[Legacy Of The Force] - 03(51)

“You changed your mind,” Nashtah said, finishing Leia’s sentence. “You began to think the danger was not real?”

Leia nodded.

“And now what do you think?” Nashtah’s eyes were sparkling with delight. “Was your fear justified?”

“Just hold on a blasted second.” Han started across the deck toward the assassin. “If you think we wish we never had kids…”

Leia raised a hand and used the Force to stop Han from coming any closer. “If Han and I had never raised children, there would have been no Anakin Solo to save the Jedi from the voxyn, no Jacen Solo to show us the way to victory against the Yuuzhan Vong, no Jaina Solo to lead the fight. So what I think is that it’s unwise to oppose the will of the Force.”

“I see,” Nashtah said. “So if it’s the will of the Force for your son Jacen to follow in the path of his grandfather, you won’t oppose it?”

“It’s too early to tell how far down that path Jacen will go, but I won’t let him become another Darth Vader.” Leia saw the alarm her reply raised in Han’s eyes, but to give any other answer would have been to step into Nashtah’s trap-to admit that the reasons she had given for turning against Tenel Ka were false. “Whatever it takes to stop that from happening, I’ll do.”

Nashtah continued to study Leia. “Whatever it takes?”

“You heard her.” Han said. He had stopped in the middle of the cabin, with his hand still resting on the butt of his blaster pistol. “Not that it’s any business of yours how we feel about the way our kids turned out.”

“It might be, when you realize that you can’t handle him yourself.” Nashtah slowly looked from Leia to Han. “I specialize in Jedi, you know. That’s why they recruited me for Tenel Ka.”

“Yeah?” Han replied. “Well, leave us your contact data and we’ll think about it.”

The multiprocessor chimed three times, announcing that lunch was ready.

Han unsnapped the keeper strap on his holster. “Are we gonna eat, or what?”

Nashtah’s gaze dropped to his hand and stayed there for a moment. Then she let out a snort of derision and slowly moved her hand away from her blaster. “Eating sounds good,” she said.

“Wonderful,” Leia said. Trying to keep her sigh of relief relatively inaudible, she went to the multiprocessor and prepared a tray with the two savory-smelling gorba melts and Nashtah’s four defrosted steaks. “Would you like something to drink, Nashtah?”

“Not necessary,” the assassin said. “But I will need an empty glass.”

Resisting the temptation to ask why, Leia added the empty glass to the tray, then returned to the table and distributed its contents.

To Leia’s astonishment, Nashtah took one of the raw nerf steaks and rolled it tight. Holding it over the empty glass, the assassin wrapped her long fingers around the meat and sank her sharp nails into it, then carefully squeezed the blood out.

Suddenly Leia’s gorba melt no longer smelled quite so savory.

Nashtah smiled at Leia’s obvious look of revulsion, then said, “I saw your father race once.”

“Race?” Han echoed. Though his eyes were fixed on Nashtah’s slowly filling glass, he was gobbling down his sandwich and had to speak around a full mouth. “You mean Podrace?”

“Yes. It was the Boonta Eve Classic. He was good … very good.”

“So I’ve heard.” Leia found herself feeling resentful of Nashtah. As much as she still hated the memory of Darth Vader, over the years she had come to think of her father as the little boy she had glimpsed in her grandmother’s vid-diary, and it seemed somehow unfair that this assassin had been there at the high point of his life when all Leia had known were the low ones. “He won, I believe.”

“That’s right. It was when he earned his freedom.” Nashtah put the shriveled steak aside, then took a drink from the glass and smacked her lips in approval. “Do you know what always amazed me about that race?”

“Wait a minute.” Han swallowed a mouthful of gorba melt. “You expect us to believe you were there?”

“I believe her, Han.” Leia pushed her uneaten gorba melt aside, then asked, “What amazed you, Nashtah?”

“That he didn’t cheat,” she replied. “All that natural Force ability, and he ran an honest race in a contest that has no rules.”

“Your point?” Leia asked.

Nashtah gulped down the contents of her glass, then picked up another steak and began to refill it. “Do I need to have a point?”