Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [50]
The process, which divorced reproduction from emotional commitments, struck many, including Corran, as inhuman, but the Kuati aristocracy found it practical in a number of ways. It left their people free to enter into alliances and mergers without placing a child in jeopardy of being drawn into an enemy camp when whatever enterprise that brought two people together collapsed. It also prevented inbreeding between noble families and provided the children with a guardian/tutor with a very serious and tight bond to his charges. The children knew their telbuns provided one half of their biological makeup, but they only acknowledged their aristocratic parent as having a blood relationship with them.
The process was not easy on a telbun, but what did their feelings matter? They were property, nothing more.
The official hit a few buttons on her datapad. “You and the telbun are cleared. Beyond the airlock is your shuttle. Enjoy your stay … or whatever.”
The woman moved off down along the ship’s spine toward the next docking foyer. Erisi and Corran retreated to circle in the center of the docking foyer. The circle slowly rose toward the outer hull and the circular platform on which they rose locked into the floor of the airlock with a click. Corran felt bits and pieces of things shift below his feet, then the cylindrical airlock slowly rotated ninety degrees until the side opened onto a shuttle’s hatch. Beyond the opening stood a female pilot who waved them aboard the modified Lambda-class ship.
The hatch closed behind them. “If you will be seated,” said the pilot, “and strap yourselves in, I can take you to the Hotel Imperial.”
Erisi nodded. “We are cleared for an entry vector?”
“Yes, Mistress Darsk.”
Corran walked into the passenger compartment and took a seat in the last of four rows. Erisi cast a glance down a small corridor toward the cockpit, then came back and joined him. She said nothing as she strapped herself in, but she did rest her arm on his. The lights glistening on her blouse shifted color sequentially, as if a golden beach was being eroded by a silver wave.
The ship shuddered and popped as it disengaged itself from Jewel’s airlock, then it lifted off and its wings snapped down into place. As they did so, holographic displays lining the walls of the passenger compartment provided images that made it appear as if the whole ship had been made of transparisteel. The shuttle pulled up and away from Jewel, heading outbound from Coruscant for a moment. The screens filled with pinpoint images of distant stars.
Erisi kept her voice low. “Please forgive me for how rudely I have treated you.”
“Whatever you desire, mistress.”
She looked at him with a horrified expression at the dullness of his response, then that deepened as she realized that being alone in the ship’s cabin did not mean they could not be overheard. Erisi leaned toward him, filling his nostrils with the sweet scent of nlorna flower perfume. She kissed him on the lips, lingering close enough to whisper, “You are telbun. You understand.”
Corran nodded. “I am telbun. I understand.” Her comment and his reply, fairly innocent and common given the relationship of their two cover identities, had been imbued with a different meaning for the two of them. It was a touchstone, a link back into their real identities. Whenever they needed to assure themselves that the other person was just playacting they were able to use the phrases and responses to do so. In this way Corran knew her cruelties were forced