SW0408 Jedi Academy 02 Dark Apprentice (v5) by Kevin J Anderson

Author:Kevin J Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

25

When Wedge Antilles wasn’t looking, Qwi Xux stole a glance at the coordinates displayed on his navigation panel. Sitting in the copilot’s seat of the disguised personal space yacht, Qwi used her nimble fingers to tap the coordinates into the navicomputer, requesting a full display.

Wedge looked away from the starfield and caught what she was doing. “Hey!” he said, then grinned sheepishly as he lowered his gaze. “This was supposed to be a surprise.”

Qwi laughed, a cascade of short musical tones. “I just wanted to know the name of the planet.” She frowned as the display came up. “Ithor? Never heard of it.”

Wedge chuckled and reached over to squeeze her slender shoulder. She felt the warmth of his touch linger for several moments after he removed his hand. “Qwi, you’ve never heard of most places in the galaxy. You spent your entire life cooped up in Maw Installation.”

“Is Ithor a nice place?” she asked.

He sighed. “It’s beautiful. A pristine natural world covered with forests and jungles, rivers and waterfalls. We’ll be incognito, and you won’t have to worry about anybody knowing who you are.”

Qwi looked around at the metal-edged control panels of the space yacht, at the synthetic fabric of the seats that felt so smooth and soft. She smelled the recirculated air. Qwi had lived for years inside a completely enclosed environment; she knew nothing about plants and animals and other life-forms. She hoped it would be fascinating.

“Are you sure we’ll be safe?” she asked, swallowing hard. Her greatest nightmare was that some Imperial spy might recapture her and haul her back to the black-hole research lab where they would tear the weapons knowledge out of her head, no matter how much she resisted.

“Yes,” Wedge said after a long pause. “Ithor is an isolated paradise. It’s a world where many young couples”—he paused, then swallowed as if embarrassed by the word he had just spoken—“uh, tourists go for vacations. Many people come and go, and the Ithorians welcome everyone.

“The Empire blockaded this world during the Rebellion, causing some damage as a show of force. But after one of the Ithorians gave the Empire access to the agricultural and cloning information they wanted, Ithor was basically left alone.”

Wedge looked out at the starfield where the brilliant sun of the Ithorian system gleamed a whitish blue. He increased the thrust from the sublight engines and vectored them toward a bright green planet veined with blue and swathed with white clouds.

“Just pretend we’re on vacation,” Wedge said. “We’ll be tourists, and I’ll show you what you’ve been missing. I can’t think of a better place to start.”

“I really look forward to it.” Qwi smiled warmly at him.

Wedge blushed, then seemed to concentrate furiously on the relatively simple task of entering a low orbit.

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