Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [71]
It circled over the distant plant for several orbits. Then its circle broadened; it spiraled out, an ever-growing pattern, as it searched for evidence of the Skywalkers and Vestara.
Luke smiled. He was sure they had left no sign they’d ever visited the plant. Dr. Wei’s body was untouched. Any footsteps they might have left had been obscured by Luke, and any eddies of wind would have caused them to vanish completely.
Luke ducked under the overhang well before the sphere’s orbit brought it on its closest approach to the shuttle. A few minutes later, he ventured out again. There was no sign of the craft. “All clear, you two.”
Ben’s head and shoulders popped up from the passenger-side hatch. He squinted toward the east, where a trace of violet light limned the peaks of the mountains, signaling the arrival of dawn. “Time to get some rest, too.”
“You’re right.” Luke hopped up onto the port-side wing and climbed atop that pod. Moments later he squeezed into the passenger seat behind his son and closed the hatch. He didn’t dog it down; in this sheltered ravine, the wind wouldn’t be able to blow it open. In fact, he propped it open just a crack with some loose rocks, making sure that air could circulate.
They hadn’t completed the repairs or the rigging of the sail. A few more hours would do the trick, but they wouldn’t be able to do their work during the windstorm-battered daylight hours, so this was a time for rest.
Rest on restricted rations, already nearly half gone, on a hostile world. Things could be better. But Luke was a veteran of countless events that could have been described as Things could be better.
He listened as Ben made one last intercom check to make sure that Vestara, alone in the pilot’s cockpit, was comfortable. Then, untroubled, Luke fell asleep.
Sleep was fitful during those hours. Luke would manage to sleep for an hour, for half an hour, and then a sudden rocking of the shuttle in the wind would rouse him, or a restless movement on Ben’s part would do so. At times during the day, each of them had to exit the craft to relieve him- or herself and then would return, cold and dusty, to the comparative warmth of the shuttle interior.
Late in the day, each had managed all the sleep he or she would be able to get. They ate, a fraction of the calories they should be receiving, cold-stored rations several years old, and then contented themselves with time-killing tasks on their datapads.
Dear Papa:
The sleeping arrangements here are funny. Back at the hostel in Hweg Shul, Master Luke and Ben crowded into one room, while I had all the space I needed in the other. Here in the field, they crowd into the passenger pod and its two uncomfortable seats while I have the cockpit.
Master Luke is protecting Ben, of course, because I’m—
Because she was a Sith, of course, and not entirely to be trusted. But it was more than that. He was protecting Ben from possible mistakes of judgment, from any act that might bind Ben to her before her own loyalties and needs were clearly determined.
And that stung. It didn’t bother her that she wasn’t fully trusted. It was that Luke would protect Ben, while her own father, Gavar Khai, would offer her no such consideration, had not for years. He would simply assume that if Ben undertook any action Vestara did not care for, she would kill him herself. That was the Sith way. Like a reptile, walking away from the nest long before the eggs hatched, not overly concerned with the fate of its progeny.
She backed up a little in her letter.
Master Luke is protecting Ben, of course, just as you would protect me.
The letter stalled there. The lie, for the moment, was insurmountable. In her mind, the real Gavar Khai laughed at her for her softhearted delusions.
Suddenly she wanted to go home.
She wanted there to be a home to go to.
There wasn’t one.
* * *
After dark, they resumed work on the shuttle. They activated