[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(134)

“No.” Jaina closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating. “Doesn’t feel like a call for help. Feels like … a fight.”

Luke decided to warn Tenel Ka that he was on his way purely as a precaution. Eighteen-standard-hour transit. Given the number of planets in the Hapes Cluster, it would probably take even the Hapans a lot longer than that to find a StealthX, but the more eyes that were out looking out for Mara, the better.

Luke tried to appear casual as he climbed into his cockpit. Jaina stood looking up at him.

“I know I’m officially out of the service,” she said, “but if someone authorizes it, I’m happy to join in. Please.”

Luke gestured to the ground crew. “Thanks.”

“It’s Lumiya we should be worrying about.” Jaina was trying to reassure him. “I can see Aunt Mara going in for braided scalps like Fett. Red ones. Does Lumiya dye her hair, do you think? Will the stuff have icky gray roots?”

Luke knew she was trying to make him laugh, and he tried to oblige. But just hearing the name Fett reminded him that pretty well every member of his family, Solos or Skywalkers, was at the top of someone’s must-kill-today list.

Luke didn’t want or expect to be loved by everyone. He just wanted to wake up one morning and find his loved ones left alone to get on with their lives.

When Mara came home—scalps or no scalps, war or no war—he was going to book a vacation for the two of them, somewhere soothingly uneventful. He balled the flimsi note she’d left for him and wedged it into a gap in the cockpit fascia. The StealthX’s drives whined into life.

It wouldn’t be Hesperidium, though.

KAVAN

Jacen had expected to have to deal with an angry Mara after he killed Ben, not before.

He was still looking for meanings and patterns in the events around him, and he now saw in himself a certain desperation to try whatever was placed in his path to see if that did the trick and sealed his Sith status.

Will I notice? What does it feel like?

How will I know ?

There had to be something that changed the fabric of the galaxy—a tipping point. Meanwhile, Mara was challenging him, pinpointing herself in the tunnels that ran deep under the Kavan countryside, thinking she was still an A-list assassin and that she could take someone who had complete mastery of the Force.

She was a superb assassin, but her Force skills were crude compared to his. Once Jacen removed her, it would be easier to deal with Ben. And Luke … he’d cross that bridge when he had to.

Jacen checked his belt, pockets, and holster, and decided to oblige Mara. Lumiya and Ben seemed to be elsewhere having their own showdown. Now it all fitted. Lumiya had to be silenced for what she knew, and Ben would do it. It was tidy. It was a food chain.

Jacen loaded four poisoned darts into an adapted blaster and slipped the others into slots on his belt, wondering how he could think such things so calmly. He approached the tunnel mouth with slow care. While he could sense the layout, Mara had vanished from the Force again. There was about a meter of headroom as he edged carefully along the central tunnel, and he could see horizontal shafts at about hip height branching off. It had been built to drain storm water; in harsh winters, local Kavani had once made emergency homes down here.

Jacen stood and listened.

“Okay,” he said. “I know you can hear me, Mara. You can still back out of this.”

His voice echoed. There was no response, just as he expected, so he began walking deeper into the maze of drains, lightsaber in his right hand and blaster in the other. The only light around him now was a green haze from the glowing blade of energy.

“I could,” he said quietly, “go back, block the entrance to this complex with flammable material, and set fire to it.” She could hear him, all right: he could hear water dripping slowly deep in the tunnels. Sound was magnified, even if it was hard to pinpoint the origin. “And the fact that these tunnels have vents means the chimney effect would smoke you out, asphyxiate you, or barbecue you.”

Silence.

He held his breath, listening.

Crack.

His right knee exploded with blinding pain as Mara cannoned out horizontally, Force-assisted, from a side conduit and caught his leg on the joint with her boots, ripping the tendons. As he lost his footing in the narrow passage, screaming, he found himself wedged for a second and groping for support. He lashed out with his lightsaber, shaving powdery brick from the wall. Mara dropped to the muddy floor to dodge the lightsaber, then sprang up and sprinted away down the tunnel.

It wasn’t a good start. Jacen swore and made himself run after her, willing endorphins to numb his leg and telling himself that he knew she was setting up a trap. She wanted him confined, pinned down, penned.