Nothing suggested to Jaina that she or her companions were attracting attention. The broad, multilane avenue before her was thick with groundspeeder traffic-and the Corellians were such maniacal speeder pilots that anyone near the street with any sense kept his or her attention on their lane-changing, position-jockeying antics. The huge, gated building behind them was, by contrast, inert, some parts of its grounds in deep shadow from trees and creeping vines. Even the guards at the sidewalk gates and main doors were still.
The other two members of their team, female Bothan Kolir Hu’lya and male Falleen Thann Mithric, moved up to join them. Kolir, the youngest member of the team, having completed her trials and achieved Jedi Knight status only weeks before, wore an abbreviated dress in white that contrasted nicely with her tan fur and would not overheat her on this warm day. Thann, dressed in a traveler’s robe, looked the most Jedi-like of the four of them but was still thoroughly unremarkable of appearance in this cosmopolitan city; he had his hood up over his long black topknot and was maintaining his skin color at a light orange, making him virtually indistinguishable from a human.
“I don’t see any problems,” Kolir said.
Not that reassuring coming from someone who’d been an apprentice a few days ago, Jaina reflected. She heard Zekk snicker. Kolir looked curiously at him, but Jaina said, “Transmit that we’re onstation.”
Kolir nodded. She dug around in her white carry-bag, the same bag that held her lightsaber and an array of other destructive weapons, and brought out a comlink. She smiled as though she were calling a boyfriend and spoke into it: “Team Purella here, just checking in.”
OUTER SPACE,NEAR THE CORELLIAN SYSTEM
Luke, dressed in what looked like standard brown-and-tan Jedi gear but which actually had all the equipment and functionality of a pilot’s suit, sat on the rolling staircase that was meant to give a pilot or mechanic access to the X-wing’s top surfaces. It wouldn’t be needed for that purpose. The mechanics were finished for now with his XJ6 X-wing, and Luke wouldn’t need any assistance in getting to the cockpit-for a Jedi, it was just one quick leap away.
The bay where his squadron’s X-wings waited was frantic with activity. A broad expanse, all scuffed and burned permacrete flooring and pristine glow-white ceiling, it was the size of a sports arena, with room for Luke’s squadron, a squad of Eta-5 interceptors, two squads of shield-equipped TIEs from the Imperial Remnant, and a half squad of B-wings for support. Mechanics fueled some starfighters, made last-minute repairs on others. Pilots arrived to perform inspections of the craft they’d be flying. Commanders moved from pilot to pilot, machine to machine, issuing orders, offering advice.
Luke didn’t feel the need to do so. His pilots were all Jedi, all calm in the face of the storm to come, in the face of possible death.
One X-wing over, Mara, similarly garbed, made some final ratcheting motions with her hydrospanner, finishing adjustments to her laser cannon positioning, and slapped closed an access panel on her craft’s S-foil underside. She dropped the hydrospanner in a toolbox and moved over to join her husband. “Any word about Ben?”
Luke shook his head.
“You’re very quiet.” Mara leaned over to stroke his forehead. “Is everything all right?”
“I meditated earlier,” he said. “And I had a vision of Ben talking to the man who doesn’t exist.”
“Not a dream,” Mara said. “A vision.”
He nodded.
“Could you tell when?”
“The future. Ben was a little older, a little taller.”
“At least,” she said, “that argues well for what he’s up to today.”
Finally, he smiled. “Thanks for not killing me.”
“When we met?”
“When I told you that I left it to Jacen to decide whether Ben would go on this mission.”
“Oh.” She didn’t return his smile. “I might have been tempted… if I had any sense of what the right answer was. I’ve fouled up in the past, clinging too tightly to him, trying to protect him. What’s the right amount?”
Luke shrugged. “You’re asking a Jedi Master. Not a Parenting Master.”
“Is there one, somewhere?” Finally, she did smile. “I’ve spent more than thirteen years worrying about him. Which has given me great wisdom about why the Jedi of old didn’t allow marriages within the order, discouraged attachments, that sort of thing. If they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been Sith or alien empires or natural disasters that killed the Jedi. It would have been worrying about their kids.”