I’ve got to stick on his tail now. I’ve got to strike when I can.
She could track Lumiya, and he was still in touch with her. If she hung around Lumiya, then she’d eventually get Jacen where she wanted himaway from the genteel, constitutional way of doing things on Coruscant. Jacen had said he had an appointment, too, and while it might have been another of his lies, the chances were that he’d want to tell Lumiya that Mara was on to them.
I’ll save you the trouble.
She made a conscious effort not to see Leia’s face in her mind’s eye, and somehow she’d erased poor Han from this altogether. It wasn’t that fathers’ feelings didn’t matter, but she had a better idea of the pain Leia would go through; however old kids got, the memory of them as newborns never faded.
It might be true for dads, as well. But Mara only knew what a mother felt, and that was bad enough.
She checked her datapad for the transponder trace. Ben’s showed he was still at Shevu’s, and so he was one factor she didn’t have to worry about. Lumiya’s transponder indicated she was heading for the Perlemian node just off Coruscant. If Jacen wasn’t with her, Mara thought, she might well get a lead to one of her bolt-holes; in the assassination business, every scrap of data on a target’s habits and movements was valuable. It would be worth the journey, and the technician at the base was used to Jedi booking out flight time in StealthXs. She didn’t have to fill out any forms that said her mission was to kill the joint Chief of State.
Mara closed the inner doors to keep the light in the hallway from waking Luke, and paused at the apartment’s front entrance. Okay, I’ll risk it. If he wakes up, though … it’ll be another argument.
She put down her pack and tiptoed back into the bedroom, leaned over Lukestill snoring like a turbosawand kissed his forehead as lightly as she could. He grunted.
“Sorry I never spotted it,” she mouthed at him. “But better late than never.”
Luke grunted again, and his eyelids twitched. Mara debated whether to give him a little Force-touch deep in his mind and see if she could get him to smile in his sleep, but decided she was pushing her luck, and Jacen probably had a head start on her. Lumiya definitely did.
Mara paused at the doors and left a flimsi note stuck on them.
Gone hunting for a few days. Don’t be mad at me, farmboy …
There was no need to say who the quarry was. She’d have a hard enough time explaining when she returned.
SITH MEDITATION SPHERE, PERLEMIAN TRADE ROUTE
Hush,” Lumiya said aloud. “I have no idea if he can hear you.” The meditation sphere had developed an annoying habit of asking her questions. It wanted to know why there were so few. Lumiya wasn’t sure where to begin with such a vague question. The ship had been buried on Ziost for more time than it wanted to remember, it told her, and now it was curious to know where all the dark ones had gone.
“It’s a long story,” Lumiya said. “We haven’t been in the ascendant for a long time. Jacen Solo will change all that.”
What about the others?
“Oh, Alema?”
She comes and goes, broken, but sometimes very happy.
It was a good description of Alema’s almost bipolar moodsmurderous, bitter obsession punctuated by highs of … murderous triumphant obsession. The sphere was very attuned to feelings, it seemed. Maybe it could sense darkness anywhere, like a homing beacon, so that it could go to the aid of Sith in difficulty. “I told her to tail Jacen, but I should have known better than to rely on a psychiatric case. But who else is there? Apart from me, that is.”
Plenty of little darknesses. The two with my flame.
Lumiya repeated it to herself. Flame. “Ahh … red hair? Mara Jade Skywalker. She was the Emperor’s Hand, an agent for the dark side, just like me. The boy is her son.”
You darknesses should never fight. So few of you. I stopped her fighting.
“You certainly did.” It was fascinating that the ship could still sense the dark side in Mara, even though she’d abandoned her roots. But to taste it in Ben, too … it might have been in his genes, or perhaps the ship was reacting to his new career as a state assassin. Like mother, like son; Lumiya almost thought she’d written off Ben too soon. “Do you sense dark ones near?”
The broken one is looking for the Lord-to-be.
“If she looks as if she’s going to interfere, remove herdark or not.” Lumiya had told Alema to track Jacen, but now wasn’t the best time for Alema to interfere. “Jacen Solo is our priority.”
The ship went quiet. It was impossible to get an accurate sense of speed in a vessel with no instruments in hyperspace, but she could measure the duration of the journey on her chrono, and the ship could tell her where its equivalent location was in realspace.