“How long?” Lumiya asked, immediately ready to calculate the maximum distance he could travel in the time available.
“Twenty-four hours, possibly forty-eight. If I stay away any longer, I don’t think Niathal will misbehave, but I think Senator G’Sil might get ideas. That third element where only two can exist, you know?”
“I understand,” she said.
Jacen had done this before. He would vanish for short periods, confide in nobody, and come back with a sense of melancholy about him and a little of his dark energy diminished. Lumiya had put it down to natural apprehension about the size of the task he had ahead of him, and she’d tolerated it, but he couldn’t afford to be running off again at this critical stage.
And if Jacen was in trouble, he’d never ask for help.
It was for his own good, as well as the galaxy’s. This time, it was important for her to find out what was pulling him away just as he was on the brink of making everything happen. She’d follow him. She had to keep his path clear now, and remove all distractions.
“Will you have access to HNE where you’re going, or do you want me to brief you on your return?”
“I don’t want to be contacted,” he said. “If something major happens, I’ll know. Just mind the shop.”
The doors closed behind him. Lumiya wandered into the bedroom to see if he’d left the package he’d been clutching under his arm. There was nothing on the bed, and when she paused to feel the tiny disturbances that showed her where objects might have been hidden, there was no trace of anything beyond items taken: just a change of clothing, and the small necessities men needed. Jacen seemed to like plain antiseptic soap, a discovery that she found both touching and funny; Jacen was moving ever closer to self-denial. He didn’t have to indulge that nasty Jedi habit. She’d have to help him be a little kinder to himself when he’d made his transition.
The apartment was more austere than it had been a few months before. Every time she came here, there was one less comfort and fewer personal touches than the last. There were now no holoimages of family and friends to be seen. He hadn’t even stuffed them into a cupboard to avoid their accusing glances that asked what had happened to good old Jacen.
But it wasn’t altogether a bad sign. Perhaps he was washing away the old Jacen and preparing for the one he would become. So if he needed to do that by wearing sackcloth and brushing his teeth with salt, that was fine. She shut off the lights, checked that the apartment was secure, and made her way out of the apartment building to the walkways of Coruscant.
She slipped through the back alley and into the disused warehouse where she’d hidden the Sith meditation sphere. Ben Skywalker did have his uses; even insects had a vital role in the ecology. The ship would come into its own now.
Lumiya might not have been able to find Jacen when he vanished into the Force, but the ancient red sphere somehow could. She could feel its curiosity and even a little excitement. It wanted to be useful again, to serve. It extruded its boarding ramp without even being asked.
Follow Jacen Solo, she thought, and pictured him in her mind so that the sphere didn’t get distracted by Ben. It seemed fascinated by the boy. Follow the Sith-Lord-to-be.
He was going to succeed.
BEVIIN-VASUR FARM, MANDALORE
The hard red soil was baked solid like pottery clay, and it shattered at the first blow of his vibroshovel. Fett stared at a stark white tracery of bones beneath, highlighted by the harsh sun.
“Why did you leave me here, son?” asked Jango Fett. Where was he? There was no face, nothing at all. But the voice was right there. “I’ve been waiting.”
“Where are you, Dad? I can’t find you.”
“I waited …”
“Where are you?” Fett was shouting for his father, but his voice was a kid’s and the hands he could see clutching the shovel were an old man’s, veined and spotted. Panic and desperation nearly choked him. “Dad, I can’t see you.” He started tearing aside the hard dirt, and the gritty particles jammed painfully under his fingernails. He kept digging, sobbing. “Where are you?”
Fett woke with a start. His heart was pounding; sweat prickled on his back. Then it faded and he was looking at the chrono on the far wall. In the weeks since he’d brought his father’s remains back to Mandalore, he’d had that nightmare far too often. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tested his weight on them, waiting for the pain to start gnawing at the joints.
It wasn’t so bad. In fact, he just felt a little stiff around his lower back, as if he’d been digging. Maybe he’d acted out that nightmare.
He bounced on his heels a few times to see what happened. There was no pain. He didn’t even feel that nausea that had been so routine, he’d forgotten what it felt like to wake up without it.
Apart from running a temperature, he felt better than he had in days—months, in fact. He was alive. He wouldn’t believe he was in the clear until the nerf-doctor came back with the test results, but he knew something fundamental had changed.
So you didn’t poison me, Jaing.
He went to the refresher to shower, if a torrent of cold water from an overhead cistern could be called that, and shaved with an ancient fixed blade that nicked his chin. Where the Sarlacc’s acid hadn’t left smooth, glossy scar tissue, there was still stubble to tackle, and these days most of it was pure white and hard to see. He shaved twice a day anyway. These were the unguarded, naked times when he allowed himself to think of Ailyn and other painful things, because he had to look himself in the eye, and he wasn’t a liar. Lying wasn’t just bad; it was stupid. Lying to yourself was the most stupid thing of all.
And now that he wasn’t so preoccupied with his own death, he could think about the deaths of others. There was a lot of unfinished business. He’d start with Ailyn.
She was a stranger when I opened that body bag. A middle-aged woman. Not lovely like her mother. Old before her time, exhausted, dead. And still my baby, my little girl. I don’t care if you tried to kill me. I really don’t.
Killing was his trade. He didn’t enjoy it, and he didn’t dread it. The only person whose death he knew would make him feel good and not just competent was Jacen Solo.
Better that you rot than die. I can wait. Thanks for motivating me to survive.
I’m back.
Fett checked his face in the mirror for missed beard, double-checked with his fingertips, then lowered his helmet over his head. The world became sharp and fully comprehensible again with all the extra senses built into his armor. At a time when other men had failing eyesight and unreliable hearing, Fett could see through solid walls and eavesdrop kilometers away. There was a lot to be said for smart tech. He flexed his fingers in his gauntlets, finally feeling complete and girded against the world.
Yes, I really am back.
He rode the speeder bike into Keldabe and hammered on the doors of the vet’s surgery. She had her name on a durasteel plate: HAYCA MEKKET.
A man leaned out of the open upper window, looking bleary-eyed, and stared down at Fett. He disappeared again. “Sweetness,” he bellowed. “It’s your special patient.”
The vet appeared at the window. “I suppose I’ve got to open early, especially for you.”
“Haven’t you got any letters after your name?”
“Nerfs can’t read. Why bother?”
“Got my results?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“The cell degeneration’s stopped. But the lab tech over on Dawn said we shouldn’t breed from you.” Somehow she was easier to deal with than Beluine. “You know that needle was for banthas?”
“Felt like it.”
“You’re a hard man, Fett. I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“A quilt. A nice, thick red one.”
Fett went back to Slave I and caught up with the news. Murkhana and Roche were heading for a showdown: it was a good opportunity to show what a single Bes’uliik c
ould do, if the Verpine wanted to invoke the treaty.
Fierfek, I did it again. I’m going to live.
If nothing else went wrong, he’d have another thirty years, maybe more. Most people would have been over-joyed at the reprieve. But Fett found he was actually glad that he’d come so close to death again, because it had a way of sharpening him up and making him think harder. He liked the risk; he liked beating the odds.
I suppose I should tell Mirta.
Now he felt he could ask her what Ailyn had taught her over the years to make her hate him so much. What he really wanted to know, though, was where Ailyn had learned her hatred. Most kids from divorces didn’t pursue a homicidal feud across half a galaxy.
But it could wait an hour or so while he had a decent breakfast.
He’d enjoy it today. He was going to live.
chapter seventeen
I find it interesting that Taun We has never held it against Fett for attacking Kamino. Either he’s her favorite unfinished project, or there’s something else we don’t know.
—Jaing Skirata, musing on the motives of Kaminoans
LON SHEVU’S APARTMENT, PORT QUARTER, CORUSCANT
“It’s really kind of you to put me up, sir.” Ben tried to take up as little room as possible on Captain Shevu’s sofa. It wasn’t just awkwardness about intruding on someone’s privacy; Ben found himself trying to hide—not in the Force, but from it. Ideally, he’d have gone home with Mom, but that meant Dad, too, and he simply couldn’t face him yet.
“You’re not really afraid of your dad, are you?” Shevu handed him a plate of breadsticks filled with fruit preserves, which was a weird combination but he seemed to leave the proper cooking to his girlfriend. “He seems such a nice guy.”
“He is,” said Ben. “But did you ever think your parents knew everything you were thinking, and everything you’d done wrong, just by looking at you?”
“All the time.”
“Jedi parents really can—well, nearly.”
Shevu’s opinion of Jacen showed on his face now that he was off-duty. “I think Master Skywalker would be angry with the person who made you do it, not you.”
“Oh, he’s angry enough with Jacen.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t put you on the spot about your family. It’s not fair. Forget I said it.”
“I think I did the right thing for the wrong reasons.”
“Well, beats doing the wrong thing for the right reasons—classic excuse, that one. I was a cop. I know …”
“Do you want to stay in the GAG?”
“I miss CSF, actually. I miss catching real criminals and showing tourists the way to the Rotunda.” He wandered into the kitchen, and there was a banging and clattering of dishes. He came back with a glass of juice and drank it in two gulps. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Oh, yeah. Look, I’ll be out of your way as soon as I can.”
“No rush. Shula thinks it’s great that you wash the dishes.”
Shevu’s girlfriend said he was a “nice polite boy.” Ben thought that providing a safe haven for him was worth help with the chores, at the very least. “I can Force-dry them, too.”
Shevu laughed and handed him the remote control for the lights. Ben got the feeling that Shevu was happier keeping an eye on him in the aftermath of the assassination because he didn’t approve of the Jedi habit of letting “children” carry weapons and fight. As far as he was concerned, Ben shouldn’t have been serving in the front lines before he was at least eighteen. He was just too polite to say that he thought Jedi made bad parents.
Poor Mom.
Ben slept. He had a few odd dreams about Lekauf that woke him up, and the grief when he woke up properly and remembered his comrade was dead was painful. He lay wondering about Lekauf’s folks, and how they were coping, and then he thought he drifted off again because he could hear—no, he could feel a voice in his head asking where he was.
He sat up. He knew he was fully awake, because he could see the environment-control light on the wall, winking faint red every ten seconds. It took him a while to work out why he knew the voice but couldn’t put a face to it when he shut his eyes again.
It was the Sith ship. He didn’t know where it was, but it was calling him. It wanted to know where he was.
Sith sphere, color orange, no index number, last known registered owner: Lumiya. Ben decided to treat it like a stolen speeder, the way Shevu would. I owe Jacen this. He’d never have done these things without Lumiya twisting his mind. Shows he’s not half as clever as he thinks he is.
Mom would probably try to talk him out of it. But they’d reached an understanding now that he had to do things his own way, because she couldn’t expect anything else from him, given his pedigree.
Ben pulled on his clothes, left a scribbled flimsi note for Shevu, and set off for the GAG compound to liberate an unmarked long-range speeder.
The nice thing about being the secret police was that provided you signed out the kit, nobody asked you what you planned to do with it. And it was legitimate police business to catch criminals.
It was only when he fumbled in his pocket for his ID that he realized he’d left his vibroblade at Shevu’s. He hoped he wouldn’t need his mom’s luck tonight.
SKYWALKERS’ APARTMENT, CORUSCANT
Luke was asleep when Mara got back, and she was relieved. It saved a lot of awkward questions. She peered through the doors, counted the seconds between rasping snores, and decided he was out cold.
Good.
She slipped past the bed and selected her favorite working clothes: dark gray fatigues with plenty of pockets for storing small weapons and ammo. She had no idea how long it would take to run Jacen to ground, so she opted to pack for a mission—as much as she could cram into her backpack.
I’ve got to stick on his tail now. I’ve got to strike when I can.
She could track Lumiya, and he was still in touch with her. If she hung around Lumiya, then she’d eventually get Jacen where she wanted him—away from the genteel, constitutional way of doing things on Coruscant. Jacen had said he had an appointment, too, and while it might have been another of his lies, the chances were that he’d want to tell Lumiya that Mara was on to them.
I’ll save you the trouble.
She made a conscious effort not to see Leia’s face in her mind’s eye, and somehow she’d erased poor Han from this altogether. It wasn’t that fathers’ feelings didn’t matter, but she had a better idea of the pain Leia would go through; however old kids got, the memory of them as newborns never faded.
It might be true for dads, as well. But Mara only knew what a mother felt, and that was bad enough.
She checked her datapad for the transponder trace. Ben’s showed he was still at Shevu’s, and so he was one factor she didn’t have to worry about. Lumiya’s transponder indicated she was heading for the Perlemian node just off Coruscant. If Jacen wasn’t with her, Mara thought, she might well get a lead to one of her bolt-holes; in the assassination business, every scrap of data on a target’s habits and movements was valuable. It would be worth the journey, and the technician at the base was used to Jedi booking out flight time in StealthXs. She didn’t have to fill out any forms that said her mission was to kill the joint Chief of State.
Mara closed the inner doors to keep the light in the hallway from waking Luke, and paused at the apartment’s front entrance. Okay, I’ll risk it. If he wakes up, though … it’ll be another argument.
She put down her pack and tiptoed back into the bedroom, leaned over Luke—still snoring like a turbosaw—and kissed his forehead as lightly as she could. He grunted.
“Sorry I never spotted it,” she mouthed at him. “But better late than never.”
Luke grunted again, and his eyelids twitched. Mara debated whether to give him a little Force-touch deep in his mind and see if she could get him to smile in his sleep, but decided she was pushing her luck, and Jacen probably had a head start on her. Lumiya definitely did.
Mara paused at the doors and left a flimsi note stuck on them.
Gone hunting for a few days. Don’t be mad at me, farmboy …
There was no need to say who the quarry was. She’d have a hard enough time explaining when she returned.
SITH MEDITATION SPHERE, PERLEMIAN TRADE ROUTE
“Hush,” Lumiya said aloud. “I have no idea if he can hear you.”
The meditation sphere had developed an annoying habit of asking her questions. It wanted to know why there were so few. Lumiya wasn’t sure where to begin with such a vague question. The ship had been buried on Ziost for more time than it wanted to remember, it told her, and now it was curious to know where all the dark ones had gone.
“It’s a long story,” Lumiya said. “We haven’t been in the ascendant for a long time. Jacen Solo will change all that.”
What about the others?
“Oh, Alema?”
She comes and goes, broken, but sometimes very happy.
It was a good description of Alema’s almost bipolar moods—murderous, bitter obsession punctuated by highs of … murderous triumphant obsession. The sphere was very attuned to feelings, it seemed. Maybe it could sense darkness anywhere, like a homing beacon, so that it could go to the aid of Sith in difficulty. “I told her to tail Jacen, but I should have known better than to rely on a psychiatric case. But who else is there? Apart from me, that is.”
Plenty of little darknesses. The two with my flame.
Lumiya repeated it to herself. Flame. “Ahh … red hair? Mara Jade Skywalker. She was the Emperor’s Hand, an agent for the dark side, just like me. The boy is her son.”
You darknesses should never fight. So few of you. I stopped her fighting.
“You certainly did.” It was fascinating that the ship could still sense the dark side in Mara, even though she’d abandoned her roots. But to taste it in Ben, too … it might have been in his genes, or perhaps the ship was reacting to his new career as a state assassin. Like mother, like son; Lumiya almost thought she’d written off Ben too soon. “Do you sense dark ones near?”