That was when the door to the refresher hissed open, and a pair of small gray eyes peered out. They were wide open and locked on Jacen with an expression that might have been awe or fear or both.
“No, Allana!” Jacen could not bring himself to release the Force lightning while she was watching; even if Tenet Ka had not yet taught her that the dark side was evil, his own childhood training remained strongly enough ingrained that he did not want his daughter to see him using it. “Close the …”
Jacen had to let the order trail off when Sing took advantage of his hesitation to leap at him. Allana screamed from inside the refresher; then Sing was three paces away, lightsaber coming in for a midbody strike. Jacen lifted one foot as though to pivot away, and Sing took the bait and stopped, dropping one leg back as she continued her swing.
Instead of spinning past as he feinted, Jacen cartwheeled over her blade and came down on the other side. Sing reversed her attack so fast he barely had time to grab her wrist, much less turn her own weapon against her as he had intended.
So Jacen kicked her in the knee as hard as he could.
The joint dislocated with a sickening pop, and Sing collapsed to the floor shrieking. But she did not release her lightsaber. She did not even stop fighting, rolling into him in an effort to break his grasp and slash him open. Jacen started to pivot out of the way, intending to bring her arm around for a clean break behind her back.
But Allana suddenly appeared on the other side of Sing, charging forward with her dark brows lowered and what looked like a small recording rod clutched in her hands.
“Allana, no!”
Allana kept coming.
Determined to keep Sing from striking out at his daughter with any of her weapons, Jacen Force-leapt backward, dragging the assassin away from his daughter. Allana took two more steps and raised the silver rod over her head … then dived.
Sing raised her uninjured leg, cocking her foot to kick Allana with the stubby knife in the toe of her boot.
Jacen screamed and whipped Sing’s arm around, twisting her away from his daughter. Her lightsaber flashed by so close he nearly lost an ear, but the assassin’s legs spun around with her body, and the kick-knife flashed past half a meter above Allana’s head.
Allana landed on Sing’s other leg and jammed the silver rod into her injured knee. The hiss of an autoinjector sounded from its tip, and Sing cried out in astonishment.
“You little shrew!”
Sing drew her leg back again to kick … then let it drop to the floor. Her eyes widened in anger-or perhaps it was fear. She craned her neck around, staring at Allana, and began to convulse. Jacen quickly pulled Sing’s lightsaber from her unresisting hand, then held the still-ignited tip to the assassin’s neck.
“Allana, what…”
“She’ll be awright, Jacen.” Allana sat up and straddled the assassin’s leg, no longer afraid-if she ever had been. “It was just my safety stick.”
“Okay.” Jacen was too numb and relieved to ask more-or to chastise Allana for not staying in the refresher. He simply waved her off Sing’s legs. “Get off. She could still be dangerous.”
“That’s not what Doctor Meala says.” Despite her protest, Allana climbed off Sing’s legs. “She says the bad person won’t be dangerous again until someone gives her the antidope.”
Allana came to Jacen’s side, then squatted and looked into Sing’s hate-maddened eyes.
“But don’t be scared,” she said. “Yedi never kill helpless people-even bad ones like you.”
“That’s right.” Jacen took Allana’s hand and, surprised by how right her words felt, pulled her up to stand at his side. “We just put them in a confinement facility for a very, very long time.”
Chapter Twenty
Outside the Falcon’s canopy hung a streaming veil of blue and white brilliance, so intense that it made Han’s eyes hurt like a Fogblaster hangover. He hesitated at the back of the flight deck, trying to make some sense of what he was seeing, half convinced that it was the efflux tail of some Death Star-type megaship.
And if it was some big new superweapon, Han knew he and Leia would end up trying to destroy the thing before it blew up Tenel Ka’s throneworld or something-and he had no doubts about how that would turn out. Han was already older than Obi-Wan Kenobi had been when he’d died aboard the original Death Star, and on crazy missions like that, wasn’t it always the wise old man who got killed first? If it happened, Han only hoped his kids would figure out he and Leia had been no part of the assassination attempt on Tenel Ka. Dying, he could take-he just didn’t want to go out with people thinking he was some kind of terrorist.