Han saw two turn toward the Aleph. The Aleph, in response, banked straight toward Han's Shriek, flying underneath and past it. As soon as the Aleph and Shriek were so close to each other that their signals would he mixed on the missiles' sensors, the missiles turned away, hunting new targets. The Aleph dropped to ground level and skidded to a stop among several parked speeders, making it an unlikely target for continued missile targeting.
Han grinned. The girl was in good enough shape to try to kill him again—her tactic, leading pursuit missiles across his path, would have worked had he not already been designated a nontarget by the droids. All was right with the world. He could have cheered.
At least, all was right until his datapad beeped again at him. Its screen read,
TRANSPONDER TRAGOF1103 ON FREQ 22NF07 IS JAINA
The majority of missiles reached the summit of their arcs and turned back toward the ground.
Some didn't. A few hit targets in the air—starfighters circling above the Galactic Alliance beachhead, pilots waiting to get into the fight, pilots who weren't fast enough to elude missile fire or eject in anticipation of the impact.
The other missiles completed their turns and roared downward, concentrating into three streams.
The leading missiles of those streams hit the glowing dome of the GA shield, matching their explosive energy against its coherent force.
The first several lost that match; the shields were too strong. But the missiles kept coming, each one adding new explosive power to the equation.
The shields shivered. Complicated energy matrices began to lose their coherence. Within the Center for the Performing Arts, alert, failure, and overload lights began to flare on shield generator machinery; operators began to look at one another uncertainly, and the more fearful of them glanced around for a place to take shelter, for a direction to run.
Then, in one thousandth of a second, it happened: the complex fabric of the shield unraveled at one point, and the next missile entered the empty space where it had been. It did not detonate. The computer at the heart of its guidance system relayed its new position, meters beyond what had been designated the shield limits, to the other missiles in the flight, and those that could still maneuver to position themselves along its path began to do so.
That missile was halfway down to the crown-like top of the Center for the Performing Arts when the next spot atop the curved surface of the shield gave way. More missiles flashed through the widening gap.
The foremost missiles roared down toward the roof below, calculating at each minute fraction of a second their current position, estimated range to target, estimated fuel reserves --
Observers weren't aware of what happened in thousandths of a second, of course.
When the first missiles struck the shield, onlookers saw a glow begin there, accompanying the distant whumpf of the missiles' detonation. The glow grew larger and brighter; the noise from the detonations became louder.
Then a lance of fire shot down from the position of the shields and hit the roof of the Center for the Performing Arts.
The center seemed to swell, its walls bulging outward with flame behind them. Then the whole immense building erupted like a cake of solid fuel. Ironically, though the shield projectors were in the act of melting, disintegrating, the shields they created had not had enough time to fail utterly, and the leading edges of the explosion hit them, were contained by them.
Then the shields gave way, and the flame and debris behind them spilled out in all directions.
Missiles continued to rain down, many of them pouring into the increasingly cavernous hole that the center had been. Others hurtled onto the hulls of the small capital ships that had landed around the center. Their shields were up; their shields went down, collapsing under the relentless explosive barrage, and those fighting ships began erupting with explosions of their own.
CORUSCANT
I was fighting a simulacrum of Jacen,” Luke said. He paced through his bedchamber, looking in the closet and then under the bed, as if more enemies were likely to be found there.
“Mine was a twisted form of Ben,” Mara said. “Rather cruel of an enemy to try to kill you in the image of your own son.”
Luke, on his knees by the bed, looked up at her. “Why didn't they send a Ben against each of us? Wouldn't that improve the odds that one of us would hesitate, at least in theory?”
Mara shrugged. “What did this?”
Luke rose. “A dark side Force-user of some sort. Or a group of them. Something new? I don't know.” He moved back to the closet and pulled out his off-white pants and tunic. “Something's happening out there, where Leia is, maybe where Jacen and Ben are. I'm going to get on the comm and see what I can find out.”
“Give me my robe. I'll join you.” Mara tried to push aside her sense of unease. It had gripped her the moment she'd kicked the mutated image of her son, and it hadn't left her.
STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL
Around the rock outcropping, Jacen came face-to-face with another rock—a boulder of black stone, its surface shiny and smooth. It was unlike any other surface he'd seen while in these caverns.
And it reeked of dark side energy.
“A door,” he said.
Beside him, Brisha nodded.
Jacen reached out to explore the barrier with his Force-attuned senses. The stone seemed to be resting on a pivot of pure energy. The slightest exertion would swing it to one side . . . but the exertion had to be made through the Force. Through the dark side of the Force. Perhaps a light-side exertion would swing it open as well, but he sensed that such an exertion would have to be much greater.
He shrugged, gestured, exerted himself minimally along dark paths. The boulder swung obediently to one side. There was darkness beyond.
Brisha moved into the darkness and Jacen followed her. Just past the boulder entrance, on the similarly smooth stone to the left, a set of sturdy metal levers and controls was revealed, and she flipped several of those switches from the bottom to the top position.
In the distance a light came on—bright, golden light, cheerful and warm in hue, revealing that Jacen and Brisha stood in an irregular stone corridor, triangular, wide at the base, coming to a point a couple of meters above their heads. The corridor widened a few meters before them, and the cavern beyond was being illuminated by the new light.
Gravity, too, was asserting itself. Jacen's second step was half the floating, bouncing distance of the first, and the next was almost correct for Coruscant-standard gravity. After that, he felt that he could have been on Coruscant, except for the coldness of the air.
“The heaters are now on,” Brisha said, as though reading his mind. “But it takes awhile to warm a space as large as this.”
“Of course,” Jacen said.
They moved out from the corridor and into the open cavern, and Jacen blinked at what he saw.
The cavern was open, its walls slightly irregular but still of the same dark, smooth material as the boulder-door. The cavern ceiling was perhaps 50 meters up at its lowest point, 60 at its highest, and the space was longer than it was high, some 200 meters in length in one dimension, 150 in another.
But none of that registered at first. Jacen's eye was drawn to the building that occupied the cavern's center.
It was a mansion, five stories of stony construction, and it did not seem in the least ominous. The building's outer surfaces were rock, but dressed white and green marble slabs rather than the ponderous dark stone of this asteroid. Its windows were wide, unshuttered, inviting.
At each corner of the building was a tower, the chamber at its summit roofed but open to the sides, and figures moved there and in various windows of the building. In one tower window, a figure painted; in another, one played an oversized harp, and distant notes, soft and true, reached Jacen's ears; in one of the lower windows, a figure juggled three glowing yellow balls. At the center of the fifth floor a huge mechanism, all gigantic gears and levers, operated, it
s whole purpose apparently being to drive a single dial on the face of the building; it turned at a rate of two or three times a minute, carefully watched by a figure who stood on the fifth-floor ledge in front of it.
The moving figures were all protocol droids, and gaily painted, one red, one forest green, one gold. The machine tender was a pastel blue.
And it was all suffused with dark side energy.
“This,” Jacen said, “is insane.”
“Not really.” Brisha walked toward the building with him. “Darth Vectivus enjoyed the architecture of Naboo and incorporated some of its building materials into his home away from home. Other architectural elements are from other worlds.”
“But it's not very Sithly. The Sith citadel at Ziost—”
“I've been there. Very gloomy place. Unnecessarily so.” They reached the steps up to the main doors, and, as they began climbing, those doors swung open for them. Beyond was a marble-lined hallway; waist-high columns along its walls supported busts of men and women, mostly human, some of other species.
“All right,” Jacen said, “no more delays. The truth.” He reached the top of the stairs and moved into the hallway. He felt a little offbalance—the dissonance between the energies he felt and the cheerful surroundings bothered him.
“The truth is, I trained to be a Sith. I was trained by your grandfather, Darth Vader.” She did not seem in the least ashamed by this revelation.
Jacen drew to a stop at the first of the busts. It showed a serene-looking woman, her hair in a layered style that reached high. “But you don't talk like a galaxy-conquering psychopath.”
“Vader wasn't a galaxy-conquering psychopath. He was a sad man whose one love in life had died, and whose one anchor to the world of the living was, yes, a galaxy-conquering madman. Palpatine. The bust, by the way, is of Vectivus's mother. She wasn't Sith, she wasn't Jedi.”
Jacen shot Brisha an irritable look and gestured for her to keep going.
“All right. My true name is Shira Brie.”
Jacen blinked at her. “But you're better known as Lumiya.” In his mind he called up holographic images he'd been shown of the famous monster, the woman whose lower face was always concealed behind a tight-fitting veil, who always wore a triangular headdress, who carried a unique weapon—a lightwhip, as destructive as a lightsaber but pliant and with a greater reach. There was no place for this woman to carry one in the jumpsuit she now wore, but he did not deceive himself that she was unarmed.
“Yes.”
“Under which name you tried to kill several members of my family.”
“Decades ago. Yes.” Now she did look abashed, regretful. “Don't judge me too soon, Jacen. My history is very much like your aunt Mara's . . . except she received some lucky breaks I didn't. I took longer to straighten out my life.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I was raised on Coruscant, tapped for Imperial service, and, when Luke Skywalker became a hero of the Rebels, I joined them.”
“To kill him.”
“No, to do worse—to discredit him. A ruined hero is much more devastating than a dead one.” Her gaze slid off to one side, and Jacen sensed that she was reliving events that had transpired before he was born. “I actually developed quite an attachment for your uncle. Once he was ruined as a Rebel, I planned to draw him over to the Imperial side. But during a starfighter battle, he relied on the Force instead of transponder data to differentiate friend from foe, and shot me down.”
“I'd heard that.”
“I lived, but it cost me. Cost me more than half of my body, in fact. My limbs, some of my organs . . .” She looked down at herself. “Cybernetic replacements.” When Jacen didn't answer, she continued, “And that's when Darth Vader took special interest in me. Perhaps because of our similarities. He could feel the Force potential in me, and it didn't take a master psychologist to pick up on my desire for revenge.”
“Which you did attempt.”
“Again and again, after my Sith training on Ziost. Yes.”
“You seem singularly unapologetic.”
“I don't have anything to apologize to you for. Bring me into the presence of Luke Skywalker or Leia Organa, and, well, things will be different. Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
“Is there anything to it but bright cheerful colors, bedrooms, refreshers, and so on?”
“Not anymore. There were lots of artifacts in his library, but I removed them to the library you saw in the habitat. There are all the gaily painted protocol droids.”
Jacen shuddered. “So far, the one irrefutable sign that Vectivus was evil . . . No, we can do the house tour after your explanation, after I retrieve Ben and Nelani. So—Palpatine and Vader both die, and you have no chance to be educated enough to become the Mistress of the Sith.”
“Oh, there you're wrong, Jacen.” Lumiya shook her head as if chiding him for his ignorance. “I never had any chance to become Mistress of the Sith. No matter how much I learned.”
Jacen moved to the next bust in line. This was a Bothan face, alert and intelligent. “Why not?”
“The Force is the energy of the living. You interact with it, its eddies and flows, with your own living body. It's all right to have a mechanical part or two—an implant, a replacement foot. But for true Mastery in the Force, light side or dark side, you have to be mostly organic. I'm not, and so the greatest, the most significant powers, I can never learn.”
Jacen frowned. “Wait. That means that Darth Vader could never have become the Lord of the Sith . . . a true Master.”
“That's correct. I'm not sure he ever understood that. He might not have cared. He was numbed by tragedy. The Bothan you're looking at, by the way, was an old family friend of Darth Vectivus. Taught Vectivus basic principles of negotiation.”
“Are you saying that none of these busts is a Sith?”
“That's right. This isn't a museum for Sith matters. It's a celebration of Vectivus's youth and life. His life, Jacen. His joys and triumphs.”
Jacen propped his elbow up on the Bothan's head. “So that's what the trap is.”
“Eh?” Lumiya looked surprised.
“You didn't lure me here to kill me. You lured me here to persuade me to take up the path of the Sith.”
“Yes.”
“Because I have all my body parts.”
She grinned at him. “Not exactly. Because it's you. All the portents, all the convergences flowing into the future say so, particularly since you've already received quite a lot of Sith training.”
“Explain that.”
“In a minute. What was I saying? Oh, yes. I'm not trying to turn you into a Palpatine. He was, as you say, a psychopath. Destructive, uncaring, manipulative. He chose the dark side to achieve his ends, but was weak and confused enough to be twisted by the dark side. Unlike your uncle Luke, you haven't been twisted by the light side, so I'm certain you can resist the temptations of the dark.”
“I've heard enough.” The voice was Nelani's, and there she was, striding in through the front doors, her unlit lightsaber in her hand. “As I'm sure you have, Jacen.”
“Where's Ben?” Jacen asked.
Nelani shook her head. “We were separated.”
“You were never together,” Lumiya said. “When you were talking to Ben and he to you, you were actually hundreds of meters apart, talking to Force phantoms of each other. A trivial thing to arrange in this place, where there's so much energy to manipulate.” She returned her attention to Jacen. “Energy you could use, in the name of improving people's lives, if you chose to.”
“Quiet,” Nelani said.
Jacen turned to Lumiya. “Where's Ben?” he repeated.
“Unconscious. Not hurt. He'll wake up a little sore.” Lumiya shrugged. “If I were the monster you thought I was, he'd be dead, Jacen. The son of the man who shot me down and destroyed my body? Think about it.”
“Think about this,” Jacen said. “Brisha—Shira—Lumiya whatever you choose to call
yourself, there are still outstanding charges against you for crimes committed back when you were an Imperial. Whatever you are now, you have to face those.”
“Perhaps.” Lumiya suddenly looked tired, dispirited. “I just wish you weren't taking me into custody from your own fear. That's sad.”
“Fear?” Jacen frowned at her. “I have nothing to fear.”
“You're afraid that my words might be true,” Lumiya said. “That the dark side doesn't corrupt in and of itself. That you're destined to become the next Sith Lord—the first Sith Lord to be active in decades, the first one in centuries with the strength to use the Sith techniques to help others. Because if it is true, you have to make a decision, choosing between your life as it is—comfortable, but almost purposeless—and life as you know it should be.”
Nelani's lightsaber snap-hissed into life. “I think you need to shut up,” she said.
“There's no need for that,” Jacen said. There was a sting to Lumiya's words—the jibe about his life being purposeless was too close to the mark to be entirely ignored. Luke would have said that obedience to the guidance of the Force would give him direction and purpose, but since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong war, except for those times when he faced foes whose behavior lit up the Force like a KILL ME SOON sign, the life of the Jedi hadn't given him the sense of purpose it seemed to have provided his uncle. “No need unless she resists.”
Lumiya smiled. “There's no worry. Nelani would never attack me unless I resisted. She's a very good girl. A sweet, doctrinal Jedi.”
“This sweet, doctrinal Jedi is about to kick your teeth in,” Nelani said. “Jacen, I can feel you wavering.”
“I'm not wavering. I'm just curious about her arguments. There is merit to some of them.”
“Like any dark-sider, she mixes truth with lies until you can't separate them.”
Jacen ignored her. He waved at the busts and walls around him. “Lumiya, you present me this house as though it constitutes proof that Darth Vectivus was a nice man despite his dark side training. Well, that doesn't wash. Anyone can commission the building of a pretty house. Palpatine was a patron of the arts. As for Vectivus himself, you not only can't prove that he was uncorrupted—you haven't offered any proof that he actually existed.” He fixed her with a look he intended as amused condescension. “The dark side corrupts. The Sith are inevitably drawn to evil.”
STAR WARS: BETRAYAL Page 40