“When we defeat the Confederation, we’ll shape the galaxy as we see fit for the greatest benefit. They contribute to that, and they get two rich worlds for their trouble.”
“Or they still get two worlds that don’t want to be under their yoke and fight them for every meter of land.”
“Either way, not our problem.”
But sooner or later, it would come back to bite him, she was sure. “This reminds me of one of those Naboo time-share scams,” she said. It was time to let him get bitten, and Pellaeon would never allow it anyway. “But I leave the high-level politics to you.”
“Fondor, then?”
“Shut down their shipyards first, because that disables their war effort. Then we neutralize their armed forces.”
“Very well.”
“And are you going to talk to Pellaeon direct?”
“I was thinking of sending a more neutral figure. Tahiri.”
“Jacen, she’s not exactly a diplomat, or even a negotiator.”
“All she has to do is get him to accept the principle. I can do the rest.”
Niathal got the feeling that Tahiri was being groomed to take Ben’s place. She was glad the boy had managed to get out of Jacen’s grip; he had the makings of a good officer and was becoming his own man. “Let me know when you do, then.” She turned to go to her own office, the one she’d had as Supreme Commander. It felt like a haven at times like this. “Preferably before you take action …”
“Send Shevu in, will you?” Jacen called after her. “He should be outside by now.”
Niathal passed the young GAG captain in the corridor, right on time, and gave him a nod toward Jacen’s door. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look scared. If Jacen tolerated someone that visibly unintimidated in his entourage, then Shevu had to be one of his most trusted lackeys. She would keep her distance.
“He’s all yours,” said Niathal.
THE MILLENNIUM FALCON, JEDI OUTPOST, ENDOR
“So, Dad, how do I contact Boba Fett?” Jaina asked. All she could see of Han Solo in his position under the coolant lines of the Millennium Falcon were his pilot’s boots. “How did you get hold of him?”
“Usual way, kid. I stood around like a jerk, and he ambushed me.”
“I’m serious, Dad.”
Han hauled himself out from under the Falcon and got to his feet. “This is Jag’s idea, isn’t it? I should never have let him have the crushgaunts.”
“Hey, I can make my own crazy decisions. And the best person to teach me how to hunt Jedi is Fett. Am I right?”
Han wiped the hydrospanner on a rag, and Jaina could see that a light had gone out of him. Beyond the clearing, the forest was a cacophony of wild noise that somehow managed to coalesce into something tranquil. Here she was, talking in this detached and oblique way about hunting Jedi—her twin brother, her father’s only remaining son. There were days when Dad disowned Jacen and never wanted to see him again, and the next day … the next, Jacen was his boy again, and he wanted to look after him and put things right. But every day, the volume of things that needed putting right got bigger, and harder, and more impossible. Dad hurt. Jaina knew Mom was hurting, too, but she seemed to be handling it better than him.
“So Ben thinks Jacen killed Mara.”
Jaina reached out and took the rag and the tool from his hands. “It’s clean now, Dad. Yes, he does.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“You think he’s capable of that?”
“I don’t even want to think about it yet.”
“Jaina, do you think he’s capable of it?”
Jacen had tortured Ben: who knew what kind of weird logic he was operating under? If he did something terrible to Mara, would he have had any concept of it being wrong? He hadn’t planned to kill Fett’s daughter, but she hadn’t survived his interrogation. Jaina hated herself for even thinking it. Jacen was Han Solo’s son. But every killer, every criminal, was someone’s kid.
“No, I don’t think he’d murder Mara,” Jaina said. “But Ben seemed pretty rational. There’s something that doesn’t add up. I just hope he doesn’t get too close to Jacen while he’s doing this investigation.”
“So you do think Jacen would harm his own family.”
“Dad, he’s already done plenty of harming.”
“What are you going to do with him? I mean, you must have something planned or you wouldn’t be going to sign up for the Fett master class.”
“I’ll bring him in,” she said.
“Bring him in. Then what? Deprogram him? Lock him in the attic like you’re supposed to do with crazy relatives? Rehabilitate him and take him back into the Jedi Order? What happens to ex–Sith Lords?”
“The alternative is leaving him to carry on, Dad.”
Han Solo had never scared his kids but he was scaring Jaina now. She dropped her chin slightly. “We can worry about all that after he’s out of harm’s way.”
“Okay,” said Han. “If I was looking for Fett, I’d go to him, starting at Mandalore. He’ll give you a hard time, you know that?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“He might show you the door.”
“Won’t know until I ask.”
“You think your temper will hold out?”
“I can do anything when I really want to,” Jaina said. “And I want to bring Jacen in before anyone else gets to him. Maybe before Ben gets too close, too. For everyone’s sake.”
“Fett doesn’t have all the moves, or he’d have killed Jacen by now and wearing some part of his anatomy as a trophy.”
“Jacen’s not invincible, Dad. Nobody is. But when I go after him, it’ll have to be with skills he doesn’t have. Like Fett’s.”
“If you run into problems, your mom and I are going to be looking for alternative sites for a Jedi base not too far from that part of the galaxy …”
“No,” said Jaina. “I won’t need rescuing. I just wanted to know if you thought there was another way to do this.”
Han didn’t have a better idea or he would have argued. He gave her a long hug instead, silent and helpless, and she knew then that the focus she’d keep in her mind when things got ugly was that she had to do this to stop her father’s suffering. The general good, the trillions of beings whose lives might be at stake, was impossible to use as a powerful motivator. She needed something that would galvanize her from the gut, from the soul. And that something was her father’s face, drained of the spirit that made him such a hero to her.
“Look after Mom,” she said, and walked away into the trees. “I love you, Dad.”
“Hey, don’t take the StealthX to Mandalore,” he called after her. “It’ll just tick them off. And I love you too, sweetheart.”
Jaina turned around a few times to check if Han was still watching or back in the refuge of the Falcon, but he waited, arms folded, then waved. It must have compounded his pain to know that when things had reached their lowest ebb, his own daughter thought that the only man who could help was Fett.
Fett knew what it was like to lose a kid and see his family torn apart. She hoped, for no logical reason whatsoever, that the man would agree to train her not because he wanted to have his revenge on Jacen, but because he understood her pain.
In the end, though, it didn’t matter at all.
chapter three
Boba, how has your illness progressed? Has my data been of use to you? My offer still stands.
—Taun We, former human clone development supervisor on Kamino, now Head of Clone Adjustment at Arkanian Micro
GALACTIC CITY SPACEPORT, CORUSCANT
It was a planet of a trillion people, and Ben knew Coruscant well enough now to vanish within it.
He shut himself down in the Force long before the flight from Bespin landed in Galactic City, more out of fear of implicating the people he intended to contact than worrying that Jacen would sense him and come after him. Knowing Jacen, he’d probably
written Ben off as a weakling who couldn’t take it. Ben was consigned to the also-rans, minor disappointments Jacen would deal with when he came across them.
And Ben had his sources. They said Tahiri had pretty well taken his place at Jacen’s side.
At Galactic City Spaceport, the transport disgorged its long-haul passengers and Ben slipped through in the merging streams of bodies from all parts of the galaxy, a single fish in a multicolored shoal. With the easy obscurity of sun visor and a cap, he was just another young man out of millions in the Galactic City area. And maybe it was wishful thinking, but he thought he detected a faint growth of beard, more fluff than anything, but it was still … different. He didn’t look like Lieutenant Skywalker.
Ben logged his identichip at the transit security control gate—bogus, naturally, one of a dozen he carried—and was still expecting a sudden wail of alarms for a good ten paces as he headed for the open walkway. But nothing happened. All he had to do now was remember to disguise his walk to defeat the gait recognition system on security cams, and then he could wander around at will. A small pebble in each boot changed his stride enough to cheat the software without crippling him. In his bag—a reversible bag—there were various changes of clothing. He got as far as the first public refreshers by a branch of the Bank of Aargau and started adding to the deception.
That’s your problem, Jacen. You taught me all this. Or at least the GAG did.
In a cubicle, he changed his tunic, cap, and pants, turned the bag inside out to show its light brown side, and repacked. He changed shoes to ones with stack heels. Then he emerged a totally different person, walking differently and dressed differently. He’d keep doing that, and the security cams would have no pattern to track.
Lon Shevu’s girlfriend, Shula Palasj, worked for a haulage company. He’d start with her; no comlink calls, just in case. The GAG might be monitoring, the same way Ben had eavesdropped on Senators and politicians when he was in the Guard. He made his way to Shula’s workplace, doubling back occasionally just as Jori Lekauf had—
It hit him hard sometimes. Even when he was mired in grief over Mom, Lekauf would suddenly appear in his mind, and he’d feel it all over again. It wasn’t any less of a sense of loss than the one he felt for his mother, just different, and it could still make him stop breathing for a moment while he steadied himself. Lekauf had taught him about evading detection and tracking others, so this was another way of ensuring that his sacrifice to save Ben hadn’t been in vain; using that training to bring down Jacen was right.
Ben swung right into a walkway lined with clothing stores and tapcafs. What do I really mean by “bring him down”? He was sure now that he didn’t mean killing him. It wasn’t Ben’s job to be the judge. He was just getting a case together, and someone else would decide what to do with Jacen in the end.
What do you do with a deposed dictator? A Sith, too? And if Dad sorts him out and gets him back to the light side, how can I even be in the same room as him after what he’s done?
First things first; and first was proving a case against him, although Ben knew there were ordinary folk who’d say that Jacen was already guilty of enough, and that killing a Jedi didn’t actually take him into a new category of monstrosity. It was just a personal act of betrayal, and Ben knew he had to put that aside.
Most murders happen within families. Did I think we’d be any different?
Yes. I did. We’re Jedi.
Ben alternated between speeder bus—paying by cash credits, not traceable chips—and walking between docking stations. He was finding he didn’t need to affect a different walk now. The slightly higher heels had altered the angle of his spine, giving him twinges. An hour and a few changes of appearance later, he stood outside a branch depot of GalactiSend.
When he walked in, he couldn’t see a face he recognized. It was a busy place; beings of all kinds lined up waiting to dispatch parcels or held datapads in their hands, checking in consignments. He intercepted a droid in GalactiSend livery skimming through the reception area.
“Is Shula around?” he asked. “Shula Pakasj?”
“She no longer works here,” said the droid.
Well, that was sudden; it could only have happened recently, because the last time he’d spoken to Shevu, she’d still been here. “Thanks,” he said, and wandered out to amble along the walkway and rethink his strategy.
He’d have to go direct to Shevu’s apartment now. He hadn’t wanted to, just in case Shevu was under surveillance, but he still had the passcard, and if Shevu had changed the code … well, that wouldn’t slow Ben down much. He spent the next couple of hours taking a circuitous route to the apartment block. By the time he got to the last leg of the journey, he was tired and fed up with changing his clothing.
As in most apartment buildings in the capital, an array of crime prevention cams kept watch on the entrance. Ben visualized the sensors getting a sudden burst of intense light, using the Force to overload them for a moment to give him time to pass into the turbolift. All the monitoring system would see was a short period of dark shapes as the cam tried to compensate for the light levels its sensor told it were there. At the four hundredth floor, Ben slipped out into the corridor and stood outside Shevu’s door for a moment, trying to sense if anyone was inside.
It felt empty. Ben tried the passcard and it didn’t work. It took him a couple of seconds to Force-wipe the lock to its default setting and slip inside.
He’d stayed here before when Shevu had given him a bolt-hole so he wouldn’t have to go home and face Luke; there was a sense of familiarity about it that was at odds with the feeling that he was violating his friend’s privacy. But Shevu would understand. The clutter of personal possessions had gone—Shula’s collection of stuffed toy animals in unlikely colors, piles of holovids, the Heptalian embroidered throw that used to adorn a chair—and Ben wondered if the pair had just sold up and left, and he was now in a stranger’s home waiting for the new owner to walk in to find a Jedi burglar sitting on the sofa.
A quick check of the closets and kitchen cupboards showed that Shevu still lived there. Those were his uniforms, his bolo-ball gear, the boxes of pepper-flavored breadsticks he seemed to live on. But every trace of Shula was gone, even the holopics of the couple enjoying a vacation on Naboo.
Maybe they’d broken up. That would have been a surprise, but a job like the GAG put a strain on relationships, and under Jacen the GAG was getting harder for former CSF cops like Shevu to handle. Ben settled down facing the door, and resisted the temptation to comm his old captain to check which shift pattern he was on. That didn’t seem to count for much with the GAG lately, though. It was a round-the-chrono job.
Ben occupied his time by reading his datapad and speculating. Four hours later, Force senses on edge, he felt a familiar presence and rehearsed all the different ways he could start telling Shevu that Jacen was now out of control.
Do I mention Mom first, or do I work up to that?
He decided to play it by ear. Footsteps paused outside the doors. The silence went on longer than Ben would have expected for Shevu to find his passcard, and then the doors parted and Ben realized what a bad idea it was to surprise a trained cop.
The whir of a charging blaster made him leap up just as Shevu burst through the gap and fired. Ben deflected the bolt, sending a stack of holozine pads smoking to the floor. “Sir, sir, it’s me! It’s Ben!” He held out both arms well away from his body. “Hold fire!”
Shevu, panting and wide-eyed, was down on one knee by the cover of an armchair with his service blaster still leveled at Ben.
“Stang, Ben,” he snapped. His shoulders relaxed instantly and he shut his eyes for a moment. “Don’t do that. Call ahead, for goodness’ sake.”
“Sorry. Sorry about the damage, too.”
Shevu stepped back into the corridor and said something to a person Ben couldn’t see. The neighbors had stuck their heads out of their doorways to see what the noise was about, and Ben heard a few wo
rds like thought I had a burglar, but it’s a buddy before Shevu shut the doors behind him and stood looking down at Ben.
“It’s lucky you’re a Jedi.” Shevu seemed much more shaken than he would have been on a genuinely dangerous mission. “Or you’d have been a dead buddy.”
“I tried to find Shula first. I didn’t want to compromise you by comming you direct.”
Shevu picked up the scattered and melted holozines. Some had fused into a single lump. “You’re in trouble.”
“No … Jacen is.”
“Oh, that’s okay, then.” Shevu flashed his eyebrows. “We’re all in the poodoo. We’ve been told you’re not GAG personnel any longer. Jacen didn’t say why you’d left, but when he suggested that we tell him if we ever saw you, I reached my own conclusions. It’s kind of hard to ignore the mayhem going on with the Jedi Council.” Shevu checked himself as if he’d just made a terrible gaffe. “What kind of buddy am I? I’m sorry about your mother, Ben, I really am. That was thoughtless of me.”
Ben took a breath and dived straight in. The cue was there. “It was Jacen who killed her.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
It wasn’t the casual way Shevu said it that shocked Ben as much as the fact he said it at all. Shevu wasn’t appalled. He wasn’t even mildly surprised.
“You knew?”
“Come on, Ben, you know rules of evidence as well as I do. I’ve got nothing solid.” Shevu checked the window locks and rechecked the door, as if he was used to watching his back these days. Then he went into the kitchen, and the noise of clacking plates, running water, and snapping cupboard catches drifted into the living room with the sudden scent of fresh caf. “It’s got his fingerprints all over it, though—not that Jedi leave any, of course. He’d be the first suspect whose collar I’d feel, believe me.”
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