He gestured at the guards; they spun and left the salon. The door shut behind them.
He didn’t bother to keep impatience and indifference out of his voice. “Well?”
Leia looked him over. Clearly, the visual image he presented-a tall, dangerous Force-user in all-black garments and cloak-was again reminding her of her father more than her son, and Caedus enjoyed having discomfited her… But she didn’t let what she was feeling be reflected in her face or voice. “Jacen, it’s time for you to look at yourself.”
“I’m well aware of what I look like, Mother. I have to cultivate my image carefully for holonews appearances.”
“I’m not talking about your looks. I’m talking about your life.”
He sighed. “You know, I was actually hoping you had come up with some exciting, imaginative new argument to sway me from my path. Not that it has a chance of succeeding. But it would be more entertaining. Don’t you have some new heart-wrenching appeal? Some brilliant metaphor to hurl at me and cause me to double over in the anguish of guilt, to reevaluate my whole ethical structure?”
She shook her head, and there was no missing the sadness in her eyes. “All I have is the truth, and the memory of who you used to be.”
He pressed a button on the arm of his chair. The door behind Leia slid open. “You’re wasting my time. Leave now.” She glanced at the button, and it clicked down without Caedus’s help. The door slid closed again. “You no longer have time for me?”
“Which you? The mother you used to be, or the interplanetary criminal you’ve become? I’m not the only one who’s changed.”
“History decides who’s a criminal, Jacen.” Finally, real irritation began to stir within Caedus, and he rose to the argument. “No, the law decides who’s a criminal. History just forgives them, and for reasons as stupid as they are varied. Han Solo was a spice smuggler, an unapologetic lawbreaker. You, even when you were a teenager, were a traitor to the legitimate galactic government, a conspirator planning war and overthrow. The puppet government you put in place may have forgiven you both, but you’ll be criminals for the rest of your lives.” Her expression graduated to scorn. “Have you ever studied Darth Vader? Clearly, you got your intelligence and your political acumen from your grandfather.” He nodded. “There we are in agreement.”
In the private hangar bay set aside for the use of Anakin Solo’s commander, a team of security specialists, carrying standard scanning gear, walked down the yacht’s boarding ramp. Moments after the last one reached the hangar floor, the ramp rose into place, sealing the yacht.
Jaina Solo, stretched out on her back in an oppressively enclosed space, watched them leave. She did not watch them directly, but through the portable monitor she held in her hands. A shielded data feed led from the device into the metal wall of this smuggling compartment.
Beside her, Han stirred but did not open his eyes. “Are they gone?”
Jaina twisted a dial at the bottom of the screen, flipping its view through all of the Love Commander’s exterior holocam feeds. “No, they’re walking the yacht perimeter, doing a final scan.” Irritated, she checked her chrono. “How long can Mom keep Jacen distracted?”
Han shrugged. “Hard to guess. My estimate is that he’s not going to fall for guilt, but he’s pretty reactionary these days. If she can push the right argument buttons, he’ll be defending his politics and decisions from now until his next birthday.”
“How’s that going to make Mom feel?”
Han’s expression turned sad. “How do you think?”
An ominous scratching sounded from the far end of the compartment.
Jaina looked past her feet to the cage situated there on the compartment floor. A cube one meter in each dimension, it was made of thin, brightly painted durasteel bars-Within it was a jagged piece of polymer shaped like a stunted tree bole, and holding on to the sculpture was a reptile-a little over a meter long, greenish, with two sets of clawed legs and a long tail. It stared at them as if waiting for a reply to its statement.
Jaina wrinkled her nose at it. “I hate that thing.” It was an ysalamir, a lizard from the world of Myrkr-one of a species that had long ago evolved the ability to project an invisible bubble of Force energy in counterbalance to the Force all around it, making everything inside its border undetectable by Force-sensitives outside its range. So long as Jaina and Han, and Zekk and Jag in the next compartment, remained nearby, Jacen could not detect them.
Of course, Force-sensitives within the bubble were blind to the Force while they remained there.