Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [49]
“You don’t trust me.”
She folded her hands on her lap, and her voice became small. “I am trying, Luke—but you don’t know how hard it is for me to trust someone who believes as you do, and who has your power.”
Luke stole a sideways glance to catch her expression. “Are you saying you’re afraid of me—because of this?” He rested his hand over the concealed lightsaber.
“I suppose I am,” she said. “I don’t want to be.”
“I would never hurt you, Akanah,” Luke said. “I brought this with me in case there were any surprises waiting—not to threaten you.”
“I move through the world without one,” she said. “Could you not do the same?”
Luke slowly shook his head. “Not while I still call myself a Jedi. It’s more than a weapon—it’s a tool for training the mind and the body. And it’s become part of me—an extension of my will.”
“And a way to enforce your will on others.”
He shook his head. “Most of the discipline of the lightsaber has to do with defense.”
“What about the rest?”
“The rest—the rest requires that you get close to your adversary, close enough to have to look them in the eye,” Luke said. “An old-fashioned idea, and a civilizing one. If all you want is to kill quickly, efficiently and impersonally, a blaster is a much better choice—the Emperor’s stormtroopers didn’t carry lightsabers, after all.”
“All of my nightmares are of places where there are men who want to kill ‘efficiently,’ ” Akanah said, turning her face back to the viewpane. “And the worst nightmare of all is to think that the only Universe that is, is such a place.”
Griann had been laid out on the plains of Teyr with a compass and a square. Its regularly spaced streets of regularly sized houses intersected with right-angle precision in a grid five kilometers square. At the heart of the city was a small commercial zone serving both the residents and the traffic on the Harvest Flyway. Around the boundary of the city was an enclosing wall of silos, granaries, ag domes, sheds for the autoharvesters and skyhoppers, control towers for the irrigation system, and all the other facilities necessary for servicing the fields beyond.
“Welcome to scenic Griann,” Luke said, guiding the bubbleback into a refueling stall. “What now? Do you have a plan?”
“I have an address,” Akanah said. “North Five, Twenty-six Down. My friend Norika lived there.”
Luke shot her a questioning look. “I thought the children were supposed to be hiding. How did you get a lead as specific as an address?”
“From Norika,” Akanah said. “I got one letter from her that first month, hypercommed to Carratos from a public terminal at something she called the committee office. I wrote her back, a dozen letters at least, but she never answered—I never heard from her again.”
“Hmmm. Someone probably enforced on her the idea that ‘hiding’ means you don’t tell anyone where you are,” Luke said.
“Or the circle came for them, and took them away.”
Luke glanced out his window at the display on the refueling droid. “It’s been nineteen years—you may not know her even if she’s still here.”
“I would know Nori no matter how many years have passed,” Akanah said fervently. “Wialu said we had the bond of twins. I’ve never been closer to anyone.”
The refueling over, Luke started the repulsorlifts. “Well, let’s go find out how close we are. North Five, Number Twenty-six?”
“Yes.”
“I think I can find that.”
From city center to city edge, Akanah’s anticipation built until it bubbled over in nervous smiles and a restless bouncing in her seat. But when the bubbleback turned onto North 5, her face went pale, and her hand shot out and clutched Luke’s wrist tightly. A strangled noise was all that escaped her parted lips.
Luke did not need an explanation—his eyes saw the same thing hers did. The double row of lowhouses along North 5 ended at Number 22. Where Number 24 should have been was an expanse of patchy grass. Beyond it, the grass gave way to