“Yeah, I understand.” He pulled down the neck of his shirt a little to reveal a gold chain. “No ID, of course, but my girlfriend gave it to me, and I never go on patrol without it.”
It helped to know everyone got edgy before a mission and needed a little reminder of their loved ones. Shevu got halfway to the doors before he turned around and seemed to be working up to saying something.
“I realize your father might find it hard to accept what you do, Ben, but I’m proud of you,” he said. “Still, if I had a son, I wouldn’t be letting him do this kind of thing until he was an adult. It’s not as if we haven’t got enough trained men to do it. But … well, Colonel Solo has his reasons, I’m sure.”
Ben sat thinking over that statement for a while, and realized that Shevu had said fathernot parents. Maybe he thought that his mother would understand a job like this. Ben felt he was hanging on to the relationship with his family by his fingertips, but there had been no more fights, and he didn’t feel quite so angry about having to compromise. Maybe that was really what growing up was aboutan increasing distance from parents, knowing that there would always be tomorrow and that he didn’t have to get what he wanted right now, and starting to understand the things they’d been through when they were younger.
I wouldn’t be letting him do this kind of thing until he was an adult.
But his father had done this kind of thing, more or less. He’d just been a little older, that was all. This was no different from blowing up the Death Star, and plenty of ordinary people just doing their jobs had died when Luke Skywalker had done that. Ben was removing a single manno bystanders.
He’d remind Dad of that if it ever came out and he had to defend his decision. Dad would probably say Jacen made him do it.
Ben stood in the refresher with the dye worked into lather on his head, and caught sight of himself in a mirror. He felt ridiculous. The foam looked mauve, and he wondered if something had gone horribly wrong. When he rinsed it off, though, his hair was brown, just brown, and he was looking at a stranger.
Good.
He needed to be someone else for all kinds of reasons.
When his hair had dried, he took out the civilian clothes Lekauf had left for himall Corellian style, all Corellian labels. This is in case I get caught. The thought chilled Ben, but it was standard procedure. Nobody had spoken to him about what would happen if he did get caught, and what interrogation might be like, but he could guess. They probably didn’t know what advice to give a Jedi about resisting interrogation anyway.
Maybe they thought he could just nudge a mind here and a thought there, and walk out of the cell.
Maybe he could.
Ben checked himself in the mirror a few times, trying to see himself as a stranger might, and was satisfied that he looked unlike Ben Skywalker, and disturbingly like a Corellian boy a little older than he was, but blondBarit Saiy.
He hadn’t seen Saiy since they’d rounded him up with the other Corellians. After that, Ben had stopped asking what happened, but he still wondered silently.
He squatted down and placed his boots in the locker. Then he counted the various pieces of kit. Daily pair, battered raid pair for good luckbut no parade-best pair.
He couldn’t imagine where they’d gone. No, actually, he could: Lekauf. Ben would find them full of something unmentionable just before kit inspection. Or painted bright pink.
“Jori, I’m going to think up something special for you,” he said aloud, and grinned, wanting the diversion.
It was nice to be one of the boys. Ben slipped his datapad into his pocket, wondered where he was going to leave it for safekeeping, and went to pick up the Karpaki and some ammo packs from the armory.
It was just a job, and he had to do it.
THE SKYWALKERS’ APARTMENT, CORUSCANT
Luke woke in a heart-pounding panic and reached out toward a hooded shape at the foot of the bed, knowing he was dreaming but unable to stop himself from reacting to the specter that dissolved as he became fully awake.
He hadn’t had the dream of the menacing figure in the hooded cloak for a while. Now it was back. It was four in the morning, and Mara still hadn’t come home.
Usually, the Force dream vanished and just left him with that sick jolt in his gut as if he’d seen a speeder crash. But this was different; as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he had a sense of someone still being in the room, and he was sure he wasn’t asleep. He checked the chrono to make certain he wasn’t still mired in the nightmare.
0410 hours.
He wasn’t.
Luke reached for his lightsaber, which he’d been keeping on the nightstand lately, and made a cautious inspection of all the rooms. He couldn’t sense flesh and blood anywhere, but he could detect something. The presence was so close now that he could almost feel breath on the back on his neck.