“I better call Dad,” Ben said. “Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”
Ben suspected that his father would have a good idea of what he was doing, even if he didn’t know where he was doing it. He’d break it like he’d planned, gently, audio only.
“Hi, Dad. How are you doing?”
Luke sounded as if he was making an effort to switch into an upbeat voice. “I’m okay. Where are you? I can’t trace the link.”
“Coruscant.”
“I thought as much.”
“Would it really help to hear me say the same things again, Dad? I’m sorry I never told you.”
“I could take it, actually. But thanks for trying to protect me.”
“Dad, I’m—I’m pretty sure Jacen was implicated.” If Ben used the detached, oblique language of investigation, Luke would know he was in full control of his emotions and not about to do anything dumb. But he didn’t say Mom’s murder. He found himself stopping short of that. “I have to prove or disprove that for my own peace of mind. He’s worse than you imagine, Dad. He just killed one of his own crew. He broke her neck.”
There was a faintly crackling pause, and then Luke said, “I know. Admiral Niathal told me.”
“Niathal?”
Shevu looked up at the mention of her name.
“She’s moved from being helpful to us to taking the risk of contacting me direct. Ben, I’ve told her to trust Shevu.”
“Where do you think I am?”
“There you go … you trust him, too.”
“How far do you think she’ll stick her neck out?”
“Pretty far.”
As far as Cal Omas and Dur Gejjen did when they met in secret to discuss removing jacen, and look what I did then. If I hadn’t assassinated Gejjen, would we be here now? Is this all my fault for just obeying Jacen?
“You might hear that I’ve asked a favor of her, then, Dad—sooner or later.”
Ben struggled again with the thought that was uppermost in his mind, more important even than nailing Jacen—that he had seen his mother’s Force ghost. The first thing he’d wanted to do was tell Luke the news, and then he wondered how his dad would feel when he knew that his wife hadn’t appeared to him. Ben now knew exactly how desperate you could be to grab one more minute—one more second, even—with someone you’d lost. It was the greatest hunger he’d ever experienced, all-consuming and blind, but he’d got that wish.
And Dad hadn’t.
Would he feel robbed? Would he torment himself wondering why Mom had chosen Ben?
Did I even see what I thought I did?
Ben was sure he had. And there would be a better time to tell Dad. Maybe he had seen her, too, but wasn’t saying so yet for exactly the same reason.
“Just tell me if I’m likely to run into you while you’re doing it,” Luke said, jerking Ben’s attention back to the here and now. “And you might hear crazy rumors about Jaina, too. They’ll be true.”
“How crazy?”
“She’s gone to ask Fett to train her to take on Jacen.”
Ben didn’t find that crazy at all. “We all have to think outside the box these days, Dad.”
He could have sworn his father started to laugh for the first time in months. “You know, I must have blinked and missed you growing up. And overtaking me.”
Ben almost relented and risked telling him about Mom, but the moment was lost. It would come again. “Take care, Dad.”
Shevu fidgeted, waiting for Ben to end the link. “What about Niathal? What did he say?”
“She went to see Dad. She’s come out against Jacen, at least privately.”
“That could be a break.”
“Specifically?”
“She can authorize things. All I have to do is ask her.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“So is breaking into the GAG hangars and getting caught swabbing the seat of the Chief of State’s personal StealthX.”
“We could drop this right now.”
“No, because now I have to know, too, and this is a reported crime, right? ‘Forget that murder I mentioned, officer …’ It doesn’t work like that.”
“I could get you killed.”
“I could get you killed.” Shevu pulled the holochart onto his lap, balancing it on his knees. “Even if Jacen’s away on one of his jaunts minus the Stealth, then someone will have to have a pretty good reason for scrambling all over it or he’ll be on full paranoid alert. I’ll find a reason and get Niathal to make it happen. And I’ll make sure I’m always wired with a holorecorder when I have contact with dear Jacen, even if it’s only audio. You can never be too careful.”
Shevu was casting around for any evidence he could grab. Every loose thread Ben followed, every connection he made, seemed as fragile and flimsy as a hair. It was all if, if, if. They might risk their lives getting into the StealthX and find nothing. Ben saw Mara Skywalker again, tugging strands from her scalp and dropping them into his palm that would have waited forever to catch them. Perhaps they were still falling somewhere; he hoped that whatever unknown forces determined the existence of ghosts would allow her to appear to Luke when his father most needed her.
Mom would know the right time, if she could choose.
JOINT CHIEF OF STATE NIATHAL’S SUITE
Niathal consulted the fleet status repeater display on her office wall—known as the tote board within the service—and noted that the Anakin Solo had returned from Fondor.
“He’s always been a day-tripper,” she said to her droid administrator, recalling Jacen’s unexplained absences in previous months. “If I didn’t know he was wasting munitions on pointless exercises, I’d say he had a secret lover.”
“There was minor enemy contact off Fondor.”
“How off?”
“In Fondorian space.”
“I hate it when he throws stones and goads them. I’ll assume he’s testing their resolve before the big push.”
“I believe he was training his new assistant.”
“Is that girl even enlisted? I won’t have civilians playing battleships. Not in my navy. At least the Skywalker boy had a proper commission.”
“She remains a civilian, Admiral.”
“We’ll see about that.” She tapped a note to Jacen and submitted it to the system. He’d see it come up on his datapad next time he deigned to check it. “There have to be some limits to this unstructured style of leadership.”
Putting on a display of niggling annoyance was superfluous with a droid, but Niathal had to remain in character so that she never slipped. If she looked as if she’d gone off the boil, Jacen would turn his attention to her; she knew enough about him to realize her mood was transparent to his Force senses, and so she kept it set at a steady temperature of irritated contempt and disdain.
It really didn’t take much effort. It came naturally.
Niathal could still manage to keep tabs on most of Jacen’s movements by logging his ship’s movements or the times his StealthX was missing from the hangar—an incomplete method but more than she expected to be able to do at this stage of his megalomania. And whether he liked it or not, procedure said there had to be someone contactable to make decisions as need arose, and that meant that he either had to hand over the reins to her completely or tell her where he was going if he wanted to be consulted.
The Anakin Solo wasn’t hard to track anyway. Even Jacen couldn’t make a Star Destroyer disappear. And he didn’t seem to be able to secure the ship against intruders, so either he was less omnipotent than most supposed, or he used the ship like an insect trap.
If she pressed him, she had a feeling he would say the latter. Not knowing how powerful he actually was—that troubled her. No military strategist could be comfortable while the enemy’s strength and assets remained undefined. Niathal stared in slight defocus at the image of Mon Calamari on her office wall, losing herself for a moment in the unbroken horizon behind Reef Home—her home—and wondering when she might
find time for shore leave again.
I wanted the top job, and I got it. Serves me right.
“Colonel Solo to see you, Admiral,” said the droid, using their military titles. Neither needed to be reminded they shared control of the Galactic Alliance, but Niathal needed to hear the word admiral, to be made to remember how she’d first signed up to serve the state. It was too easy to slide into the other role.
Jacen strode in and perched his behind on the edge of a table facing her desk. He was close to knocking off a pile of flimsi and datapads with his long black cloak, and that casualness annoyed her almost as much as the fact that his business-like black GAG fatigues had given way to this pointlessly dramatic wardrobe.
“I’m hearing interested noises from some of the Moffs about joining the GA,” he said. “They’re thinking thoughts of empire again.”
“Heard personally?” she asked. Jacen had said he wouldn’t negotiate without her explicit involvement. “Or does this emanate from their gentlemen’s clubs and smoke-filled tapcafs again?”
“Let’s say the latter.”
“How? I’m fed up guessing like this is some party entertainment.”
“The military attaché was passing through Muunilinst at the same time as a Moff who has relatives there.”
“Doing charity work for bank employees, no doubt …”
“If I’d sent him to talk to the Moffs in Ravelin itself, you’d have accused me of bypassing you.”
“I would.” Niathal worried about the Moffs. The Imperial Remnant had been quiet and content to live within its borders for years, or so she’d thought. Content was a relative term. “What impression have you given them?”
Jacen slid off the edge of the table and activated Niathal’s holochart, the one she used when she had staff meetings. He zoomed in on the northeast quadrant, filling the table with translucent planets, stars, and threads of colored light representing the major hyperspace routes.
“Here’s what we’ve hinted is on the table,” he said, thrusting his fingertip into a cluster of worlds to the N’Zoth side of the Core. “Borleias and Bilbringi.”
“You’re reassuringly transparent.”
“Come on, Bilbringi is always going to be a system that they want back. We’ve not consolidated our claim on it since the Yuuzhan Vong War—all we did was defend it. Let’s just say that now we’re not going to be defending it, the mineral resources are still there, and, as they say in real estate, it’s ripe for sympathetic restoration—as shipyards again.”
Niathal thought that it was all a little too close to Coruscant for her comfort. “And Borleias gives them fast access to all the major hyperspace routes.”
“Resources, infrastructure—with a little bit of work, of course—and mobility. What more could a red-blooded Moff want?”
“Blue-blooded. They’re such snobs. I’m just concerned that they’re all dressed up with nowhere to conquer, and we’re giving them delusions of glory again.”
“They’re still not big enough to worry us. The deal is that if they commit their considerable military machine to the war effort, then their reward will be a major expansion of their territory.” Jacen tilted his head this way and that to consider the three-dimensional view of the galaxy’s flattened disk. “So I suggest we ask them to help us take Fondor.”
Jacen, you just can’t leave Fondor alone, can you?
It was clear that politically, Fondor irked him. It wouldn’t toe the line. It was Corellia all over again, and whether he admitted the irony or not, Jacen’s own Corellian blood made him a man who didn’t like the word no. Strategically, though, he had a point: Fondor fed ships and weapons into the Confederate war effort at a prodigious rate, so shutting down the orbital yards made sense. Taking the planet and appropriating its industrial capacity, though—that would take more resources, and an army of occupation to keep the workforce running the yards and not sabotaging them. Niathal had her doubts about that, and for several reasons.
“You realize,” she said, “that the Remnant might think Fondor is up for grabs, too, seeing as Borleias and Bilbringi would extend their range to within striking distance of that side of the Core.”
“They might well think that.”
“Don’t play games with them, Jacen. They’d be awfully close neighbors to Coruscant.”
“And with enough corridor to defend between Bastion and Borleias to keep them too busy to start getting ideas about us. And … Pellaeon. Never forget Pellaeon. He knows how to keep the Moffs in line, so when we have his blessing, we can move.”
“If,” said Niathal. “If we get his blessing. He hates your guts.”
“So do you, Admiral.” Jacen smiled. “But we still work well together. It’s an efficient strategy, two beings with no love lost between them, maneuvering …”
This was the problem with Jacen. If he had been demonstrably, consistently, visibly incompetent or insane, it would have been easy to dismiss him, and much easier to consider removing him the hard way. On sleepless nights, Niathal even found herself wondering how she could assassinate a Force user with prodigious powers and awareness of approaching danger. She always chose bombarding them from orbit with a planet-killer—hypothetically, at least. Usually she thought about mutiny, and whether she might be on the receiving end of it if she didn’t make up her mind. She had never had those thoughts in her life before. But then Jacen would confuse her and negate all those justified fantasies by being strategic, sensible, and successful.
She needed him to do something barking mad to steer her one way or the other, and the murder of Lieutenant Tebut was pretty close to the final get-rid-of-Jacen token she needed to collect to salve her conscience.
As if I could take him down alone.
“I agree that we should take Fondor out of the game sooner rather than later.”
“Is that a yes to formally approaching the Imperial Remnant?”
“It’ll make us look as if we can’t handle the job on our own, but—yes, we’re at overstretch. I can’t complain, having nagged you about that so often.”
“Excellent,” Jacen said. He seemed as pleased as a child being told he could hold a party and invite friends. “I’ll send Tahiri Veila to see Pellaeon.”
“Haven’t we got a more seasoned officer free to do the job?”
“She can be very persuasive. Much tougher than she looks, too.”
“Very well, but next time you want her to play with cannons—make sure she’s a member of the Defense Force. Give her a commission. Enlist her, if you don’t think she’s officer material. But make sure she understands wars are not for civilians.”
Jacen’s guard seemed as down as it ever would be. They’d argued, after a fashion, admitted they disliked each other, and yet reached an agreement; all mistrust seemed to have been aired. Niathal slid in her knife.
“What kind of Jedi are you, Jacen?” she asked. “Because my meetings with the Jedi Council were never quite so target-oriented and ruthless.”
“I don’t do things their way, it’s true.”
“Are you a Sith?”
Jacen’s loss of composure was always betrayed by his eyes. He could control the rest of his face and his body language—Niathal knew human psychology almost as well as Mon Cals’ now—but there was always something in his eyes when he was caught out. She couldn’t even pin it down beyond a slight flicker. But whatever it was, she saw it now.
“What do you know about Sith?” he asked, all quiet reason.
“Oh, not much. I know Palpatine was a Sith, and he was a brilliant tactician—no quarter given, all exits sealed, the kind of total war that I could never see Master Skywalker waging in an eternity. Which is why I ask, because your ability to see the whole picture reminds me of that.”
The first sentence was true; the second was a lie, of course.
“Yes,” Jacen said quietly. “I’m a Sith.”
“We should teach Sith tactics at the academy, then,” said Niathal, knowing that she would proba
bly rather have the Yuuzhan Vong back instead.
Jacen gave her that patronizing smile that said he didn’t think she understood what was happening and pitied her for being so inadequate. That was fine. She was pleased with her progress, and hoped he detected that and misinterpreted it as basking in his temporary approval.
“I’ll brief Tahiri,” he said, and left.
Niathal suspected that Tahiri was already on her way, but it didn’t matter. She sat looking at the holochart and wondering how an Imperial Moff might see it, what temptations it might suggest. Had Pellaeon not still been running Bastion, the Remnant might have already been in the war, or at least circling the battlefield looking to take advantage of the chaos. But he was in his nineties and wouldn’t live forever, so perhaps managing their ambitions now would prevent them boiling out of the Braxant sector in a few years’ time like kids let out of school, bent on mischief.
I hate it when you might be right, Jacen …
“Admiral,” said the droid, “Captain Shevu asks if you can spare him five minutes.”
“Yes, show him in.” Niathal shut down the holochart and had the feeling she might need to erase a little of the droid’s memory. “If anyone calls, tell them I’m in a procurement planning meeting.”
Shevu wasn’t the kind of officer who popped in for a chat. Niathal had almost expected him since Luke Skywalker had identified him to her as a potential ally, and he hadn’t wasted any time; considering he was the most senior officer in Jacen’s personal elite, 967 Commando of the Galactic Alliance Guard, he was taking a huge risk—and Jacen couldn’t have made a worse-placed enemy.
She gestured to him to take a seat and wondered who would say it first.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I sweep the office for surveillance devices every time I enter it.”
Shevu slid a small scanner out of his pocket and aimed it at various points around her office before looking a little more relaxed. “So do I.”
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