“So?” Han asked. “That's not business for the Jedi. That's a problem for politicians with nothing better to do. Next thing you know, we'll have Jedi walking the government halls on Corellia and telling us what to do.”
Leia smiled. Han hadn't lived on Corellia for decades, but in his heart, he was all Corellian, embodying the swagger, the cockiness, the carefree attitude that the citizens of that system considered essential elements of their culture. His exploits during the Rebellion and up through the present day had made him dear to the hearts of the people of that system. The second best-known Corellian hero of the same era, Wedge Antilles, did live in the Corellian system, but he was more reserved, less brash, and simply hadn't captured the public's affection as Han had.
But Luke wasn't as amused. “Han, the Corellians are playing a dangerous game. They're demanding all the advantages of Galactic Alliance membership—trade benefits, use of the GA communications and travel infrastructure, citizenship rights, all of it—hut not contributing their fair share of Alliance overhead. They're dragging their heels on supplying ships and personnel to the military, on providing tax revenues—”
“See, that's the thing.” Han pointed his fork at Luke's chest as if intending to jam it in and probe around the heart and lungs. “We can maintain our own military, and not the tiny peacekeeping and police force the new laws are calling for. When the time comes for military action, the Corellians have always brought our forces up, under our own colors, even when we weren't members of whatever government was swinging the biggest stick at the time. We did it for the Old Republic and the New Republic. We did it in the Vong war.”
Jaina grimaced. “Not a good example, Dad. How many lives, how many whole systems were lost in the Yuuzhan Yong war because governments couldn't work together, didn't have standardized weapons, communications, tactics?”
Han turned his scowl on his daughter. “How many lives, how many whole systems were lost,” he asked, his tone mocking hers, “because the New Republic government was so bloated, impersonal, and stupid that it couldn't see when it was getting its rear end kicked and didn't care when millions of its people got killed? How many members of Borsk's old Advisory Council ran off to their homeworlds with personal yachts packed with treasure and left people behind them to burn?”
“Which is exactly what Corellia is doing,” Luke said, his voice soft but his expression unrelenting. “They're trying to pack up their treasures and avoid the economic toll that rebuilding civilization is taking on the rest of the Galactic Alliance, while they're throwing up a shield of planetary pride to convince people that their decision is based on something other than selfishness and irresponsibility. And other systems are starting to look to Corellia in a leadership role. It's foolish to cast the Galactic Alliance as the Empire and Corellia as the Rebel Alliance. Because that's what it might come to, a rebellion—a stupid and unnecessary one.”
“Luke,” Mara said. Her voice was a whispered note of caution.
“Is that the position of the Jedi order?” Han asked, voice rising. “What the galaxy needs is one language, one system of measurement, one uniform, one flag? Should we just cut the word no out of the language and substitute Yes, sir, right away, sir instead?”
“Han,” Leia said. “Not nice to argue in front of a guest.”
“Zekk's not a guest. He's the man chasing my daughter all over the galaxy.”
“Dad.”
“I think—” Han paused and looked around the table, finally aware of all the eyes on him. He plunged his fork into the last piece of spice-loaf on his plate and hurriedly swallowed the piece of meat. “I think I'm done. I think I'm going to wash some dishes.”
“Please,” Leia said.
Han rose and took his plate and utensils with him.
When the kitchen door slid shut behind him, Mara asked, “Is he all right?”
Leia shrugged and took a sip of wine. “It's been getting worse as things have been heating up between Corellia and the GA. On the one side, the fact that his own cousin is Chief of State of Corellia and is playing this slippery, deceptive political game bothers him a lot. On the other hand, Han doesn't really trust any interplanetary government anymore, not since the Yuuzhan Vong war. Not that he ever did, but it's worse now. And since Anakin died—” She stopped, shot Luke a regretful look.
Luke sat back. Years ago, during the worst days of the war with the Yuuzhan Vong, Han and Leia's youngest son, Anakin Solo, named for his grandfather, had led a unit of fellow Jedi on a mission to a Yuuzhan Vong world. There, they'd exterminated the queen voxyn, preventing the creation of any more of the Force-sensing, Jedi-killing beasts. There, Anakin had died.
Luke, however reluctantly, however regretfully, had signed off on that mission. “Ever since Anakin died,” Luke said, “Han has never really trusted the Jedi order, either. Has he?”
Leia shook her head. “It's strange. He trusts you, his old friend Luke. But Master Skywalker, head of the Jedi order? Not so much.” Then her smile returned. “Not that he can talk too much about Jedi, not with every member of his immediate family being a Jedi.”
Jacen smiled, too, and raised his wineglass in the direction of the kitchen door. “Here's to irony, Dad.”
Chapter Four
JACEN, LEIA, AND MARA RELAXED ON THE LIVING CHAMBER FURNITURE. In the kitchen, Han, maintaining his self-imposed exile, was riding roughshod over C-3P0 in the act of cleaning the dinnerware. Luke was alone in the sealed-off communications room, borrowing the Solos' comm gear for some sort of official Jedi business call. Ben and R2- D2 were out on the balcony, matched in a musically noisy but bloodless hologame. Jaina and Zekk, too, were out there, but the occasional glimpses caught of them suggested that they were at the railing side of the balcony, watching the endless streams of multicolored traffic flow by in the nighttime sky.
“Ben,” Mara said, “is more open. More trusting.” Her words, directed at Jacen, were as much question as statement.
Jacen nodded, thoughtful, and took a sip from his wineglass. “I think he is. He's coming to understand the Force . . . and people. The fact that he's inherently a bit suspicious of both of them is working in his favor. He's progressing slowly and cautiously. He's not as likely to give in to temptations of the dark side of the Force .....even to teenage hormone rushes.”
As a small child during the tragic Yuuzhan Vong war, Ben had become fearful and suspicious of the Force, retreating from it despite his own inherited facility with it. Only as Jacen's unofficial apprentice had he begun to overcome the emotional damage of that time.
Mara shuddered. “Don't bring up the specter of teenage hormone rushes.”
Leia snorted. “Not ready to become a grandmother yet?”
“I think I'd throw myself on my lightsaber first.”
Leia smiled. “I think I'm ready. I plan to be the sort of feisty, bad-example grandmother who teaches her grandchildren deplorable habits.” She turned her attention to Jacen. “How long should I expect to wait?”
He gave her an admonishing look. “If you're trying to embarrass me, you're talking into a dead comlink.”
“Not embarrass. I'm just trying to get a timetable.”
“Ask Jaina.”
Leia's expression soured comically. “She said to ask you.”
“Then ask Zekk. I'm sure he has things planned out. He probably just hasn't Informed Jaina yet.”
Leia shook her head over her own wineglass. “I have to find some sort of appropriate punishment for Han. For giving our children smart mouths and unhelpful manners.”
“All joking aside,” Mara said, “Jacen, thank you. Ben is doing so much better. I spent years being afraid that he'd never be at home with himself, with his Jedi legacy, with things he could never escape. You've given me reason to think I can stop worrying.”
“You're welcome. Though, as Mom put it, I have to find some sort of appropriate punishment for you.”
Mara looked surprised. “What do you mean?”
�
�Well, if, as Mom asserts, the smart mouths and unhelpful manners of the Solo children come only from Dad, it means they come not at all from the Skywalker family. Right? So Ben's smart mouth and unhelpful manners have to come from you. I'm going to have to figure out some sort of appropriate revenge, someday.”
Mara grinned, her good humor restored. She tapped the lightsaber hanging at her belt. “Do you have a favorite prosthetics manufacturer? I can preorder you one.”
“Jacen.” Luke stepped into the main living area from the hallway leading to the communications chamber. “Care to take a walk with me?”
“Of course.” Jacen rose. All of them knew that as simple a request as Care to take a walk with me? under these circumstances probably meant, Time to talk Jedi business.
They left through the door that not so long ago Han and Leia had spoken of defending with blasterfire. A dim side corridor led them away from the main access corridor toward an oversized door that occasionally vibrated; beyond it, though muted, was the hum and roar of Coruscant nighttime traffic. The door lifted out of the way as they approached, revealing a swirl of colors outside—the running lights of flying vehicles, from two-person speeders to small lumbering freighters, hurtling by outside, a high aerial traffic lane that passed mere meters from the pedestrian balcony outside the door.
As the door slid shut behind them, they paused for a moment at the balcony railing, looking down two hundred stories toward Coruscant's ground level. At night, despite the fact that windows on every floor between their position and the ground were illuminated, that advertising signs and banners glowed and gleamed brilliantly, ground level was too dark and distant to be glimpsed.
As a child, Jacen had once become lost at Coruscant's bedrock level along with Jaina. The depths held no terror for him; even now, more than twenty years later, they seemed to be a place of mystery and exploration.
But it wasn't really the same Coruscant as the one of his childhood. The Vongforming had reshaped much of the world into the Yuuzhan Vong image. Now, years later, huge tracts of what had once been continuous pole-to-pole cityscape still remained black at night, overgrown with fauna, and places like the bedrock levels of the planet and the infrastructure beneath were still home to the crawling and slithering life-forms the Yuuzhan Vong had introduced, some of them deadly.
Still, that reminder of the beating Coruscant and the old New Republic had suffered was not visible from this viewpoint. Here, it looked like the Coruscant of old, with swirling streams of air traffic, with high-rise dwellings outlined and illuminated by millions of view-ports.
This balcony ran the length of Han and Leia's building along a canyon-like drop. Bridges, sonic of them canopied and some open to the sky or to overhanging spacescrapers above, spanned gaps between buildings. This elevated pedestrian roadway changed appearance, surface texture, and lighting every few hundred meters, intersecting other walkways. Had someone no need to work a job, had he an infinite credcard and feet as tough as duracrete, he could probably walk entirely around Coruscant's circumference at this altitude.
Most of the men, women, and who-knew-whats traveling this path—Jacen counted only thirty or so within a hundred steps in either direction—were probably on less ambitious errands. Jacen saw wealthy businessbeings, many of them accompanied by bodyguards both overt and covert, on strolls; there were young lovers and families, chiefly belonging to the higher income brackets, walking apparently unprotected. Some of them probably didn't worry about the dangers that they might face walking so far from protection. Some were probably better defended than they looked.
Luke gestured to the left, where the walkway rose in a series of short steps some five meters across a distance of fifty, and they began walking in that direction.
“Your father surprised me,” Luke said. “With his mention of Jedi walking the government halls in Corellia.”
“Surprised you?” Jacen thought about it. “Not because he's being paranoid. Because he's not being paranoid. Because there are plans along those lines.”
Luke nodded, his expression glum. Then he put up his hood and wrapped his cloak more closely around himself, the better to conceal the presence of his lightsaber.
Jacen did the same. A young human couple pushing a repulsor-assisted baby stroller, trailing two dark-clad security men, one human and one Rodian, were walking in their direction. Luke and Jacen would still be slightly conspicuous in their cloaks, which had the anonymous appearance of travelers' garments but were seldom worn by the sort of people who lived at these altitudes . . . then again, the residents of these heights did often go slumming in inappropriate clothes, so they weren't too unusual. Their features shadowed by their hoods, the Jedi passed unrecognized by the oblivious couple and their alert guards.
Once they were past, Jacen continued, “It seems like an extreme action. Has the GA given up on negotiation with Corellia?”
“The GA is aware of some facts that haven't made it to the holocomm news feeds,” Luke said. “Such as, the Corellians aren't really negotiating in good faith—just stringing the GA negotiators along while making no internal effort to edge toward compliance with the new regulations. Such as, the Corellians are secretly encouraging other systems to follow the same sort of resistance. Such as—”
Luke looked troubled. “What I'm about to tell you is for your ears alone.”
“Understood.”
“The Corellian government, or someone inside it, appears to be constructing a planetary assault fleet. In secret.”
Jacen frowned. Historically, there was only one reason ever to build a planetary assault fleet, and to do so in secret: to launch a sneak attack on another system. “For use against whom?”
“That's a good question. And it's a question military intelligence hasn't been able to answer yet.” Luke shrugged. “But there are dozens of possibilities. Most of the recovery loans Corellia made after the Yuuzhan Vong war are in default, and the Corellians have no shortage of trade disputes. They might even be considering a resource-grab. There are just too many possibilites at this point to guess.”
“Why did you say the Corellian government or 'someone inside it'? Do we not know who's responsible?”
Luke shook his head. “The truth is, this intelligence is based primarily on analyses of procurement patterns, plus a long history of suspicious personnel assignments.”
“Wait. The existence of the fleet is based on the reports of accountants?”
Luke grinned. “What do you have against accountants?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“The problem with the data we have, though, is that it gives us no idea where they're building the fleet—only that it's been under construction for almost a decade, and our logistics people think it's nearing completion.”
Jacen grew thoughtful for a moment, then asked, “And you want me to find the shipyards and confirm the intelligence?”
Luke shook his head. “I wish it were that easy. Admiral Pellaeon is confident that military intelligence will soon pinpoint the base. We need you to handle a more pressing matter.”
“More pressing than a planetary assault?”
“Yes.” Luke took a deep breath. “The Corellian government is close to making Centerpoint Station operational again.”
That stopped Jacen where he stood. He stared at Luke, his surprise earning him a nod of affirmation from his uncle.
Centerpoint Station was a relic, an artifact of an ancient civilization that had, in a sense, constructed the Corellian star system—by dragging several inhabitable planets to the system and sending them into beneficial orbits. Several hundred kilometers in diameter, bigger even than the Death Stars that the Empire had wielded against rebellious planets decades ago, it had, over the centuries, been the object of internal and external attempts at control by political and military forces that had never quite learned how to utilize it.
At the heart of Centerpoint Station was an apparatus that could focus gravity and move planets or even affect the orb
its of stars. It could move them, it could affect them; used more aggressively, it could destroy them. At times, the Corellians and others had been close to being able to utilize this as a reliable, devastating weapon. But it had for years been restricted by biometric data to operation by only one person—Anakin Solo.
The last it had been used was during the Yuuzhan Vong war. After years of being essentially nonfunctional, it had been brought to operability by the simple realization that it had imprinted on Anakin Solo and could be activated only by him. Jacen had argued that it should not be used against the Yuuzhan Vong or anyone—it was too terrible, too unpredictable a weapon. Anakin Solo had argued for it, his reasoning being that its use would prevent the Yuuzhan Vong from destroying millions of lives.
Anakin had activated it. Thracken Sal-Solo had fired it. Its use hadn't gone well. It had destroyed much of the mighty war fleet of the Hapes Cluster, one of the New Republic's allies. Later in the war, of course, Anakin had died, apparently eliminating the likelihood of it ever being used again.
Jacen felt a moment of dissonance. His younger self refused to utilize Centerpoint Station. His current self, in the same circumstances, would use it, his qualms having evaporated across the intervening years. The recognition of the changes in himself surprised him. They had crept up on him while he wasn't paying attention.
The Jacen of more than a decade ago was gone, as dead as the Anakin of the same era was. He took a deep, slow breath and wondered why he no longer mourned either loss. “How have they made it operational again?” he asked.
Luke shrugged. “The information we have suggests that they've figured out how to duplicate crucial elements of Anakin's biometrics—probably handprint, retinal patterns, and brainwaves, in the absence of surviving tissues—to pull it off.”
STAR WARS: BETRAYAL Page 4