Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [150]
He gestured toward Wialu as he spoke the last, then looked to her. “You must think me a fool, chasing after the phantom she created. Thank you for the wakeup call. I wish you luck in coaxing her off Isela’s path, and onto yours.”
Then Luke turned and left the cabin, missing Akanah’s honest tears.
“Is he coming?” Akanah asked anxiously.
Etahn A’baht frowned and looked across the loading bay to the open entryway. “Let me check with my people again,” he said, reaching for his comlink and stepping away from the foot of the boarding ramp.
Akanah looked to Wialu as a Star Morning porter passed between them, carrying their bags aboard. “I have to talk to him. I can’t leave like this.”
“How long would you have us wait?” Wialu asked gently. “The damage you have done—”
“I know,” Akanah said. “But I have to make him see that it wasn’t all lies.”
“There can be one star of deception in a galaxy of stars, but if that is the star before you, you can see nothing else—and if you stare at the deception, you will be blinded by it,” said Wialu. “It will take time, Akanah—more time than we have.”
Akanah sent an anxious glance toward A’baht, who was returning to them. “If you can’t wait, then I’ll have to stay here.”
“Akanah, you cannot force the flow to come to you,” said Wialu. “You can only ride it where it goes.”
The general rejoined them then, his frown deeper than before. “Luke’s not answering. No one seems to know where he is,” said A’baht. “I don’t understand it—he brought you here, and I’d think he’d want to see you off. We owe you a debt—”
“There is no debt,” Wialu said firmly. “The choice was mine, and I ask for nothing.”
A’baht grunted. “I still feel I should apologize—”
“He is here,” said Wialu.
The others looked toward the entryway, but Wialu directed her gaze toward an empty corner of the compartment. A moment later, Luke appeared there, as though walking through a door no one could see.
“What the—” A’baht said, then shook his head in disgust. “Jedi.”
Akanah ran to meet Luke, but stopped a step short of the embrace she wanted, and looked into his eyes for a cue.
“I came to say good-bye,” Luke said.
“I’m not sure that I’m leaving.”
Luke shook his head. “Your place is with them. Wialu is right. Even I can read that in the Current.”
“There’s something I have to say before I can go,” she said fervently. “Please—don’t judge us by my example. I beg you not to reject the truth because of the lie that preceded it. There is something gentle, and beautiful, and healing in the Fallanassi way—and if I failed to put it before you, the weakness was in me, not in the way of the Light, or the path of the White Current. There is depth there beyond what I’ve mastered, and worth there beyond what you’ve seen.”
“I’ve seen deception, manipulation—”
Stepping forward bravely, she touched his breastbone lightly with the flat of one hand. “It is not a way of power, but a way of peace—and I dearly wish for you to have that peace within you. I wish for you to add that strength to the great strength you already possess. I always wanted that for you—I never wanted anything from you.” A tremble entered her voice as she added in a near whisper, “I never wanted to add to your pain.”
Luke covered her hand with his own and lowered his eyes. “It seems I must choose what to believe,” he said at last. “I will try to believe that first, and perhaps it will guide me through the rest.”
She looked up at him gratefully. “Then I can go now,” she said, and kissed his cheek softly before backing away.
He stood and watched as she accepted a final word of thanks from the general, then moved up the boarding ramp past Wialu, who turned and followed.
Akanah hesitated for just a moment before vanishing through the inner airlock, looking back to him with a final apology in her eyes. Somewhere he found a forgiving smile