• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Captain, I depend on the sensor master. Not five seconds passed from his call before we left hyperspace—”

Sensor Master Nillik rose from his station before Gegak reached it, and retreated before him with hands raised. “I have not betrayed you, Captain. The instruments have betrayed me—”

With a snarl, Gegak lunged forward and closed the gap between them to little more than an arm’s length. “And who is responsible for the maintenance of your instruments?”

“I am, Lord Captain—but, I beg you, hear me—”

“I hear only the whining of a traitor.”

“This ship is old, twice the age of Gorath, and we have had neither the prize money nor the blessings of Foga Brill with which to maintain it. You cannot expect—”

Gegak produced a neural whip from inside a fold of his bright tunic and brandished it in front of him. “I can expect that my officers will not repay the favor I do them with excuses.”

“Captain—please!” Nillik now found himself backed against a bulkhead. “To track a ship through hyperspace is difficult even with the most sensitive installations. I was given no time to cool and retune the soliton antenna—I could not hear the target at all. I was barely able to hear Gorath above our own compression wave.”

“You are only making excuses for your inattentiveness.”

“No, Captain—it was not my attentiveness that wavered. The signature was so faint that I lost and reacquired it half a dozen times before the final loss of signal. That was the only reason for my delay. I do not know for certain if those ships left hyperspace behind us or continue on somewhere ahead of us.”

Gegak growled and stabbed the neural whip into Nillik’s abdomen. The sensor master screamed and collapsed writhing to the floor.

“I should have been informed of your difficulties,” the captain said, returning the whip to its pocket. His voice was suddenly tranquil. “You have forgotten the first rule of survival in an autocracy—speak truth to power. I hope the pain will help you learn from your mistake.”

Then the captain turned his back on the gasping sensor master. “Point the bow toward Prakith. Make flank speed. Call the second master to the sensing station. We will search back to the point where Gorath disappeared from our instruments. And I will hear no more excuses for failure. I have expended all my tolerance on Nillik.”

Chapter 5

Luke found it difficult not to step off the slidewalk to pursue Akanah and prolong the argument. The thinly veiled threat she had offered as her parting words, suggesting that she might continue on to j’t’p’tan without him, might withdraw her promise to lead him to his mother’s people, was not without power.

But that threat was also nakedly manipulative, and his reflexive resentment allowed him both to see the emotional blackmail and to resist it.

It was not that he gave no credence to the threat. Akanah’s conduct on Atzerri had made clear that she was perfectly capable of striking out on her own when her interests so dictated. But he had no compromise or concession to offer her. The old, familiar demon of Duty had reentered his consciousness during the conversation with the shipwright, and he could do nothing else until he either answered to his conscience or silenced it.

There was no point in seeking a rapprochement with Akanah until Luke knew his own mind—until he knew if he could allow himself to continue the journey.

And for that, he needed information.

After stopping at the port office to authorize Starway Services to move Mud Sloth to their work bay, Luke returned to the skiff. Locking the entry not only against strangers but against Akanah as well, he settled at the flight console and began making queries.

A connection to Utharis GridLink gave him access—at a refreshingly reasonable price—to both New Republic Prime and Coruscant Global archives, as well as to the back numbers of several smaller newsgrids. But the most complete information Luke found came from two local services, Eye-On-U and Taldaak Today! The Coruscant-based grids were obsessed with Imperial City politics and offered only