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Ben’s expression changed to one of respect. “That’s what you did before?”

“Yes.” The mayor was looking at Luke. “I was so employed when I met your father—your father Owen Lars, that is.”

Luke grinned. “I hope you’ve forgiven the subterfuge.”

“Yes, of course. As for the diagram, why would he draw the man and the droch by hand, then let it dry and run it through a printer to add the text? Or go through those steps in reverse order? Why not do it all on the computer and print it out as a single step?”

Luke’s comlink beeped. He brought it out of its pocket and activated it. “Skywalker.”

“Luke, it’s Sel. I’ve spoken to Dr. Wei’s mechanic and he’s allowed me to look at backups of his speeder’s memory.”

“Ah, good.”

“There’s not much to report. The mechanic’s system is a bit of a mess, hard to navigate. One file I found, though, indicates that Wei regularly traveled a distance of exactly four hundred eighty-three kilometers each way from Hweg Shul. In what direction, it doesn’t say.”

Luke looked at the mayor. “Is it possible to plot distances from Hweg Shul to all known homesteads and facilities to see if one matches that distance?”

Snaplaunce offered a little bow. “Possible, and a matter of only a few minutes. I’ll comm my office at once.”

“Thank you.”

There was one such site on record, a failed rock ivory processing camp in the mountains out beyond Bleak Point, uninhabited for years. But it exactly matched the distance shown on Dr. Wei’s landspeeder memory backup file.

Luke assembled the others outside Wei’s home. “Even with a good landspeeder, it’ll take us hours to get there and back. I wonder if Koval Transport will let us charter a shuttle. Or, even faster, we could go up, bring the Shadow down, and use her. Though that means the slower decontamination when we leave Nam Chorios.”

Mayor Snaplaunce shook his head. “No need. Take my shuttle. It will have you there in half an hour.”

Luke smiled. “Perfect.”

* * *

A few minutes later, Luke was no longer smiling. He was looking at a relic of his youth, a weapon of the enemy.

It looked like a TIE bomber—angled solar wing arrays like the more famous TIE fighter, with a double cockpit, two pods side by side. As if to mock its own sinister shape, this one was painted in bright yellow, with words on the outer wings in red: VOTE SNAPLAUNCE.

Luke looked at the mayor. “You have a TIE shuttle.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded as though he were informing the man of something Snaplaunce might not have realized before now.

Snaplaunce nodded. “Indeed.”

“I’m not sure I can recall ever seeing one in private hands.”

“A mechanic, late of the Imperial fleet, settled here about fifteen years ago and sold off several of the vehicles he had lovingly restored over the years. Seeing this one, how could I resist?”

“How indeed?” Having painted it these colors, how could you resist activating the self-destruct sequence? But Luke did not give voice to his thought.

He slid through the top hatch into the starboard-side pilot’s pod as Ben and Vestara struggled into the port-side passenger compartment. While Snaplaunce checked him out on the vehicle’s eccentricities, such as its lack of a laser weapon and the fact that its port-side ion engine had 10 percent greater thrust than the starboard, Luke heard his son and Vestara arguing over who should sit in front. Moments later they were ready to go; Luke and Ben dogged down their respective hatches, Luke brought the repulsorlifts and twin ion engines up, and they were airborne.

Airborne on a very precise course already transmitted to the port authority. “The commanders of the weapons platforms take a very dim view of spaceworthy craft rising from the surface and then deviating from filed courses,” Snaplaunce had told him. “Best not to practice your astrobatics or to buzz Koval Station.”

But restricted course or not, ugly paint job or not, Imperial symbol of terror or not, it was good to be behind starfighter-style controls again. And though the shuttle felt as maneuverable as a quartet of Hutts fastened together