There was nobody in the restaurant. The tables were empty and he ran between them, heading for a door at the back. Behind him he heard shouting, screams, and blasterfire: he had to be right about this now. He stopped at the doors at the back, not sure whether to force them open, and saw that it was Shevu behind him, not Jacen, covering his back, blaster aimed.
I can’t stop now.
Ben opened the doors with a Force push and stepped through, lightsaber held in both hands, and found himself in the kitchens, a jumble of durasteel racks, ovens, and sinks flanked by cupboards and storerooms. He concentrated, trying to feel for where people or arms might be hidden, and went instinctively toward a hinged door with a hand wheel on one side. He didn’t sense a person, but he sensed something indefinably dangerous.
“You have to remember to wear an earpiece,” Shevu whispered through his voice projector, and pointed to the hand wheel, indicating get over on that side by stabbing his finger. Then he made a circling motion.
Turn the hand wheel.
Ben held his lightsaber in his right hand and slowly wound the wheel with his left. The door hissed as a seal broke and a mist of chilled air tumbled out into the warm kitchen. Shevu held up two fingers, then one, and jerked his fist down.
Two, one—go.
Ben wrenched the door open and Shevu aimed inside. It was pitch black and the blaster’s targeting spotlight punched into the darkness of a cold store, highlighting mist. Ben fumbled for the lights. Frost-rimed boxes lined shelves; unidentifiable joints of meat hung from hooks. Nobody was hiding in there.
Ben covered Shevu as he rummaged around in the cold store. The captain emerged with a long metal cylinder in one hand. His helmet was already iced over.
“Know what this is?” he asked.
Ben stared at the object. It was a tube. “Grenade launcher?”
“Close. Shoulder launcher, for small missiles. Part of one, anyway. There’s about a dozen in there.”
“That shouldn’t be on the menu.”
“Kriffing right it shouldn’t be.”
“Okay, let’s go up one floor,” Ben said.
“That’s your Force-sense talking, is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, works for me.”
The turbolift was tiny and they huddled inside. Ben hated lifts. It was the moment when the doors opened that was worst: his Force-sense would tell him if there was a welcoming committee outside, but he still had a sick feeling in his stomach as the doors parted and he saw into the lobby beyond for the first time. This time he was sure there were people around. He pointed to the left. Shevu darted down the passage and trained his blaster on the first door, gesturing Ben to stand to one side as he blew the lock panel. Then Ben sent a surge of energy ahead of him in a shock wave to flatten anyone inside.
Like a stun grenade, it provided a few precious seconds to overpower an enemy, but it didn’t leave them temporarily deaf and blinded. The two men inside—and Ben had spotted them only when he was well inside the room—scrambled up from the floor and he lunged forward with his lightsaber. His reflexes took over. A blaster bolt shot past him. He thought it was from Shevu’s weapon and as he saw one of the men raise his arm he brought the saber down in an arc. It felt like the skirmish was taking forever, but he knew somehow that it was seconds. Another bolt of white light flared and he deflected it without thinking. Then there was silence.
The air in the room smelled of burned fabric and rasped at his throat. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples.
“Well, they’re about as dead as you can get …” Shevu still held his blaster on the two men as he stared down at them. “Why’d you block my shot like that?”
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“But you shot one.”
“No, one of them fired at me.”
Ben looked at his hands as if they weren’t his. He was holding the lightsaber two-handed as usual and his grip was shaking. He’d killed both of the men. They both looked about Jacen’s age and he didn’t like what he saw.
“You okay?”
“Were they both armed?”
“Bit late to worry about that.” Shevu squatted down, laid his blaster beside him, and began searching the bodies. Ben heard pounding boots, and two GAG troops entered behind them. “Well, one definitely was. Can’t find a weapon on the other.”
Force forgive me. I killed them. I killed a man who wasn’t armed. I didn’t even think.
Ben leaned against the wall and slid down it a little, bracing his legs. Around him, more GAG troops were running down passages, checking rooms. He heard cupboards being wrenched apart and shouts of, “In here! Clear!”
His head sank into his hands. He wanted to look, but he couldn’t. Someone took his arm.
“Ben, get up.” It was Jacen.
“I’m sorry—”
“Ben, get a grip. You’ve got work to do.” Jacen pulled him upright gently but firmly. “Go on. Look. You should have searched the bodies instead of leaving it to Shevu.”
“He wasn’t armed.”
“Stop it. His buddy was, and the place is stuffed with rocket launchers and hardware.”
Jacen steered Ben toward the two men on the floor and held him by both shoulders from behind to make him face them. Ben switched off. He felt a numbness spread through his mind and all he saw was shapes. He didn’t see people. He knew he would later, but right now something had cut in to cushion him from what he was seeing.
“You made the call, Ben.” Jacen’s voice was low. From the corner of his eye, Ben could see Shevu watching, or at least he was facing in their direction, head turned as if he was focused on them. “Mostly we get it right, but sometimes we don’t. You got most of it right today. Maybe you got all of it right, but it might take us days to find out if that man was a threat or not. Either way—you can’t afford to let it get to you.”
He turned Ben toward the door, and one of the GAG troops took his arm and led him out into the passage. The noise outside was leaking into his awareness; he felt the Force torn and twisted by a riot in progress. He’d started it. It was all his doing.
He caught a snatch of conversation.
“He’s a kid.” Shevu’s voice. “He’s a boy.”
“He’s a Jedi and he has to learn,” Jacen said. “He was already handling weapons at the same age you were learning to add.”
Ben took a breath and surrendered himself to blind reflex again. By the time he got out onto the walkway, CSF officers were using snare rifles on parts of the crowd that wouldn’t disperse and the air was hazy with smoke. The thrum of assault ship drives made his back teeth vibrate. A CSF officer grabbed him and bundled him into one of the police personnel carriers and he sat with his back against the bulkhead, silent and stunned, until a familiar face appeared in the hatchway with his visor pushed back.
“Hey, Ben,” said Corporal Lekauf. “You okay?”
“Kind of.”
“It’s never easy, kid.”
“What isn’t?”
“Killing someone. You need someone to talk to, I’m here—anytime.”
Ben knew he should get out of the carrier and get back to fighting, but a small, scared voice inside said that he was only a kid and it wasn’t fair and that he wanted his mom. He shook himself out of it. Mandalorian boys his own age would already be warriors. They’d spit on Ben for being such a baby. He pulled himself to his feet and scrambled out of the personnel carrier, stumbling back down the walkway as if wading through deep snow.
At some point—and it was probably only moments later—Jacen caught his arm and passed him to Shevu. They were pulling out. The black assault ship drew level with the walkway and Shevu heaved Ben aboard. On the flight back to base, Ben sat sandwiched between Shevu and Jacen, thinking that if they moved he’d just collapse.
“It doesn’t get any easier,” Jacen whispered. “The day it gets easy is the day you have to stop this business.”
Ben found his voice someho
w and it didn’t sound like his own. It echoed in his head. “Will you teach me to shut down my presence in the Force, Jacen?”
“Why?”
His instinct was that it would protect him one day. He also had another reason. “So if I want Dad not to find me, I can.”
“You can’t hide from your father every time you do something he doesn’t approve of.”
“I know, but I just want … to be on my own sometimes. Really on my own.”
Jacen studied his face as if looking for something. “You did okay today, Ben. You don’t have to hide.”
The last few weeks had been a constant series of cliff edges that Ben felt he had stepped from and somehow he hadn’t fallen. But they had changed him each time, and he had a sense of never being able to step back onto the cliff edge again. And today—today really had changed him. He knew it. He wanted his old self back, but he knew that the Ben he had once been was gone forever.
He wanted to cry. But he was a soldier now, and he had to live with what he did.
Dad must have gone through this, too. And Mom.
He wondered if he would ever be able to talk to them about it. He doubted it.
chapter nineteen
What is he playing at? Either he’s running the Guard or he isn’t. I know he gets results, but he has to make up his mind about whether he’s a fighter pilot or a special forces colonel. I don’t know if he just likes playing with X-wings, or if he’s trying to score points with the admirals. Maybe both.
—Captain Girdun, in a message to his wife,
on the subject of Colonel Jacen Solo
THIRD FLEET BASE, CORUSCANT.
It was a dream: a real dream, Luke hoped, the kind caused by eating too close to bedtime or enduring too much stress, and not a Force-vision.
But it had woken him early. His son Ben appeared, head in hands, crying, sobbing: “It’s too high a price. It’s too high a price.”
That didn’t sound like the kind of thing Ben might say, but then Ben was changing into a man almost before his eyes now. Luke sat in the deserted wardroom of the Third Fleet’s shore base and waited for Jaina. He let his gaze rest on the row of ship’s badges that were hung neatly along the pleekwood paneling behind the bar.
No, military discipline was none of his business. But Jacen Solo was.
Jaina arrived still wearing her orange flight suit and sat down in the chair beside him with slow care.
“Thanks for coming, Uncle Luke.”
“I wanted to hear your side of it. I don’t believe Jaina Solo would ever turn tail and run during an engagement.”
“I’m suspended from duty.”
There was no point telling her that the gossip had already ripped through the fleet: she’d refused to obey an order to attack. It was the kind of thing that got a high-profile Jedi pilot a lot of attention.
“What happened?”
“I didn’t think it was … appropriate to continue attacking a civilian vessel when it was retreating.”
Luke knew the answer but he asked anyway. “Who ordered you to do that?”
“Jacen.”
“Had the ship fired on Alliance vessels?”
“No, but it breached the exclusion zone and it had targeted Jacen. I took out its aft laser cannons, but it was still capable of firing. Then it withdrew from the exclusion zone and Jacen ordered me to open fire on it.” Up to that point, Jaina had been detached and professional, couching everything in military terms. Then her frown deepened. “It was just wrong, Uncle Luke. He wanted destruction. He wanted to teach them a lesson. I felt it.”
Luke chewed over the complexities of rules of engagement. Technically, the freighter was a proven threat. It could still attack Alliance ships even if it had moved outside the exclusion zone. Technically, Jacen was right.
Had it not been Jacen, Luke would have chalked it up to the split-second decisions people had to make in battle and accepted it sadly. But it had been Jacen’s order—one more incident that showed Luke how far toward the dark side his nephew had moved. The Jacen he had known was gone. And Lumiya was around. She was back, and that boded ill.
She was here. He’d have to find her.
“Mom and Dad are going to be so ashamed of me,” said Jaina. “Please don’t tell them. I’ll do it myself when I’m ready.”
“They know the kind of person you are.” Luke reached out and took her hands. “But why haven’t you defended yourself?”
“Because if I told everyone what happened, they’d think I was whining. You know: everyone else has to do as they’re told, but Jaina Solo thinks she’s above orders.”
“I know you’re right, Jaina.”
“You wouldn’t have fired, would you?”
“I meant that I know Jacen is turning to the dark side, and that it’s beyond anything that you or I did when we ventured there.”
“I don’t want to be right.”
“Neither do I.”
“You’re arguing with Mara about it, aren’t you?” Jaina said.
“Sometimes.”
“She can’t see what he’s like these days?”
“She sees, but she has another explanation. And we live in difficult times.”
“We always do. That’s no excuse.”
“So what are you going to do now you’re that grounded?” Luke asked.
“Until I face a court-martial—no idea. Can I be of use to you? I’d go find Mom and Dad, but I don’t think that would help them right now.”
“I’ll think of something. How’s Zekk taking this?”
“Trying to be understanding. I don’t want to be understood. I just want this insanity to stop.”
“Me, too,” said Luke. “Come on. Come and have lunch with me and Mara. We don’t see enough of you these days.”
“Do you stay in touch with Mom and Dad?”
“If you mean do we talk … not much. But I’m always in contact with Leia. I’m afraid it’s your dad I’ve lost touch with.” Luke could remember the time when the three of them had been inseparable; it had been impossible to imagine then that there would ever be rifts or that they’d be fighting on opposite sides. “I miss him.”
“I’d bet he misses you, too.”
Luke thought of straightforward battles against evil and how he had never given the gray areas a second thought. He missed that, too.
On the way back to the apartment, the traffic lanes seemed slower than normal. The stream of airspeeders was backing up. Luke switched to the holonews traffic channel to find out where the delay was and heard a new fact of daily life in Galactic City: a number of skylanes had been closed and the traffic rerouted while CSF officers cleared up after a riot.
“We’d better get used to this,” Jaina said. “The Alliance just upset a whole new bunch of people, as well as Corellia.”
Somewhere, Luke felt Ben in sudden, brief pain: not in trouble, not in danger, but in emotional pain. It was faint, almost like an incomplete memory, and then it was gone again as if it had been snatched back under cover. He wondered why he hadn’t picked up anything before. Alarmed, he opened the comlink and called Mara.
“Honey, is Ben with you?”
“No.” Her voice tightened. He heard the pitch rise. “What’s wrong?”
“Can you feel him? Is he okay?”
“I can’t feel anything. No sign of him.”
Jacen. Luke knew his nephew could disappear from the Force when he wanted to. Maybe he could mask the presence of others. Ben would be alongside him, he knew that much. And he couldn’t feel Jacen at all.
“Okay, honey. Just checking. I’m on my way home with Jaina.”
He shut the link and looked for another route home. There was no point chasing Ben and having another fight right now. The last time they’d spoken, Ben had seemed close to working things out for himself. Forcing a Jedi to do anything was always of questionable use, even if that Jedi was your little boy.
“You have to get Ben away from Jacen,” said Jaina, unprompte
d.
“I know,” Luke said. “I’m trying to get him to make that choice for himself. If I force it, I’ll make Jacen a martyr in his eyes.”
“Am I wrong to think this about my own brother?”
“What do your senses tell you?”
“That he’s going to somehow break my heart one day.”
“Yes,” said Luke. “We need to make sure that never happens.”
But it already has, he thought. It already has.
THE SOLOS’ APARTMENT, CORONET, CORELLIA.
“You got to hand it to Gejjen,” said Han. “He must have had all this planned.”
Fett had already worked out a fast exit from the Solos’ shabbily anonymous apartment. From the window he could see the red flashing lights of Corellian Security Force speeders racing across the city: when he checked his bank account—one of them, anyway—he was already one million credits better off. Gejjen certainly paid promptly.
Mirta gave Han a wary look. “Forget Gejjen. Call your son.”
Leia Solo—and despite the decade that had passed since he had last seen her, Fett had still recognized her immediately—had a comlink pressed to one ear. “I’m trying.” She stared at the comlink in exasperation and then snapped it shut. “He’s not answering. Let’s try the Jedi way. That usually gets his attention.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and closed her eyes for a moment. Fett didn’t care for Jedi: they were an aristocracy, winners in a genetic lottery, and there was something about the lack of merit required that rankled with Mandalorians. But for all the lightsaber trophies he kept on display from Jedi bounties, Fett knew they had their uses.
All I care about now is seeing Ailyn. Corellia can burn for all I care.
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