Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [39]
That was the last thing Akanah wanted. Of all the impulses capable of moving Luke’s hand toward his lightsaber, she feared the power of his loyalty to his sister most. In frustration, she pulled away from him, moving to the opposite edge of the slidewalk.
“What?” he asked in surprise. “What is it?”
Akanah sensed his confusion and uncertainty and targeted her words there. “I’m just wondering if maybe we’ve gone as far as we can together,” she said. “Maybe it was a mistake to make you part of this. If you don’t have the commitment or the trust—”
“Akanah—”
“I have to think about what to do now,” she said, and stepped neatly off the slidewalk.
Luke whirled about but did not follow, letting the slidewalk carry him on toward the port. Their gazes locked together for a moment, then she turned away.
Eyes now closed, she studied the Current’s flow through and around him, reading its eddies and meanders. There was exasperation there, but a new and still raw worry as well. Good, she thought. Wonder about me. Worry that I’ll steal a ship on my own and leave you behind. Then perhaps you won’t worry so much about other people’s wars or think about joining them. Your place is with me, Luke Skywalker—I still have lessons to teach you.
* * *
Han had lost track of time. There was no day-and-night cycle in the brightly lit Yevethan prison cell, no regular meals to mark out intervals. Han dozed, exercised, paced, played endless games of hop-stone solitaire on the dusty floor, dozed. His mouth was parched, and his head and empty stomach were possessed by constant aches too sharp now to simply ignore.
In the beginning Barth had joined him in what Han had dubbed the planetary championship of two-handed hop-stone, but both of them were too short-tempered for competitive games now. They had exhausted their repertoires of bawdy jokes, with Barth emerging the uncontested winner for both variety and delivery. In revenge, Han had taught Barth all eighty-six verses of a song that their brains kept singing long after their voices were stilled.
Of late Han had taken to talking to the ceiling, to their unseen jailers. He had peppered his monologues with increasingly savage insults, hoping to provoke a response, any response, that would lead to the cell door opening, that might give them a chance to do something about their circumstances. When he ran out of words, he mentally rehearsed scenarios for overpowering any number of guards up to five.
But all he accomplished was to make both Barth and himself tired of the sound of his voice. By the time the cell door opened, they were so weak from hunger and dehydration that they could barely stand.
One of the three Yevethan guards threw Han a pair of loose-fitting white pants and gestured at Han’s uniform. “You will wear what we have given you,” he ordered, and tossed another pair of the pajamalike pants to Barth.
Stripping without modesty, they both complied without argument. When the task was finished, the guards prodded them toward the corridor.
There was a Yevethan guard in front of Han, leading the way, and another behind him, with Barth following and the third guard bringing up the rear. It was one of the geometries Han had rehearsed—take out the guard in the middle together, high-low, then turn back-to-back and take on the others—but he weighed the odds against his curiosity about where they were being taken and decided to wait.
But the pants they had been given had been sized for a Yevethan frame—the waist was too low and the legs a handspan too long. Before he had gone half a dozen strides down the corridor, Barth tripped himself on the trailing fabric and went sprawling.
Hearing the noise behind him, Han had only an instant to react. He spun, hands forming into fists, and received a rock-hard Yevethan forearm across his throat for his trouble. Gasping and choking, he fell backward. It was a hard landing, even without the