Heir to the Jedi (26 page)

“No, you’re not entirely mistaken,” I said. “But we’re just friends.”

“Uh-uh, pilot, that’s not going to fly. I’m talking about what you
want
, not what you
are
.”

I couldn’t believe the conversation had gotten this uncomfortable
this quickly. I wasn’t any sort of expert on relationships, but I felt certain that I had already said too much, and it was unwise to speak to one person about your desire for another. Honesty, I reflected, might not always be the best policy. Sometimes you need to take evasive action.

“I think it doesn’t matter what I want. I’m a farmboy and she’s a princess. Being her friend is about all I can hope for.”

Nakari shook her head slowly as she spoke, not letting me get away. “She’s not all that inaccessible for you. You’re not a farmboy anymore.”

“All right, maybe I’m not, but she’s never shown any interest in me beyond friendship and what I can do for the Alliance. I hope we’re not going to fight about her.”

Nakari’s eyes hardened and her lips pressed together in a thin line. “Hopes are fragile things, Luke. Especially right now. Because it sounds like who you want and who you’re with are different people.”

For a fleeting half second I was elated that she thought I was
with
her, but I squashed that feeling because that might not be her thought for much longer. “No, that’s not it at all. Why are you angry? You asked if there was a note of yearning and I was honest and admitted one, but it’s nothing beyond that.”

Nakari held up her good hand to quell any further words and then used it to pinch the bridge of her nose as she shut her eyes and took a deep breath. After she exhaled, her hand dropped away and her eyes opened. “Honesty is usually good, Luke, you’re right. But sometimes it’s not what people want to hear.”

“Oh. Well, I wish I could go back to the Luke of two minutes ago and tell him how it is.”

Much to my relief, she snorted and her mouth split in a wide smile. “Don’t be too hard on him. His first impulse there was a good one.”

Allowing myself a cautious grin, I said, “All right, I’ll go easy on him. But I do apologize for encouraging any doubts with my
honesty. The honest truth you should remember is that I’m glad we met.”

“Attaboy,” she said, encouraging me. “You bring me the sugar now. Go on.”

It took me a moment to realize she was speaking metaphorically, but I was glad I caught myself before I moved to search for a sugar packet in the hotel room. “Right. Sugar. Well, you are so …”

“I’m so what, Luke? Don’t stop now.”

“So … how do people do this? Everything I can think of to say sounds trite and insincere in my head.”

“Don’t worry. You just earned all these sincerity points with the too-much-honesty thing. That’s not saying you shouldn’t strive to be original; I’m just saying that if you blurt out something I’ve heard before, I might believe you.”

“Ah, but no pressure, right?”

She winked. “Right.”

“Well, actually, that’s something I really admire about you. No pressure.”

Nakari narrowed her eyes. “You sure this is sugar?”

“Definitely. I guess this is a roundabout compliment, but I’m going for originality.”

“All right, dazzle me.”

“Well, I don’t feel the crushing weight of your expectations. I mean you had them—you just shared them with me—but I never would have known unless you said something. And believe me, that’s refreshing. Important.”

Nakari prodded me to clarify. “Important how?”

I struggled to find the right words. “Ever since the Battle of Yavin, I feel sometimes that people expect me to top it and wonder why I haven’t yet. What I feel from you is
encouragement
to top it—which is very different—and rare.” The other person who habitually encouraged me was Leia, but I thought it best not to elaborate on that.

Nakari leaned back in her chair. “Whoa. I’m not encouraging you to top the Death Star thing.”

“I know—that probably didn’t come out right. Let me try again. The secret about the Battle of Yavin was that I succeeded because of the Force, so to me, topping what I did there doesn’t mean a bigger explosion or killing more stormtroopers. It means taking another step along the path to becoming a Jedi. And I’ve made more progress in the Force since I met you than any other time after I lost Ben. I actually have hope that I can learn to use it now and it’s because of your encouragement … So, you see, you’re …” I flailed for some kind of original phrasing and nothing came to mind. Panicked that I would clam up and let loose another awkward silence into the world, I finished up with a simple fact: “… You’re good for me.”

Nakari waited a few beats to make sure I was finished. “Hmm. That was some pretty complex sugar,” she said, her mouth teasing up to the left, “but you wrapped it and put a neat little bow on it at the end.” She leaned forward again, pushed her plate out of the way, and propped an elbow on the table, resting her cheek against her good hand. Her half smile bloomed into a wide one. “That wasn’t bad, Luke. Full points.”

I felt giddy and exhausted at the same time, the way you feel after a narrow escape from death. I was glad she didn’t seem intent on fanning the flames of jealousy. I didn’t doubt for a second that she still thought of Leia as competition, but at least for the moment she was content to let it slide. And I had better not push my luck any further. Having negotiated one minefield successfully, I’d be a fool to step back in and dance around.

Reaching across the table to snag her plate, I placed it on top of my own and rose to clear away dinner.

“You know what?” I said, as I moved to the kitchenette. “If I could go back to see that old Luke—the one right after the Battle of Yavin with a medal around his neck, still riding high after sinking proton torpedoes down an exhaust port that must be
history’s greatest design flaw—I don’t think I’d be angry with the way he felt back then. But I’d tell him it wasn’t always going to be that easy. Because the Empire’s obviously still out there. A huge victory for us was only an inconvenience for them. They still kill and enslave people—well, I don’t need to remind you of that. We’re hiding in the Outer Rim like the vermin the Empire says we are, and running missions like this one where we don’t know if it will make a difference or not, or if anything we do really matters.”

“Oh, it matters, Luke,” Nakari said. When I turned to look at her she had a crease between her eyes and was regarding me intensely. “We are the thorn that pricks the Emperor’s finger when he looks at the galaxy as his personal garden. And you know who he punishes every time we get away with something? Vader.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“Because poodoo rolls downhill and Vader’s not at the top. He passes it on to everyone beneath him, for sure, but he gets it first every time the Emperor is displeased. And the fact that we are still out here displeases him plenty, I bet.”

“You want Vader to get what’s coming to him, eh?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s not
all
I want. But I wouldn’t pass up a chance to take a shot at him if the opportunity presented itself. He took my mom from me and betrayed your dad. Don’t you want him dead?”

“I want him defeated.”

“Dead qualifies as defeated,” Nakari pointed out.

“Yeah, but I guess I’d like to know how he became the thing that he is so I would know what
not
to do. You can’t get answers from a dead man.”

“Hold on. You think you could turn all evil like that? You think you have that inside you?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant. Ben said he’d been seduced
by the dark side of the Force, almost like he didn’t have a choice. I need to know more.”

Nakari’s voice deepened along with the crease between her eyes. “He chose to send my mother to the spice mines and let her die there, Luke. It wasn’t some metaphysical dark side that made him do it. He chose to do that, just like everything else he’s chosen to do. He’s not helpless. He’s responsible.”

Seeing my mistake, I hastened to reassure her. “Yes, he is, absolutely. I’m not saying I agree with Ben—I simply don’t know what he meant. There are mysteries about the Force to which Vader might know the answers.”

“True, but you couldn’t trust anything he said anyway, so why talk?”

“Like it or not, he’s one of the few people remaining in the galaxy who can even discuss it with me.”

Nakari blinked. “So what are you saying? You want him to teach you?”

“No, of course not. I just think I could learn something from him.”

She made a noise like steam escaping a pressure valve. “I don’t think you’d like anything you learned. He’s not going to make you happy.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Vader probably doesn’t even know what happiness is. You know what? I bet he’s never had a slice of cake.”

The abrupt change of subject startled me. “What, cake is happiness?”

“Absolutely. You want to ask him something when he’s defeated, ask him that.” Her voice changed this time, not to imitate her father but to imitate me. “ ‘Lord Vader! Have you ever had any cake? Answer me!’ ” She sounded strange and kind of nasal.

“Hey, I don’t sound like that, do I?”

“Don’t get distracted! We’re discussing Vader’s dessert preferences.
If he says yes, he’s had cake, then he was human at one point and remembers what it was to be happy, and you can continue to talk because there’s some common ground there. But if he says no, he’s hopeless. Chuck him out the air lock and end his misery.”

We started laughing, and even though it wasn’t that funny, we laughed until our stomachs hurt and tears streamed from the corners of our eyes. When you laugh at something that scares you, it’s not so scary anymore, which is probably the reason Vader had Nakari’s mother sent to the spice mines. He wanted to be feared and couldn’t bear to be mocked.

I never told Nakari, but I thought those stolen moments with her in a Kupohan hotel were so much better than cake.

WE CHECKED ON OUR PRISONERS
in the morning, and aside from being annoyed with us they were fine. Room service provided berries and a selection of strange cheeses, and after eating we let them use the facilities one at a time, making sure the bathroom had no avenue of escape and keeping them in blaster sight to and from. We got them settled, bound yet comfortable, and made sure Artoo was fine on power. Nakari hooked up an interface with her datapad so he could download a report for us. Favvin had attempted to get up and hurl himself at Artoo at one point in the night and received a debilitating shock as a result. He had been perfectly docile since then, and Migg Birkhit had enjoyed a day of rest and entertainment in a hotel room that was no doubt far nicer than his apartment.

“Just one more day on vacation, guys,” I said. “We’ll let you get back to work tomorrow.” Favvin scowled, but Birkhit waved as we left the room.

That visit was quite friendly compared with the reception we got across the hall from Drusil. The Givin never let us in the door; she simply spewed math at us through the comm and threw in the words “Go away” at one point, so we gave up and said we’d be at the garage if she needed us. She must have been involved with something complicated if she couldn’t stop to talk.

At the Nessin Courier & Cargo facility, we spent the remainder of the morning and the entire afternoon helping Ruuf Waluuk, the Duros, and the Wookiee remove the totaled engine from the
Desert Jewel
. When the Wookiee warbled something to Ruuf, the Kupohan shook his head and said, “I don’t know where Migg is. Could be sick, or he could be off playing around with one of his girlfriends. Good thing these people are willing to help us; I don’t think we’d get the job done otherwise.”

I didn’t know where Nessin was, either, and it was mildly worrisome. So was the fact that we hadn’t heard anything positive from the Alliance regarding Drusil’s family. On the plus side, we had the old engine out and the chassis prepped for the new engine by the time it arrived at the end of the workday.

Drusil finally joined us shortly after its arrival, hooded. Her arms were laden with food containers; she took them over to the dining area, where she laid them on the table and invited us all to dig in. Nessin’s mechanics took some of the containers at her urging but begged off sitting down.

“Mr. Nessin has a policy about us fraternizing with customers,” Ruuf explained. “We’d love to stay, but we can’t. Thank you kindly for dinner, though,” he said. “Wish all our customers were so considerate.”

The Wookiee grunted in agreement and added a nod of gratitude, and they bade us farewell for the evening after promising to return first thing in the morning to begin installing the new engine.

“Hey, Nakari, it’s quitting time,” I called, and her curly head popped out of the
Jewel
’s engine bay to reply.

“Not quite for me. I still have a couple things to do. Go ahead and start; I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She disappeared.

I turned to Drusil. “Well, I’m hungry enough to start without her, and she gave us permission, so let’s see what you brought.”

“Yes, please, be satiated,” Drusil said. The containers held an assortment of meats, vegetables, and noodles that could be combined with several different sauces.