Light of the Jedi(55)
Another impulse from Elzar: Lying, and again, from her: No.
“Be that as it may,” Avar said, “the Legacy Run died, along with many people aboard it, and millions have died since in the Emergences. Your family has spent more time studying hyperspace than anyone in the galaxy. Have you ever encountered anything like this?”
“No,” Marlowe said flatly, and this time there was no signal of falsehood from Elzar.
“So you don’t think it’s a problem with hyperspace?” Elzar said.
“We’ll look at your data,” Vellis said, holding up the datachip, “but as of now, it’s hard to imagine something like that. I don’t think you have to worry about another Legacy Run. Our guess, based on more than a century of experience out there in the lanes…”
“…this was a onetime event,” Marlowe finished.
Avar stood up, and Elzar, masking his surprise, did the same.
“Thank you,” she said. “We can’t tell you how much we appreciate your sending your people to help Keven Tarr in Hetzal. We’re going to move on to our next appointment—but if we think of additional questions, can we reach out?”
“Of course,” Marlowe said, standing as well. “As we said, it is an honor and a privilege to assist the Jedi and the Republic with anything you might need.”
Final pleasantries were exchanged, and Avar and Elzar left the San Tekka compound, heading for the Longbeam that had brought them to Naboo, waiting on a landing pad just outside the gates.
“They were hiding something,” Elzar said. His tone was light, but she knew he was frustrated. A familiar emotion from him. He was always reaching…pushing.
“I’m sure they were, Elzar. They’re businesspeople. We don’t know that what they held back is even relevant. The San Tekkas didn’t seem malicious. The opposite, really—they’re offering to share some of their most closely held secrets to help save lives.”
Elzar was silent, but she felt a grudging acceptance from him.
“Let’s continue our investigation, see if there’s more we can learn. If need be, we can return and question them again. We made progress here. Be pleased.”
“The drink was good, at least,” Elzar said, and walked ahead, toward the waiting Longbeam.
* * *
The breeze blew across the lanai, and Marlowe and Vellis San Tekka sat in silence, looking out across the lake at the isle of Varykino, where strange geniuses toiled in isolation, creating art that, more likely than not, would never be seen by anyone beyond the shores of the little island.
“You know who this sounds like, don’t you?” Vellis said.
He lifted his wineglass, tapped his fingernail against its rim a few times, then set it back down on the quartz table.
“It’s not possible,” Marlowe answered. “She can’t still be alive. She’d be beyond ancient.”
“I hope so,” Vellis said. “For her sake, by all the gods…”
The sun sparkled off wavelets on the lake, and both men thought about the history of their clan, and where their great wealth had truly come from, and the great tragedy at its heart.
“…I hope so.”
Marchion Ro’s flagship traveled through hyperspace—but in a way no other ship in the galaxy could. Its course was not set, moving from one access zone to another, through a well-defined hyperlane. No…the Gaze Electric didn’t move, it maneuvered. The massive ship plunged and rose, making impossibly tight turns, diving into tiny offshoots of the main road and finding itself in an entirely new ur-space. It followed routes that could not be seen and could not be repeated.
Its path was charted by Mari San Tekka, and Marchion Ro let her have her head—she had complete control over the ship’s navigation systems, and if the ride got a little bumpy sometimes, even terrifying, so what? These rides made Mari feel happy and good—they let her test her theories, work out new ideas.
Piloting the Gaze Electric calmed her down, made her feel like she was in a good place, so that when Marchion asked her for specific Paths, she was able to provide them without exhausting herself or getting frustrated.
He looked through a viewport at the strange, unreal landscapes through which she was taking the ship. Like flying through a snowstorm made of flowers built of bright-green light. Beautiful and horrifying all at once.
Traveling through hyperspace under ordinary circumstances was an entirely different experience. You entered the lane, you flew through the unchanging, swirling nothing for some set period, and then you exited back to realspace.
But Mari’s flight was like that of a fast-winged insect, zipping from blossom to blossom, changing direction without bowing to considerations of inertia, acceleration, or deceleration.
These abilities came at a cost, both in wear and tear and fuel, though the Gaze Electric was specially equipped to handle them via a Path engine of unique design. The very first, in fact, similar in appearance to those on all the other Nihil ships but greatly enhanced in capabilities. The engines allowed the Nihil to translate the Paths into actual navigational data that would be rejected by any conventional system as being impossible—they were the key to everything, now and in the future.
Marchion had owned the huge vessel for a very long time, and his father before him, both of them haunting its empty spaces designed for thousands, now through time and treachery inhabited by only a few. The Ros, father and son, had no homeworld; they left it behind long ago. The ship was as close as Marchion got, just as Mari San Tekka was the nearest thing to family he had left.