the chest lid before him. “We didn’t know,” he said at last. “We weren’t told. At the time I thought it was … Well, it was my duty. Now …” He turned back, his face troubled.
“I suppose something went wrong. Somebody found out after all, though everyone said that was impossible, since the Emperor was the only one that knew. After we’d been here nearly a year I got to wondering if maybe the Emperor himself had forgotten. When I saw your ship come over I sort of hoped he’d finally remembered—that he’d sent scouts to see what was left.” His big hands toyed wistfully with the straps.
“But if it wasn’t the Emperor who sent you out, you see, I know enough to know that whoever screwed up and scrapped the mission, nobody’s going to want to be reminded it ever existed. Which means I might be sort of an embarrassment.”
He slung the pack over his shoulder, and came to stand next to the tidy bunk where Luke lay on the silvery survival blankets and feather quilts. “My signal isn’t strong enough to reach anybody, not way out here. But if we can get your engines fixed, you think maybe you might just drop me in some out-of-the-way place where they might not find me? It’s nice to see human faces again. I was the company armorer; I know everything’s changed in all this time, but I can still work pretty good with my hands, and I’ve learned to be a fair cook. I can find work. It’s been a long time.”
No bargaining, thought Luke wonderingly. No Take me off this rock or you won’t get so much as a screwdriver out of me. Everything freely offered, expecting nothing in return.
“It’s been a long time,” he said gently. “The Emperor’s dead, Triv. The