Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 06_ Vortex - Denning Troy [100]
As his father turned toward the hatch, Ben caught his eye and mouthed, What’s going on at home? Luke only shrugged and shook his head.
Vestara banged on the hatch again. “Look, if you two don’t want me hanging around—”
“Don’t be silly.” Luke released the lock and hit the control pad on the wall. “We want you right here where we can keep an eye on you.”
The hatch hissed open. On the other side of the threshold stood a sour-faced Vestara, her eyes narrowed in suspicion and her Force aura droning with irritation.
Instead of stepping aside to allow her onto the deck, Luke asked, “Something wrong with the refresher?”
“No, it’s fine.” Vestara’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
Luke’s gaze dropped along her sleeves. “Your hands usually smell like sanitizer when you return,” he said. “This time, they don’t.”
Vestara looked to the floor, attempting to feign embarrassment, but she was not quite quick enough to conceal the way her pupils widened in alarm. Wherever she had gone after leaving the flight deck, it hadn’t been to the refresher.
“I must have forgotten,” she said, spinning on her heel. “Thanks.”
“Not at all,” Luke said, starting after her. “I’ll come along to make sure you remember this time. Ben can handle the approach until we return.”
“Sure, no problem,” Ben called back.
He didn’t know whether to be amused, angered, or saddened by the situation. His father clearly had Vestara figured, which meant she was less likely to cause them problems. But what his father had figured out—that Vestara was still deceiving them—felt like a betrayal not only of Ben’s trust, but of Ben himself. He was doing everything he could to show her that life didn’t need to be so difficult—so filled with treachery and abuse. But Vestara seemed to be doing everything she could to make it clear that she just didn’t care.
And maybe that was to be expected. Ben was trying to convince her to turn her back on not only her parents, but her entire culture, and even the world she grew up on. He could imagine how he would react were someone to try to convince him to turn his back on the Jedi.
Of course, Jedi didn’t use beatings to discipline their students.
The shining crescents of Almania and its moons had grown so large in the forward viewport that they filled its entire expanse and were beginning to drift apart. Ben checked his navigation display and was not surprised to see approach-control channel designations for Almania and Drewwa flashing over their respective positions. But there was nothing for Pydyr. It was a fairly primitive world, still recovering from the destruction wreaked a few decades before by a Dark Jedi named Kueller, but it did have a spaceport. And that meant it should have had an approach-control system.
Had Ben been flying a StealthX instead of a VIP luxury shuttle, he might have attempted a covert landing. But instead of gravitic modulators and thermal dissipators, VIP luxury shuttles came outfitted with red nerf-leather seats and flight-deck beverage dispensers, and that meant that even if Pydyr didn’t notice the Emiax’s approach, Almania and Drewwa would. There was nothing for him to do but a standard approach, so Ben set a course for the daylight side of the moon and activated the shuttle’s comm unit.
“Pydyr Control,” he commed, “this is the transport shuttle Emiax requesting an approach vector. Repeat: transport shuttle Emiax requesting approach vector.”
Ben fell silent and awaited a reply, watching the moon swell from a crescent to a sea-mottled half sphere as the Emiax continued to draw closer. Half a dozen large landmasses were visible through a thin layer of clouds. Ben brought up a data file on the moon and discovered that the only significant population concentration was in the city of Corocus, located near the equator on the largest continent. He adjusted his course, swinging around the day side of the moon until