by Troy Denning
“Good,” Jacen said, realizing that he was drawing concern from more people in the cabin than just Orlopp. “Thank you.”
He returned his gaze to the holodisplay. Several Galney Battle Dragons were flashing with damage, and there were holes in the formation where two more had already been destroyed. It was far more damage than the Anakin could do with three long-range turbolaser batteries.
Jacen turned to Espara. “I didn’t know the Queen Mother’s Battle Dragons had been equipped with long-range turbolasers.”
Espara granted him a rare smile. “I’m sorry, Colonel. Admiral Pellaeon was kind enough to share the technology after the Queen Mother assigned two fleets to the Galactic Alliance. The Royal High Commander instructed me to reveal the upgrade only on a need-to-know basis.”
“I see.” Jacen was irritated, but not surprised. Even among allies, secrets were not shared easily. “And how widespread is this technology in the Consortium?”
“It’s not. So far, the only Battle Dragons carrying the new turbolasers are in our task force.” Espara turned back to the holodisplay, where several more of the usurpers’ vessels were blinking. “Perhaps that will change after the Queen Mother sees how effective they are.”
“Don’t count on it.” Jacen nodded toward the holodisplay. The rear elements of Galney’s reinforcement fleet were splitting off to meet the Anakin and her task force. “Now that the element of surprise is gone, the new turbolasers will lose effectiveness fast.”
Galney’s ships were already pouring clouds of starfighters into space, trying to set up a defensive screen so the leading elements of the traitor fleet could continue the attack on Tenel Ka. Jacen’s task force began to decelerate and spread out, preparing to launch its own starfighters and take advantage of their long-range turbolasers to soften up the enemy before fully engaging.
“Colonel Solo, we can’t stop to fight,” Espara said. She pointed at Tenel Ka’s small flotilla. “The Queen Mother will be pinned against the planetary shields.”
“I see that, Major.” Jacen knew better than to suggest Tenel Ka could retreat planetside; there were too many enemy vessels nearby. If she had the planetary shields lowered, they would simply follow her through and take out the generator stations. “Are you suggesting a breakthrough attempt?”
Espara nodded. “We have no choice. If we slow down to fight here, by the time we reach the Queen Mother, she’ll be in an escape pod trying to dodge Miy’tils.”
Espara was right, and Jacen knew it. Even with half the Galney fleet hanging back to fight his task force, the Queen Mother’s flotilla would still be outnumbered nearly three to one. What Espara did not know was that any breakthrough attempt would also put at risk the life of the Consortium’s Chume’da, Allana—and Jacen felt certain Tenel Ka would not want that any more than he did.
Espara frowned. “Colonel Solo, you are wasting valuable—”
Jacen silenced her with a raised hand. “Thinking is not a waste of time.” He activated the intercom microphone again. “Commander Twizzl, how many Battle Dragons would be required to have a reasonable chance of breaking through that screen? And bear in mind they’ll need to have enough strength left to continue pursuit.”
Twizzl’s answer came immediately. “It would be better to send us all. That’s our best chance.”
“I didn’t ask for our best chance,” Jacen countered. “I need a reasonable chance.”
Twizzl was silent for an instant, then said, “Eighteen, sir. Berda believes that strength would give the task force a sixty-three percent chance of disrupting the Galney attack on the Queen Mother.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do, Captain,” Jacen said. Berda was the Anakin’s tactical computer, a powerful mainframe operated by a squad of Bith programmers. “Have the other two Battle Dragons stand off with the Anakin.”
“Stand off?” Espara echoed. “Colonel Solo, a sixty-three percent chance of saving the Queen Mother’s life is not good enough. You may be too much of a coward to send in the Anakin, but I assure you every Hapan—”
“That’s quite enough, Major.”
Jacen made a pinching motion with his fingers, and Espara was suddenly too busy gasping for breath to continue speaking. Her accusation stung more than he cared to admit, in part because it was so true—at least when it came to Allana. He was too afraid of losing his daughter to risk her life in the middle of a pitched starship battle, and it really didn’t matter that Tenel Ka would want him to make this decision. The simple fact was that there were some things he would never sacrifice—not even if it meant saving the galaxy.
When Jacen continued to hold his Force choke, Espara’s gasping changed to a desperate gurgling, and her hands rose to her throat. Her two aides scowled in alarm, and they stepped forward to shield her, automatically reaching for sidearms they were not permitted to carry aboard the Anakin.
Jacen froze them with a glance, then turned back to Espara. “Your dedication is commendable, Major. But there are facets of the situation that you’re unaware of, and I am doing exactly as the Mother Queen would wish. Is that clear?”
Espara nodded and braced her hand on the arm of one of her aides.
“I’m glad we understand each other.” Jacen released his Force choke and allowed her to gulp down a long breath, then held out his hand. “I doubt it will be necessary for you to communicate with Her Majesty’s Battle Dragons until after the battle. I’ll take your comlinks now.”
Espara reluctantly passed over her own comlink and nodded to her aides to do the same.
“Thank you.” Jacen slipped the devices into his uniform pocket, then turned back to the holodisplay feeling worried and useless. The eighteen Battle Dragons he had dispatched to save Tenel Ka were already closing on Galney’s defensive screen. Clouds of starfighters were pouring into space between them, and vessels on both sides were already blinking and starting to fall out of formation.
Jacen could not help thinking that the intelligence provided by his parents had so far been more of a curse than a blessing. It had not prevented Aurra Sing’s attack on Allana, but it had sent him to Relephon with a sizable piece of the Royal Navy at exactly the wrong time—a blunder that might well end up costing Hapes her queen … and Allana her mother.
The Anakin and its two escorts were concentrating their fire along one flank, trying to help open a hole through the screen. But the usurpers adjusted quickly, sliding a fresh vessel into place each time an old one was destroyed, compressing their formation as their attackers drew closer. The pursuit detail was already down to fourteen Battle Dragons, and a third of those were blinking with various degrees of damage.
Jacen felt Orlopp’s attention. He looked over and waited until the Jenet was actually looking at him, then cast a meaningful glance at the datapad.
“Everything all right there?”
“Nothing has changed.” Orlopp’s voice held a note of distress over Jacen’s apparent obsession with monitoring the assassin and the girl in his cabin. “The pilot you asked to see has arrived.”
“Good,” Jacen said. “We’ll need a few moments of privacy.”
Happy to escape Jacen’s presence, Espara and her aides left immediately, followed closely by his own staff. Only Orlopp lingered.
“Is there something else, Lieutenant?”
“There is,” Orlopp said. “You probably don’t need to be concerned, but we may not need to send anyone after those rescue beacons we detected. The Signals Deck reports a private transport headed their way.”
“Good. Have Signals track the vessel, and we’ll make contact after the battle.”
“Very good, sir.” Orlopp flipped the datapad up under his wrist and turned toward the exit. “I’ll send the pilot in now.”
“Thank you.” Jacen extended his hand. “But leave the datapad.”
Orlopp wrinkled his snout in concern, but passed over the datapad and departed. Jacen checked the display to make certain his daughter was indeed okay, as Orlopp had reported,
then set the unit on a table and blanked the screen. His conversation with Lumiya was going to be difficult enough without having to explain his obsession with safeguarding Allana.
A moment later, a slender woman in a black flight suit appeared in the doorway, her face concealed behind a closed helmet visor. Jacen immediately had the sense that something was wrong—not dangerous, but not what he had expected, either. For a moment he thought the cause might be his own feelings. Perhaps he was merely nervous about meeting Lumiya after he had tried to set her up at Roqoo Depot. Or perhaps his real fear was that she had prevailed after all—that Luke and Mara were dead.
Then Jacen noticed how much taller and more slender this pilot was than Lumiya, how bulky her helmet was in back, how one shoulder sagged. He let his hand drop to his lightsaber.
“That’s far enough until I see your face.”
The pilot stopped, and a dark flutter of amusement rippled unevenly through the Force. Leaving one hand to hang useless at her side, she reached up with the other and released the neck ring.
“You mustn’t kill us.” Even modulated through a helmet speaker, her voice sounded silky and half familiar—and it definitely did not belong to Lumiya. “We have news of your Master.”
“My Master?”
“Your Sith Master … Lumiya.” The helmet rose, revealing a once-beguiling face that had gone hard and sharp. “Surely, you’re curious about what became of her at Roqoo Depot?”
A pillar of fire rose inside Jacen. Alema Rar had been a Gorog Joiner, a member of the Killik nest that had tried to kill his daughter as a newborn—and now here she was aboard the same ship as Allana. Before he knew it, Jacen had ignited his lightsaber and grabbed her in the Force.
Alema allowed him to draw her closer, her eyes gleaming with unbalanced delight. “You would do it,” she snickered. “You would kill us without a thought!”
Startled by the truth in her words, Jacen released her.
“Without hesitation,” he corrected. How many times had Lumiya told him he could not be a servant to his emotions? If he wanted to restore order, his emotions had to serve him. “But I have been thinking about it. I’ve thought about it a lot.”
“That is nice to know, Jacen.” Alema’s lip curled into an odd sneer, what she probably intended to be a coy smile that her haggard face could no longer muster. “We have been thinking about you, too.”
“And that still sends a creep down my back,” Jacen replied. “Now, since I really doubt you came here to fulfill a death wish, why don’t you tell me about Lumiya?”
Alema raised one thin eyebrow. “You don’t deny that she is your Master?”
Jacen shrugged. “I doubt there would be much use in it.” He glanced at the holodisplay, where his pursuit detail was just crashing into the screen of Galney ships, then added, “And I’m kind of in the middle of something, as you can see.”
Alema’s gaze went from the holodisplay to his light-saber, and she retreated a step.
“Go ahead and kill us, then. You should.” Despite the Twi’lek’s words, she seemed clearly less confident about her chances of leaving the salon alive than she had been a few minutes earlier. “We are the only ones who know Allana’s heritage—aside from you and Tenel Ka, of course.”
Jacen’s hatred welled up inside him again—or perhaps this time it was alarm. He had always worried that the Gorog had been told the secret of his daughter’s heritage when they were engaged to assassinate her. Now Alema had confirmed his fears, and he ached to do exactly as she suggested and snuff the life from her twisted body.
But it had to be a trap—the Twi’lek would never have tempted him if protecting his secret were as simple as killing her.
“I’ve never liked threats,” Jacen warned. “These days, I don’t tolerate them at all.”
“Then it is a good thing we were not making a threat,” Alema replied coolly. “We were making a suggestion. Gorog tried to kill your daughter. We are all that remains of Gorog. You should kill us.”
“And have gossipvids claiming that I’m Allana’s father start popping up all over the Consortium?”
“Did we say that would happen?” Alema asked innocently. “We are concerned with higher purposes, Jacen. We serve the Balance.”
Jacen knew better than to believe her. Alema Rar would never have come within a light-year of him without some means of assuring her safety, and the most likely form of that assurance was the very threat she had so skillfully avoided making directly. Were Alema to fail to leave the Anakin alive, he had no doubt that the secret of his daughter’s heritage would quickly become public knowledge.
Jacen considered killing the Twi’lek anyway, thinking it might be better for the secret of Allana’s paternity to come out now, while the Consortium was already in such disarray. But that decision was not his to make—at least not while Tenel Ka was still alive.
He glanced at the holodisplay and saw that the issue of the Queen Mother’s survival remained undecided. Though the flotilla he had sent to save her was down to ten vessels, three Battle Dragons had penetrated deep into the defensive screen and were close to breaking through—provided they did not take much more damage. Their designators were already blinking rapidly.
Jacen deactivated his lightsaber and turned back to Alema. “As tempting as I find your invitation, I prefer to let you live for now. Tell me what happened at Roqoo.”
Alema’s face relaxed, and she said simply, “We failed.”
“We?” Jacen asked. “Who is we? You? You and the Killiks? You and—?”
“Lumiya,” Alema said. “We have been working with her for some time.”
The Twi’lek risked taking one step closer, then went on to explain how she had stumbled across Tresina Lobi spying on Ben in Fellowship Plaza, and how she had helped Lumiya kill her. After that, Lumiya had agreed they should work together. Alema had gone on to assassinate several members of the Bothan True Victory Party, then boarded the Anakin Solo with Lumiya and accompanied her to Roqoo Depot to attack the Skywalkers.
“Wait,” Jacen said. “Lumiya knew they would be there?”
“Of course—she knew the best way for you to deal with their suspicions was to betray her and send her to fight them.” Alema reached for his forearm—then, when he jerked it away, pretended not to be bothered. “Your Master was very proud of you, Jacen. By betraying her, you proved that you have the strength to fulfill your destiny.”
“I don’t know which I find harder to believe,” Jacen scoffed, “that Lumiya would work with you, or that she would be proud of me for setting her up.”
“Believe both,” Alema retorted. “We both worried that you were more committed to your family than to your mission, but your answer to Luke’s suspicion convinced us we were wrong. You used everyone brilliantly—Lumiya and your aunt and uncle. It proved you are capable of anything.”
“Thanks,” Jacen said, more surprised than sincere. He was finding it hard to ignore the details Alema knew about his relationship with Lumiya, but something still wasn’t adding up. “You said Lumiya knew she was being set up to fight the Skywalkers?”
“Of course,” Alema said. “Lumiya was a Sith, after all.”
“And she went? And still got killed?”
Alema nodded. “She knew that killing your uncle was the best way to ensure your success, but she couldn’t be certain of her victory. So she wore a proton detonator on her chest. When her heartbeat stopped, the detonator exploded. We are sorry.”
“You saw her die?”
Alema shook her head. “We’re still here, are we not? But Lumiya couldn’t have survived. The entire cantina was destroyed. Even your aunt and uncle escaped by only two minutes.” The Twi’lek paused for a moment, then added, “That’s why we came back—to warn you that they’ll be returning to Hapes as soon as they make repairs.”
“Repairs?”
Alema’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “The Jade Shadow suffered a mysterious rupture of a containment line,” she said. �
��The repairs won’t be simple.
“And you arranged this because …?”
“Because you needed time to prepare,” Alema said. “The Skywalkers know that you set them up, too.”
Jacen frowned. He was growing increasingly troubled by Alema’s story, though only because he sensed that she was telling the truth—at least as she knew it. His plan had been to use the Skywalkers’ own fears against them by making it appear that Lumiya had been following Ben. Clearly, something had gone wrong.
“What about Ben?” Jacen asked.
For the first time, Alema looked confused. “Ben?”
“Did he survive the explosion?”
Alema frowned. “Ben was never there,” she said. “That’s how the Skywalkers know you betrayed them.”
Jacen’s stomach sank. If Ben had never made the rendezvous, naturally the Skywalkers would have believed Roqoo Depot was a trap. But then where had Ben gone? The sinking feeling in Jacen’s stomach grew cold, and he turned back to the holodisplay.
The rescue flotilla—or rather, the eight Battle Dragon designators still blinking on the holodisplay—had finally broken through. They would soon be in full pursuit of the Galney force moving against Tenel Ka. But Jacen’s gaze went to a position on the far side of the battered defensive screen, where a blinking transport symbol labeled long-shot was gliding toward the tiny blue blips of four Alliance rescue beacons.
“What is so interesting there?” Alema asked, following his gaze.
Instead of answering, Jacen oriented himself toward the real, physical rescue beacons, then reached out in the Force and sensed four presences—three of them familiar. They seemed healthy, though perhaps a little impatient, frightened, and—at least in Jaina’s case—angry. Jacen didn’t bother even trying to guess why the three Jedi had returned the Rover to Hapes instead of obeying their orders to rendezvous at Roqoo Depot—or how they had gotten themselves blasted out of their skiff. He simply flooded his presence with reassurance and tried to project that to them, so they would know help was on the way.
