[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(129)

Ben savored a brief fantasy of emptying the shuttle’s cannon into the sphere, felt strangely sorry to destroy the ship just to finish Lumiya, and wondered if all boys went through a stage of feeling aggressively protective toward their mothers. Maybe that went with finding it so hard to deal with fathers as you grew up. It was that alpha-male thing.

Come off it. How many guys your age—or any age—have to worry about their family being attacked by Sith and insane Dark Jedi? This isn’t normal life. The rules are different.

Ben got as close to the Sith sphere as he dared. As far as he could tell, it was holding its position, but when it moved—he’d go for the kill. Then his mom would know he was there whether he made himself detectable in the Force or not, because the GAG shuttle was about as stealthy as a brick.

If he could avoid killing the Sith ship, he would. For some reason, it bothered him more than killing a real human being, which he’d done too many times now.

FOUNTAIN PALACE, HAPES

Jacen said good-bye to Allana, finding it freshly painful not to be able to call her his little girl.

“Nice fur,” she said. She refused to be parted from the stuffed tauntaun and hugged it to her with both arms. “What’s his name?”

Jacen squatted down level with her. She was Force-sensitive and smart, but if she’d realized who he actually was, she was too well

schooled in survival to say. He liked to think that it was a knowledge they both shared, and that she understood why he couldn’t be Daddy—not yet, anyway. It was a sobering thought for such a little girl.

“What do you want to call him?”

“Jacen.”

“That’s lovely. Why Jacen, sweetie?”

“So when you don’t come to see us I can talk to him instead.”

A father’s guts were made to be twisted. Jacen reached the stage of wanting to just turn and run when he took his leave of her and Tenel Ka, so he could avoid that hesitant parting a step at a time, looking back over and over again and thinking: What if this was the last time I ever saw them? He did think it. It was morbid, but a measure of how important they were to him that he tested just how devastated he’d feel without them. At least as Chief of State, he had a much better reason for more frequent contact with an allied monarch.

And he’d come through this visit without his destiny bursting in and creating a moment that told him he had to kill them. He listened for that whisper of fate, dreading it, but there was only silence.

It would only have caused him pain, nothing more. Sith ways were logical; never pointlessly cruel. Whatever sacrifice he still had to make, it would have productive meaning, however hard.

Jacen, the tauntaun, who was there for Allana when he wasn’t around, would always hurt a little, though.

Tenel Ka walked with him in silence to the StealthX in the compound.

“You’re not happy about Omas, are you?” he said.

She did that gracious tilt of the head, the one she must have learned to cover her real reaction when she was being bored senseless by guests at a diplomatic reception.

“It’s very different, being the focus of government after you’ve enjoyed the relative freedoms of being a deputy,” she said. “I hope it doesn’t turn out to be a mistake for you.”

“I can always steer the attention to Niathal.”

“Make sure you both have different ambitions. It’s far safer than both wanting the same thing.”

“That sounds like the kind of advice I should wake up sweating about in the small hours.”

“I think the phrase is lonely at the top, Jacen Solo.” She indicated the blaster, lightsaber, vibroblade, and toxin darts in the belt around his waist. “I see you’re getting used to the Hapan level of mistrust…”

“Like you say, it’s lonely.”

He didn’t look back this time. Now that his brief respite was over, the fresh memory of Mara haranguing him—had he handled it right, did she have enough on him to destroy all he was working for?—flooded back in along with Ben’s face.

I want it over with. I can deal with it. I just can’t stand not knowing where and when and how.

The StealthX lifted clear, and Hapes dwindled into a sumptuous quilt of gardens and canals again. He had a good idea now of what he’d face when Ben was gone: Mara, an animal robbed of her young with all the primeval wounded rage that went with it, and Luke—he had no idea how Luke would react, only that a man who could bring down the Empire, and whose blood was closer to Vader’s even than his own, wouldn’t be paralyzed by grief.

Jacen was now more afraid of the Skywalkers discovering Allana’s parentage than of the Hapan nobles. He could probably protect her from the Hapans if he had to, but it would be far harder to protect her from the vengeance of Luke or Mara. Allana was his weak point.