[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(36)

Jacen had thought of this test of Lumiya’s intentions and so it was meant to be. He had to get used to that. He had to trust his reactions not as impulses to be doubted, but as decisions.

Steady. Trust yourself.

Jacen cloaked Lumiya in a Force illusion and projected his own unconcerned calm as Luke approached. It was an exhausting maneuver, nothing beyond him when dealing with ordinary people, but something that took all his strength when deceiving a Jedi Master of Luke’s stature.

Luke strode toward them and glanced back over his shoulder a couple of times as if someone were following him. He acknowledged Jacen stiffly and paid Lumiya no more than polite attention, as if his mind was more on what was down the corridor.

Jacen strained to hold the Force illusion steady, like a ball of heat within his chest that he had to balance to keep it from touching his rib cage. That was exactly how it felt. And Lumiya … Lumiya, somehow nestled in miniature within that ball of heat, felt not vengeful or trying to disguise her intentions, but genuinely worried about being discovered before her work was complete.

Luke seemed baffled.

Suddenly Jacen realized that it wasn’t anything in the office at the end of the corridor that was distracting Luke: he could sense something amiss and wasn’t sure where it was coming from.

Luke was sensing Lumiya, but very faintly. Jacen knew it.

“Good morning, Uncle.”

“Hello, Jacen.” Luke’s gaze rested briefly on Lumiya, but he concentrated on Jacen. “Morning, ma’am. Where’s Ben?”

“Admiral Niathal is showing him around the Fleet Ops center.” Jacen knew Luke was in a hurry to see Omas, the way he always was after a council meeting. “Have you time for a caf?”

Luke shook his head, as Jacen expected. “Sorry. Perhaps later.” He was making an effort to disguise his uneasiness with Jacen in front of a stranger. He nodded politely at Lumiya, and then glanced briefly behind him again. “Ma’am.”

They watched him go. Eventually Lumiya let out a breath.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Jacen kept the Force cover in place. “I think I did.”

“My issues with Luke Skywalker are long over, Jacen.”

“Really?”

“Yes. If I wanted to get to him, I wouldn’t need you as a route. Please understand what’s at stake here. This is beyond our own little personal grievances.” She picked up her folio case. “I should go now.”

He felt a surge of real anger in her. He believed her. Events were unfolding as they were because it was his destiny. He grew more accepting of it by the hour.

“I’ll see you out,” he said.

They walked back through the main entrance and paused halfway down the promenade to look back at the Temple. “So how does it feel to have walked in your enemy’s camp?”

“I don’t see Jedi as the enemy now,” said Lumiya. “That’s far too simplistic.”

“What, then?”

“They’re people with only half the picture who believe they have all the facts. It makes their decisions flawed.”

“It’s hard to want to see the rest of that picture.”

“You already do.”

He watched Lumiya walk away toward the taxi pad until he could no longer see her; only sense her. He was so engrossed in exploring the ripples she left in the Force and searching them for signs that he was startled by what touched his mind then, almost as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

He felt his mother. She was in trouble.

His future as a Sith Lord was very easy to lay aside for a moment while he reached out to find her.

CORELLIAN QUARTER, GALACTIC CITY, CORUSCANT.

I should have told Jacen where I was going.

Ben hadn’t exactly lied to Jacen: he really had visited the Fleet Command Center, and Admiral Niathal really had showed him around the ops rooms. It just hadn’t taken as long as he had expected. And now he was still desperately curious about the Corellians who lived on Coruscant and who were now quite possibly what Niathal called the enemy within.

Ben was having trouble working out what was truly Coruscanti on a world of a thousand species. But they were at war with other humans. What was them? What was us? How could Coruscant be both a separate world and the embodiment of the galaxy, all of it?

Maybe that was the problem.

Ben found himself in one of the Corellian neighborhoods near the heart of Galactic City, wandering along the catwalks among shops and homes and businesses. He was looking for an engineering workshop called Saiy’s, owned by Barit’s family. This looked like any other neighborhood: the names on the stores didn’t look any different from those on the rest of Coruscant. The people looked like him. The more he saw of nonhuman species, the more Ben was intrigued by the ease with which beings could fight among themselves. It was as if the small differences mattered more than the really big ones-like you had to recognize something before you could hate it properly.