Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [74]
“Here’s another balance.” He pressed a hand to his dirt-streaked forehead. “The mountaintops in my life are balanced by canyons. I’ve lost friends, family, teachers. The Empire killed most of them. If I’d never even begun my Jedi training, they’d still be dead.” He frowned. “Actually, I’d be dead too. The day I met my first teacher, the Empire struck our farm. They butchered my Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru while I was away. Everyone who was home died. Haven’t they done that here too? Do you approve of the Empire?”
“That’s a loaded question.”
“Do you?” he pressed.
Of course she did. Didn’t she? “The Empire has seized more power than any government needs,” she admitted. “Yet it balances submission with privilege. One advantage to living under the Empire is a wonderful range of educational opportunities. Bright children may study right at Imperial Center.”
He made a wry face. “I’ve heard that the brightest don’t get to go home.”
How did he know that? Some stayed on, offered lucrative employment. Some vanished. She’d preferred to go home. “Let’s say we learned to hold back a little. Imperial leadership has been good for Bakura, anyway. It restored order when we were close to civil war. It has drawbacks, but I’m sure your people would tell you that the Alliance has problems.”
“They’re the problems of freedom.”
That stung. “You frightened us when your battle group arrived. The Rebel Alliance’s reputation is destructive, not constructive.”
“I guess from an Imperial point of view, it could be. But we’re not. Honest.”
He’s no diplomat. “Thank you for talking this through,” she said. “I feel better—”
“I wish I did.”
“—And more certain of myself,” she lied firmly. She reached into the satchel, twisted her wrist, then slipped the bag over one shoulder. “We will work together against the Ssi-ruuk.”
He made a hand-twisting motion. She switched on the generator one last time. “Is there a chance we—I—could buy a few of those?” He pointed inside the string bag.
She shook her head. “This is Eppie’s. There are only a few of them left on Bakura, property of the original families. We’ve kept them secret from Governor Nereus.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes, it is,” Gaeri agreed. “I’ll take the hover cart out.”
He clipped his lightsaber back onto his belt.
Luke walked her to the door. He wanted to stroke her hand, reason with her, erode her defenses with the Force. Even begging seemed reasonable. Instead, he palmed the door open and then thrust his thumbs through his belt.
“Thank you,” she said. The stormtrooper guards watched as she pushed the hover cart out and strode down the hall without looking back. Once she vanished around a corner, Luke dropped his hands. He clenched them, loosened them, and clenched them again. His abilities had always opened doors. Doors into danger, both in space and in the brighter, darker, wider spaces of his own soul, but he’d always had the freedom to walk through.
Gaeriel had tried to slam this door in his face, but she hadn’t succeeded. He’d felt the conflict within her. She might not fight him forever.
Then again, she might. Exhausted, he shut the apartment door behind him and strode up the hall in the opposite direction. A roof access door opened on his left. He pushed through and rode the lift up.
By night, the roof garden could have been primitive, isolated forest. Still air cooled his face. Clusters of white tree trunks branched out of protruding root wads, then swept up and ended in bright yellow-orange twigs, damp but no longer dripping. Two small round moons and several dozen bright stars shone overhead, and night glims edged a stone path between dark, mossy banks.
As he paced away from the lift shaft, the path branched. Several meters down the narrow spur toward the complex’s edge, he knelt on a bench, rested his elbows on the restraining wall, and looked down. The circles of the city stretched out around him, lit by hovering blue-white street lamps at the center, then pale yellow, fading to reddish—
Like a diagram of star types. The comparison leaped into his