“Lumiya, if I lobby for this, it’s going to look like a weakness they can exploit.”
“You don’t have to, not yet. Let me shape opinion.”
“Influence the Jedi council? Oh, come on now …”
“You have allies there apart from Mara Skywalker. Let me plant the idea in a few places—outside the council, of course. Ideas take on a life of their own.”
“Like Admiral Niathal’s.”
“She already had ambitions. She merely needed not to be ashamed of being bold.”
“Is there anyone else you’ve influenced to act?”
“I haven’t had to influence much. This is a galaxy in search of order.”
Jacen needed to ground himself again. Attractive as Lumiya’s reassurance was, he trusted his own feelings most. He would go back to the Jedi Temple tonight and see for himself—hear for himself, feel for himself—what was true and not true.
And he would risk time-walking to his grandfather’s day again. He had to face it.
“You’ll be ready to understand what your final passage must be very soon,” said Lumiya. “I know it.”
“So do I,” said Jacen, and clapped his hands together once in a burst of Force energy. The beautiful blue underwater illusion vanished like shattering ice on a pond, and he was back in his sparse apartment again with a bag to pack and a war to win.
SKYWALKERS’ APARTMENT, GALACTIC CITY.
The apartment doors opened before Ben could press the entry key. Luke felt him coming, a turmoil of emotions in the Force.
Is that what I do to him? Is he that scared of me? I think I preferred it when he just ignored everything I said.
“No need to look so scared,” said Mara. She took Ben’s shoulder and steered him into the living room. “We’re just worried about you, that’s all.”
She sat him down and gave Luke a warning glance as he walked into the room to attempt to pull his son back from the brink. Ben was still wearing his black fatigues, which were actually no more than the standard special forces uniform but somehow looked a great deal more sinister. He certainly didn’t look like a Jedi.
You tried to force him to be what he didn’t want to be. This is what happens.
“Are you okay, Ben?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“I’m not angry with you.” Luke pulled up a chair. “But we see the kind of things Jacen is doing lately and we wonder if you should be part of it.”
Ben just stared back at him. Luke had seen that expression on children’s faces before, but they had been refugees, children from war zones who’d had to grow up faster than was reasonable or decent and who never went back to being carefree kids again.
“I’m learning a lot,” said Ben.
“I’m not sure if it’s the kind of thing you ought to be learning.”
“Why, sir?”
Ben had always called him Dad. Suddenly he had become sir. Luke caught Mara’s reaction, a little mental flinch beneath the reassuring smile that seemed set in place.
“It’s violent, Ben.”
Ben swallowed. “Jedi do violent things. We fly starfighters with laser cannons. We use lightsabers. How many people did you kill when you fought the Empire?”
Luke was stopped in his tracks. He found himself forming the words, “But they were all …”
All what? All evil? All people who didn’t matter? Most of them had just been swept up on the wrong side—soldiers, pilots, people in uniform, even civilians, just cannon fodder—and it had been easy to see the good guys and the bad guys back then. Now he couldn’t put his hand on his heart and say that he truly believed he had killed only evil men.
“I killed a lot of people,” Luke said.
“And so did I,” said Mara pointedly. “And I was on the other side.”
Ben looked as if he was measuring his words. He’d acquired a little gesture—a habit of looking down at the floor, chin on his chest, and pursing his lips—that was pure Jacen. “But I haven’t killed anyone. I know I’ve saved a couple of lives in the last few weeks. Just because it looks bad, it doesn’t mean it is bad.”
Luke had no answer. His gut instinct and his recurring dream of the hooded figure had not changed one bit, but his intellect was saying something else. It was whispering hypocrite. Mara caught his eye.
“Ben, how would you feel if I asked you to go to the academy for a while?” Luke asked.
“Now?”
Luke had expected an instant eruption of indignation, not merely a one-word question. “I’d thought that, yes.”
Ben looked down again, an echo of Jacen. “Are you going to make me?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Then I’d like to carry on with the Guard a bit longer. There are things I need to understand before I study again. Things I can’t work out at any academy.”
Luke’s Force-sense told him that Ben meant exactly what he was saying. He wasn’t playing for time or manipulating the situation.
“Okay, son,” said Luke. “We’ll talk about it later.”
They had a meal together, their first as a family in what seemed like a long time, and for a while Luke could almost pretend that nothing was wrong. Ben got ready to leave.
“Could we spend some more time together when all this stuff has calmed down?” Ben asked.
It was the assumption of an innocent child that the situation would resolve itself in a time scale he could imagine: days, weeks, months. Luke wished it were true.
“That would be great,” he said.
When Ben had gone, Luke waited for Mara’s reaction. It took a while.
“Now look me in the eye and tell me that Jacen is corrupting Ben,” she said.
“I never used that word.”
“You didn’t tell him you wanted him to stay away from Jacen, either.”
“Okay, Ben has grown up very, very fast.”
“And he’s making sense. Nobody’s ever asked that question before.”
“What?”
“How we can justify what we’ve both done in the past. It’s easy for me to look back and know what I did, but what about you? Ben’s got a point.”
“You’re remarkably tolerant these days,” said Luke.
“I’m a lot older now, and I’m more concerned about my own family than the galaxy’s problems,” said Mara. “It knocks the edges off a girl.”
For a moment Luke wanted to believe that he’d overreacted to Ben and Jacen, and that Mara was right. His mind said that what he saw on the surface was true. But his gut said otherwise. It said that what he saw in his dreams was more real than his waking hours.
“I’m glad we could sort that without having a fight and Ben storming out,” said Mara.
Everyone believed what they wanted to believe. If it hadn’t been for that echo of Lumiya—and he couldn’t have been mistaken about that—then Luke would have believed it, too.
KEBEN PARK, CORONET, CORELLIA.
He’s going to have your wife and kids killed. That’s all you need to know.
Han Solo wasn’t one of life’s natural-born killers and he knew it. For all the times he had fantasized about killing his cousin Thrackan, from his teenage years right up to a few hours ago, he now wondered if he could actually aim a blaster at him in cold blood and pull the trigger.
The man deserved it. But that didn’t mean Han could do it.
He was going to try, though. Jacen might have intercepted Ailyn Habuur, but there was another potential assassin out there, this woman Gev. And if there wasn’t, then Thrackan would just keep coming anyway, year after year. He’d blighted Han’s life for as long as he could remember.
The plans that Gejjen had given Han were the public kind that any Corellian taxpayer could examine in the public library. The itinerary of the President could change, too, so that meant Han would have to do some serious recce work before he felt confident about taking a shot. For a scumbag, Thrackan didn’t seem to surround himself with the massive security typical of most paranoid tin
-pot despots. But maybe he thought people loved him as much as he loved himself, and seeing as he had been voted back into power yet again after a career of sleaze and treachery that would have embarrassed a Hutt, he was probably right.
Han found a good vantage point in the park overlooking the government offices and Presidential residence. The G.O., as Corellians now called it, was one large complex, a tasteful little village of colonnaded low-rise buildings in the classical style set in well-kept formal gardens. The park around it sloped gently up an artificial hill that provided a safe gradient for board-skiing when it snowed. Han found a seat at the top of the hill and took out some breadsticks to chew on, every bit the regular man having his lunch in the park. He even fed the gliders that gathered to watch for crumbs.
I’ll need to get him in a confined space. I’m not a sniper.
Han wondered if he should have put aside old feuds and hired Fett after all. At least he’d have known the job would be done right.
Okay, he has his regular weekly press conference today, which means he has to be in his office either side of that slot. A nice grenade launcher. No, he’ll have staff with him. It’s not their fault their boss is a scumbag.
Whatever it was going to take to eliminate Thrackan, it was going to have to be close, personal, and point-blank. And then there was the matter of getting out again.
Han broke off a piece of breadstick and rubbed it into crumbs between his fingers before scattering it on the grass in front of him for the gliders. They descended in a flurry of wings. Okay, maybe take him while he’s in transit: but that means a sniper shot, too. Or a drive-by. Or a … no, this is all going to suck in innocent bystanders. I have to get him alone in his office.
If Fett did this for a living, then Han understood why he wasn’t the sociable type.
The gliders flew up in a sudden spiral like one animal and left him staring at a snowfall of crumbs. He finished the bread and walked down the hill, working out when the next public guided tour of the building would give him a chance to get inside and look around.
If I take Thrackan out and get clear of the building, will Gejjen turn me in?
No, this bounty-hunting business wasn’t like fighting as a soldier at all. Han strolled through an avenue of trees that led past a construction site for a new sports stadium; work had ceased. There must have been plenty of places that were running short of materials now that the traffic between the orbital factories and the surface had been largely stopped. When Thrackan was done and dusted, he thought, that could be his new job. He was great at running blockades. He could teach these kids a thing or two.
Han was just wondering if Leia had managed to get hold of Jaina by comlink when he heard a sharp hiss like a jet and felt as if someone had run up behind him.
He spun around and was face-to-face with a Mandalorian visor that he knew far, far too well.
“Long time no see,” said Boba Fett, and Han went for his blaster without thinking.
Fett brought Han down with a forearm smash under the chin and sent him sprawling. Han tasted blood in his mouth and his head rang so hard he was convinced the sound was real and external. Getting hit by an armor plate was a lot harder to bounce back from than a bare fist.
He shook his head to clear it and propped himself up on one arm. He was now staring into the sawn-off muzzle of an EE-3 blaster.
“Every time I see you, that thing’s had a few more gizmos added,” said Han.
“You make it sound like I pursue you.”
“You do.”
“Your glory days are long over, Solo.” Fett encouraged him to get up with a jab from his boot, blaster still aimed, and picked up Han’s where it had fallen. “Nobody’s put a decent price on your head for years. I’m after someone who matters.”
“Funny, I thought you’d taken Thrackan’s contract.”
“Shut up and give your ego a rest.”
“What are you here for, then?”
“Sightseeing. You want an audience?” Fett shoved him into the chaos of bricks and durasteel that lay where it had been left and toward a site office, one of those temporary cabins that could get up and walk to a new position on their own repulsors. Fett bypassed the lock with something on his gauntlet and waved Han inside with his blaster.
“So what can I do for you?” Han asked, settling on a chair covered in permacrete dust. “Need another carbonite caf table for your Hutt buddies?”
“If I’d wanted you dead, I could have looked the other way when you had that spot of trouble with the Vong.” He still hadn’t holstered his blaster. “I need you as bait.”
“Terrific.”
“No risk to you.”
“It’s the word bait I tend to notice.”
“My daughter accepted Sal-Solo’s contract on your family. I shouldn’t get in a fellow bounty hunter’s way, but I need to find her and you’re the best way to do it.”
“Can’t you call her like a regular father?”
“She’s sworn to kill me.”
“She’s a chip off the old block for sure.”
“So I’m going to sit on you until she shows up. You can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
“I remember your easy way.”
“You can do it dead if that’s easier.”
“You must want to see her real bad.”
Fett perched in the edge of a desk between Han and the door, one boot on the seat of a chair. He glanced toward the door as if waiting for someone to show up. Han calculated whether he’d be able to charge whoever came in and make a run for it before Fett fired, and he realized he couldn’t. Then he heard rapid footsteps—too light for a man—and wondered if Leia was going to rescue him again. Her timing was usually great.
But it wasn’t Leia.
A very young girl with short brown hair, cold dark eyes, and an earnest, humorless face ducked into the cabin and closed the doors. She was wearing armor; not a full set like Fett, but armor all the same, and that meant another bounty hunter.
“She’s still not answering,” said the girl. She stared at a comlink in her hand as if willing it to melt. “If she doesn’t know Solo’s here, she won’t come.”
“You don’t usually work in a team.” Han was getting worried now. Fett doing things that were out of character scared him more than the alternative. “You need hired help these days?”
“This isn’t a team,” said Fett. “This is an arrangement.”
“Okay, if I help you out, what’s in it for me?”
“What do you want?”
It was worth a try. Fett was the master at this kind of thing. “Help me assassinate Thrackan Sal-Solo.”
Han could have sworn Fett actually sighed. “Too late. One of his political rivals already booked me to do the job.”
“Well, that’s just great. Who? No, let me guess. Nice young man with dark hair? Dur Gejjen?”
“Might be.”
“He gave me a few tips on how to whack Thrackan, too. Looks like he isn’t sure I can do the job.”
The girl stared at Han as if she’d have to clean him off her boots sooner or later. “Can you?”
“It’s not as easy as it looks, is it?”
“It is,” said Fett. “Now, about my daughter.”
Han thought of Jacen’s comlink message, which he had read several times but not answered. Bounty hunting was a small world. He took a chance. “Is your daughter called Mirta Gev by any chance?”
The girl’s hand went to her blaster as she fixed Han with an unblinking stare. “I’m Mirta Gev, Granddad.”
So this was it. It was Fett’s double cross after all. He was working for Thrackan. Han decided to go for it. “Just my kriffing luck—”
He exploded out of the chair, head down, and charged the girl. She was a lot heavier than she looked and that armor plate on her chest really hurt, but nowhere near as much as the stock of Fett’s blaster against the back of his head. He fell on all fours and the girl brought her knee up in his face just as he pit
ched forward. That hurt a lot, too.
“Solo, you forgot a few things since we last met.” Fett hauled him to his feet and shoved him back in the chair. “Don’t take on two bounty hunters at once. Now, how come you know Mirta’s name?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because I’m going to kill your sleazebag cousin. Show some gratitude.”
Fett meant it. Han couldn’t work out what was going on, except he wasn’t dead yet, and Fett wasn’t the man to indulge in long gloating speeches before he claimed his bounty.
“My son says they picked up a hitwoman in Galactic City called Ailyn Habuur and that—”
“Osik!” the girl hissed. Her face was instantly white and shocked.
“—and if you’re Mirta Gev, then you two might both be after me and my family.”
“I’m not hunting you, old man.” Mirta was upset: that was clear. “I was looking for Habuur.” She took a breath. “I recovered some items for her.”
“She must owe you plenty, judging by the look on your face,” said Han. He looked at Fett, but a man with a helmet betrayed nothing. He was just very still.
“Ailyn’s my daughter,” he said quietly, in a voice that sounded as if it belonged to a totally different man. “Real name’s Ailyn Vel. So your son’s got her, has he? I think I know the kind of job he does.”
“She was cannoned up and ready to kill me, pal.”
“I need to see her.”
“Well, let me go and sort Thrackan and I’ll put in a good word for you with my boy. Maybe he can arrange visiting rights.”
“And maybe I’ll tell your boy that he can pick his dad up in a body bag if he lays a finger on my daughter. Maybe I’ll finish the job for her, because you’re no use to me as bait now.”
Mirta was staring at Fett as if she wasn’t sure what was happening. He’d certainly said something she wasn’t expecting.