[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(106)

Kyp raised an eyebrow. “And the semantics thought for the day was brought to you by our sponsors …”

“I’m seeing Niathal,” said Luke, slapping his palm down on the arm of his chair. I should have gone with my gut so long ago. I really did take my eye off the ball trying to live up to this role. “And before we start griping about lack of action, think about this. When it was a matter of your not approving of Ben’s involvement with the GAG, it was a choice between letting him carry on and hauling a teenage boy home. Now we’re talking about action against … what, exactly? Stage our own coup? Depose Niathal? Confiscate Jacen’s lightsaber? I’m up for most things, I admit, but we have to think this through, because we might leave matters worse than before we started.”

“Well, trying to talk him around is off the menu,” said Mara. “So I’m sticking with going after the irritant in this. Lumiya. But let’s not forget that Omas didn’t exactly behave sensibly, and Niathal isn’t in Lumiya’s thrall. She’s got her own agenda, and I don’t get any sense of the dark side influencing that.”

Luke knew she was right. The dynamics were complex. The best thing Jedi could do was to tackle the things that non-Force-users couldn’t. Once again, he missed the clarity of thoroughly evil adversaries, or at least those he thought were evil.

It was hard to turn against your allies. It was as hard as turning against your own family. Now they were one and the same.

GAG HEADQUARTERS, CORUSCANT

The worst thing about waking up that morning was the few seconds of blank comfort before remembering what had happened, and then the world collapsed again. Ben couldn’t stop seeing Jori Lekauf everywhere he looked. He couldn’t face staying at home: he needed the company of his friends, the people who missed Lekauf, too. As he walked through the GAG security gates, and the system accepted his identicard to open the blastproof doors, every face in the corridor was Lekauf’s. When Ben went into the locker room, he could hear his voice. It was a running nightmare conjured up by a combination of his Force-senses and the simple human reaction to fresh bereavement. He wanted it to stop, but he felt he was being disloyal to a dead friend for wanting not to see him everywhere.

Zavirk was still in the monitoring room. He looked up at Ben and tapped the mute button on his earpiece. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“I won’t say it.”

“Fine.”

“And not your fault, okay? Could have been any one of us.” Zavirk tapped the button again and dragged the adjacent chair closer for Ben to sit down. “You heard that the boss is … well, really the boss now?”

“Yeah.”

“Should be good news for us.”

Ben knew that his father would say it wasn’t good news at all. He sat in the monitoring room for a while, just grateful to be among the troopers, and then wandered off to find a quiet spot. If he couldn’t handle this kind of stuff without being devastated, he’d be no use in the GAG. Every other trooper here got on with it. Shevu had probably had an awful conversation with Lekauf’s parents, but when Ben walked by his office, he was hard at work, marking up a duty roster on the wall and getting on with things.

Okay, I’m fourteen. I could say, all right, I’m just a kid and I don’t have to be tough when my buddies get killed. But I can’t pick and choose when I act like an adult. I’ve got to get on with it, or go to school like every other kid my age.

And he was scaring his mother. She had enough problems of her own hunting Lumiya.

According to the roster display, Jacen was on duty. The time codes showed he’d been at HQ since about one in the morning. Ben couldn’t feel his presence, but that didn’t surprise him now. There was a time when Jacen had hidden in the Force when he had to; now he only showed himself when he seemed to feel it was necessary.

Without thinking about it, Ben found himself shutting down, too. As he walked down the corridor, the tiles still gleaming with spots of water because the cleaning droids were just meters ahead of him, he let himself merge with the matter and energy around him. The more he did it, the less he felt like he was in a trance, cut off from reality, and the more he felt like he was observing the world as it truly was, particles within particles. It gave him a fleeting feeling of serene clarity. It was relief of a kind.

At the top of the corridor, a pair of doors led to the holding cells. That area was always kept shut, but today there was a notice fixed on the wall next to it that read top-level clearances only. They were holding Chief Omas down there. It seemed surreal. Ben carried on toward Jacen’s office and he could see as he rounded the corner that the doors were open.