It helped to know everyone got edgy before a mission and needed a little reminder of their loved ones. Shevu got halfway to the doors before he turned around and seemed to be working up to saying something.
“I realize your father might find it hard to accept what you do, Ben, but I’m proud of you,” he said. “Still, if I had a son, I wouldn’t be letting him do this kind of thing until he was an adult. It’s not as if we haven’t got enough trained men to do it. But … well, Colonel Solo has his reasons, I’m sure.”
Ben sat thinking over that statement for a while, and realized that Shevu had said father—not parents. Maybe he thought that his mother would understand a job like this. Ben felt he was hanging on to the relationship with his family by his fingertips, but there had been no more fights, and he didn’t feel quite so angry about having to compromise. Maybe that was really what growing up was about—an increasing distance from parents, knowing that there would always be tomorrow and that he didn’t have to get what he wanted right now, and starting to understand the things they’d been through when they were younger.
I wouldn’t be letting him do this kind of thing until he was an adult.
But his father had done this kind of thing, more or less. He’d just been a little older, that was all. This was no different from blowing up the Death Star, and plenty of ordinary people just doing their jobs had died when Luke Skywalker had done that. Ben was removing a single man—no bystanders.
He’d remind Dad of that if it ever came out and he had to defend his decision. Dad would probably say Jacen made him do it.
Ben stood in the refresher with the dye worked into a lather on his head, and caught sight of himself in a mirror. He felt ridiculous. The foam looked mauve, and he wondered if something had gone horribly wrong. When he rinsed it off, though, his hair was brown, just brown, and he was looking at a stranger.
Good.
He needed to be someone else for all kinds of reasons.
When his hair had dried, he took out the civilian clothes Lekauf had left for him—all Corellian style, all Corellian labels. This is in case I get caught. The thought chilled Ben, but it was standard procedure. Nobody had spoken to him about what would happen if he did get caught, and what interrogation might be like, but he could guess. They probably didn’t know what advice to give a Jedi about resisting interrogation anyway.
Maybe they thought he could just nudge a mind here and a thought there, and walk out of the cell.
Maybe he could.
Ben checked himself in the mirror a few times, trying to see himself as a stranger might, and was satisfied that he looked unlike Ben Skywalker, and disturbingly like a Corellian boy a little older than he was, but blond—Barit Saiy.
He hadn’t seen Saiy since they’d rounded him up with the other Corellians. After that, Ben had stopped asking what happened, but he still wondered silently.
He squatted down and placed his boots in the locker. Then he counted the various pieces of kit. Daily pair, battered raid pair for good luck—but no parade-best pair.
He couldn’t imagine where they’d gone. No, actually, he could: Lekauf. Ben would find them full of something unmentionable just before kit inspection. Or painted bright pink.
“Jori, I’m going to think up something special for you,” he said aloud, and grinned, wanting the diversion.
It was nice to be one of the boys. Ben slipped his datapad into his pocket, wondered where he was going to leave it for safekeeping, and went to pick up the Karpaki and some ammo packs from the armory.
It was just a job, and he had to do it.
THE SKYWALKERS’ APARTMENT, CORUSCANT
Luke woke in a heart-pounding panic and reached out toward a hooded shape at the foot of the bed, knowing he was dreaming but unable to stop himself from reacting to the specter that dissolved as he became fully awake.
He hadn’t had the dream of the menacing figure in the hooded cloak for a while. Now it was back. It was four in the morning, and Mara still hadn’t come home.
Usually, the Force dream vanished and just left him with that sick jolt in his gut as if he’d seen a speeder crash. But this was different; as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he had a sense of someone still being in the room, and he was sure he wasn’t asleep. He checked the chrono to make certain he wasn’t still mired in the nightmare.
0410 hours.
He wasn’t.
Luke reached for his lightsaber, which he’d been keeping on the nightstand lately, and made a cautious inspection of all the rooms. He couldn’t sense flesh and blood anywhere, but he could detect something. The presence was so close now that he could almost feel breath on the back on his neck.
And then he sensed … amusement.
The presence—now at the door to the apartment, he was sure—was like a cloud of billowing smoke in his mind. He could almost see it. As he felt it becoming more solid, more real, more here, it suddenly lit up as if a silent explosion had lifted it in a ball of soaring flame.
Lumiya.
Lumiya.
Luke rushed to the front doors, at the same time concentrating hard on using the Force to jam the two sets of doors in the corridor outside that stood between the apartment and the lifts. He’d trap her. She’d lied. Mara was right. All that nonsense on the resort satellite, all that I-mean-you-no-harm was just a feint, mocking his indecision—
The doors parted with a gasp of air and Luke sprang into the corridor with his lightsaber raised. One set of doors was wedged open with something, trying repeatedly to close and making little mechanical groans each time the inner edges hit the obstruction and bounced back a few centimeters. There was no sign of Lumiya.
But she’d been here seconds before. Luke could almost taste her in the air. It was as if she’d sprayed perfume too liberally and was leaving a cloud wafting behind her, except it was a scent of darkness, not rare oils. Frustrated and furious, he strode down the corridor to see what had jammed the doors apart.
It was a pair of black boots, army boots with segmented durasteel plates around the ankle, the kind that Ben wore. He parted the doors with a Force push and squatted to recover the boots.
They were Ben’s. Not only did Luke recognize them, but he also felt Ben in them when he picked them up. Luke rarely jumped to conclusions. But he was certain who’d left them there, and what the message was: If I can take personal items from your son, I can take him, too.
The thought hit Luke like a hard slap in the face. Maybe she’s abducted Ben. He felt for his son in the Force, and sensed no crisis; in fact, Ben seemed to be leaving a trace in the Force of someone soundly and safely asleep. How long he’d stay that way, though, Luke wasn’t ready to bet.
He went back into the apartment to grab his jacket, opening his comlink to Jacen as he went. He didn’t care what time it was. Jacen answered immediately. It seemed he didn’t sleep much, either.
“Where’s Ben?” Luke demanded.
“Asleep, Luke.” Jacen had that calm, mock-soothing tone that did anything but soothe him. Patronizing little jerk. “Is there a problem?”
“Have you had any intruders in GAG HQ tonight?”
Jacen gave a quiet little laugh. “We’re the ones who do the forced entry, Luke.”
“Someone’s left Ben’s boots here as a calling card.”
“I don’t understand. Did he leave them behind?”
“He doesn’t keep any of his uniform at our place. Someone’s taken them from your headquarters, and as juvenile a prank as it seems—” Luke almost stopped short of mentioning Lumiya, because he had no idea yet how deep her inroads into the GAG had become, or even if Jacen was consciously aware of them. But he was angry and scared for his boy, and that always colored his judgment. “It’s Lumiya. She’s taunting me. Showing me she can get at Ben anytime she pleases.”
Jacen was silent. Luke waited.
“I can’t give you an explanation for that, I really can’t,” Jacen said eventually.
“Well, Lu
miya’s jerking my chain, as she probably was at Gilatter, too.” Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I ever have been fooled like that? “And she has someone inside your organization, so I suggest you get that sorted out fast.”
“We’ve had one investigation already, and found nothing. We’ll have another, if it makes you happier.” Jacen’s voice sounded both offended and irritated, but Luke couldn’t even take that at face value any longer. “But I can assure you Ben is safe—he’s even got pretty good protection right next to him. Lieutenant Lekauf.”
“Nice to see the guy get promoted. He strikes me as being very loyal to you.”
“As his grandfather was to Vader, Luke. You can’t buy loyalty like that. Ben’s in good hands. Let’s talk again in the morning.”
Luke shut the link dead. No, the morning wouldn’t do, and there was no point talking to Jacen, who was clearly trussed and tied as far as Lumiya’s influence was concerned. She was right under his nose. So much for what he’d learned about arcane Force techniques during his five-year sabbatical.
Luke jogged to the landing pad and tore off in the speeder, maybe a little faster than was safe. Lumiya had left a very clear trail, beckoning Luke to follow. Well, he wasn’t falling for that. It had to be a diversion—or an ambush.
I’ve never been afraid of an ambush, Lumiya. I’ll walk into one happily, knowing my enemies are there. Nice try. I’m coming, don’t you worry.
He resisted the impulse to drop everything and charge after her trail. She was still near, or at least still on Coruscant; he could feel it. But he had to talk to Mara first, and she was at Starfighter Command. He opened the comlink.
How could I have let this go on for so long? I don’t care if I’m expected to be the elder statesman. This stops; this stops now.
“Mara, we have a problem,” he said. “Lumiya.”
“I’m with Jaina, sweetheart. Do you want me to—”
“She’s been outside our apartment.” Luke picked his words a little more carefully now. Mara would go ballistic as soon as he mentioned Ben’s boots. It was a sinister, silent threat. “Stay where you are. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“When there’s a trail going cold?”
“Or a diversion.”
“Or a trail she wants you to think is a diversion.”
Yes, Mara and Lumiya both had that layer-upon-layer way of thinking, just as Palpatine had taught them. “I know what she wants,” he said, and shut the link.
Luke broke the traffic regulations a dozen times. He skipped out of the regulated skylanes—always busy on Coruscant—and got a discordant blast of horns from vessels whose noses he nearly clipped. In the way of automatic actions, his mind slipped into deep contemplation as he took the familiar route to Starfighter Command.
I know what my problem is.
He thought back forty years, when he’d been ready to rush to the aid of a total stranger on the basis of a message in an intercepted hologram. The plea for rescue hadn’t even been aimed at him, but he’d responded to it anyway, without thinking, without questioning, because it had felt like something he had to do.
And now I act sensibly and soberly, because I’m leader of the Jedi Council, and I’m not nineteen anymore.
But it wasn’t his nature. It wasn’t what he did best. Just because he had whatever gifts the Force had given him more generously than other Jedi, it didn’t mean he was cut out for … management. Yes, management: that was it. He thought of the nagging frustration he always felt when he sent other Jedi on missions, and how he thought that was just reluctance to admit it was the turn of the young Jedi to take on the physical derring-do while he made wise judgments in the Chamber.
Sitting on my backside.
What he did best was right wrongs, and if he couldn’t put this right for his only child, then what was he?
I forgot who I am.
He was an uncomplicated man who cared enough about his friends and family to die for them, if that was what it took to save them. He was, as Mara told him at least once a day, a farmboy.
He was Luke Skywalker. And if he could take on the Empire without a second thought, he could certainly finish off one of the last pitiful remnants of its rule—Lumiya.
GA STARFIGHTER COMMAND, CORUSCANT
“Y’ know, this always works on the crime holovids …”
Mara added another illuminated marker to the holochart of the galaxy and stepped back to see if a pattern of Lumiya’s movements emerged. It was a big galaxy, and Lumiya seemed to cover a lot of space, which now included Mara’s own front doors.
Keep it up, cyborg girl. You’re just focusing me better.
“Might as well use the time productively.” Jaina leaned over the desk and tapped in more coordinates. Now that she was a civilian again, she was here in her capacity as a Jedi working for Luke Skywalker and the Council, but she slipped back into fleet ways fast. “So let’s add in Alema’s known whereabouts …”
“Well, there’s no pattern there, either … Do you think it’s a case of Alema stalking Lumiya, looking for scraps from her table? Why do those two seem to hang out together?”
“They both need a lot of spare parts?”
Mara stifled a laugh. “That’s not nice, Jaina …”
“Seriously. They haven’t got enough functioning parts to make one decent humanoid between them.”
“They’re both good at hiding, whether by disguising their presence or erasing the memory of being seen.” Mara was feeling around her in the Force, just waiting for Lumiya to spring from nowhere. She could sense her, but not near. “Lumiya’s broken her cover, and she’s not stupid, so she wants to be seen.”
Jaina kept checking the chrono on the wall and then looking at her own timepiece. “Did you go to see Jacen?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“You want the truth, Jaina?”
“Don’t I always?”
“Lumiya’s bending him somehow. Okay, no need to tell me I was the last person to notice that.”
“I wasn’t going to. Did you … mention that?”
“Yes. I thought it was time someone dropped a hint that we’d noticed our Jacen had turned into a monster.” Mara was getting angry, and her honest inner voice told her that the only person who deserved that anger was herself, for defending Jacen while the fact that things were going disastrously wrong was staring her in the face. But Mara was human, and scared for Ben, and it boiled over onto Jaina. “Forgive me for asking, but being his twin, have you never had this out with him?”
“I tried. He responded with a court-martial charge, remember?”
“I can’t help thinking that you might have tried slugging him.”
“Suddenly he’s my responsibility? I’m the one who said he was going dark, way back.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Mara put her hands up in mock submission. She could apologize, but she couldn’t retract her acid tone, and she regretted that. “I just—okay, none of my business.”
“Spit it out, Mara.”
“I just don’t get how you can be so caught up in worrying whether you want Jag or Zekk when your own brother’s going to pieces and taking others with him.”
“Whoa …”
“Sorry. I said it was none of my business.”
“Well, you said it, so—yes, I want to be distracted by personal issues, because otherwise I’d go nuts trying to understand why Jacen’s doing what he’s doing to our parents.”
“Maybe it’s time we all faced that. Together.”
There was an awkward silence. Mara wanted to tell Jaina that she was a grown woman now and it was time to stop messing around like a teenager, and that Ben was more adult at fourteen than she was at thirty-one. It was spiteful, partly true, and partly fueled by Mara’s incomprehension of anyone who wasn’t as totally focused on the mission as she was, to the exclusion of all else.
She kept her thoughts to herself. It was a sign of weary middle age, along with gray hairs and fading
stretch marks.
I spent my whole youth on duty for the Emperor. I never had the freedom that Jaina’s always had. And a little bit of me … resents that now.
It wasn’t Jaina’s fault. She was headstrong and passionate like her father, but she hadn’t quite found the silent, hidden durasteel of her mother yet.
She’ll rise to the challenge when it comes. But if this isn’t it, I don’t know what is.
Jaina had her head down, hair forming a dark curtain as she leaned over the desk, pretending to be absorbed in the chart, but Mara could feel she was hurt. It wasn’t the first time in recent weeks.
Mara would make it up to her when she calmed down. Families had spats all the time. The storms blew over.
“Change of plan,” said Luke, stepping out of the turbolift with his hair disheveled and a bag in one hand. Sometimes he had that Don’t-stop-me look, and he had it now. It always made Mara want to stop him. “I’m going after Lumiya. Enough.”
“No, you’re not,” Mara said. “You’re too close to this. She’s baiting you.”
Luke dumped the bag on the desk, disrupting the holochart. Jaina stepped back.
“Ben’s boots,” said Luke.
“And the point is …?”
“Deposited at our apartment by Lumiya.”
Mara put her hand on the boots and felt the remnants of dark energy. Now she was mad: cold, clear, icy mad. “She’s been into GAG HQ. Or Jacen’s apartment. I don’t know which idea I like less.”
“I need to settle this with her.”
“It is, as some admiral once said, a trap—”
“For her. Biting off more than she can chew.”
Jaina glanced at them both, still looking a little wounded. “Uncle Luke, I’ll stick my nose in here and say it’s better if we go after Lumiya now, because she’s clearly playing a game, and … I’ve never seen you angry like this before.”
Sacrifice Page 20
