[Legacy Of The Force] - 03(71)

“I wouldn’t say with.” The pitch of Morwan’s voice was just a touch higher than normal, but it was enough to confirm the ripple of anxiety that Leia felt through the Force. “I wasn’t part of the command staff.”

“Lady Morwan, didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s impossible to lie to a Jedi?” Leia caught Han’s gaze in the canopy reflection and held it, making sure he understood the significance of the question. Hapan officers tended to draw their command staffs from their own houses, so chances were good that they had just identified the coup ringleader. “But don’t worry. Your Ducha’s secret is safe with us.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Who are we going to tell?”





Chapter Sixteen


Luke woke with the same troubled spirit he did every time he dreamed of the face, his chest heavy with the weight of a duty unanswered, his stomach churning with premonitions of failure. The face always came to him half hidden beneath a raised hood, betraying only a hint of its appearance-a mouth frozen into a lopsided grimace of anguish, a jagged brow fixed in a permanent scowl of disapproval, a pair of ebony eyes shining with perpetual malice. He never saw enough of the face to know whether it was the same one each time, but the emotions always came in order: pain, condemnation, spite. Luke had no idea what the pattern meant, but he felt sure it was a storm warning.

A beckoning whistle sounded from the far side of the Jade Shadow’s elegant master cabin, where R2-D2 stood in the hatchway, rocking back and forth on his support arms. Luke allowed himself the fantasy of using the Force to push the little droid back into the corridor and closing his eyes again. Since learning of Lumiya’s involvement with GAG, he had been so worried about Ben that he had barely been able to sleep-and even when he did, he was so troubled by dreams that he never woke feeling refreshed.

R2-D2 let out an impatient bleat, then extended his charging arm and started across the floor.

“All right-no need for the ronto prod.” Luke swung his feet around and sat on the edge of the bunk. “I’m awake.”

R2-D2 issued a doubtful whistle, but stopped and retracted the charging arm as Luke pulled on his boots. The steady thrumming in the deck suggested that the Shadow had emerged from hyperspace and was decelerating hard, presumably on its final approach to the planet Hapes. Luke could sense Mara’s impatience through their Force-bond, though not the cause. Perhaps she was having a hard time securing approach clearance from the Hapan defense forces-or perhaps she was simply eager to get Ben away from any influence Lumiya might be exerting over Jacen and GAG.

Once his boots were fastened, Luke grabbed his robe and started forward through the observation salon. The cratered faces of two silver moons were sliding past outside the Shadow’s starboard viewport. Outside the other, the ion tails of half a dozen starships were crawling across the star-flecked velvet. In the distance hung a white motionless disk-no doubt one of the Battle Dragons that would be screening Hapes after the attempt on Tenel Ka’s life.

Luke continued forward onto the flight deck, where the cloud-mottled disk of the planet itself hung dead ahead. Its sparkling oceans and forested islands were as beautiful as ever, but Luke was more interested in the thumb-sized wedge slowly drifting toward the center of the canopy. Instead of the customary white, the Star Destroyer’s hull was matte black, with the telltale dome of a gravity-well generator bulging beneath its belly and a cloaking cone rising midway down its spine.

It was the first time Luke had seen the new GAG Star Destroyer. He didn’t much like it-and he really didn’t like that it had been named the Anakin Solo, after his dead nephew.

A canopy section opaqued into a mirror, and Mara’s face appeared in the reflection, looking focused and worried. The Shadow had a drop-deck helm, with the pilot seated down in the nose of the cockpit, so she had to tilt her head slightly upward to meet his gaze.

“We just received a very interesting holorecording,” she said.

“From Jacen?”

Mara shook her head. “From Han, relayed over the HoloNet from the Jedi Temple.”

“Really?” Luke lifted his brow; before leaving the Jedi Temple, they had been briefed on the Solos’ “participation” in the assassination attempt. “Explaining how they’re being impersonated by clones and weren’t even on Hapes when someone tried to kill Tenel Ka? Because that’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Not exactly,” Mara said. “And it only gets more confusing. Han and Leia are spying on the coup plotters.”

“Spying? ” Luke frowned, trying to work out the course of events that would lead the Solos from Coreilia to the assassination attempt to becoming spies for the Galactic Alliance. “You’re right, it is confusing-but whatever Han and Leia do usually is. What was in the message?”