[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(127)

Lumiya couldn’t even feel the ship around her.

The sense she was wrapped up in now wasn’t taste or sight or sound, but… touch.

There was something soft, silky, and furry in her hands—Jacen’s hands—and it yielded when he closed his fingers. It meant nothing to her, and then—then she understood.

“Ship, you said loves.”

Two, the ship said. Yes, two.

The ship could detect Force-users, and it felt there were two more on Hapes, two more whose link with Jacen Solo had to be kept secret at any cost, and who would have an emotionally overwhelmed Jacen clutching something soft and covered in silky fur …

A toy. A soft toy. Jacen had come back to the apartment with a plain package gripped tight under his arm, and left with it. He’d bought a cuddly toy for a child he loved with his entire being.

Lumiya snapped herself out of the connection, and managed to stop short of beating her fists on the stark red deck of the sphere in sheer frustration. The ship might have taken it the wrong way.

Oh, Jacen, you had a child with Tenel Ka.

Lumiya now understood his fear and desperation. She thought of all the conversations she’d had with him about immortalizing his love, and suddenly realized who was in his mind when he looked so utterly tortured and desperate as she explained that he had to destroy what he loved most.

It explained everything. Lumiya never thought she could pity someone again enough to weep, but she found her vision blurred by tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.

She settled in for a long wait in a state of mental silence, not even wanting to occupy herself with getting to know this extraordinary ship. She’d need to be there for Jacen after this. It seemed insultingly banal to kill time when he was about to make a sacrifice that almost no mundane being—or Jedi—would understand or forgive.

Yes, it was a very high price indeed.





chapter eighteen


The Roche government has given Murkhana twenty-four hours to cease production of weapons command systems that are allegedly in breach of patents, or face what it describes as “immediate enforcement.” GA Chief of Staff Niathal tonight warned Roche against military action and said GA fighters would be patrolling the system in a peacekeeping role.

—HNE news update

HAPES

Mara dropped out of hyperspace still putting together scenarios to explain why Lumiya had gone racing down the Perlemian to the Hapes Cluster shortly after a GAG StealthX was signed out of the GA Fleet hangar by Colonel Jacen Solo.

There was no sign of the StealthX. If Jacen wasn’t making himself detectable in the Force, Mara couldn’t spot the stealth fighter any better than an enemy could. But ideas were forming in her mind.

Either Lumiya was fermenting more trouble to break the Alliance, in which case Hapes was a wasted journey, or she was meeting someone here like Alema—sorry, Jaina, I’ll try to bring her back alive for you, but no promises, not in this mood—or … she was pursuing Jacen.

Or … maybe she’d found the transponder and was back to playing tag.

Mara thought it was odd that the ship hadn’t spat out the tiny device, given that it was smart enough to throw a line around her neck to save Lumiya’s tin backside.

It could have killed me easily enough, too. But it didn’t.

Mara disliked reasoning in a vacuum. She didn’t quite trust the crazier things that crossed her mind lately. But maybe the ship still saw her as a dark sider. It would be academic soon, but the thought that she might still have that tang of darkness about her produced some mixed emotions.

Yeah, I’m going to kill my sister-in-law’s son. On the dark scale of ten, that’s a twelve.

Now that her anger had ebbed, she was beginning to wonder what she was doing here. The Hapans would wonder that, too, if they managed to spot a StealthX hanging around their system unannounced. Lumiya’s transponder showed that her ship was sitting in a cluster of asteroids, but she wasn’t showing up on scans.

What was she waiting for?

Mara ran a discreet check on her instruments. If she went active on sensors, she’d give away her position, so it had to be a case of passive detection only.

She was watching, or waiting, and how the Hapans hadn’t taken an unhealthy interest in the sphere was anyone’s guess, but Lumiya had a talent for evasion.

Follow the credits. But in this case, follow the Sith.

Mara shut down as many systems as she could afford to do without and waited. The temptation to launch a spread of proton torpedoes took some resisting, but until Mara worked out what Lumiya was waiting for, the Sith had a stay of execution.

It had to be Jacen that Lumiya had followed, although how she’d managed that Mara wasn’t yet sure. Maybe Tenel Ka had summoned him, to intercede and get him to drop that stupid warrant on his parents. That didn’t explain Lumiya riding escort, though, or why she’d tailed him for eighteen solid hours.