by Troy Denning
“You can say killed her, Jacen. If you can do it, you can say it.”
“Perhaps when you start calling me Colonel,” Jacen replied. “But however we refer to it, why would I have done such a thing?”
“Because she knew you were working with Lumiya,” Ben replied. “You needed to keep her quiet.”
Jacen shook his head. “Think, Ben. If your mother suspected I was working with Lumiya, wouldn’t she have told someone? A whole team of Jedi Masters would have come after me, not just your mother.”
Ben frowned at this. He knew why his mother had kept her silence: because he had been too embarrassed to tell his father about Jacen’s dalliance with Lumiya and reveal what a nerf-head he had been, and his mother had been trying to keep his secret. But Jacen didn’t know that. From his point of view, if Ben’s mother had known about Lumiya, then of course she would have told his father—and every other Jedi Master with a working comlink. So Jacen wouldn’t have thought that killing her would keep anything quiet.
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “Maybe you just wanted to get even.”
Jacen scowled in disappointment. “You know me better than that. There’s only one reason I would ever do anything so … difficult: for the good of the galaxy.”
An angry fire welled up inside Ben. “Killing Mom wasn’t good for the galaxy!”
“And I didn’t kill her,” Jacen replied calmly. “But we’re talking hypotheticals here. If you could bring peace to the galaxy by sacrificing your own life—to assassinate me, for instance—would you do it?”
“In a heartbeat,” Ben retorted. “Even if it didn’t save the galaxy.”
“Let’s limit ourselves to meaningful sacrifices,” Jacen said. “Now, if you had to kill someone else instead—someone like your mother—to bring peace to the galaxy, would you do it?”
“That’s a stupid question!” Ben yelled. “Killing my mother didn’t bring peace to anything. The galaxy’s more of a mess now than before you did it.”
“That’s beside the point,” Jacen said. “And I didn’t kill her. I asked if you would—if you would trade your mother’s life for galactic peace.”
Ben fell silent, afraid that if he answered, he would somehow stop hating Jacen for what he had done, somehow come to accept that his mother’s death was … necessary.
After a moment, Jacen said, “You won’t find a trap, Ben. There isn’t one.”
Ben still found it difficult to answer. The fact was, he had made exactly the kind of trade his cousin was talking about. He had done it twice now. First, he had tried to win Jacen’s confidence by suggesting that Jacen kill the Solusars and other adults on Ossus instead of wiping out the entire academy. And just a short time ago—at least he thought it was a short time ago—he had stood next to Jacen on the bridge and suggested that the Anakin Solo target the Wookiee cities. And why had Ben done that? To allay his cousin’s suspicions, so he could kill Jacen and end this war.
When Ben remained silent, Jacen pressed on. “You can’t answer because it would be selfish to refuse, even evil. How could you not trade one life to save billions? Your mother would have begged you to, if the choice were hers.”
“That’s … not … what … happened!” Ben could feel his hate slipping away—and with it, his identity. He would have liked to think it was because Jacen was using the Force to influence him, but he knew better. He was losing his identity because he was more like Jacen than even Jacen knew. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“And I didn’t—but I would have. That’s the difference between us. I’m willing to carry that burden.” Jacen paused and reached over to stroke a muscle node on the side of the Embrace. “And that’s why this is necessary—to give you the strength to make the same choice.”
Ben expected the tendrils to tighten again, or at least to ooze some new kind of toxin that would turn his welts into weeping sores and his weeping sores into boiling abscesses. Instead, the tendrils retracted their barbs and slackened until he was comfortable. Jacen laid a hand on Ben’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Now I’m afraid I must hurt you in a way worse than anything the Embrace has done.” Jacen continued to clasp Ben’s shoulder, infusing his wounds with soothing Force energy. “A short time ago, your father and my sister made a foolhardy attack on the Anakin Solo. Jaina appears to have escaped, but your father’s StealthX was destroyed.”
Ben frowned, not quite able to grasp what Jacen was telling him. “So?”
“So, his craft was vaporized,” Jacen explained. “There was no chance to eject.”
“You think he’s dead?” Ben knew that his head should have been reeling and his heart cracking, but the truth was, the only thing he felt was disbelief … and hatred. He still had that, even if Jacen was telling the truth. “Boy, are you gullible.”
Jacen’s hand clamped down, sending hot fingers of pain through Ben’s chest and neck. “I was there, Ben. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You think you shot him down?” Ben didn’t know what he would do if he actually succeeded in making Jacen lose control of his anger—only that he had to make something happen. “That’s a laugh.”
But Jacen wasn’t taking the bait. He removed his hand and said, “Actually, it wasn’t me. It was an accident—friendly fire. Jaina got him.”
That did shake Ben. It seemed unlikely that Jaina Solo would make such a mistake, and even more unlikely that his father would be caught by it. But freak accidents did happen, and his dad had been very distracted since his mother’s death. Was it really so impossible that a grieving Luke Skywalker had made a fatal mistake?
“No—you’re making it up.” Ben’s objection sounded desperate, even to him. It felt like a cold hand had grabbed his heart and started to squeeze. “I would have felt him die—just like I did when you killed Mom.”
Jacen shook his head solemnly. “How, Ben? Have you felt anything through the Force since you’ve been here?” He took his vibrodagger from its sheath and activated it, then tossed it onto the floor about two meters away. “Go on, then. Summon that blade and free yourself.”
Ben reached for the vibrodagger … and couldn’t find it. He opened himself wide, and sensed nothing.
“What’s wrong?” he gasped. “I can’t … feel.”
“Of course not,” Jacen replied. “How long could the Embrace have held you, had I let you keep the Force?”
“You can do that? You can separate me from the Force?”
Jacen gestured at Ben’s helpless form. “Apparently so.”
“And now I can’t reach out for help,” Ben said, beginning to see how Jacen was trying to fool him. “So when you tell me Dad is dead, I can’t find him in the Force. I have to take your word for it.”
“That’s not the reason,” Jacen said. “But I see how you might come to that conclusion.”
Jacen laid his hand on Ben’s shoulder again, and the Force came flooding back in a shocking, painful torrent. He sensed a dozen things at once—his aunt Leia searching for him in the Force, filled with pain and shock and sympathy; his cousin Jaina, down on Kashyyyk, full of sorrow and apology and—now that she sensed him aboard the Anakin Solo—confusion; Saba Sebatyne and the other Masters relieved by his sudden return to the Force. And they were all reeling, bewildered and concerned because he was aboard Jacen’s ship.
But mostly, Ben sensed his father—a small, tight presence a deck or two above. He was skulking through the substructures below one of the long-range turbolaser turrets, and he seemed as surprised as everyone else by where Ben had turned up. But there was also a note of reassurance, a promise that he would soon be there to help.
At first, Ben couldn’t understand why Leia and Jaina and everyone else still seemed so sad—then it hit him: They couldn’t feel his father’s presence. Ben was the only one whom his dad was allowing to sense him through the Force. Not even Jacen had that kind of control.
“Neat trick.”
Ben didn’t realize he’d said
this aloud until Jacen scowled.
“It’s no trick, Ben. Even I’m not good enough to project emotions into other Force-users,” Jacen said. “You’re sensing the same thing I am. Everyone knows what happened.”
“And that’s why you think Dad is dead?” Ben asked cautiously. “Just because everyone thinks so?”
“I know because I felt him die,” Jacen said. “I’m glad I was able to spare you that particular anguish. It would have done nothing to make you stronger.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Ben said flatly. Now that he was alert to it, he could sense how tightly his father was holding his presence. Even Ben felt only half connected to him, as if he were holding hands with a ghost or something. “How long ago did all this happen?”
Jacen smiled. “You know I’m not going to tell you that.”
Ben cocked his head in acknowledgment. “It was worth a shot.” He was trying to figure out why his father had sneaked aboard the Anakin Solo—it had to involve more than just taking out the long-range turbolasers. With Jaina along, they could have destroyed all four in a single pass and still had two shadow bombs left. “It’s been about a day. Everybody’s still in shock, but they’ve had time to start worrying about me.”
“It appears their concerns are misplaced. Your thinking is remarkably clear.” Jacen glanced at the Embrace, then added, “All things considered, of course.”
The smirk in Jacen’s voice made Ben want to kill him, and he finally realized his father had probably sneaked aboard to do the same thing. It didn’t seem right. The responsibility was Ben’s alone. He had gotten his mother killed by telling only her about Lumiya. If he had owned up to his mistake publicly—if he’d had the courage to tell his father and the rest of the Council Masters what he had seen—then his mother would never have gone after Jacen alone. The Masters wouldn’t have let her, and she would be alive right now and Jacen would be dead, and the galaxy would probably be at peace.
“It’s okay to hate me,” Jacen said, apparently sensing the drift of Ben’s thoughts. “But you mustn’t be controlled by it. You must make your hate serve you.”
Ben summoned a laugh, managing to sound bitter if not natural. “I don’t hate you, Jacen. I pity you.”
Jacen scowled. “I don’t appear to be the one in need of pity, Ben.”
“You will be,” Ben said. “Dad’s not dead. He’s coming for you.”
Jacen’s scowl vanished. “You’re not holding up as well as I thought.” He patted Ben’s arm. “Stop fighting it, and the hallucinations will pass.”
A sudden rumble shook the cabin, and the muffled squeal of twisting metal began to weep down from many decks above. An alarm siren blared to life out in the hanger; then a series of muted thuds sounded somewhere overhead as a chain of bulkhead doors slammed down.
Jacen was on his comlink instantly, demanding an explanation from his aide Orlopp. Ben caught a snippet of the Jenet’s reply, something about cooling coils and a catastrophic failure of the number two long-range turbolaser.
“Stop the barrage and inspect the cooling coils of the other batteries,” Jacen ordered into the comlink. “Keep me informed.”
Ben waited until Jacen had closed the channel, then asked, “Still think I’m having hallucinations?”
Jacen glanced up at the ceiling, and Ben could feel him reaching out in the Force, actively searching for Luke—or any other saboteur. Finally, he shook his head and returned his attention to his captive.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “I don’t feel any Jedi presence at all, and if I don’t, then neither do you—nothing real, anyway.”
“That’s because he doesn’t want you to feel him.” Ben said. He sensed his father very near now, on the same deck and moving fast. “But he’s here.”
“And I suppose you’ll help me find him if I let you go?” Jacen scoffed. “Nice try.”
Ben glimpsed a dark figure stepping into the doorway. “I don’t think you’ll need any help finding him, Jacen. Dad’s right behind you.”
It had to be a bad dream, Ben sitting there in that over-grown bramble, swaddled in thorn-studded vines, his skin flaking away in purple scales, his eyes burning with a pain-mad gleam. Luke had to be imagining this. Not even Jacen would use the Embrace on his own cousin.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Ben.” Still facing Ben, Jacen laughed and threw his hands up in mock terror. “ ‘Look! Behind you!’ That ruse was old when the stars were young.”
Ben shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”
“It might be, if I were naïve enough to let you summon that.”
Jacen pointed at a vibrodagger lying on the deck, about two meters in front of Ben. Luke didn’t know what it was doing there—whether Ben had attacked Jacen with it, or whether Jacen had been using it on Ben—but he started to accept that the horrible scene was real. He was, in fact, standing in the doorway of a secret cabin filled with Yuuzhan Vong torture devices, watching his twisted nephew taunt his captive son.
Luke didn’t give Jacen a chance to surrender. He just sprang.
Ben’s jaw dropped, and Jacen started to spin, snatching his lightsaber from his belt and igniting it in the same motion, bringing the emerald blade around high to protect his heart and head.
But Luke was attacking low, striking for the kidney to disable in the most painful way possible. Jacen’s eyes widened. He flipped his lightsaber down in the same moment Luke’s met flesh.
The tip sank a few centimeters, drawing a pained hiss as it touched a kidney, then Jacen’s blade made contact and knocked it aside. Even that small wound would have left most humans paralyzed with agony. But Jacen thrived on pain, fed on it to make himself stronger and faster. He simply completed his pivot and landed a rib-crunching round-house.
Luke stumbled back, his chest filled with fire. Jacen had caught him on the barely healed scar from his first fight with Lumiya, and now his breath was coming in short painful gasps.
Good, Luke thought. This was supposed to hurt.
Jacen followed the kick with a high slash. Luke blocked and spun inside, landing an elbow smash to the temple that dropped Jacen to his knees. He brought his own knee up under Jacen’s chin, hearing teeth crack—and relishing it. He parried a weak slash at his thighs, then drew his blade up diagonally where his nephew’s chest should have been.
Except Jacen was sliding backward, one hand extended behind him, using the Force to pull himself toward a tendril-draped rack in the far corner of the torture chamber. Luke leapt after him, bringing his lightsaber around in a low, clearing sweep.
Jacen stopped pulling and started to swing his free hand around. Luke was ready, had been expecting this since the fight started. Still flying through the air, he raised his own hand, palm outward, and pushed the Force out through his arm to form a protective shield.
The lightning never came. Instead, Luke was blindsided by something heavy and spiky, and his body exploded into pain as he slammed into a durasteel wall. He found himself pinned in place, trapped by a bed of thorns Jacen had hurled across the cabin. He felt the hot sting of the thorns pumping their venom into him. His hearing faded and his head began to spin, and he saw Jacen, one hand still raised to keep Luke pinned, sneering and taking his time rising.
Bad mistake.
Luke raised his lightsaber, slashing through the thorn bed as he sprang. Jacen scrambled to his feet, barely bringing his weapon up in time to block a vicious downstroke. Luke landed a snap-kick to the stomach that lifted Jacen a meter off the deck, then followed it with a slash to the neck—
—which Jacen ducked. He came up under Luke’s guard, holding his weapon with one hand and driving a Force-enhanced punch into Luke’s ribs with the other, striking for the same place he had kicked earlier. Luke’s chest exploded into pain, and he found himself croaking instead of breathing.
Luke struck again with his lightsaber, using both hands and putting all his strength into the attack, beating his nephew’s guard down so far that Jacen’s emerald blad
e bit into his own shoulder. Jacen kicked at Luke’s legs, catching the side of a knee. Something popped and Luke felt himself going down. On the way, he swept his blade horizontally.
Jacen screamed, and the smell of scorched bone and singed hair filled the air. Knowing Jacen would strike despite the wound, Luke rolled over his throbbing knee and spun back to his feet with a clearing sweep.
His blade met Jacen’s in a shower of brilliant sparks. Luke freed one hand and drove a finger-strike at Jacen’s eyes.
Jacen turned his head, but Luke’s little finger scratched across something soft and bulbous. Jacen roared and stumbled away, shaking his head. Luke feinted a dash toward his nephew’s blind side, then—as Jacen pivoted to protect his injured eye—Luke hit him with a Force wave.
Jacen went flying, and it required only a soft nudge to steer him into a tendril-draped rack in the far corner. He hit with so much cracking and crashing that Luke worried the rack had broken, but the thin tendrils quickly entwined Jacen in a net of pulsing green.
Luke started forward, his injured knee buckling each time he put weight on it. The rack’s slender tendrils were tightening around Jacen, cutting into his flesh and oozing a yellowish irritant that made skin puff up and split. Jacen began to slash his lightsaber up and down, cutting the vines away two and three at a time. If Luke wanted to finish this—and it seemed like a good idea, given how battered he was himself—he had only a few seconds.
Luke closed to within two meters without saying a word. What point would there have been? Jacen wasn’t going to surrender, and Luke wouldn’t have believed him if he offered. It was better to attack quickly, while he still had the advantage. He brought his lightsaber up to strike.
“Wait!” Ben cried from behind him. “Let me do it!”
Astonished and appalled, Luke put a little too much weight on his injured knee—and fell as it buckled. He rolled beyond the reach of Jacen’s lightsaber and looked back across the chamber. Ben was still strapped in the Embrace, but he had summoned the vibrodagger off the floor and was battling to cut himself free of the chair’s lashing tentacles.
