Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [80]
“Have you ever been there?”
“No,” Luke said, sending the coordinates to the autopilot. “You?”
“No.”
“Can’t get a better recommendation than that,” Luke said, suddenly feeling as tired as he had pretended to a short time before. “When we get there, I’ll buy you a souvenir hat.”
He did not wait for Akanah to settle in her couch. Thumbing the hyperdrive safety and throwing the actuators forward, Luke bent time, stretched the stars, and hurled the ship toward Utharis.
Lying on his back in the bunk, Luke stared up into the mesmerizer that covered the bulkhead above the bunk.
The thin panel offered several holographic depth illusions intended to combat shipbound claustrophobia, an array of hypnotic sleep-inducing light and color patterns, and several other displays of a purely recreational nature. Playing before Luke’s eyes was the slowly spinning disk of a great spiral-armed galaxy as viewed from outside, a thousand light-years above the galactic plane.
Luke had seen such a sight once before—from the Alliance’s medical frigate, at the deep rendezvous point they had code-named Haven. The sight took him back. That had been after the debacle at Hoth, after the escape from Bespin. He held his right hand, the bionic hand, up before his face and flexed the fingers, remembering—trying to remember.
Even more than leaving Tatooine in the Falcon with Han and Obi-Wan, it was his encounter with Vader, there in Cloud City, that divided his life into two halves. Before that, Luke had been little different from any of the Empire’s many casual victims—uprooted from his home by Imperial brutality, recruited into the Rebellion more by rage and tragedy than ideology. The blaster bolts that killed Owen and Beru had destroyed one future and sent him tumbling into another. But it had seemed a matter of chance, not destiny.
His meeting with his father, though, had laid a greater weight on his shoulders. Not until he was hanging from the power gantry, hearing the voice from behind the black mask speaking unthinkable words, had he understood what was being asked of him. Not until then had he known that he and no one else could carry that weight. Looking back to that moment was looking back to the moment he became himself. Looking back beyond that moment was almost impossible.
You can hardly see twenty-one from thirty-four, he thought.
The soft click of the curtain release interrupted his introspection. A moment later, Akanah slid the sections apart.
“Somehow I knew you were still awake,” she said, showing that now familiar quick smile. “What did I leave you wondering about?”
He shook his head. “I was just thinking about when I stopped being a kid. And how long ago it seems.”
“What if you live to be as old as Yoda?”
He smiled ruefully. “Then I’ll probably laugh at myself for feeling the way I feel right now.”
“It’s not the time. It’s the responsibility,” she said, and the smile left her eyes. “Luke—I’m sorry to intrude on you this way. But there was something I didn’t tell you, and should have. And I didn’t feel right letting it wait.”
Luke sat up far enough to prop himself up on his elbows. “Okay.”
She sat down on the wide sill at the edge of the bunk where the curtain track ran. “Even though I held back some things you might wish I’d told you, I’ve tried to always tell you the truth,” she said. “But I did lie to you about Atzerri.”
Luke sat up a little farther. “Oh?”
“I took you to Atzerri under false pretenses,” Akanah said. “The circle was never there. You were right about Star Morning. The writing at Teyr said to go to J’t’p’tan.”
“Then why?”
“I had to,” she said. “I had to try to find my father.”
Luke looked hard at her for long seconds, but his words were surprisingly soft. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand?”
“I was afraid of what I might find,” she said, dropping her eyes. “I was afraid of what you might think of me if my father turned out to be someone even I can’t respect.