Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [77]
“How do you know?” he demanded, twisting around to face her. “Did you read my mail?”
“No. I didn’t need to.”
“You knew I was going to check up on you,” he said.
“Oh—I thought you would, eventually. I rather thought it would be sooner.”
“So you checked yourself, and you knew how little I’d find.”
“I checked for myself,” she corrected. “You’re not the only one looking for pieces of your past.”
He sat down on the edge of the copilot’s couch. “Why are there so few?” he asked, the accusatory tone leaving his voice.
“Talsava and I lived in the shadows on Carratos. We came in unregistered. We lived in a part of Chofin where people come and go without notice. When Talsava left, I became one of the invisibles—I owned nothing, did nothing that put my name in the identity records of the occupation. The only time I ever lived above the line on Carratos was the last two years—the years I was with Andras.”
“No one questioned who you were, where you came from?”
“No. The old records were seized by the Empire, and the occupation records were destroyed by the liberty movement. Everyone was given a fresh start. I took a name in the local custom for women—given name, mother’s name, father’s name. But it means nothing anywhere but there, anytime but then.”
“So there’s no reason for it to be anywhere in Coruscant’s records.”
“Or Lucazec’s, or Teyr’s. It’s not that there are other names behind which the records hide—”
“As far as the bureaucrats and census-takers were concerned, you didn’t exist.”
She smiled. “On Carratos, the census is of property and the owners of property,” she said. “When I owned nothing, I did not count. When Andras took me, I was his property. Now that I own this”—she raised her hands to indicate the skiff—“I am a person.”
Luke nodded slowly. “I guess that all makes sense, the way you explain it,” he said. “But something else I learned still doesn’t have an explanation. The traffic records say we’re still on Coruscant, and I’m starting to think that we’re still going to be there no matter how many systems we visit.”
Inexplicably, Akanah giggled. “Did your tracking report mention a visit to Golkus?”
“Yes,” Luke said. “On your way to Coruscant.”
“And did it say why I went there?”
“No. I didn’t think about it much, either,” Luke admitted. “I guess I figured that, it being your first trip in the skiff, there was either some little problem you needed fixed, or you just didn’t like being alone out here.”
“Well—the second is true, absolutely true. But so is the first. The problem I needed fixed was the ship’s identification transponder. I told you—we leave no trail that an outsider can follow. There was someone on Golkus who could help with that.”
“Someone? Altering ID profiles is no mean trick.”
“His name would mean nothing to you but could harm him,” Akanah said. “I believe he once worked with—or for—Talon Karrde.”
“How do you know him?”
“He came through Carratos once, years ago,” she said. “When I heard why, I arranged to meet him and to do him a favor. But the price was still dear. I paid him with most of the credits I had, plus favors I had collected from others.”
“So he changed the profile—what, to some other Adventurer? So some other ship left Coruscant.”
“Oh—he did more than change it,” Akanah said. “If that’s all I’d asked for, it wouldn’t have been quite so dear. No, he put what he called a smuggler’s kit in the transponder.”
“This ship’s black-boxed?” Luke stared wonderingly.
“I guess that’s what it’s called. Every time we jump, the profile changes—to something that looks legitimate but isn’t. If I’d had the price, I could have bought bootleg IDs instead of counterfeits.”
“And I suppose the system doesn’t activate until after you’ve jumped out from wherever the work was