Jacen didn’t need solitude. He was quite capable of shutting out the world anytime he wanted to. The man could meditate in the middle of a hurricane. He wasn’t running away; he was going in pursuit of something.
“How long?” Lumiya asked, immediately ready to calculate the maximum distance he could travel in the time available.
“Twenty-four hours, possibly forty-eight. If I stay away any longer, I don’t think Niathal will misbehave, but I think Senator G’Sil might get ideas. That third element where only two can exist, you know?”
“I understand,” she said.
Jacen had done this before. He would vanish for short periods, confide in nobody, and come back with a sense of melancholy about him and a little of his dark energy diminished. Lumiya had put it down
to natural apprehension about the size of the task he had ahead of him, and she’d tolerated it, but he couldn’t afford to be running off again at this critical stage.
And if Jacen was in trouble, he’d never ask for help.
It was for his own good, as well as the galaxy’s. This time, it was important for her to find out what was pulling him away just as he was on the brink of making everything happen. She’d follow him. She had to keep his path clear now, and remove all distractions.
“Will you have access to HNE where you’re going, or do you want me to brief you on your return?”
“I don’t want to be contacted,” he said. “If something major happens, I’ll know. Just mind the shop.”
The doors closed behind him. Lumiya wandered into the bedroom to see if he’d left the package he’d been clutching under his arm. There was nothing on the bed, and when she paused to feel the tiny disturbances that showed her where objects might have been hidden, there was no trace of anything beyond items taken: just a change of clothing, and the small necessities men needed. Jacen seemed to like plain antiseptic soap, a discovery that she found both touching and funny; Jacen was moving ever closer to self-denial. He didn’t have to indulge that nasty Jedi habit. She’d have to help him be a little kinder to himself when he’d made his transition.
The apartment was more austere than it had been a few months before. Every time she came here, there was one less comfort and fewer personal touches than the last. There were now no holoimages of family and friends to be seen. He hadn’t even stuffed them into a cupboard to avoid their accusing glances that asked what had happened to good old Jacen.
But it wasn’t altogether a bad sign. Perhaps he was washing away the old Jacen and preparing for the one he would become. So if he needed to do that by wearing sackcloth and brushing his teeth with salt, that was fine. She shut off the lights, checked that the apartment was secure, and made her way out of the apartment building to the walkways of Coruscant.
She slipped through the back alley and into the disused warehouse where she’d hidden the Sith meditation sphere. Ben Skywalker did have his uses; even insects had a vital role in the ecology. The ship would come into its own now.
Lumiya might not have been able to find Jacen when he vanished into the Force, but the ancient red sphere somehow could. She could feel its curiosity and even a little excitement. It wanted to be useful again, to serve. It extruded its boarding ramp without even being asked.
Follow Jacen Solo, she thought, and pictured him in her mind so that the sphere didn’t get distracted by Ben. It seemed fascinated by the boy. Follow the Sith-Lord-to-be.
He was going to succeed.
BEVIIN-VASUR FARM, MANDALORE
The hard red soil was baked solid like pottery clay, and it shattered at the first blow of his vibroshovel. Fett stared at a stark white tracery of bones beneath, highlighted by the harsh sun.
“Why did you leave me here, son?” asked Jango Fett. Where was he? There was no face, nothing at all. But the voice was right there. “I’ve been waiting.”
“Where are you, Dad? I can’t find you.”
“I waited …”
“Where are you?” Fett was shouting for his father, but his voice was a kid’s and the hands he could see clutching the shovel were an old man’s, veined and spotted. Panic and desperation nearly choked him. “Dad, I can’t see you.” He started tearing aside the hard dirt, and the gritty particles jammed painfully under his fingernails. He kept digging, sobbing. “Where are you?”
Fett woke with a start. His heart was pounding; sweat prickled on his back. Then it faded and he was looking at the chrono on the far wall. In the weeks since he’d brought his father’s remains back to Mandalore, he’d had that nightmare far too often. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and tested his weight on them, waiting for the pain to start gnawing at the joints.