“It’s really kind of you to put me up, sir.” Ben tried to take up as little room as possible on Captain Shevu’s sofa. It wasn’t just awkwardness about intruding on someone’s privacy; Ben found himself trying to hidenot in the Force, but from it. Ideally, he’d have gone home with Mom, but that meant Dad, too, and he simply couldn’t face him yet.
“You’re not really afraid of your dad, are you?” Shevu handed him a plate of breadsticks filled with fruit preserves, which was a weird
combination but he seemed to leave the proper cooking to his girlfriend. “He seems such a nice guy.”
“He is,” said Ben. “But did you ever think your parents knew everything you were thinking, and everything you’d done wrong, just by looking at you?”
“All the time.”
“Jedi parents really canwell, nearly.”
Shevu’s opinion of Jacen showed on his face now that he was off-duty. “I think Master Skywalker would be angry with the person who made you do it, not you.”
“Oh, he’s angry enough with Jacen.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t put you on the spot about your family. It’s not fair. Forget I said it.”
“I think I did the right thing for the wrong reasons.”
“Well, beats doing the wrong thing for the right reasonsclassic excuse, that one. I was a cop. I know …”
“Do you want to stay in the GAG?”
“I miss CSF, actually. I miss catching real criminals and showing tourists the way to the Rotunda.” He wandered into the kitchen, and there was a banging and clattering of dishes. He came back with a glass of juice and drank it in two gulps. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Oh, yeah. Look, I’ll be out of your way as soon as I can.”
“No rush. Shula thinks it’s great that you wash the dishes.”
Shevu’s girlfriend said he was a “nice polite boy.” Ben thought that providing a safe haven for him was worth help with the chores, at the very least. “I can Force-dry them, too.”
Shevu laughed and handed him the remote control for the lights. Ben got the feeling that Shevu was happier keeping an eye on him in the aftermath of the assassination because he didn’t approve of the Jedi habit of letting “children” carry weapons and fight. As far as he was concerned, Ben shouldn’t have been serving in the front lines before he was at least eighteen. He was just too polite to say that he thought Jedi made bad parents.
Poor Mom.
Ben slept. He had a few odd dreams about Lekauf that woke him up, and the grief when he woke up properly and remembered his comrade was dead was painful. He lay wondering about Lekauf’s folks, and how they were coping, and then he thought he drifted off again because he could hearno, he could feel a voice in his head asking where he was.
He sat up. He knew he was fully awake, because he could see the environment-control light on the wall, winking faint red every ten seconds. It took him a while to work out why he knew the voice but couldn’t put a face to it when he shut his eyes again.
It was the Sith ship. He didn’t know where it was, but it was calling him. It wanted to know where he was.
Sith sphere, color orange, no index number, last known registered owner: Lumiya. Ben decided to treat it like a stolen speeder, the way Shevu would. I owe Jacen this. He’d never have done these things without Lumiya twisting his mind. Shows he’s not half as clever as he thinks he is.
Mom would probably try to talk him out of it. But they’d reached an understanding now that he had to do things his own way, because she couldn’t expect anything else from him, given his pedigree.
Ben pulled on his clothes, left a scribbled flimsi note for Shevu, and set off for the GAG compound to liberate an unmarked long-range speeder.
The nice thing about being the secret police was that provided you signed out the kit, nobody asked you what you planned to do with it. And it was legitimate police business to catch criminals.
It was only when he fumbled in his pocket for his ID that he realized he’d left his vibroblade at Shevu’s. He hoped he wouldn’t need his mom’s luck tonight.
SKYWALKERS’ APARTMENT, CORUSCANT
Luke was asleep when Mara got back, and she was relieved. It saved a lot of awkward questions. She peered through the doors, counted the seconds between rasping snores, and decided he was out cold. Good. She slipped past the bed and selected her favorite working clothes: dark gray fatigues with plenty of pockets for storing small weapons and ammo. She had no idea how long it would take to run Jacen to ground, so she opted to pack for a missionas much as she could cram into her backpack.