Caedus regarded her. “Who allowed the shuttle to land?”
“I did, sir. It broadcast all correct identification and passwords.”
“It was full of assassins, saboteurs, and criminals, and yet you allowed it to land.”
She fidgeted under his gaze. “Yes, sir. I was following security protocols.”
“Do the protocols say for you to allow assassins, saboteurs, and criminals aboard?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you were not following security protocols. You did not follow security protocols, and because of it many people have died, and I could not coordinate our attack on Centerpoint Station, and this mission is a failure. Correct?”
Her next words were quiet and halting, as though she were giving directions in a language she did not speak very well. “Sir, anyone in my position would have done exactly the same. This is what the protocols are for. To define responses and procedures. I believe my actions were correct, under the known circumstances—”
Caedus gestured, raising a hand, and under his exertion of power Tebut floated up in the air, putting her slightly above his level. Her eyes grew wide. “Sir…”
Caedus closed his hand into a fist. Now no more words came from her, just pained gasps. She grasped with increasing desperation at a choking hand that just was not there.
He continued, his voice still level, controlled. “Lieutenant, we can’t have that. Gross incompetence. Gross insubordination. The deliberate contravention of orders and top-level plans. Nor can we let it go unpunished. Can we?”
Captain Nevil approached. “Sir, this is not the time or the way—”
Not looking at the Quarren, Caedus gestured with his free hand and Nevil was suddenly flying backward, skidding across the raised walkway, fetching up against the blast doors through which the Skywalkers had so recently left.
Amazingly, Tebut was still trying to talk. “Sir…can’t…loyal…”
“Loyal?” The word exploded out of Caedus, raising his voice a screechy octave. “How dare you use that word? You may not say that word ever again. Loyal officers do not betray their command, their comrades, their oaths!” His outrage turned everything he saw a reddish hue, even Tebut’s face.
And there was only one way to restore everything to its proper color. He tightened his grip.
The sound of Tebut’s neck breaking was startlingly loud over the hum of the bridge’s monitors and computer gear.
Caedus dashed his hand down. Tebut’s body slammed to the deck plates below her. More bones snapped. She lay behind her security station, bent at an odd sideways angle at the waist, her eyes fixed open, staring at the ceiling.
Caedus breathed out all his rage. Colors returned to vibrant normalcy.
He turned and walked toward the stern. As he passed Nevil, still lying where Caedus had thrown him, he said, “I’ll be in my quarters.”
Nevil stared at him with—what? Fear? Anger? Obsequious acceptance? Caedus couldn’t tell. The fishy folk were so hard to read, Mon Cals and Quarren alike. He didn’t like them anymore.
chapter thirty-eight
REFUELING STATION, GYNDINE SYSTEM
The Rakehells, the Broadside, and the Millennium Falcon put in at an abandoned repair and refueling satellite. It orbited the world of Gyndine, burned and ruined by the Yuuzhan Vong during the war named for them. Owned by Tendrando—the corporation headed by Lando Calrissian and his wife, Tendra Risant—it had been decommissioned and shut down, but Han and Leia still carried the codes that would open its air locks, reactivate its life-support systems.
There they swapped personnel around, putting everyone bound for Endor on the Broadside, giving the X-wing pilots a brief respite.
In the Millennium Falcon’s main hold, which had mostly served as a crew lounge for most of the years Han had owned the freighter, Leia and Han sat Allana down on a sofa and bent to face her more at eye level.
“We’re going to take you back to Hapes now,” Leia said. Seeing Allana up close for so long, it was hard for her to concentrate. The little girl was so familiar, staring up at her with eyes Leia knew so well.
The realization of where she knew Allana from was like rising from a pool after too long underwater. Suddenly Leia could breathe again, could think again. Allana had Tenel Ka’s coloration—the fair skin, red hair, gray eyes—but her face, her expressions, her lively intelligence, were so like his when he was a child, before Yuuzhan Vong and voxyn and Vergere and who-knows-what twisted all the happiness out of his life. Leia found she could not speak.
But Allana wiggled, happy. “You’re Leia Organa Solo.”
Leia nodded, mute.
“You’re Jacen’s mommy.”
Leia nodded again.
“He’s my daddy.”
Finally Leia found her voice again. “I know,” she whispered.
She knelt and pulled Allana to her in an embrace. She stood with the little girl in her arms. “I’m your grandmother.”
She turned to face Han. His face was frozen in surprise.
Leia saw his mouth work as he tried to find the perfect quip for the situation. But there was none. His expression softened, and he merely patted the little girl’s arm, a clumsy gesture of affection. “Hi, sweetie. I’m your grandfather.”
SANCTUARY MOON OF ENDOR, DEATH STAR WRECKAGE
Jaina found Jag lying on a blanket near the edge of the wreckage shadow, watching the huge reddish ball of Endor as it began to sink below the horizon of trees. She sat beside him, allowing herself a moment to appreciate the beauty of the view.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Now?”
“No, but soon. A few hours, a few days.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
He grinned. “I recommend you figure that out before you leave.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” She shook her head. “Alema’s dead. Jacen’s next.”
“Just about everyone I know plans to be the one to confront Jacen Solo. Grand Master Skywalker, Ben Skywalker, half the Jedi Knights, all the Jedi Masters…every pilot I know plans to be there in a starfighter the next time he’s in one. So I suggest you get in line.”
“If it is someone else, I won’t complain. But if it has to be me, I want to be ready. You showed me I wasn’t.” She took a moment to consider her words. “I’m his twin. I have as much power as he does…potentially. But he’s had training I haven’t. I need to counter it with training he hasn’t had. And the sort of ingenuity you showed me.”
He watched her in the deepening shadows. “I’ll give you whatever help I can. But I think Alema was just about my match. Jacen…he’s far more dangerous.”
“I know. But I wanted you to understand that you have helped me. Helped me get this far. I just have to get farther. And that means going away.”
He nodded. “Just remember who you are. That should mean everything to you. And remember that it means nothing to Jacen anymore. He’s already shown that he cares nothing for the families of those he tortures and kills.”
“Those he tortures and kills.” Jaina froze as something occurred to her. “Those he tortures and kills…”
“What is it?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head, almost unaware of Jag, as the thought took hold. “I can’t.”
“You can’t what?”
She looked at him, hoping that something in his expression or words might tell her why her idea was wrong, bad.
But it wasn’t. It was the only answer. It was inevitable.
She rose. “I have to go.”
“I know; you said that.”
“But now I know where. I need to make some preparations. Don’t worry: I’ll say good-bye before I leave.”
She turned away from his baffled expression and headed back to the outpost. Toward her mission. Toward an act of last resort.
Toward her teacher.
Read on for a preview of Karen Traviss’s
REVELATION
The eighth novel
in the thrilling new Star Wars epic!
JEDI OUTPOST, ENDOR: TWELVE WEEKS AFTER THE DEATH OF MARA JADE SKYWALKER
My brother died in the Yuuzhan Vong War.
Not Anakin: Jacen.
It’s taken me years to work that out, but I should have seen it from the start. Jacen, the brother I loved, my twin, never came home. It just looked as if he did.
I think the core of Jacen probably died in the Embrace of Pain, at the hands of Vergere and the Yuuzhan Vong. Whatever came back was another person; a total stranger.
It’s the only explanation for what he’s become.
So that’s why I’ve reached the point of doing something utterly unthinkable, because the unthinkable is the last card we have left to play, the only way I can stop Jacen and his war from swallowing the whole galaxy. It was the Mandalorian crushgaunts that made up my mind. As Jag has proven, they certainly work. They’re nasty weapons. Mandalorian iron—beskar—is pretty well nearly lightsaber-proof.
I almost expected the things to detonate when Dad opened the package. Since when did Boba Fett ever send my father gifts?
Since his daughter was tortured to death by my brother, actually. We’ve been waiting for Fett’s revenge ever since, but so far…nothing. Just the gift of crushgaunts and armor plate, all made from Mandalorian iron.
So I’m packing for a journey I didn’t think I’d ever make. I’ll give Jag this much: he never said I told you so. He’s the one who said I needed to learn from someone who had a track record in bringing down Jedi.
If anyone can stop Jacen, then, it’s me. I’m his equal, and I’m the Sword of the Jedi. But I just don’t have his…training. I’ve no idea what he learned from Lumiya, let alone what he picked up on his travels during those five years. But he’ll make a mistake sooner or later. He’s way too cocky not to overestimate himself.
I just hope it’s sooner. And if being a Sith made Jacen invincible, he’d have taken over the galaxy by now.
I have a chance, and Fett’s going to help me make the most of it.
It can’t be that hard to find him. He’s a bounty hunter, so I’ll hire him like any other client, except I’m not just any other client—I’m Han Solo’s daughter, and I’m a Jedi, and Fett has spent a lifetime hunting us.
And now I’m asking him to train me to hunt and capture my own brother.
For all I know, he’ll laugh in my face—if he ever laughs, that is—and tell me to get losr. But I have to ask him. Swallow pride, eat humble pie, and beg if need be. Dad seems to have thawed a little toward him; I still despise him.
But if he says yes—I swear I’ll be the best pupil he’s ever had. Come on, Fett: show me how it’s done.
When the nation is in its darkest peril, the great warrior-sailor Darakaer shall be summoned from his eternal sleep by a rhythm beaten on his ancient drum. For his final pledge was that he would come to our aid when the drum sounded, and that we should call him when we sailed to meet the foe.
—Irmenu folk legend
JEDI OUTPOST, ENDOR: TWELVE WEEKS AFTER THE DEATH OF MARA JADE SKYWALKER
Ben Skywalker had thought it would be a simple matter of thumbing his lightsaber to life—screaming vengeance or choked into silent grief, he didn’t care which—and slicing Jacen Solo’s head from his body.
He sat flicking the blade on and off, staring down the shaft of blue energy and watching it vanish only to snap back into vivid life over and over again. He saw his mother, who couldn’t be summoned back again at the flick of a switch, although he would have given the rest of his life for one more chance to tell her how much he loved her.
But the image that he wanted to erase yet couldn’t was Jacen Solo’s face. So many people said Jacen was a stranger now, but a stranger was someone you never loved or looked up to, and so their brutality or careless cruelty was just repellent detail, the distant stuff of holonews bulletins. Family, though…family could hurt you like nobody else, and they didn’t even have to torture you like Jacen did to leave scars.
The face of Jacen that Ben would recall until the day he died was the one he saw on Kavan while he sat with his mother’s body, the face that promised Ben they’d get whoever did that to her. And that was why it simply would not go away; there was something wrong about that face, something missing, or something there that shouldn’t have been. Ben picked away at the memory, checking his chrono every few minutes, convinced that he’d been waiting for Aunt Leia for hours.
I had the chance to kill him. Dad stopped me. Maybe…maybe I could have killed Jacen without turning dark. Will I ever get another chance?
Jedi had killed Sith before. They said Qui-Gon Jinn killed a Sith on Naboo, but nobody thought it was an instant passport to the dark side, because dirty jobs had to be done. Ben had thought his absolute, all-consuming need to destroy Jacen had passed; but it hadn’t, and neither had his grief. It had simply shifted position. It ebbed and flowed, some days worse than others. He would not get over it. He would learn to live with loss—somehow—but the galaxy had changed and would never return to normal; it was an alternate universe, nearly familiar enough for him to navigate, but where the most important landmarks were gone forever.
Now he was ready to pour his heart out to Leia. There were some things he wasn’t ready to tell his father; Luke Skywalker might have looked as if he was dealing with his grief, but Ben knew better, and if he told him what he really thought…Dad would kill Jacen, he was sure of it. He’d snap. Ben had to be the responsible one now.
But if I’m wrong…I’ll only hurt Dad more.
Nothing added up.
I don’t believe Alema killed Mom, Sith sphere or not. I just don’t.
How did Jacen know where to find me on Kavan?
How did he know I was there with my mother’s body?
Ben had thought it was odd at the time, even when the shock of finding her body had nearly paralyzed him. But even in shock, he’d had the presence of mind to record evidence at the scene, every bit of data he could grab, just as Captain Shevu had taught him. Jacen had mind-rubbed him once: he wasn’t going to let him rewrite history again.
And that was my instinctive reaction. Even when I found Mom dead…something inside me said that was important. I’ll trust that.
Jedi would have said it was the certainty of the Force; cops like Captain Shevu would have said that Ben’s investigative training had kicked in. Either way, Ben had more questions than he had answers. But he was more sure each passing day that Jacen, his own cousin, his own flesh and blood, really had killed his mother.
He waited.
Eventually he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the passage, and had a sinking feeling that Luke might have met Leia in passing and decided to tag along. But when the doors opened, it was Leia and Jaina.
“Ben?” Leia always had that calming tone that said everything was under control, even when it wasn’t. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got some difficult things to say,” he said. “You might not thank me, but I can’t sit on it any longer.”
The accusation was meant solely for Leia, and for a moment he was reluctant to blurt it out in front of Jaina as well. But she needed to hear it.
“You know you can tell me anything,” Leia said. “Do you want Jaina to leave us alone?”
“No, no. As long as you don’t rush off and tell Dad, because he thinks I’m over the Jacen thing now, and I don’t want to start him worrying again.”
Jaina sat down next to him, leaning forward, as if she was ready to hug him if he burst into tears. “It’s okay. I won’t say a word, and Mom’s the diplomat. What’s so bad that you can’t tell Uncle Luke?”
Cut to the chase. The longer he built up to it, the worse it would be. Ben concentrated on calm, rational language.
“I don’t think Alema Rar killed my mother,” he said. The words hung in the air as if he could see them. “I still think Jacen did.”
Leia just stood there, arms folded, but she didn’t react. Jaina shifte
d a fraction on the seat. If anything, they seemed…embarrassed. He waited in the agonizing silence.
“What makes you think that?” Leia asked at last.
“I’m not going to rely on what I feel,” Ben said. “Even though I feel it. I’m going by things that don’t add up. You know what police look for? Captain Shevu taught me. Motive, means, opportunity. And family doesn’t seem to mean much to Jacen. Look at the things he’s done to you and Uncle Han.” Ben recalled Jaina’s sudden exit from the Galactic Alliance military. “And you, Jaina. Look what he tried to do to you.”
“I know Jacen’s doing some terrible things, but let’s go through this a step at a time,” Leia said. “You’ve accused him before, but we’re all pretty messed up lately. Why is this still eating at you?”
“The way he found me on Kavan.”
“He’s good at finding people in the Force, Ben.”
“I was hiding. Doing my shutdown act. He’s not the only Jedi who can do that—he taught me to do it, and I taught Mom. I’ve even shown Dad how to do it, and he’ll tell you—once you switch out, even Master Amazing Super-Smart Jacen shouldn’t have been able to find me. And he still walked straight up to me in a tunnel on a deserted planet that’s the back end of beyond. That’s not luck, and it’s not finding me in the Force. He knew. And then there was the Sith meditation sphere that Lumiya had.”
He’d kept it to himself all this time. The longer you kept a secret, the harder it got. If only he’d disobeyed Jacen and told Dad about the thing. If only…maybe Mom would have still been alive.
Ben would never know.
“What about the sphere?” said Jaina.
“I found it on Ziost. I handed it over to Jacen when I docked it in the Anakin Solo. Next time I see it, Lumiya’s driving.”
Leia sucked in a little breath. “Lumiya was adept at taking what she wanted.”
“The Anakin Solo might be slack when it comes to stopping infiltrators, Aunt Leia, but I can’t see Lumiya just wandering in and stealing the sphere without someone knowing about it.”
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Fury Page 30
