by Troy Denning
“Thanks, Aunt Leia.” Ben smiled at her briefly, then looked back to Jaina and frowned. “I’m a Jedi, Jaina, with a job to do, just like you. If we’re going to keep working together, you’re going to have to remember that—okay?”
Jaina lifted her brow. “Yeah, sure, Ben. Sorry.” She looked to the two women accompanying him. “What have you two been feeding him?”
The two women looked at each other, then the one on the right said, “Don’t blame us if you can’t handle your men. All we did was deliver him to Her Majesty, as ordered.”
Ben just shook his head, then turned to his father, who was standing quietly beside Leia.
“Good to see you, Dad,” he said. “At least you’re not treating me like a kid anymore. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Ben,” Luke said. “But there’s no need to thank me. All I did was give you a mission, and you performed brilliantly. Without you, we wouldn’t have known where to look for Caedus—and we wouldn’t have known what he was up to in the Roche system.”
Ben beamed for a second, then hugged his father. Jaina was surprised to see that he had already grown almost as tall as Luke. In a year, he might even be taller.
“I guess I had a good teacher, Dad.” After a moment, Ben freed himself and stepped back, his expression growing serious again. “But there was a problem with my escape—a big one.”
“There always is, kid,” Han said. “What’s this one?”
Ben hesitated. “Maybe I’d better let Tenel Ka explain it. She has the intelligence reports.”
“Tenel Ka is here?” Zekk gasped.
Ben looked at Zekk as though he had just asked a very foolish question. “Of course she’s here,” he said. “You didn’t think the Dragon Queen came all this way just to deliver me, did you?”
Jaina frowned and looked to her mother, who did not seem surprised at all. “What did I miss?”
“Sorry,” Luke said. “I didn’t want to interrupt your sparring. The Dragon Queen arrived an hour ago with most of the Hapan Home Fleet.”
Now Jaina was really confused—as were Jag, Zekk, and the others. Moving an entire fleet to a secret base wasn’t a very good way to keep it secret.
“What’s the Home Fleet doing here?” Zekk asked.
“Her Majesty will explain all that shortly,” said one of the women with Ben. She stepped to Zekk’s side and looped a hand through his arm. “In the meantime, why don’t you show me around, handsome? My name’s Taryn.”
Zekk looked somewhere between confused and shocked; then his expression softened.
“Maybe we can do that later … Taryn.” He nodded toward the door, where a large Hapan security detail was escorting Tenel Ka and Allana into the courtyard. “Right now, I’d like to hear what Her Majesty has to say.”
Taryn looked annoyed—but only for a moment. “Later is good, too,” she said. “But don’t disappoint me. We have a date.”
“Uh, sure.” Zekk was clearly reeling from the straightforward manner of Hapan women; he flushed and glanced over at Jaina. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”
Taryn turned to Jaina, her expression more appraising than apologetic. “He’s yours?”
“Well, n-no,” Jaina said. Zekk looked even more uncomfortable, and through the Force, she could feel Jag smirking at her dilemma. “Of course he’s not mine. We don’t—”
“Well, then,” Taryn interrupted. She smiled and squeezed Zekk’s biceps. “Lucky me.”
Taryn’s twin sister rolled her eyes. “We’re supposed to be on duty, Taryn.”
“Don’t be such a Dug, Trista,” Taryn replied. “I can have fun and do my duty.”
Trista stifled her reply as Tenel Ka emerged from the building, holding the hand of a beautiful little girl with her mother’s red hair and a cute button nose. Jaina’s heart broke. It was the first time she had ever seen her niece, and Allana’s resemblance to Jacen at that age was striking. She could not understand how her brother could have introduced so much evil into the galaxy when he had such innocence to protect. Nearly everything else Caedus had done might have been forgivable, but how could he have taken his own daughter hostage?
As Tenel Ka and Allana arrived, the group made a place for them to stand, but there were no big Solo hugs for Allana. Her paternity was known by only a few, and for Allana’s sake, Tenel Ka and the Solos wanted to keep it that way.
“Your Majesty,” Luke said. “Thank you for visiting us here on Shedu Maad. We’re honored.”
Tenel Ka smiled and impatiently motioned for everyone to stop bowing. “There is no need for formalities when we are alone, my friends,” she said. “Nor do we have the time. I’m afraid I’ve come with some alarming news.”
Luke nodded. “We suspected as much when you arrived with your fleet. What is it?”
“As Ben may have told you,” she said, “my father was captured and taken aboard the Anakin Solo.”
Ben hadn’t told them, of course, which certainly explained the dead silence that greeted her announcement.
After a moment of quiet, Ben said, “It was my fault. I thought I was clean, but—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Jedi Skywalker,” said Trista. “You told us we were being watched.”
Leia stepped over and took Tenel Ka’s hand. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty. If there’s anything we can do—”
“Perhaps later, Princess Leia,” Tenel Ka interrupted. “But Prince Isolder knew the location of this base. Apparently, Darth Caedus forced him to reveal it, because the Anakin Solo has broken out of the Roche system with the Remnant assault fleet. They were last seen entering the Transitory Mists near Roqoo Station.”
“Caedus is coming to us?” asked Saba Sebatyne, looking entirely too happy about it. “You are certain?”
Tenel Ka nodded. “And there may not be time to evacuate. The Mist Patrol informs me that with the right charts, Caedus could be assaulting the Maad system within twelve hours.”
“What are the chances he has the right charts?” Han asked.
“Even if he doesn’t, the Force will guide him,” Luke said. He turned to Tenel Ka. “But I doubt your father revealed our location. I think Caedus may have found us another way.”
“What other way?” Tenel Ka asked. “Only a handful of people know the location of this base.”
Luke motioned Jaina forward, then pointed at the stains that Jaina still had not been able to scrub off her face and neck. “Do you recognize this?”
Tenel Ka’s jaw dropped. “Those are not burns?” Before Luke or anyone else could answer, she leaned in closer to Jaina. “That’s Caedus’s blood?”
“I knew it,” Jaina said, growing uneasy. “It’s from his arm, and it won’t come off—”
“Because it’s a blood trail,” Tenel Ka explained. “Some of the Nightsisters used the technique to mark their slaves—so they could always track them down.”
Jaina’s heart sank. “So I led him here.” She turned to Luke. “And you knew? Why did you let me stay?”
“I knew Caedus would be coming,” Luke corrected. “For me.”
Jaina frowned. “But he saw me cut off his arm,” she said. “He must know that I’m the one hunting him.”
“He knowz you are the Sword,” Saba corrected. “Does one win a battle by breaking the Sword, or the warrior who wieldz it?”
Luke turned to Tenel Ka. “Thank you for the warning. I don’t mean to be an ungracious host, but we have to prepare, and we may not have long. Perhaps you and Allana should leave while there’s still time.”
“We are staying, as is my fleet,” Tenel Ka said. “If the Jedi fall, so does my throne. Better to defend it here among friends than on Hapes, with more enemies at my back than in front of me.”
“It will be an honor, Jedi Majesty,” Saba said. “This one will be proud to hunt at your side.”
As Luke and the others began to make plans for the coming onslaught, Jaina was still struggling to grasp how her brother had taken advantage of her. She did not underst
and exactly how Nightsister blood trails worked, but she assumed the Force-user somehow maintained a connection to the blood he had shed, and employed that to keep track of his living property.
If Jaina’d had any lingering doubts about whether there might be any trace of Jacen left inside Darth Caedus, they were gone now. Caedus had known exactly what he was doing when he ordered those stormtroopers to redirect their fire. And his cold calculation in the face of such an injury scared her even more than seeing him stand up after losing his arm. He hadn’t wanted Jaina killed then, because he needed her to lead him to the Jedi now.
When Jaina returned her attention to the others, it was to find her father studying her with sad, sympathetic eyes.
“It finally happened, didn’t it?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Jaina said. “I think it did.”
Ben frowned. “What happened?”
“Her last hope died,” Leia said. “She realized that Jacen is totally gone. There’s nothing left to bring back into the light.”
Jaina nodded. “That’s pretty much it,” she said. “I started to wonder again when he ordered those stormtroopers to redirect their fire. But whatever I thought I saw—it was in my eyes, not his.”
Ben contemplated this for a moment, then asked, “But how do you know when someone can be brought back toward the light?”
“First, they must want to be redeemed,” Tenel Ka said. “All Caedus wants is to control everything he sees. There is no use wishing otherwise, Ben.”
“I did some pretty terrible things,” Ben pointed out. “And no one gave up on me.”
“You got a little confused, kid,” Han said. “That happens. But you didn’t go around killing family members and burning planets.”
Jaina glanced over at Luke. He was studying Ben not with shock or disbelief over his son’s naïveté, but with pride. Luke understood his son much better than they did, she realized. Whatever Ben was working through, it had nothing to do with Jacen … or Caedus.
“Ben?” Jaina asked. “Are you talking about Tahiri?”
Ben looked uncomfortable. “I’m just asking a question. How else am I going to know?”
“But you must have a reason for asking,” Leia prompted. “What is it?”
Ben looked at the ground and exhaled, trying to gather his thoughts—or his courage. Finally, he said, “I think Tahiri hated what she did.”
“Killing Shevu?” asked Leia.
“Right. And torturing me. She almost—” Ben stopped there, cringing at some memory he didn’t care to share. “Tahiri tried everything she could to avoid hurting me. And when Shevu died, she felt horrible. She’s not like Caedus. Not yet.”
The reply came from an unexpected source, a little voice down by Tenel Ka’s thigh. “Jedi Jacen likes hurting people,” Allana said. “He scares me.”
Jaina shuddered. Now Caedus’s own daughter feared him. The Jacen Solo she had grown up with would never have wanted such a thing.
She crouched in front of her niece and took Allana’s tiny hands in her own. “He’ll never scare you again, Allana. I promise.”
Allana looked doubtful. “You really promise?”
“Sure,” Jaina said. “I really promise.”
Why was the Jedi Master cross-eyed? Because he couldn’t control his pupils!
—Jacen Solo, age 15
An approaching battle fleet crept into view, A distant crescent of blue pinpoints shining bright against the shadowy depths of the Transitory Mists. To one side of the formation hung the nebulous smudge of the gravity well the fleet was skirting, a barely glowing protostar so deeply purple it was almost black. To the other side lay a hazard even more dangerous, a Mist-cloaked field of icy monoliths that had once been the third gas giant in an unstable triple-world cluster.
Jaina glanced down at the StealthX’s tactical display and, as she expected, saw only static. The Mists in this part of the Maad system were so thick that an object had to be nearly recognizable before it could be scanned or signaled. That was one of the reasons Luke and Tenel Ka had selected this spot for the ambush. The other reason was—of course—the natural abundance of navigational hazards. Caedus’s fleet would be forced to make a long realspace approach through a narrow “safe” channel, with barely detectable gravity wells and moon-sized ice chunks hiding in the Mists to every side. All Jaina had to do was to lure him in—and make him believe this was the route to the secret Jedi base.
It was a simple plan, really—at least in theory.
So far, she seemed to be doing a good job. Caedus had followed the blood trail this far, anyway. Her position was just across the midsystem void from Shedu Maad—more or less in line with it, and close enough that he was unlikely to have noticed her shift from the real base. At least, that’s what Luke had told her, and he obviously knew more about blood trails. Her next task was to head back down “the Throat”—Saba’s name for the channel where Tenel Ka would ambush Caedus. Jaina had to make it look like she was rushing back to base to sound the alarm.
At that point, the Jedi would launch an assault on the Anakin Solo, covering her so that she could board and hunt down her brother. She tried not to think about that last part of her job. If she let her thoughts rush too far ahead of the actual events, she might not get there at all.
Jaina began to bring up the systems she had left dormant to conserve her batteries, then realized she had not sensed any sharpening in her wingmate’s Force aura. She glanced over to the other StealthX and found Zekk’s helmet turned toward the other side of his canopy, facing the amber-striped disks of Qogo and Uluq—the twin gas giants locked in a mutual orbit at the base of the Throat. He was so lost in thought that he didn’t even sense Jaina looking in his direction, and she was surprised to discover that made her feel a little sad.
They had been so close for so many years, Jaina had simply taken for granted that they would always be the ideal mission partners, in Force contact on an almost unconscious level, able to read each other’s thoughts and intentions almost to the same degree as her parents. But that wasn’t really true anymore. Something had changed while Jaina was away training with the Mandalorians. She had returned to discover that sometimes it took a conscious effort to maintain her connection with Zekk, almost as though she had to keep reminding him that she was there.
Jaina had tried to tell herself that the change was due to her current mission, because she had to confront Caedus alone. But she knew better. The truth was, Zekk had probably just grown weary of waiting for her to sort out her personal life. Or maybe the time apart had helped him realize he didn’t need to be anything more than her wing-mate. That probably shouldn’t have made her sad, but it did.
Jaina reached out and gave Zekk a Force nudge. His helmet swung toward her a little too quickly, and a tinge of embarrassment came to his Force aura. She frowned, wondering if he had been thinking of those Hapan intelligence agents, and immediately one of the names—Taryn—popped into her mind. Jaina shook her head in disbelief.
Careful, Zekk, she thought. That one will twist you up.
A ripple of confusion rolled through the Force. Jaina grinned behind her breath mask—wistfully, but it was a grin—and pointed up the Throat toward the protostar.
Caedus’s fleet had already changed from a crescent of blue pinpoints to a snaking ribbon. A handful of faint, tiny specks were moving ahead of the ribbon and fanning out in all directions—scouting craft, on their way to map hazards and check for ambushes. They were going to find both, Jaina knew, but it didn’t matter. The Masters had foreseen that possibility, and squadrons of Miy’tils were hiding at key points to ensure that none of the reconnaissance skiffs survived to report their discoveries.
Zekk quickly brought up his own systems, then they accelerated out into the Throat and turned straight for Uroro Station—an abandoned transfer facility floating in the gravitic equilibrium point between Qogo and Uluq. Luke and most of the Jedi were there, along with a select group of younglings and academy staff. If
it was going to be an effective decoy, it would have to feel like the real thing when Caedus reached out to it through the Force.
Jaina made no attempt to hide her presence in the Force, since the whole idea was to let Caedus sense them returning to Uroro Station. And it would have been pointless anyway, since Zekk hadn’t been taught the technique yet.
They had been traveling down the Throat for about two minutes when Jaina felt a prickle of danger sense. Not only had they been spotted, she realized, but they were about to be fired upon. She reached out to warn Zekk, but he was focused on her and the mission now, and he had already picked up on her panic. They banked hard to starboard—and felt space jump as a turbolaser strike erupted behind them.
Jaina dived and Zekk climbed—that almost never happened—and a sheet of fire boiled past her canopy. She feared for a moment that Zekk had been hit, but then she felt him worrying about her and knew that he was okay. It took nearly a minute of dodging and barrel-rolling before there was enough of a lull in the barrage to chance forming up again, and by that time Jaina’s flight gloves were soaked with sweat. It felt like the Throat was vomiting fire.
This was something the Masters hadn’t anticipated, and it was going to complicate things. If she and Zekk returned to Uroro Station under fire, Caedus would sense the trap—it would look like they were trying to lead him right to their “secret” base. So they would have to dodge into the ice field and make it look like they were attempting to lead Caedus away from the station.
Right … but they couldn’t dodge too soon. The thought came to Jaina without her quite understanding why she had realized it. Apparently, Zekk was trying to tell her something through the Force—but he couldn’t be too obvious, because Caedus might be monitoring their meld. She checked her tactical display and still didn’t see anything on the screen except the conspicuous disks of the two gas giants. Then she noticed the distances to the pair and understood.
Jaina and Zekk were still two minutes away from the place where Tenel Ka was hiding with her fleet. If they left the Throat now, and Caedus followed, the Hapans wouldn’t be in position to attack.