[Legacy Of The Force] - 03(42)

“You did,” Lekauf confirmed, “Apparently, the terrorists have attempted to assassinate Queen Mother Tenel Ka. She’s requested Colonel Solo’s aid in rooting them out.”

Luke fell silent for a moment, trying to decide whether Lekauf was telling the truth or trying to throw him off the track of some other operation.

“Your son will be safe, sir,” Lekauf said. “He’s very well trained. I’ve worked with him myself.”

Seeing that he had little choice at the moment but to accept what Lekauf was telling him, Luke said, “This had better be the truth, Corporal.”

“It is, sir.” Lekauf paused, then added in a reassuring tone, “Colonel Solo took a quarter of GAG along. I’d be with them myself, except I’m on desk duty because I twisted my knee a couple of days ago.”

“Very well.”

Luke glanced back at Raatu and Tozr, who were still staring at the last message on the wall screen and having a hissed debate about what they should do.

“There was an accidental attempt to access GAG files from your safehouse on the three hundredth floor of Zorp House,” Luke said. “I’d like you to ignore it.”

“Consider it done,” Lekauf said. “And don’t worry about your son. He’ll be fine.”

“I hope so, Corporal.”

Luke closed the channel and turned to find Mara already talking on the comlink she had taken from him.

“… hangar in twenty minutes,” she was saying. “I want the Shadow prepped and ready to go,”





Chapter Eleven


Jacen stood at the viewport of the Anakin Solo’s Command Salon, staring out at the cloud-mottled face of the planet Hapes, It was a world of splendor and abundance, covered in sparkling oceans and verdant islands, but Jacen was too troubled to enjoy looking at it. Someone had tried to kill Tenel Ka and his daughter, Allana. His hands were shaking and his stomach was knotted, and as he awaited the arrival of their shuttle his thoughts kept careening back and forth between fantasies of mass vengeance and eruptions of self-reproach.

Jacen knew he could not be Allana’s first line of defense. So far, his relationship to her remained secret. If he spent too much time at the Fountain Palace, Tenel Ka’s nobles would begin to suspect that the heir to the Hapan throne had been fathered by a Jedi foreigner, and that would only endanger Allana further. Besides, Tenel Ka was more than capable of protecting their four-year-old daughter, and he could not give up his anti-terrorism work back on Coruscant without letting the whole galaxy suffer.

But Jacen could not help feeling guilty and frightened.

Every instinct in him wanted to send Allana away to be raised somewhere safe-perhaps among the Fallanassi or Jensaarai. Only the experiences of his own childhood, which had proven again and again how fallible such strategies could be, prevented him from considering it.

That-and the fact that no place was truly safe. Jacen had spent most of his life trying to bring peace to a brutal and chaotic galaxy, and matters only seemed to be growing worse. There was always some unseen war about to spill over from the next system, some hate-filled demagogue ready to slay billions to assure the “greater good.” Sometimes Jacen wondered if he was having any effect at all, if the galaxy would not have been just as well served had he never returned to the Jedi and remained among the Aing-Tii, meditating on the Force.

As Jacen contemplated this, the Hapan oceans began to sparkle more brightly. Some of the sparkles steadied into lights and began to shine in a hundred lustrous colors. Others turned red or gold and began to blink at regular intervals. They flowed together into narrow bands and began to circle the planet, like the rivers of flowing traffic that had once girdled Coruscant.

Jacen took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly after each, and consciously stilling his mind. While he could not yet summon Force-visions on command, he had learned to welcome them when they came. They were a manifestation of his unity with the Force, a sign of his growing power, and the increasing frequency with which they came reassured him that he would succeed, that he was strong enough to hold the galaxy together.

On the planet below, the island rain forests darkened to a deep, night-colored purple. Two white dots began to glow up from the heart of one of the shadowy islands, and Jacen found himself staring into the spots. They were larger and brighter than any of the lights on the oceans, and the longer he looked, the more they resembled eyes-white, blazing eyes staring up at him from a well of darkness.

A few wisps of cloud drifted across the face of the shadowy island, creating the impression of a lopsided mouth and a spectral face.

The mouth rose at the corners. “Mine.”