Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 01_ Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [93]
But that had left Luke trapped in cramped quarters with Akanah for just over eleven days on the way to Lucazec—something he had not been prepared for. After months in isolation, he had not been prepared for that much close contact with anyone. Luke wondered how he would have borne it if Akanah had not been so willing to make allowances.
She did not force conversation on him, either idle or earnest. Nor did she make him feel as though he was being watched, that she was waiting for him to do something. Without his ever asking, she granted him the only kind of privacy available under the circumstances—the privacy of the mind and heart. She did not intrude there without his invitation, hiding her own needs and curiosity so perfectly that they seemed more like comfortable old friends than strangers.
At her suggestion, they adopted a watch schedule that had them sleeping at opposite ends of the day, spaced so that neither of them had to climb into a hot bunk. She seemed to welcome the reassurance that someone was awake while she rested, and did not seem to mind that the schedule reduced their time together to a few hours twice a day.
Luke thought Akanah must be accustomed to being alone, for she seemed to have mastered the art of keeping time moving without restless motion. She read from a battered old datapad, meditated in the copilot’s couch, and intently studied the Adventurer’s owner, pilot, and system helps.
At times she even sought privacy for herself. Akanah practiced her Fallanassi craft in silence behind the drawn curtain of the sleeper, and stripped to a body-hugging monoskin to exercise only when it was Luke’s turn in the zippered bunkbag. She even politely ignored him when he made both discoveries, making it unnecessary for him to apologize, or for her to explain.
They did take meals together, dipping twice a day into Akanah’s modest cache of stabilized foodstores—many of them long-expired Imperial expedition packs, a telltale sign of desperately tight finances. But even meals did not become an occasion for substantive conversation until near the end, with Lucazec visible through the viewport and the reason for their journey too much in their thoughts to be ignored.
“Sixteen more hours,” Luke said, tearing open a pouch of Noryath brown meatbread. “I hate the waiting. I want to crawl back in the bunk and sleep until the autopilot starts asking whether we want to orbit or land.”
“If I thought this was the end of our journey, rather than just the end of the beginning, I might feel the same way,” said Akanah, and sipped at her flask of tart pawei juice.
“Do you think there’s any chance the Fallanassi may have come back, after the war?”
“No,” said Akanah. “You see, the Empire feared us as well as coveted our power. They didn’t come down with weapons drawn to round us up, as they did with so many other populations they enslaved—”
“Yeah, I’ve seen how they work. But how did they even know you existed? I thought you were a secret sect. Or am I the only one who never heard of the Fallanassi?”
“You are right, there is a contradiction,” said Akanah. “The explanation is simple, but an embarrassment. We were divided among ourselves about the coming war and what our moral duty was. One of our community, for reasons of her own, went to the Imperial governor and revealed herself.”
“You were betrayed.”
“No—no, that’s too strong a word. Even though her name is no longer spoken, she had a high purpose in what she did. She believed that by allying ourselves with the Empire, we could be the water that would quench the flame.” Akanah’s eyes were touched by wistfulness. “But