[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(125)

He shook off the misery and shame as one of those weaknesses of the old Jacen Solo and reminded himself that his life wasn’t his own now. His destiny was Sith. He turned the battered vessel toward the blockade and allowed himself the brief luxury of reaching out in the Force to Tenel Ka and Allana while he was still far, far from Lumiya.

GAG HEADQUARTERS, CORUSCANT.

Captain Shevu was swearing under his breath as he stared at a data screen in the administration office. A clerical droid stood to one side of the desk, forlorn and silent, occasionally reaching out an arm and withdrawing it quickly each time Shevu looked up and glared at it.

Ben hovered in the doorway, wondering if Shevu was going to round on him, too. The officer wasn’t happy.

“Do you know when Colonel Solo’s due back, sir?” Don’t say Jacen, not in front of his men. “He’s late.”

“Colonel Solo comes and goes as he pleases,” said Shevu.

“Can I help with anything?”

“Are you any good at finding dead bodies?”

“Well-“

“Sorry, Ben.” Shevu dismissed the droid with a sharp look. “We appear to have lost a dead prisoner, and seeing as they don’t stroll out of here unaided, I’m trying to find them. You can’t file an incident report without a body.”

Ben’s stomach sank. “Ailyn Habuur, right?”

“Right. Nobody signed out the body. But it’s gone.”

And so is Jacen. But he was going to see Uncle Han. Ben tried to think of an answer that would take away the nagging dread he felt about Jacen and Ailyn Habuur. “Does it matter?”

Shevu had a way of dropping his chin and staring unblinking at you that made it clear he thought you were an idiot. “Yes, Ben, prisoners who die in custody always matter and you don’t just dump them like garbage. What do you know about her?”

Ben shrugged. “She was angry and scared.”

“I hear from my CSF colleagues that someone was asking questions about her.”

“Is she someone important?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Ben shook his head. He got the feeling that Shevu was being cautious about what he said to him and-obvious, this-that he didn’t like Jacen very much.

“Why don’t you go and visit your parents?” Shevu made it sound like an order. “If Colonel Solo comes back in the meantime, I’ll tell him I sent you home.”

It was good to have the decision made for him. Ben wondered if the events of recent days would show on his face so clearly that his father could read them. He hoped so. He wasn’t sure that he could bottle them up much longer.

Mom would understand better. She’d told him a few stories about being the Emperor’s Hand. She’d done some bad things, she said. But it hadn’t made her a bad person, so perhaps Jacen was like that: perhaps he just did a few things that were terrible but he could learn from them and never do them again.

Ben called first and got an automated answer. The Jedi council was in session, so he went to the Temple and waited in the archives for an hour. The meeting went on, and he knew better than to even try to interrupt. So he occupied himself looking for data on Ailyn Habuur.

The Jedi archives were vast, an odd mix of ancient texts and hard data. They said that between the archives and the meditation areas, Jedi could discover anything about the outer and inner worlds that they wanted to if they put their minds to it.

He didn’t find an Ailyn Habuur in any public records-not even in the Kiffar records-but he found a lot of Ailyns and Habuurs. He found thousands. The size of the task daunted him, and he wondered if it mattered whether he found out or not.

Then he found himself looking for the names Nelani and Brisha.

He’d made a deal with himself not to ask any more questions about that missing chunk of time out at Bimmiel that had somehow ended with the Jedi Knight Nelani Dinn and a weird woman called Brisha both getting killed. He accepted that a lot of things had happened that he didn’t fully understand, but they still puzzled him, and Jacen wasn’t telling him.

How had they died?

How did Brisha and Nelani die?

He had to know. The feeling inside him said that what had happened to Ailyn Habuur meant he had to ask, because it changed everything. They were connected somehow.

Nelani was easy to find, because he knew she was a Jedi and that narrowed his search. But there were thousands of Brishas, too-some names, some places-and he didn’t have the time to go through them all. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, or if he would even recognize it if he saw it. He made up his mind to ask Jacen when the time seemed right.

Ben took the turbolift to the council chamber floor and waited in the lobby until the meeting broke up. His parents, deep in conversation, walked down the corridor as if they hadn’t spotted him, and he wondered if he had accidentally mastered the art of disguising his presence. Funny; he’d resented being invisible to grown-ups until only a few weeks ago, always ignored like a kid. Now he wanted that invisibility in the Force.