Tenel Ka nodded, all gracious calm again. “I’ll have the captain get all the available information for you.”
Tenel Ka strode out. Jaina’s expression was murderous.
“Don’t say it,” said Luke.
“He’s a total stranger,” Jaina said. “There. I had to, or else I’ll have an aneurysm trying to stifle the urge to punch him out when he finally bothers to show up.”
Luke hugged Jaina, feeling dwarfed by the grand stateroom, and his comlink buzzed. It was Leia.
“Hey,” she said. Leia didn’t just touch him in the Force, she enveloped him. “We’re coming back as fast as we can. I’m so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
It sounded as if Han had wrestled the link from her. “Kid, you just hang in there. Don’t do a thing. Leave it all to us. Is Ben okay?”
“Missing again.”
“He’ll be fine. Don’t you worry. We’re coming.”
There wasn’t much else Han could say, and he never mentioned Jacen. Luke put his comlink back in his pocket.
The silence felt like pressure building on his eardrums. His breathing seemed to fill the room. What was the last thing I said to her?
“You know pretty well the last thing Mara and I talked about?” Jaina said suddenly. She was doing exactly what he wasreplaying final conversations. Tears welled in her eyes. “Nothing important, like how much I loved her and what she’d done for me. Just how much energy I waste in stupid games with Zekk and Jag, like a dumb sulky teenager.”
“Don’t do this to yourself.”
“Takes … this to make me grow up.” Jaina didn’t seem able to say the words: Mara’s death. “Everything’s changed now.”
“I know. I know.”
“It’s Lumiya.”
“We don’t know that.”
“You’re reasonable to the last, aren’t you, Uncle Luke?”
“None of us is thinking straight at the moment.” He didn’t need Jaina going off on an impulsive quest for vengeance. He had to focussomehow. “Why don’t you call … Zekk? Jag?” He hadn’t a clue which of the two men she’d want to turn to now. “They need to know, too.”
Jaina brushed the tip of her nose discreetly with the back of her wrist, and seemed to take an unnaturally fixed interest in the ornate carvings on a chair leg nearby. “I’ll inform them, but I’m done with all
that personal stuff. I’m going to concentrate on one thing, and that’s making Lumiya pay. If I’m supposed to be the Sword of the Jedi, then it’s time I took it seriously, and there’s nothing that’s worth my time more than this.”
The duty captain of the guard came in later with a datapad on a bronzium platter and held it out to Luke. When he hesitated, Jaina took it and pored over it. The expression of I-told-you-so on her face told Luke that it wasn’t going to be comfortable news.
“You want the short version, Uncle Luke?”
“Up to you.”
“Mara shows up after Jacen, in Five-Alpha, and asks Ops to keep an eye out for an orange spherical ship with cruciform masts, because our new Chief of State might be under threat.”
Luke always tried not to be swayed by circumstantial evidence, because two and two frequently proved to add up to anything but four. But he didn’t know if they’d find any other evidence. He didn’t know if they’d ever find Mara’s bodyor even if she’d left mortal remains. He couldn’t ignore this.
“Jaina,” he said. “I think you have to leave this to me.”
“What was it you said about none of us thinking straight?”
“I don’t want anyone acting on half the facts.”
“What’s it going to take, then?”
“She’sshe was my wife. I insist that I handle this myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“I want to. Don’t take this from me.”
Jaina actually flinched. Luke didn’t think he’d snapped at her. Maybe his pain was so intense that the sudden burst of it then had touched her in the Force.
“Okay, Uncle,” she said quietly. “But you just say the word, and I’ll be there.”
There was still no sign of Jacen by the time Luke had tried unsuccessfully to sleep for six hours. He’d dropped off the charts, as Jaina put it. And Ben had not reappeared. Ben, at least, had good reason.
The search for Five-Alpha resumed early in the morning.
KELDABE, MANDALORE
The fourth Bes’uliik off the production line rolled out of the hangar to meet the scrutiny of a small crowd of silent, armored men. They’d folded their arms in that typical go-on-amazeme Mando way, but as soon as the fighter came alive and sent dust pluming with its downdraft, they all applauded and yelled, “Oya!”