Shield of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “THE ABSENCE OF DATA SHOULD NOT IN AND OF ITSELF BE CONSIDERED INDICATIVE OF PROSCRIBED TRAVEL OR ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES,” read the disclaimer at the top of the port call list.

  That didn’t stop Luke from wondering and speculating. The longest gap, a few days short of a year, started just three months after the name Mandarin had been burned off the hull. The gap began weeks before the Battle of Endor and continued through the worst of the fighting of the last year of the war against the Empire.

  According to the record in front of Luke, Star Morning had left Motexx fully loaded, heading for Gowdawl under a charter license. The liner wasn’t seen again until she turned up, cabin and cargo holds empty, at Arat Fraca some three hundred days later.

  All things considered, that was a good time for an unarmed liner to lie up in port or another safe haven. But where had she gone? Motexx and Arat Fraca lay nearly two sectors apart, separated not only by thousands of light-years, but also by the unnavigable Black Nebula in Parfadi, with its twin supermassive neutron stars. And what had happened to the passengers from Motexx? There was no record that Star Morning had ever berthed at Gowdawl.

  Another port conspicuous by its absence was Atzerri. Star Morning’s first destination after Teyr had been Darepp. In the weeks that followed, it wandered erratically toward the Rim, stopping at colony worlds named 23 Mere, Yisgga, New Polokia, Fwiis, and Babbadod before turning back toward the heart of the galaxy and, in time, its appointment at Motexx. As best Luke could determine with the Adventurer’s navicom, the closest Star Morning had come to Atzerri was en route to Fwiis—but without enough unaccounted time for it to have made a 150-light-year side trip.

  Luke felt himself girding for an argument with Akanah. The Fallanassi didn’t go straight to Atzerri from Teyr—so why is it so important that we do? Did they know when they left that they would end up there? Why didn’t the pointer point to Darepp? I wish I knew exactly what the message at the commonal said.

  But it was the third discovery Luke sifted from the report that seemed the most urgent. That was the one that prompted him to leave his couch and go back to the service access compartment, where Akanah was putting on a good show of being otherwise occupied.

  Akanah’s vehicle for that was what Luke thought of as her stretching exercises and what she called active meditation. At that particular moment she was sitting with eyes closed and, without evident stress, with her ankles crossed behind her neck. A light touch of the tips of her forefingers on the deck pad maintained her upright balance.

  “Found something,” he said quietly, and waited for her to acknowledge him. When that acknowledgment was slow in coming, he added, “Akanah?”

  Drawing a deep breath, she let her body roll forward and unfold, then sat back up in a more conventional position. Her eyes opened slowly, and her gaze was steady. “What did you find?”

  “Star Morning,” Luke said. “For most of the last few months, she’s been way over in Farana, on the far side of the Corporate Sector. But she put in at Vulvarch not twelve hours ago.”

  “Why do you think that that’s important?”

  “Vulvarch is just thirty-four light-years away,” Luke said. “We could be there in half the time it would take us to get to Atzerri. Less than half.”

  “The ship is not important,” Akanah said. “Our path leads to Atzerri.”

  “That path’s overgrown with fifteen years of bramble,” Luke said. “Look at what’s happened so far—the chances are that all we’ll find on Atzerri is another message telling us to go somewhere else, to Darepp, or Babbadod, or Arat Fraca. Star Morning’s been all over the galactic map.”

  “The ship is not important,” Akanah repeated. “It’s a tool—property. We were told to go to Atzerri.”

  “Anything or anyone waiting for us on Atzerri has been waiting fifteen years and can wait a few more days,” Luke said, growing frustrated with her stubbornness. “But this lead is only twelve hours old. If we jump right now, we should be able to reach Vulvarch before Star Morning lifts again.”

  She shook her head. “We won’t find the circle there.”

  Luke’s tone betrayed his impatience. “The same pilot’s been listed for the ship since Kell Plath took it over. She has to be one of you, or at least in the know. Akanah, we could spend months following the circle’s movements over fifteen years. But Star Morning could send us—maybe even take us—right to where the Fallanassi are today. I thought that was what you wanted.”

  “I’ll follow the way left for me,” Akanah said. “It’s what I know. It’s what I was promised—the way home will be marked.”

  Luke turned his face away, one hand clenched in a fist at his side, then retreated to the forward compartment. When he had shed the anger, he returned. She had already resumed her meditation.

  “Will you at least talk to them before we jump out of here?” Luke asked. “I have Star Morning’s hypercomm receiver address—I can set up a secure link for you. You can have all the privacy you want to exchange whatever recognition signs you need to with the crew. Maybe they can save us at least one wasted trip.”

  “No,” Akanah said without looking up. “They can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She paused and turned her face to him. “Even if the crew of the ship is of the circle, they will never reveal themselves to a stranger such a distance away. As I will not reveal myself to anyone I cannot feel in the Current. The outward signs and spoken words are only ritual—the recognition lies in sensing another adept beside you. I’m sorry.”

  Her refusal left Luke wordless with frustration, and she saw it in his eyes.

  “You should understand,” she said. “It’s the same with you and those like you. The only recognition that matters is what you feel here.” She tapped between her breasts with three fingers of her left hand. “That is the truth that can never deceive.”

  The dispute hung in the air between them as unspoken suspicion and resentment.

  Akanah did not try to forbid Luke to contact Star Morning on his own. But she hovered close enough to the flight stations to make it impossible for Luke to do so without her knowledge. It was absolutely clear that she meant to prevent any more surprises like the one that had greeted her after her nap.

  For his part, though he had said nothing of it, Luke had already concluded that hailing the other ship without Akanah’s cooperation could only be counterproductive. And since he had reluctantly accepted her decision and resigned himself to taking Mud Sloth to Atzerri, he resented her vigilant scrutiny.

  Her scrutiny also prevented Luke from collecting the report on the Mud Sloth’s history, which was surely ready for him in Ship Registry’s Pending queue. His discoveries in the Star Morning report and Akanah’s stubbornness over Atzerri made him more curious than ever to see it. But that curiosity was being thwarted, leaving him doubly resentful and harboring some suspicions of his own.

  When the time came to jump out from Teyr, Luke handled the details without announcing them to Akanah, then climbed into the bunk to sleep through the short hop he had programmed. When he did, he purposefully left the Star Morning report open on the flight station’s secondary display. Whether Akanah was tempted by that invitation, he did not know. Opening wide his connection to the Force, Luke allowed the discordant emotions to bleed away, and he was asleep within minutes.

  Three hours out from Teyr, the Verpine Adventurer dropped out of hyperspace as programmed. Climbing out of the bunk, Luke found a friendly smile for Akanah, who managed a quick, somewhat tired smile in return.

  “I’m going to query the Ministry of State now, unless you know some reason not to,” Luke said, sliding into the pilot’s seat.

  “No,” she said. “Do you need privacy?”

  Luke shook his head and keyed the hypercomm. “Nothing secret here—just limited access.” He tried another smile and found it still felt sincere. “There’s a shortage of privacy here, anyway.”

  It took only a few minutes to put in his requests,
and the responses started coming back immediately. Luke chose not to mention that all seven additional worlds for which he requested backgrounders were onetime ports of call for Star Morning. If she recognized the names from reading the report, she would know his reason. If not, it would never be an issue.

  “I’m going to start my inspection,” Luke said, standing.

  “May I look at these files?”

  “Of course,” Luke said. “It’s better if you do, in fact. As I said, no secrets. I’ll be in earshot—feel free to talk to me if you find something you think I should know.”

  The interior inspection took nearly an hour. Beginning at the rear of the skiff’s small service compartment, Luke systematically opened every removable panel and access door inside the ship, searching for anything that looked as if it might not belong. His examination turned up a clumsy retrofit to the water recycler that accounted for one of the Adventurer’s eccentricities, and half a dozen lost objects of the slipped-through-the-cracks variety, but nothing more.

  “I don’t understand why the spaceport wouldn’t allow service work in the parking area,” Akanah said when he rejoined her.

  “Probably protecting the interests of the ship services licensee. Have to keep those maintenance bays full, you know.” Luke gestured toward the displays. “Interesting reading?”

  “There’s no Flight Control Zone at Atzerri,” she said. “We can jump right into orbit if we like and pick our own landing site—all the spaceports are independent. There’s not much government of any kind there, it seems.”

  “I’ve been on Free Trader worlds before,” Luke said. “Free Traders are the closet anarchists of the galaxy. If they could figure out how to do without any government at all and not risk losing their finer things to bandits, they wouldn’t hesitate. Even as it is, they tend to tolerate a lot of fighting over the scraps. You don’t want to be poor or slow on a Free Trader world.”

  Luke missed the look that crossed her face, but he felt the shiver of revulsion. “Carratos was a lot like that, after the Imperial garrison left,” she said. “I should feel right at home.”

  “But would the Fallanassi?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It just doesn’t strike me as any more your people’s sort of place than Teyr was,” said Luke. “Did you find anything in the backgrounder to suggest why they would go there—much less stay there?”

  “They’re your people, too,” she said with a sad little smile. “I don’t have an answer to your question. Perhaps being what it is made it a better place to disappear.”

  “I suppose that could be an answer.”

  “Let’s not guess,” she said. “Is the ship clean?”

  “I couldn’t find anything.”

  “Then let’s go. Let’s go directly to Atzerri.”

  “I’m not saying there aren’t people who could hide things I couldn’t find,” Luke warned.

  “I know that.”

  “Well—let’s see if a direct route is available from here,” Luke said, turning to the astrogator. “I’d been planning to line it up with the next one.”

  They jumped out twenty minutes later, with the report on the Mud Sloth still waiting for him on Coruscant.

  The skiff had a way of getting smaller the longer they were in it, and the recent tensions had accelerated the process. As soon as they were on their way to Atzerri, Akanah and Luke resumed sleeping in shifts.

  It worked largely because the active noise-canceling system in the bunk was effective enough that the curtain divided the ship into two worlds, dark and light, awake and asleep. For most of a day’s cycle, no matter which side of the curtain they were on, both Luke and Akanah could enjoy the illusion of being alone on the ship. They allowed just enough time between shifts with both awake to avoid military-style hot-bunking—though Luke could usually catch Akanah’s gentle scent on the pillow even after he turned it.

  The jump to Atzerri was a long one. The travelers did not have much to say to each other at the first turn—she was impatient for bed and he to read the diplomatic files. It was little different at the second turn, when the conversation was polite and perfunctory.

  By the third, they were both just lonely enough again to welcome some company and to linger together in idle talk. And by the fourth, Luke ventured to broach a subject that had kept touching his thoughts in the time he spent alone.

  “Akanah—if telling me what the scribing says violates your oath, why do you do it?”

  “Because I consider you one of us,” she said, her expression carrying a hint of surprise. “You are untrained—you are not an adept—but you are Fallanassi.”

  “Why? Because my mother was—is?”

  “That, and because of the potential within you, given proof by your skill with the Force.”

  Luke returned to the pilot’s couch and curled up sideways in it. “How do people become part of the circle?”

  “Curiosity is not sufficient—which I hazard you know. Some are born to it. Some come to it. Is it any different in your discipline?”

  “Born with the gift, do you mean, or born to someone who already belongs, to a trained adept?”

  “Is the gift not in the blood?”

  “Sometimes it seems that way. Sometimes it seems as if the talent goes wild, almost as if the Force chooses its own,” Luke said, turning on his back and propping one foot on the control panel.

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “Look at the way the Jedi are coming back,” said Luke. “The Empire hunted us so relentlessly that most everyone who escaped thought they were the only Jedi left. But it isn’t just that a few solitaries who were hiding have resurfaced. I’ve found students with no family history whatsoever, in species that were never represented before in the Order.”

  “Some of your number may have been adventurous travelers,” said Akanah. “On Carratos, I heard many jokes about how the Emperor spent his evenings. If a Jedi sleeps alone, surely it must be by choice, as it is with you.”

  “Are you saying that you expected me to warm a bed with you?” Luke said. “I didn’t think that was our bargain.”

  “No,” she said. “I never expected that.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “That Luke Skywalker could have a hundred children by now. A thousand.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “No—that’s the simple truth. There are different rules for heroes and royalty, and you’re seen as a little of both. You can’t be unaware of that.”

  Luke frowned and looked away. “I don’t know how to be a father to one child, much less a thousand.”

  “You wouldn’t need to know,” she said. “Their mothers wouldn’t expect it. They would be grateful enough for the gift.”

  “I’d expect it of me,” he said, and firmly steered the conversation back on course. “We were talking about my being an honorary member of the circle—”

  “Not honorary,” she corrected. “Novice.”

  “Novice, then. But there’s an exception in your oath for people like me?”

  “Every adept has the right to judge and the duty to teach,” she said. “I’ve made my judgment.”

  “And the rest?” Luke asked. “We’ve had many hours together—why haven’t you started to teach me?”

  “But I have,” she said. “I’ve asked you to think about what you know and believe. To go beyond that, the novice must ask for the door to be opened. But you aren’t ready to think of yourself as a student again—not yet. You run too well and easily to go back to crawling.”

  “No,” Luke said, shaking his head. “To be a Jedi is to be a seeker. A Jedi is always learning. It’s only on the dark side that one becomes obsessed with knowing, and impressed with doing.”

  “There’s a touch of the dark side,” Akanah said slowly, “in the way you cling to the privilege of killing, and resist the teaching I’ve offered you. A hint of a mind that has settled on answers and resents being challenged with new questions
.”

  Luke toyed with the lacing on his longshirt as he considered her words. “You may be right,” he said finally. “I found the Force at a time when what I needed was power. I wanted a weapon to protect my friends, not enlightenment. I was thinking of war against the Empire, not peace with the universe. Perhaps something of that lingers in how I see myself. I’ll think on it.”

  “Good,” she said. “Your words give me hope. And hope is the beginning of everything worthwhile.”

  Luke sat up and turned toward her. “Akanah—I do want you to teach me,” he said. “I want to learn to read scribing. You were able to help me see it. Can you teach me to see it without your help?”

  “Yes. But that isn’t the first lesson,” she said. “That will come later.”

  “Don’t you think there’s reason enough to change the curriculum?”

  “What reason?”

  “Insurance,” Luke said. “If we’re going to follow your way, the marked way, to the circle, finding and reading the signs left in the Current is crucial. But if only one of us can read them—”

  “I won’t miss any signs,” Akanah said, shaking her head. “Or misread them.”

  “What if we become separated? You said that in your mind, I’m Fallanassi. If that’s so, then these signs are meant for me as well.”

  “Commitment must be based on more than need,” Akanah said. “I’m sorry. The time isn’t right for what you ask.”

  Luke frowned. “Are you afraid that I’ll go off and try to finish this journey without you?”

  “No,” said Akanah. “Would you allow your student’s impatience to dictate the sequence and timing of his instruction? Would you give him the secret that could most compromise you before he had affirmed the principles that most define you?”