“Relax,” said Jacen. He centered himself and projected a Force illusion around Lumiya to bolster her own cloaking of her identity again. He felt the sensation of a ball of heat building in his chest, and he nudged her with his elbow. “Go on. Brief me on the strength of the Corellian fleet and don’t react to anyone passing by.”
Jacen and Lumiya waited. The lobby and the corridor leading off it were empty. Eventually they heard boots thudding fast on the marble floor-Luke’s, for certain-as if he hadn’t much enjoyed the meeting and wanted to get out.
Okay, Lumiya, let’s see how you react to Luke this time-and how he reacts to you.
Luke approached them, eyes downcast, distracted and frowning. He seemed about to walk past Jacen and then paused to acknowledge him as if it was an effort.
“Are you waiting for Niathal?” asked Luke.
“I’m paying my respects as head of the Galactic Alliance Guard.” Jacen indicated Lumiya. “This is a colleague from the university’s Defense Studies Department.”
Luke nodded politely at Lumiya then turned back to Jacen. “Are you certain that’s the right choice?”
“If I don’t do it, who will?”
“Maybe nobody should,” said Luke.
“If Chief Omas needs the job done, I’ll do what I can.”
Luke fixed Jacen with a frank blue gaze for a few moments, but he didn’t look at Lumiya again, and-more to the point-Lumiya didn’t look at him.
“Mind how you do it,” Luke said, a slight frown still creasing his nose, and walked away. Jacen waited a full ten minutes, still holding the heat in his chest to maintain the illusion, before relaxing.
“I’m impressed by your ability to deceive Luke,” said Lumiya. “And you appear to have no doubts or misgivings about it.”
Jacen stood up. Lumiya had been given the best chance she had for decades to kill Luke Skywalker, and she hadn’t shown the slightest inclination to take it.
“No doubts,” said Jacen. “But no enthusiasm, either.”
“That’s as it should be,” she said. “Tell me what your next task is.”
There was no harm telling her. It would be all over HNE in a few days.
“Internment,” said Jacen. “We’re confining Corellians until this current wave of terror is contained. Come on. Let me introduce you to the officer who’ll be in the Chief of State’s office within the year.”
Internment. Extreme, dangerous … and inevitable.
When you could let go of your own need to be the hero, the admired one, the respected, and face being reviled for doing a necessary job, then you had finally overcome the most poisonous attachment of all: the love of ego.
Jacen was prepared to be hated in pursuit of a greater good.
Chapter Nine
I heard stories about his grandfather when I was a boy, and Jacen Solo struck me as walking the same path. Vader liked a loyal military elite at his back, too. And sometimes ends do justify the means. The protest from the media and civil rights groups that greeted our announcement that a Galactic Alliance Guard had been formed to deal with the new threat to public safety was to be expected. It did not, however, make it any easier to hear myself decried as the new Palpatine.
-Chief of State Omas, Memoirs
CORELLIAN QUARTER, CORUSCANT.
Ben knew he was taking an insane risk by going back to the Corellian neighborhood, but he had to find Barit.
This time he made sure he was wearing regular clothes, not Jedi robes. He worried that he was a coward for hiding his status, but a sensible voice inside him said that there was no point in getting beaten up before he found out something useful. That was pragmatism, as Jacen called it.
Corellians didn’t have a fight going with the Jedi. Just the Alliance. But the distinction between the two wasn’t always clear.
He sauntered along the walkways, stopping to stare at things that made him curious, reminding himself that he was a thirteen-year-old boy and not a soldier this time. Nobody seemed to notice him.
All he wanted to do was to look Barit in the face and ask a simple question: what made him see Coruscanti as the enemy?
The fact that two governments were behaving like idiots didn’t seem like justification enough for Ben. He didn’t want to attack Corellians just because the government had a problem with Corellia: even the raid on Centerpoint Station hadn’t been directed against people. He felt no hatred for Corellians at all.
But Barit, who wasn’t that much older than him, had tried to shoot a CSF officer. He hadn’t aimed at the mob stoning the Corellian embassy. He had tried to shoot a complete stranger who was trying to stop the riot.
Ben didn’t understand, and he needed to.