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The only request he made that was refused outright was for the Fleet Office’s daily Tactical Briefing Memorandum, also known as the trouble map—a compendium of situation reports from all the various Fleet and base commands. Unlike that aboard his E-wing, Mud Sloth’s hypercomm wasn’t military-rated, and there was no persuading the Intelligence Section to send a white-star file to what they considered an unsecured receiver.

Luke thought about comming Admiral Ackbar directly to ask his appraisal of the trouble in Farlax—the news digest Luke had picked up on Atzerri was almost as sensational and unbelievable as the Jedi document. But doing so promised to invite questions Luke wasn’t ready to answer, and possibly force a decision he wasn’t ready to make.

Instead, he chose to contact the public information offices of both the Senate and the General Ministry. He asked for the official record of the past twenty days, hoping he could read between the lines well enough to know if it was time to head home.

Then he lowered the lights in the flight compartment, stretched out on the deck behind the control couches, and closed his eyes. All his pending requests required patience, from minutes to hours to days. But just reaching out had left him feeling better about his circumstances. Even if some of his efforts returned nothing useful, the next time he and Akanah talked, he expected to be in a much stronger position.

Sorry as I am to say it, what I have to have now is reason to trust you, not just reason to want to, he thought. If we’re going to go on any farther together, you’re going to have to start trusting me.

Prompted by a sensation like a feather tickling somewhere inside his skull, Luke became aware of two things at once: that he had fallen asleep on the deck, and that he was being watched.

He turned his head in the direction of the sensation and opened his eyes. He found himself looking directly at Akanah. She was sitting on the edge of the bunk, hands folded on her lap, her hair bed-tousled.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m sorry I monopolized the bunk for so long. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Taken aback by her apology, Luke pulled himself up to a sitting position. “ ’s all right,” he slurred. “You must have needed it. You looked like you did, anyway, back at Talos.”

She nodded. “About Talos—there’s some things we have to talk about,” she said. “You’ve been very patient with me, and I’ve been terribly unfair to you. You deserve to know what’s been happening with me.”

Having had his own opening speech preempted, Luke could find nothing more to say than “Go on, then—I’m listening.”

Akanah nodded toward the foredeck. “You have some messages. You’ll probably want to look at them first.”

Eyeing her quizzically, Luke moved to the copilot’s couch and browsed the list of waiting replies.

There was an acknowledgment from Streen on Yavin 4, which Luke skipped for the moment. He also skipped the press folders from the Senate and General Ministry, which were irrelevant for the moment.

The New Republic Reference Service had responded with a short précis on naming, ending in the messages:

Search Key: FALLANASSI—Not Found

Search Key: WHITE CURRENT—Not Found As Single Term

Search Key: FALLANASSI + WHITE CURRENT—Not Found

It was the same with the response from the information broker on Atzerri—an apologetic note and an offer to apply half of the search fee to Luke’s next request.

With increasing agitation, Luke skimmed through half a dozen more replies from various agencies and companies on Carratos and Coruscant. All were singularly uninformative—a few dates, a few facts that fell into the category of vital statistics, and several NO RECORD and NOT FOUND messages, with a pair of REQUEST DENIED rebuffs scattered among them.

“Let me tell you what your messages say,” Akanah said gently. “My full name was Akanah Norand Goss, now Akanah Norand Pell. I was married on Carratos to Andras Pell, a man thirty-six years my senior. Andras died a year later, and I inherited this