“We'll see,” he said.
“Come back and I will help you see.”
She stood watching through the air lock's transparisteel wall as he boarded, sealed his shuttle, uncoupled the boarding tube. The shuttle rose on its repulsors, gently turned toward the opening doors, and departed.
Tired, drained, jubilant, Lumiya returned to the living chamber at the top of her habitat. She lay on a couch there and stared up through the scratched transparisteel dome at the stars. “I've won,” she said.
Jacen—dark-garbed, a gold-and-black lightsaber hilt at his belt, the pupils of his eyes golden-orange—moved out from a shadowy nook and turned to face her. His mouth did not move, but his words carried to Lumiya's mind: And so I must go. Become nothingness.
“You always were nothingness. You're a projection—dark side energy from the caverns, shaped by my imagination and Jacen Solo's form. But you'll be back. Bit by bit, Jacen Solo will become you.”
And at last I'll have a name. A Sith name.
“Yes.”
The phantom Sith moved forward to stand over her. He will learn that the attack at Toryaz Station was your doing. That good men were ruined by the phantoms from your mind, phantoms taking the forms of those they loved. That this war to come could have been prevented but for your interference.
“Yes, someday, perhaps. In the meantime, his anger, the anger of his family, will be directed at Thrackan Sal-Solo, who's more to blame than I am for that attack—since he did what he did out of self-interest. And by the time Jacen discovers the full truth, he will understand how important he is, how he could not come to be without those events occurring, and he will forgive me.”
I feel his emotions. He will hate you for these events.
“But he will love me for them, too.”
Yes.
Lumiya smiled. “Then I know balance. The balance of the Sith.”
The false Jacen nodded, then slowly, and without evident distress, faded to nothingness.
Bleary-eyed, gently rubbing his stomach, Ben moved into the shuttle's cockpit and dropped into the copilot's seat. “How long was I unconscious?”
“Hours,” Jacen said.
“Where's Nelani?”
Jacen paused, looking for the right words. But the gentle ones would, in the long run, do more damage than the cold, short, truthful ones. “Ben, she's dead.”
Ben sat up straight. The expression he turned on Jacen was pained, disbelieving. “How? The Sith?”
“Yes and no.” Jacen considered his answer; considered the mix of truth and lies he would someday have to unravel. “There was a person in the lower caverns who called himself a Sith. But he wasn't. He was just a dark side Force-user who'd learned to tap into the powers imbued in the place. They made him very strong . . . but only there, on that asteroid. He sent deadly illusions against us.”
“I remember. I fought Mom. She kicked the stuffing out of me.”
“Just as she would in real life. Nelani fought the phantoms of her own inadequacy, phantoms I thought I'd helped her deal with when she was just an apprentice, and she was too weak for them. They killed her.”
“Oh . . . Sith spawn.” Ben slumped. “What about . . . about . . . Bisha? Birsha?” The boy looked confused.
“Brisha,” Jacen supplied. He well knew why Ben looked confused, why he faltered over Brisha's name. Jacen had interfered with Ben's memories while the boy slept, brushing away Ben's recollections of the woman he knew as Brisha almost as artfully as a painter might restore a classic portrait. Doubtless Ben was confused by his sudden inability to remember her features. Jacen would attribute it to the many knocks and blows Ben had sustained. “She died, too. Succumbed to her injuries.” He heaved a false sigh. “I've ordered a tremendous quantity of explosives to blow the asteroid up.” It was true that anyone following the coordinates now in the shuttle's memory to the listed location of her habitat would find only boulder-size chunks of stone. Jacen had falsified details in the shuttle's memory, charting a route from Lorrd to a different uninhabited star system, another asteroid field. Lumiya was safe from discovery, for now.
“Good.” Ben sat, not speaking, for a few minutes, drumming his fingers restlessly on the arm of the copilot's chair. “It's not fair. That they died.”
“No, it's not. But that happens. It's life. We just have to find a way . . . to make ourselves stronger because of it.”
Ben nodded. “I guess you're right.”
CORUSCANT
“He exists.” Luke looked up from his terminal. On its screen scrolled updated reports of the engagement at Tralus, but Mara could feel that the worry on his face was caused by something else. “He finally exists, for real.”
“Your phantom enemy.”
“Yes.” Luke rose. “That must have been why we were attacked tonight—the false Jacen, the false Ben. They occupied our emotions so thoroughly that we missed the creation of—whatever he is, wherever he is. Maybe it happened close by, or there would have been no reason to divert us.” He looked in all directions, as though the smooth stone walls of the enclave interior chamber would become transparent and reveal the enemy, but they remained stubbornly opaque.
“We'll find him,” Mara said. “And we'll beat him.” Her attention returned to her own terminal and a smile crossed her features. “Message from Jacen and Ben. They're coming home.”
STAR WARS: BETRAYAL Page 43