by Troy Denning
“I’m glad you asked me.” Jacen held her to his chest, then said, “You didn’t need to come up here, though. I would have been happy to come to the palace.”
“No. This is better.” Tenel Ka pulled back far enough to look up into his eyes. “I needed to bring Allana someplace safe.”
Jacen cocked a brow. “And your palace isn’t?”
“Not at the moment.” Tenel Ka took his hand and led him over to the viewport, where the shadowy crescent of the planet’s night side was just rotating into view. “Someone poisoned the witnesses.”
“Witnesses?” Jacen asked.
“To the coup attempt,” Tenel Ka explained. “I had everyone who saw the attack isolated in the Well.”
“The Well is your detention center?” Jacen asked.
Tenel Ka nodded. “My secret detention center,” she explained. “Comfortable, hidden, and very secure. My ancestors have used it for more than twenty centuries to detain troublesome nobles, and no one has ever escaped from it.”
“They still haven’t, if I understand what you said correctly.” Jacen flashed a lopsided Solo grin. “Unless the Hapan definition of escape is broader than it is in most parts of the galaxy.”
Tenel Ka frowned at him. “Your joke is not funny, Jacen. Most of the men who died were innocent bystanders. I was only holding them until I could determine who was and was not involved in the attack.”
“Bystanders? Why would anyone poison …” Jacen let the question trail off, then said, “Tenel Ka, whoever killed the prisoners is trying to do more than silence coconspirators.”
Tenel Ka nodded. “If all they wished was to protect their own identity, they wouldn’t have poisoned all the prisoners.” She turned and stared out at the darkening planet below. “The usurpers want it to appear that I am killing the innocent as well as the guilty. They are trying to turn my nobles against me.”
“We won’t let that happen. We’ll find out who these usurpers are and stop them.” Jacen placed his hands on her shoulders. “You said the Well is secret. Who knows about it?”
“Only one company of my personal guard and a few members of my inner circle.”
“It could be someone in the guard,” Jacen said. “But chances are—”
“Yes—it always seems to be the ones closest to you.” Jacen looked toward the salon exit. “Lady Galney?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Tenel Ka said. “Lady Galney’s family members are among my strongest supporters. Her sister will rally to my cause the moment Jaina delivers my summons.”
Jacen frowned. “Jaina was here?”
“Yes.” Tenel Ka took Jacen’s hand and led him toward the salon’s conversation area. “Your sister arrived shortly after your parents.”
“My parents?” Jacen was growing more perplexed every moment. “What are they doing here?”
“Nothing, any longer. They’ve fled.” Tenel Ka sat on the couch and pulled Jacen down beside her. “I’m afraid they may have been involved in the assassination attempt.”
“Involved?”
“Participated,” Tenel Ka clarified.
For a time, Jacen was too stunned to reply. He knew his parents had taken Corellia’s side in the conflict—that was one of the few things that made him question the Galactic Alliance’s position—but assassination was just not their style. At least, he had thought it wasn’t, until he started to read the intelligence reports describing his father’s role in the murder of Thrackan Sal-Solo.
Finally, Jacen turned to Tenel Ka. “You’re sure?”
“I am sure they were here,” Tenel Ka explained. “They arrived on the day of the Queen’s Pageant and insisted that they had an appointment to see me. At first, I thought there had been a miscommunication, but my security staff is now convinced that their assignment was to cause a break in my security routine.”
“Your security staff is convinced.” Jacen stood and looked into the corner, trying to make sense of what he was hearing, trying to picture the people who had raised him—the good-hearted scoundrel and the principled diplomat—setting up Tenel Ka for an assassination attempt. “What do you think?”
“Jacen, I don’t know what to think,” Tenel Ka said. “Some preliminary reports suggested that they may have been trying to warn me about the assassins, but …”
Jacen continued to face the corner. He was beginning to feel almost relieved. Maybe Allana was not the sacrifice Lumiya kept talking about. Maybe his parents were what he would be required to surrender, and maybe their deaths would not be a coldhearted act of betrayal after all. Maybe he would be serving the Balance, merely delivering a final and terrible justice to one more pair of murdering terrorists.
“But what?” he asked, not looking away from the corner. “Go on.”
“But they were seen leaving with the leader of the assassins,” Tenel Ka finished. “She even went to their aid when my guards pinned them down.”
“I see.” A terrible sense of sadness came over Jacen, and a sense of inevitability. Had his parents really drifted across the thin line that separated heroes from murderers? Had they really slipped into the murky realm of terrorism? He turned to face Tenel Ka. “Is there any reason to think we should place our faith in the reports suggesting they were trying to warn you?”
Tenel Ka lowered her eyes. “Not really.”
“I didn’t think so.” Jacen crossed the cabin to his comm station. “It appears my parents have become part of the problem in this war.”
“Jacen, what are you doing?” Tenel Ka asked, following. “Please remember that as bad as it looks, we don’t know the whole story yet.”
“But we need to.” Jacen slipped into the chair and activated the data display, then began to scroll through a long list of electronic forms. “That’s why we need to find them.”
“Do we?” Tenel Ka came around the desk and stopped behind him. “After the Millennium Falcon left Hapes, she vanished into the Transitory Mists. As long as she stays vanished, I’m willing to give your parents the benefit of the doubt … in fact, I want to.”
“Tenel Ka, we just can’t do that.” Jacen found the form he was looking for—a GAG SEARCH AND DETAIN WARRANT—and began to enter the names of his parents. “But thank you for offering.”
“Jacen, stop.” Tenel Ka used the Force to pull his hands away from the keyboard. “If you’re angry with them because Allana was threatened, that’s not fair. Your parents don’t even know that Allana is their granddaughter, and there would have been an assassination attempt anyway.”
Jacen lowered his guard so that Tenel Ka could sense his emotions, then said, “I’m not angry. I’m sad.”
He pulled his hands free of her Force grasp and resumed entering his parents’ data on the warrant.
“But this is bigger than me—and it may even be bigger than the Hapes Consortium.” He entered a description of the Millennium Falcon, then hit a key and sent the warrant to the dispatch center. “Whatever the terrorists are planning, my parents are a part of it—and GAG needs to know how.”
chapter twelve
The Falcon had reverted into the deepest, darkest space Leia had ever seen. The handful of stars she could see through the cockpit canopy were mere ghost twinkles, and the frequency with which they kept vanishing and reappearing made her think she might be imagining them.
“Who dimmed the blast-tinting?” Han asked, complaining more than inquiring. “Check that flash detector. It must be on the blink.”
Leia pulled a glow rod from the emergency kit next to the copilot’s seat and shined a light into a thumb-sized dome that sat on top of the instrument console. The ghost stars vanished instantly as the canopy darkened.
“The flash detector is fine,” she reported. “We must have stumbled into a bank of Transitory Mists.”
“Stumbled is not how I would describe it,” said their passenger, Nashtah. The assassin was slouched in the navigator’s seat, rolling an unsheathed vibrodagger between her long fingers. Her hair remained in its bushy topknot, an
d she was still dressed in her sleeveless bodysuit. “The mists absorb light and block long-range sensor readings.”
“I see,” Leia said. “So you were expecting this?”
“Always a good idea to blind your pursuers.” Nashtah’s black-rimmed eyes shifted to the back of Han’s head. “We can take our time plotting our next jump. They won’t find us in this.”
“I like your thinking,” Han said, watching her reflection in the canopy. “After the way things went back at the palace, we’ll be leading a fleet of Battle Dragons around the galaxy if we’re not careful.”
Nashtah shrugged. “No worries. They’d have to be right on top of us to plot our next vector.”
She continued to slouch in her seat, rolling the vibrodagger between her fingers and waiting for the Solos to start plotting jump coordinates they did not have. In the silence that followed, Leia began to think it might not be such a good idea to try tricking the assassin into revealing the identity of the coup leader. There was a cold hunger in Nashtah’s Force presence that suggested she was just looking for an excuse to plant her vibrodagger in the back of Han’s neck.
When the long silence began to stretch from uncomfortable to alarming, Leia unbuckled her crash webbing and rose.
“I don’t know about you two, but I’m famished.” She gave Han’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze, then turned toward the rear of the cockpit; the last thing she wanted was to fight this assassin—but if it had to happen, she wanted room to maneuver. “Why don’t I fix us something to eat while you do the sweep?”
“Sweep?” Nashtah asked.
“For homing beacons,” Han said, smoothly following Leia’s lead. “We always do a sweep after a scrape like that—a habit we picked up fighting Imperials.”
“Ah.” Nashtah’s sunken eyes shifted from Leia to Han’s reflection. “Very clever.”
Han seemed to wilt a little beneath her scrutiny. “Uh, yeah.” He unbuckled his crash webbing and started after Leia. “And count me in for the grub. I’m hungry enough to eat a rancor.”
“Yes, eating would be nice.” Nashtah sheathed her vibrodagger and followed, clearly determined not to let the Solos out of her sight—especially together. “A good fight always whets my appetite.”
They traveled down the cockpit access corridor to the main cabin. Han went to the engineering station to scan for unauthorized signals, and Leia went to the galley. The Noghri remained out of view, though Leia could feel them nearby, one hiding just inside the forward hold, the other lurking a few paces down the main corridor. Thankfully, C-3P0 was in the rear of the ship, supervising a routine check of the backup life-support systems.
Instead of offering to help either Leia or Han, Nashtah took a seat at the table, where she would be in a good position to watch them both. None of them removed their weapons belts.
Leia called up a list of stores, then turned half toward Nashtah. “What would you like? We have brogy stew, gorba melts—”
“Do you have nerf steaks?” Nashtah interrupted.
“Sure,” Leia said. Nerf steaks were more dinner than lunch, but who knew what timetable Nashtah was on? “How would you like it?”
“Them,” Nashtah corrected. “I need three. Just defrosted will be fine.”
“Three?” Leia gasped. She did not mean to be rude, but even Saba would have trouble eating that much meat—and Saba was a Barabel. “Perhaps you’re accustomed to smaller steaks than we stock. These are half a kilo a piece.”
Nashtah’s eyes flashed as though insulted. “Make it four,” she ordered. “My species has an … unusual metabolism.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ferocious,” Leia said. “Defrosted it is.”
She punched an order into the galley’s multiprocessor, requesting two gorba melts for her and Han, and the four steaks for Nashtah. Then she returned to the table and sat across from the assassin.
“What is your species?” Leia asked, trying to sound casual and polite. “You have a youthful appearance, but I sense that you’ve lived a long and interesting life already.”
“You sense?” Nashtah’s face remained as severe and unreadable as ever, but the Force around her began to warm with resentment. “Be careful what you sense, Jedi. The dark side can be catching.”
Leia frowned, suddenly feeling even more cautious and curious about the assassin than before. “Are you saying you were a Jedi?”
Nashtah laughed—a dry, humorless croak—then promptly changed the subject. “Why don’t you and Captain Solo know where we are going?”
“I’ll take that as a no comment,” Leia said, automatically buying time. An abrupt change of subject could be just as effective for eliciting a candid reply as for avoiding one and, even without the tingle racing down her spine, Leia knew that her next answer would be a dangerous one. “Does that mean you don’t want to talk about your species, either?”
“My mother was human. My father was a ghost in the night, and I doubt even my mother knew his species—but it was obviously a long-lived one.” Nashtah drew her lips back in an indifferent smile. “If I ever find out who he was, perhaps I’ll be able to hunt him down and kill him.” Her hand drifted toward the swinging holster she wore on her hip. “So how come you and Captain Solo don’t know who our employer is?”
Leia’s danger sense turned to a sinking feeling. “Han and I don’t work for your employer.” She cautiously moved her hand to the hilt of her lightsaber. “We’re agents of the Corellian government.”
“That’s right,” Han said from across the cabin. He had stopped work and was facing Nashtah, his hand propped on the butt of his own blaster. “Prime Minister Gejjen asked us to go to the palace and lure Tenel Ka into a public area. That’s all we knew about your plan.”
“And you agreed?” Nashtah asked. It did not seem to trouble her that if a fight was to erupt, she would be caught in the middle of Han, Leia, and their Noghri—whom Leia felt sure the assassin could sense watching them. “My information says Tenel Ka is a Solo family friend.”
“She is—and she’s on the wrong side of this war.” Leia put some durasteel in her voice. “I’ve seen one Empire rise in my lifetime. I don’t want to see another.”
“We’ll do whatever it takes to stop it,” Han said. “My own son is torturing Corellians.”
“He does seem to be following his grandfather’s example, doesn’t he?” Nashtah kept her eyes fixed on Leia, and for the first time her smile appeared genuine. “That must make you very … unhappy.”
“Unhappy isn’t the way I’d put it.” Despite the obvious enjoyment Nashtah took in her pain, Leia answered honestly; if they were to have any hope of tricking the assassin into revealing the identity of the coup leader, they had to win her trust. “It terrifies me.”
Nashtah actually licked her lips. “Truly?”
“Yes.” Leia took a deep breath, then continued, “When Han and I married, I didn’t want children because I didn’t want to take the chance that one of them would grow up to become another Darth Vader.”
Han frowned across the cabin at Leia, clearly unhappy at having their family life revealed to an assassin.
“Then something happened to change your mind,” Nashtah surmised. “You hardly strike me as the careless type.”
“I’m not,” Leia said. “We were on a mission to Tatooine. I started to have Force-visions, and then someone gave me my grandmother’s vid-diary. When I began to see my father through her eyes …”
Leia let her sentence trail off, unable to help wondering if she had misinterpreted events all those years ago—if she should have seen Jacen’s dark future in the burning eyes of the Force-vision she had experienced, if she should have heard the menace in its cruel-voiced message: Mine … mine. She had concluded at the time that the Force was trying to tell her that she belonged to it, that she needed to entrust it with her future. But now … now she could not help wondering if the vision had been something darker, some unseen evil laying claim to her issue.
“You changed your mind,” Nashtah said, finishing Leia’s sentence. “You began to think the danger was not real?”
Leia nodded.
“And now what do you think?” Nashtah’s eyes were sparkling with delight. “Was your fear justified?”
“Just hold on a blasted second.” Han started across the deck toward the assassin. “If you think we wish we never had kids—”
Leia raised a hand and used the Force to stop Han from coming any closer. “If Han and I had never raised children, there would have been no Anakin Solo to save the Jedi from the voxyn, no Jacen Solo to show us the way to victory against the Yuuzhan Vong, no Jaina Solo to lead the fight. So what I think is that it’s unwise to oppose the will of the Force.”
“I see,” Nashtah said. “So if it’s the will of the Force for your son Jacen to follow in the path of his grandfather, you won’t oppose it?”
“It’s too early to tell how far down that path Jacen will go, but I won’t let him become another Darth Vader.” Leia saw the alarm her reply raised in Han’s eyes, but to give any other answer would have been to step into Nashtah’s trap—to admit that the reasons she had given for turning against Tenel Ka were false. “Whatever it takes to stop that from happening, I’ll do.”
Nashtah continued to study Leia. “Whatever it takes?”
“You heard her.” Han said. He had stopped in the middle of the cabin, with his hand still resting on the butt of his blaster pistol. “Not that it’s any business of yours how we feel about the way our kids turned out.”
“It might be, when you realize that you can’t handle him yourself.” Nashtah slowly looked from Leia to Han. “I specialize in Jedi, you know. That’s why they recruited me for Tenel Ka.”
“Yeah?” Han replied. “Well, leave us your contact data and we’ll think about it.”
The multiprocessor chimed three times, announcing that lunch was ready.
Han unsnapped the keeper strap on his holster. “Are we gonna eat, or what?”
Nashtah’s gaze dropped to his hand and stayed there for a moment. Then she let out a snort of derision and slowly moved her hand away from her blaster. “Eating sounds good,” she said.