Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

"Three days," the examiner repeated. "Are you now, or have you

  recently been, infected with any transmissible class B or class C

  agent?"

  "No, no," Luke/Li said, smiling at Akanah. "We're fit as can be. I

  just hate to travel when I'm sick, don't you?"

  "Do you have in your possession any lethal weapons, proscribed drugs,

  unlicensed technology, or other articles in violation of the General

  Visitor Agreement?"

  "Oh, gracious, no," Luke said. "We're here to have fun."

  The examiner passed two traveler's aid cards through an encoder.

  "Welcome to Teyr," he said, handing the cards to Akanah. "Enjoy your

  stay with us."

  Between the Prye Folas spaceport terminal and the Skyrail station was

  the broad green expanse of Welcome Park. Luke and Akanah stopped at

  the first open bench they spotted, tucking their bags protectively

  behind their feet.

  "I think we're finally officially here," Luke said.

  "How are you doing?"

  "It's not what I expected," said Akanah, looking around.

  Luke held out a palm. "Let's see that," he said, nodding toward the

  traveler's aid cards Akanah still clutched in her hand.

  Distractedly, Akanah handed one of the cards to Luke, who began to

  study it. The card had a tiny display screen that took up half of one

  side, with some universal-symbol command keys below. On the back was a

  line drawing of the structure that stood at the center of the park--a

  ring of more than a hundred small kiosks surrounding a two-story-high

  carousel display.

  "I have to go do a Li Stonn thing," said Luke. "Stay here--I'll be

  right back."

  When Luke got closer to the structure, he could see that the band at

  the top of the carousel said "Visitor Information Center" in Basic and

  several other common languages.

  There were short lines of people waiting at every kiosk for a chance to

  select their areas of interest and have that information transferred to

  the cards, where they could browse it at their leisure. While they

  waited, most looked up at the carousel display, which was offering

  colorful one-minute documentaries on the geology of the Rift, the

  building of the Skyrail, and the shopping opportunities in Prye

  Folas.

  "Pickpocket's paradise," Luke muttered, and turned away.

  Just then, Luke felt the momentary tickle in his senses that meant he

  was being watched. He scanned the park carefully as he returned to the

  bench where Akanah sat, but the feeling did not return, and nothing he

  saw raised his alarm.

  "I need to know what region we'll--" He stopped as he saw that she was

  struggling against tears, her eyes faraway and forlorn. "What's

  wrong?"

  "Everything's wrong," she said. "I just know they're not here."

  Luke sat down sideways beside her. "Why? You thought you'd be able to

  feel them, and you can't?"

  She was not too upset to be indignant. "No---we're not that careless,

  to broadcast our presence even on the Current."

  "Then what's the matter?"

  "I told you---everything's wrong." She shook her head sadly. "This

  isn't our kind of world. It's everything we're trying not to be. It's

  too crowded, too loud, too organized and artificial. If they were ever

  here, they won't have stayed very long." Bowing her head, she began to

  sob quietly. "It's too late. It took me too long to get here--"

  Edging closer, Luke drew her into a comforting embrace, brushing away

  the worst of her despair with caressing thoughts. "You don't know

  that," he said. "It's too soon to be giving up. Come on, where do we

  start?"

  Akanah rested her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry--I'm not doing a

  very good job of being invisible."

  "No one cares," Luke said. "No one's watching. All these people have

  tunnel vision--all they can see right now are their own plans and

  worries and hopes. They're all eager for confirmation that this really

  will be the vacation of a lifetime."

  Raising her head, Akanah sought confirmation of his words. "On

  Carratos, everyone notices public tears," she said, wiping her

  cheeks.

  "My ears expected to hear ridicule."

  "Looks like you'll have to do without, this time," he said. "So where

  do we start? Who are we looking for?"

  "The city of Griann," she said. "It's in what they call the Greenbelt

  Region. That's where they were taken--Jib Djalla, Novus, Tipagna, and

  Norika. The first three are boys," she added. "Novus is Twi'lek, the

  others are human."

  "Okay. Let's go see what the machines can tell us about Griann," Luke

  said, reaching down and shouldering both bags.

  As they stood in line for an information kiosk, Akanah's mood seemed to

  brighten, as though she were absorbing some of the joyful energy around

  her. But Luke again felt someone's curiosity as a sudden shiver, as if

  someone had lightly touched his face, trying to recognize him.

  Looking back across Welcome Park on a pretense of casual

  crowd-watching, Luke focused in on the tall, slender form of an Elomin

  male, already turning his horned face away. Luke watched his quarry

  move aloofly through the gathering until it disappeared behind the

  curve of the information center, but the Elomin never glanced his way

  again.

  You're getting twitchy, Luke told himself. There's no way that an

  Elomin would be working for Imperial intelligence.

  But the fact that an Elomin--perhaps this same one--had parked an

  airspeeder directly across from Mud Sloth would not leave his

  awareness. And the noise and the bustle of the crowd in the park

  suddenly seemed less a joyful party and more a potentially deadly

  distraction.

  Maybe they were holding us up for a reason, Akanah, Luke thought

  worriedly, patting the bulge of his lightsaber along his thigh to

  reassure himself that it was there.

  But though he stayed protectively close, Luke said nothing to Akanah

  beyond the kind of inconsequential chatter a couple as accustomed to

  each other as they were to traveling might Share while waiting in

  line.

  There's something here that I still don't understand---some question

  I've failed to ask. He shook his head in annoyance, with such vigor

  that Akanah noticed.

  "Is something wrong?" she asked.

  "Oh--I've just done it again, that's all," said Li Stonn. "The lines

  on either side are moving faster than ours. I shouldn't ever pick.

  You pick the line next time, all right?"

  She slipped her hand into his. "Be patient, dear," she said with an

  affectionate smile. "We're almost there--and maybe this will be the

  last line we have to stand in."

  Someone behind them chuckled deeply. "This is your first time on Teyr,

  isn't it?" the stranger called out.

  "You haven't seen anything yet. Wait until you get near the Rift."

  "Oh, it'll be worth it, I'm sure," Akanah said brightly, tightening her

  grip on Luke's hand. "I just know it will be worth the wait."

  Chapter 6

  Luke and Akanah rode the Rift Skyrail as far as Cloud Bridge, the

  south
ernmost of the West Rim stops. That treated them to a

  breathtaking view of the last eighty kilometers of the Rift--one of the

  narrow-est sections, and consequently one of the most spectacular.

  The elevated track was perched right on the edge of the chasm, leaping

  across side canyons that would have been major attractions in their own

  right anywhere else.

  At Cloud Bridge, Li Stonn rented a bubbleback, a local landspeeder

  variant popular with visitors who wanted to explore the canyon

  bottom.

  But instead of heading for the elevators at the Cloud Bridge Rift

  Access Point, Luke turned the bubbleback west along Flyway 120, toward

  the Greenbelt.

  An hour and a half at the top speed allowed on the flyway brought them

  to the intersection with Harvest Flyway, which Akanah's traveler's aid

  card told them was an important cargo route connecting the heart of the

  Greenbelt with Turos Noth. There was no speed limit on the lightly

  traveled cargo route, which put the agricultural city of Griann not

  quite two hours away at the bubbleback's top speed.

  "Need to stretch?"

  "No," she said, pointing behind them. "I can manage."

  As "getaway" vehicles, bubblebacks featured a compact waste station and

  reprocessor, with a full set of standard humanoid fittings. "Do we

  need to refuel?"

  " No. Griann has fuel stops, I assume."

  Akanah checked her aid card. "Yes. Though 'local prices may vary from

  published visitor area rates."

  Please, let's push on."

  They had nearly reached Griann when Akanah finally noticed the outline

  of the cylinder in the right thigh pocket of Luke's walk-arounds.

  "You brought your lightsaber?" she asked, leaning toward him.

  "Yes," he said. "You sound surprised."

  "How did you get it through Arrival Screening? You can't fool a

  scanner with Jedi mind tricks. Can you?"

  "You can fool the person whose job it is to respond to scanner alarms,"

  Luke said. "But even that wasn't necessary. Lightsabers are still the

  rarest weapons in the galaxy. There's only one model of general

  security scanner that's programmed to recognize them, and Teyr doesn't

  use it."

  "Then what do they think it is?"

  Luke smiled. "Most scanners misidentify a light-saber as a type of

  shaver. Which I suppose it could be, in a pinch--if you were very,

  very good with it."

  She settled back in her seat. "I wish you had left it in the ship."

  "That's asking too much," Luke said. "I don't carry it every minute,

  but I don't like to be that far away from it. I've gotten in more

  tough spots because of not having it close enough than I ever have for

  carrying it."

  Looking out her window at the gently rolling fields and the day moon

  that was setting over them, Akanah said, "Please remember what I asked

  of you--it's important to me."

  "I remember," Luke said. "I hope you remember that I didn't make you

  any promises."

  "Is there that much pleasure in killing, that it becomes something

  difficult to give up?"

  Luke shot a hard glance across the bubbleback at her. "What makes you

  think I take pleasure in killing?"

  "That you won't renounce it," she said, turning to meet his gaze. "If

  I had caused a million deaths, I don't think I could ever pick up a

  weapon again. I don't understand how you can."

  With no ready answer, Luke turned his gaze back toward the flyway

  ahead. It wasn't until years after the Battle of Yavin that Luke had

  first become aware that the Death Star he had destroyed at Yavin had a

  complement-officers, crew, and support staff--of more than a million

  sentients.

  In retrospect, it was something he should have realized without

  prompting. But it took a new Battle of Yavin display at the Museum of

  the Republic on Corus-cant to point it out to him. When Luke thought

  of the Death Star, he associated it with Vader and Tagge and Grand Moff

  Tarkin, with the stormtroopers who'd tried to kill him in its corridors

  and the TIE pilots who'd tried to kill him above its surface, with the

  superlaser gun crews who had obliterated defenseless Alderaan.

  But the signs at the massive cutaway model of the Death Star in the

  museum had spelled out the numbers in its table of specifications, and

  Luke could still recite them 25,800 stormtroopers, 27,048 officers,

  774,576 crew, 378,685 support staff-"One million, two hundred five

  thousand, one hundred nine," Luke said quietly. "Not counting the

  droids."

  The calm precision of the recitation brought a look of startled horror

  to her face.

  "But you have to look at both sides of the ledger," Luke went on.

  "Alderaan. Obi-Wan. Captain Antilles.

  Dutch. Tiree. Dack. Biggs--" Luke shook his head.

  "Sometimes your enemies don't give you much choice--kill them, give up,

  or be killed. And if you think I should have done anything other than

  what I did--" "The past is fixed, unalterable," Akanah said.

  "What I care about is what you'll do today, or tomorrow.

  I know your past--I know your heritage--and I have already seen you

  kill once. Can't you understand how alien and abhorrent this is to

  me--to those who gave Nashira shelter?"

  "You don't trust me."

  She folded her hands on her lap, and her voice became small. "I am

  trying, Luke--but you don't know how hard it is for me to trust someone

  who believes as you do, and who has your power."

  Luke stole a sideways glance to catch her expression.

  "Are you saying you're afraid of me--because of this?" He rested his

  hand over the concealed lightsaber.

  "I suppose I am," she said. "I don't want to be."

  "I would never hurt you, Akanah," Luke said. "I brought this with me

  in case there were any surprises waiting--not to threaten you."

  "I move through the world without one," she said.

  "Could you not do the same?"

  Luke slowly shook his head. "Not while I still call myself a Jedi.

  It's more than a weapon--it's a tool for training the mind and the

  body. And it's become part of me--an extension of my will."

  "And a way to enforce your will on others."

  He shook his head. "Most of the discipline of the lightsaber has to do

  with defense."

  "What about the rest?"

  "The rest--the rest requires that you get close to your adversary,

  close enough to have to look them in the eye," Luke said. "An

  old-fashioned idea, and a civilizing one. If all you want is to kill

  quickly, efficiently and impersonally, a blaster is a much better

  choice--the Emperor's stormtroopers didn't carry lightsabers, after

  all."

  "All of my nightmares are of places where there are men who want to

  kill 'efficiently,'" Akanah said, turning her face back to the

  viewpane. "And the worst nightmare of all is to think that the only

  Universe that is, is such a place."

  Griann had been laid out on the plains of Teyr with a compass and a

  square. Its regularly spaced streets of regularly sized houses

  intersected with right-angle precision in a grid five kilometers
/>
  square. At the heart of the city was a small commercial zone serving

  both the residents and the traffic on the Harvest Flyway. Around the

  boundary of the city was an enclosing wall of silos, granaries, ag

  domes, sheds for the autoharvesters and skyhoppers, control towers for

  the irrigation system, and all the other facilities necessary for

  servicing the fields beyond.

  "Welcome to scenic Griann," Luke said, guiding the bubbleback into a

  refueling stall. "What now? Do you have a plan?"

  "I have an address," Akanah said. "North Five, Twenty-six Down. My

  friend Norika lived there."

  Luke shot her a questioning look. "I thought the children were

  supposed to be hiding. How did you get a lead as specific as an

  address?"

  "From Norika," Akanah said. "I got one letter from her that first

  month, hypercommed to Carratos from a public terminal at something she

  called the committee office. I wrote her back, a dozen letters at

  least, but she never answered--I never heard from her again."

  "Hmmm. Someone probably enforced on her the idea that 'hiding' means

  you don't tell anyone where you are," Luke said.