by Troy Denning
Luke closed his eyes and concentrated on the drone of the lightsaber, all the time tracking Ben’s presence through the Force, waiting for the telltale flicker of resolve that would mean his son was attacking. It did not come until Ben was directly behind him, where Luke would be forced to pivot to see the attack.
But Luke didn’t need to see. He merely listened until the drone of the lightsaber began to change pitch, then raised his free hand and made a grasping motion, grabbing the hilt of Ben’s weapon through the Force and holding it motionless two meters away.
Ben grunted in surprise, but he was both resourceful and quick. Luke heard the lightsaber deactivate as the hilt was released, then felt his son flying toward the center of his back. He dropped his own lightsaber and turned his weapon hand toward the floor, rooting himself to the Force. Ben struck an instant later, kicking out with both feet in an attempt to send Luke flying.
Luke did not budge, and Ben hit the floor with another loud thump.
“Rodder!”
Luke remained motionless, but he opened his eyes and summoned Ben’s lightsaber into his grasp. “Does that mean you give up?”
“Not … yet.”
Luke sensed another flicker of excitement in the Force, then glanced over his shoulder to see Ben summoning the lightsaber Luke had dropped just a moment earlier.
When it arrived, Ben hefted its weight a couple of times, then scowled and opened the base.
Nothing came out.
Ben turned to Luke in astonishment. “You couldn’t activate the blade!” he complained. “There’s no power cell!”
“No, there isn’t.” Luke turned to face his son full-on. “A Jedi’s greatest weapon is his mind.”
Ben’s face grew red. “So I’ve heard.” He rose and handed Luke’s lightsaber to him. “Thanks for rubbing my nose in it.”
Luke returned Ben’s weapon to him. “That’s not what I was doing.”
“I know what you were doing, Dad. You had to test me.” Ben returned the lightsaber to his utility belt, then added, “But I’m not going dark. Anger has no control over me—and neither does fear.”
Luke nodded. “I can see that, Ben. I still want you to take a proper Master.”
“Then make Jacen a Master,” Ben replied. “He knows more about the Force than anybody.”
“That’s not going to happen, Ben,” Luke said.
Ben considered this a moment, then spoke in a resigned voice. “I guess that’s your decision, Dad. You’re the Grand Master.” He started to gather up his sparring armor. “I’ve got to get going—we’ve got a raid at twenty hundred.”
“Ben, I wish you—”
“I have to, Dad. They’re counting on me.” Ben stood and started toward the door, then suddenly stopped and faced Luke. “But I could use some more sparring, if you’ve got the time.”
“Sure.” Luke was as surprised by the peace offering as he was delighted. “I’d like that, a lot.”
“Me, too.” Ben turned away, then called over his shoulder, “But you’d better bring a power cell. Next time, I won’t go so easy on you.”
Mara entered the Sparring Arena to find Luke kneeling in the center of the floor, staring at the hole Ben had made, but not really examining it. She could sense that he was more worried than ever, though whether it was about Ben’s training or something else, she could not tell.
“Does it really bother you that much?” she asked.
Luke furrowed his brow. “What?”
“Ben passing your test,” she said. “Whatever he’s learning from Jacen, it’s not turning him to the dark side. I didn’t feel any anger in him.”
“Neither did I.” Luke’s gaze grew distant and thoughtful. “He was almost too calm.”
Mara let out her breath in exasperation. “When could Jacen have prepared him?” she demanded. Luke had intentionally summoned Ben at a time when Jacen would be tied up in a meeting with Cal Omas and Admiral Niathal. “And you’d better not be telling me you wouldn’t sense an act in your own son.”
“No, he wasn’t acting.” Luke stood and led the way toward the exit. “But I’d still like to see Ben apprenticed properly. His training is suffering.”
“That’s true,” Mara said. While Ben’s self-defense skills might be adequate, his sparring had shown a lack of confidence in his control. “But has it occurred to you that Ben might be right? Maybe you should make Jacen a Master.”
Luke stopped at the door and scowled at her as though she were a fool or a traitor—or both.
“Come on, Skywalker,” Mara said. “You can’t dispute Jacen’s Force knowledge. And being a Master might pull him back into the Jedi order. It might give you some control over him—at the least, you’d have a formal means to oversee how he’s training Ben.”
The disapproval vanished from Luke’s face. “There’s something to what you’re saying, but I just can’t do it. Jacen isn’t ready to be a Master … and I don’t think he ever will be. The sooner we get Ben away from him, the better.”
He started through the door toward the changing rooms, but Mara caught him by the arm.
“Actually, Luke, I’m not so sure of that.” She told him about the profound sense of certainty she had experienced earlier, about how convinced she was that the Force had drawn Ben to Jacen for a reason. “Whatever is going on with Jacen, we need to be careful about interfering. I think his destiny and Ben’s are linked.”
Luke’s face grew clouded, and Mara could sense that while he did not doubt what she was telling him, he was having a hard time accepting it. Jacen was walking very close to the dark side—even Mara had to admit that—and yet here she was, telling him that their thirteen-year-old son had to walk that line with him.
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” she said. “But everything I feel is telling me that we have to let Ben learn from his own experiences—even if those experiences involve Jacen. If we don’t, Ben is going to grow resentful and withdraw again—from us and the Force.”
Finally, Luke nodded, but his expression remained clouded. “Okay, as long as he keeps sparring with me.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. It was his idea.” Mara continued to hold Luke in the door. “But I get the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me.”
Luke frowned. “I’m not sure how it relates.”
“But you think it might?”
He nodded. “My dream has been getting worse.”
“I see,” Mara said. For some time now, Luke had been having dreams about a faceless, cloaked figure that he believed to be Lumiya. “Define worse.”
“She’s sitting on a throne,” Luke said. “Sitting on a throne and laughing in a man’s voice.”
Mara swallowed. She couldn’t dismiss what Luke saw in the Force any more than she could deny the certainty of what she had felt just a few moments earlier. “Did you see—” Her throat closed with dryness, and she had to try again. “Was Ben—”
“No,” Luke said. “Nobody else was there. Just her—him, it, whoever—looking down and laughing.”
“But it has something to do with Ben?” Mara pressed.
“That’s why you wanted to test him today?”
“It’s why I wanted to test him, but I don’t know how much the dream has to do with him,” Luke said. “I’m beginning to feel that it’s bigger than Ben and Jacen.”
“Well, that’s a relief—sort of,” Mara said. “I don’t like that throne, though. It smacks of empire.”
“It certainly does,” Luke said, nodding. “So I think it’s time to break out my shoto.”
Mara raised her brow. The shoto was a special half-length lightsaber that Luke had built after nearly losing his life the first time he encountered Lumiya’s lightwhip. The shorter blade allowed him to fight in the Jar’Kai style—with a weapon in each hand—which counteracted the advantage of the lightwhip’s dual-natured strands of energy and matter.
“So you’re going after her?” Mara asked.
Luke nodded. “I
think it’s time to find Lumiya and get to the bottom of this.”
“Then I’d better build a shoto, too,” Mara said. “Because you’re not going after her alone.”
chapter four
After a long mission Force-hibernating in the cold, cramped cockpit of a StealthX, what Jaina wanted was a hot sanisteam and a nerf steak as large as her plate. What she got, as she passed the fastidious officers on the command deck of the Admiral Ackbar; were sudden glances and—sometimes—wrinkled noses. She was still wearing the same black flight suit in which she had spent the last week, and the climate-controlled warmth of the Star Destroyer was doing nothing to mask the fact.
Jaina stopped at the edge of the Tactical Salon and waited for Admiral Bwua’tu to free himself. After a decade of off-and-on service in Rogue and various other X-wing squadrons, it was hard to avoid saluting or reporting her arrival in a clear, sharp voice. But she was no longer in the military—she had been discharged for refusing to obey Jacen’s order to fire on a fleeing blockade-runner—and Jedi Knights seldom needed to announce themselves.
The tactical holodisplay in the center of the salon suggested that the Corellian situation had not changed during her week at the observation post. Fleets enforcing the Alliance Exclusionary Zone still surrounded Centerpoint Station and all five of Corell’s habitable planets, and the Kiris Asteroid Cluster continued to glow in faint, cautionary yellow. The location of Bwua’tu’s ambush fleet—lying in wait three light-years from the edge of the system—was indicated by a simple blue arrow and a distance marker. Were the situation to remain static for another year, the two sides might actually have time to work out their differences.
But the galaxy was not going to be that lucky. There were too many schemes under way, too many factors on a collision course—and Jaina was about to bring another big complication into play. When High Command learned that the Corellians were in contact with Hapes—one of the Alliance’s most supportive member states—spies would be tasked to investigate and diplomats sent to make inquiries. Forces would be mobilized and assets moved into position, and the war would grow that much harder to stop.
Jaina did not even want to consider what might happen if High Command heard that her parents were involved. There would be a lot of unjustified concern, perhaps even panic. Scouts would be dispatched to locate them, and a task force assigned to capture—perhaps even destroy—the Millennium Falcon. That possibility had run through her mind over and over during the long journey back from the Kirises, reinforcing the notion that her report might not need to include certain things.
Jaina looked from the holodisplay to a niche high on the salon’s back wall, where a larmalstone bust of the great Admiral Ackbar kept watch over his namesake. She knew enough about the political instincts of Bothans to realize Bwua’tu was only displaying the statue to curry favor with the Alliance’s new Mon Calamari Supreme Commander, Cha Niathal. But the effigy struck her as deeply ironic. Ackbar had been a firm believer in the benevolent power of a united galaxy, and no one could be more disturbed to see the Galactic Alliance going to war against one of its own member states than he would have been.
The trouble was, Jaina just did not see how Omas could have avoided it. Thrackan Sal-Solo and his cohorts had been trying to bring Centerpoint Station back online, and they had been building a secret invasion fleet in the Kiris Asteroid Cluster. Clearly, Corellia had been preparing to attack someone—and the inability to discover the intended target did not excuse the Alliance from its duty to intervene.
Jaina sensed Bwua’tu approaching and turned her attention in the admiral’s direction. With small burning eyes and graying chin fur, the Bothan cut a feral and surprisingly dignified figure in his white uniform.
“A reminder,” Bwua’tu said in his gritty voice.
Jaina frowned in bafflement. “Sir?”
Bwua’tu pointed a finger at the bust of Admiral Ackbar.
“The statue,” he said. “It has nothing to do with Admiral Niathal, as you were thinking. It’s there to keep me humble.”
Jaina was too surprised to ask Bwua’tu exactly how he knew what she had been thinking. Perhaps that was what everyone thought when they saw the statue—or perhaps he was just that good at reading faces.
“Humble?” she asked. “How is that, sir?”
The fur rose along the back of Bwua’tu’s neck. “Jedi can’t possibly be that poorly informed. I was the laughingstock of the entire space navy over the incident in the Murgo Choke.”
“Not the entire space navy, sir,” Jaina said. During the recent peacekeeping operations in the Unknown Regions, the Ackbar had been captured by a swarm of Killik commandos—smuggled aboard in busts of Admiral Bwua’tu himself. “I’m pretty sure Admiral Pellaeon didn’t find it at all funny.”
Bwua’tu’s ears came forward; then he seemed to recognize the humor in Jaina’s tone and snorted in approval. “No, he didn’t,” Bwua’tu said. “As a matter of fact, I’m surprised the old battlecan let me keep my command.”
“The Killiks certainly wished he hadn’t,” Jaina said.
Bwua’tu studied her with narrowed eyes, no doubt wondering whether there remained enough Joiner in Jaina to wish that the Killiks had prevailed in their war against the Chiss.
“What I’m trying to say is that your performance after the Ackbar’s capture was brilliant,” Jaina clarified. “Nobody else could have stopped those nest ships in the Murgo Choke.”
Bwua’tu’s expression grew pleased. “Probably not. No one else would have moved so quickly to exploit the enemy’s uncertainty, especially in the face of such overwhelming …” The admiral stopped and glanced up at Ackbar’s bust, then flattened his ears in embarrassment. “Well, I was taking a substantial risk. But that can’t be the reason you need to see me. What’s this about a transport leaving the system?”
Jaina swallowed, then stepped close enough to speak in a hushed voice. “It was bound for the Hapes Consortium, sir.”
“The Consortium.” The fur on Bwua’tu’s brow pulled forward. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Very sure. The accuracy of the intercepts is beyond doubt.”
“Well, how … alarming.” Bwua’tu avoided asking any specifics about the intercept method. StealthX eavesdropping technology was highly classified, and there were too many ears without the proper clearance to discuss the matter in the TacSal. “The Hapes Consortium is a big gob of space. Were you able to determine which planet?”
Jaina shook her head. “I’m afraid not. The Transitory Mists make Hapan hyperspace lanes too tangled to tell, but Hapes is definitely the direction that the vessel was headed.”
“I see.” Bwua’tu fell silent for a moment, his gaze growing distant and thoughtful. “So, the Corellians are hoping to draw the Hapans into the war on their side.”
“That’s very hard to believe, Admiral,” Jaina said. It was the obvious conclusion, but given who was involved, it just didn’t make sense. “We might want to consider alternative explanations.”
“I already have, Jedi Solo.” Bwua’tu studied Jaina carefully, his eyes slowly growing beady and suspicious. “This one is a near certainty. Naval Intelligence reports that both Nal Hutta and Bothawui have refused to ally—at least openly—against the Galactic Alliance, and Corellia knows she can’t defeat us alone.”
“They may be desperate, Admiral, but they’re not fools.” Jaina had grown up in a household where Heads of State and Supreme Commanders were everyday guests, but there was something penetrating in Bwua’tu’s gaze that made her feel exposed and uneasy. “The Galactic Alliance has Tenel Ka’s full support, and the Corellians know it. She’s sent us two full battle fleets.”
Bwua’tu’s look of suspicion changed to one of disappointment. “I didn’t say they were going to meet the Queen Mother, Jedi Solo.”
Jaina frowned, digesting his remark for a moment, then asked, “You think Corellia intends to overthrow Tenel Ka?”
“I think Corellia intends to help,�
�� Bwua’tu corrected. “The Queen Mother’s support of the Alliance is unpopular among her nobles, so I’m sure they have their pick of potential usurpers.”
“No.” Jaina’s stomach knotted with outrage—with the refusal to believe her parents could betray such a good friend. “That just doesn’t make sense.”
Bwua’tu studied her with a cocked head for a moment, then asked, “Exactly what doesn’t make sense, Jedi Solo? There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What makes you say that, sir?” Jaina knew as soon as she had spoken that it was the wrong question to ask. Bothans were renowned throughout the galaxy as masters of treachery—and that meant seeing through lies as well as telling them. “I mean, I have good reason to believe that’s not what the Corellians are intending.”
Bwua’tu looked at her expectantly.
“I’m only sorry that I’m not at liberty to reveal it,” she said. “It’s, um, a secret of the order.”
“I see.” Bwua’tu tugged at his graying fur, then turned away and motioned for Jaina to follow. “Come with me, young woman.”
Jaina gulped and did as she was ordered.
Bwua’tu led her into his private office at the rear of the Tactical Salon. Like everything else aboard his Star Destroyer, the cabin was austere and tidy, with another bust of Admiral Ackbar sitting on one corner of his desk. There were half a dozen sturdy plastoid chairs in front of the desk and a pair of gray couches in one corner, but Bwua’tu did not invite Jaina to sit on any of the furniture. Instead, he opaqued the transparisteel wall that separated the cabin from the salon, then turned to face her.
“The transport was the Millennium Falcon.” The admiral stated this as fact, not question. “Jedi aren’t technically under my command, so I won’t bother ordering you to answer me. But you should know that this is what I assume.”
Jaina’s heart fell. Her parents were about to have a pair of very big targets drawn on their backs. “The exact identity of the vessel didn’t seem relevant at the time.”
Bwua’tu’s voice grew sharp. “Obviously, it was. You don’t believe Han and Leia Solo would betray your friend.”