[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(157)

His mind flickered forward through the likely time streams. The future, as Yoda had said so frequently and famously that the quotation littered the Jedi archives, was always in motion, and many potential futures led from this event.

But they began congregating in certain areas. Nelani testifying against Shira Brie, also known as Lumiya, also known as Lumiya Syo. Lumiya convicted, being executed, being locked up in solitude, being locked up in a mass prison and assassinated by someone whose father she had killed decades ago. All she knew vanishing, dying with her.

Along all these paths, the galaxy continued to come unhinged, rebellion sparking in all corners, the Galactic Alliance crumbling, like a cancer-racked body, eating itself from the insides out, whole populations dying.

Detonators destroying this place, blowing the asteroid into millions of pieces, scattering the knowledge hidden here. An ancient Star Destroyer raining turbolaser destruction down on the surface of Ziost, purging it of knowledge lingering there.

Scores of time lines congregated on Jacen Solo and Luke Skywalker, bringing them together. The two of them faced each other, their surroundings changing every second as the scene slipped from time line to time line, yet their poses and the lightsabers lit in their hands remained the same, as did the anger and tragic loss twisting both their faces.

They spun, they struck, the impacts of their lightsabers causing flares of light to cast the walls and floors behind them into greater darkness. On and on they fought, their loss giving them strength, until-Jacen cut Luke down. Sometimes it was a blow across the shoulder, down into the chest. Sometimes it was a slash, too fast to see, across the throat that sent the older man’s head from his shoulders. Sometimes it was a thrust to the stomach, followed by minutes of agony, Luke writhing in a futile struggle for life while Jacen, tears running down his cheeks, knelt nearby.

Luke died.

Luke died.

“No,” Jacen whispered. He summoned himself back to the here and now.

Nelani and Lumiya were walking away. The younger woman held the older by the shoulder, guiding her.

Jacen lit his lightsaber and struck. Nelani jumped away, but the glowing blade merely parted the cuffs that held Lumiya’s hands together behind her back.

Both women looked at him.

“She remains free,” Jacen told Nelani. “If you take her …” He could not say the rest of the words. Luke dies. And I kill him.

There was more to it than that. For a moment, he was drawn back into the streams of probability that led him into the future.

Nelani could leave without her prisoner. She would return home to Lorrd and tell all to her superiors. To Luke.

Jacen cut Luke down. Luke died.

Nelani could be persuaded not to tell. She would rethink her promise later and break it, telling all to Luke.

Jacen cut Luke down. Luke died.

Only in the time streams where Nelani fell, never to rise, did Luke remain on his feet, in command, alive. Other tragedies, shadowy and indistinct, swirled around him, but he lived.

Jacen returned again to the present. The truth of what lie had just experienced through the Force numbed him.

But it was the truth, and he had to be strong enough to face it.

Lumiya knew it, or had some sense of it. There were tears on her cheeks to match the ones he felt on his own. “There is this about being Sith,” she told him. “We strengthen ourselves through sacrifice.”

Jacen nodded, grudging acceptance of that fact. “Yes.”

Nelani looked at him, and beyond him, into his intent.

With a noise that was half moan, she turned and fled.

Jacen raced after her.

RELLIDIR, TRALUS

More missiles poured into the downtown area that had surrounded the Center for the Performing Arts. The spotter droids on the ground didn’t direct them to the crater that had been the Galactic Alliance beachhead. Instead, they sent the missiles toward enemies in the skies-the starfighters of the Galactic Alliance.

Han rose toward one of them, the X-wing whose transponder signaled TRAGOF1103, Tralus Ground Occupation Forces Number 1103, on frequency 22NF07.

His progress was not easy, fast, or safe. The skies were still cluttered with Galactic Alliance starfighters, and a surprising number of them seemed intent on shooting him down. They dived at him and rose toward him, firing lasers; a vengeful interceptor pilot even tried to ram him, a tactic that would have constituted suicide had Han not sideslipped and allowed the tiny, high-speed fighter to roar through the space he had just occupied.

Han’s intent was simple: get close enough to his daughter that missiles chasing her would abort, would turn away to find new targets.

In the few moments he had to watch her, moments when he wasn’t ducking incoming laserfire, he saw that she was doing pretty well on her own. Her X-wing, moving higher and higher in the sky, dipped and fluttered, firing its own lasers at Corellian attack fighters and ‘Vigilance Interceptors. Those starfighters tended to veer away, smoking, or detonate, leaving oddly peaceful and colorful clouds in the sky.