[Legacy Of The Force] - 07(7)

Niathal rose and leaned over so that her bulbous eyes could peer, upside down, at his screen. “What is this?”

“A note to myself to have Seyah arrested. He provided Kalenda with false information that led her to extract him from a danger zone, which is the equivalent of desertion under fire. He will confess. He will be executed.”

“Ah.” Niathal resumed her seat, but offered no protest.

Caedus appreciated that. Niathal was clearly growing to understand that Caedus’s approach was best-it kept subordinates motivated, kept deadwood out of the ranks. “What next?”

“Bimmisaari and some of her allied worlds in the Halla sector just announced they were defecting to the Confederation.”

Caedus shook his head dismissively. “Not a significant loss.”

“No, but it’s more unsettling as the possible first sign of a trend. Intelligence has detected more communications traffic between Corellia and the Imperial Remnant, and between Corellia and the worlds of the Corporate Sector, which may be nothing more than an increased recruitment effort by the Confederation. Or it may have been initiated by the other parties, a prelude to negotiations and more defections.”

“Also irrelevant.” Caedus felt a flash of irritation. Yes, these were matters that the joint Chiefs of State needed to address, but they would all be resolved when the Hapes Consortium came back into the fold. “Anything else?”

“No.”

“Excellent.”



When the meeting was done and Niathal had departed, Caedus remained in the office. He stared at the blank walls. They soothed him. He needed soothing.

Inside, he was ablaze with anger, resentment, a sense of betrayal-all the emotions that fueled a Sith.

In the days since his fight with Luke, he had come to the realization that he was all alone in the universe. It was like the plaintive wail of a five-year-old: Nobody loves me. He could manage a smile at just how self-pitying it sounded.

But it was true. Everyone who had once known love for him now hated him. His father and mother, his twin Jaina, Tenel Ka, Luke, Ben. … Intellectually, as he had embraced the Sith path, he had known that it would happen. One by one, those who cared about him would be peeled away like the outer layers of his skin, leaving him a mass of bloody, agonized nerves.

He had known it … but experiencing it was another matter. His body might be healing, but his spirit was in greater pain every day.

Everyone he had loved now hated him … except Allana. And he would not allow Tenel Ka to turn his daughter against him. He would cut down anyone who stood between him and his child.

Anyone.



SANCTUARY MOON OF ENDOR, ABANDONED IMPERIAL OUTPOST

Years earlier, before Jacen Solo had been born-before, in fact, Luke and Leia knew they were siblings, before Leia had confessed even to herself that she was in love with Han-Yoda had told Luke that electrical shocks, applied at different intensities and at irregular but frequent intervals, would prevent a Jedi from concentrating, from channeling the Force. They could render a Jedi helpless.

But Yoda had never told Luke that emotional shocks could do the same thing.

They could. And just as no amount of self-control would allow a Jedi to ignore the effects of electrical shocks on his body, neither could self-control keep Luke safely out of his memories. Every few moments a memory, freshly applied like a current-bearing wire on his skin, would yank him out of the here and now and propel him into the recent past.

Boarding the Anakin Solo. Finding Jacen torturing-torturing-Luke’s only child, his son Ben. The duel that followed, Luke against the nephew he’d once loved. … the nephew who now commanded Master-level abilities in the Force, though he had not been, and never would be, elevated to the rank of Jedi Master.

And no pain Luke suffered in that fight was equal to Ben demanding the right to finish Jacen. That demand had brought Luke to where he was now, sitting cross-legged on the floor of an upper-story room of an abandoned Imperial outpost, staring through a wide transparisteel viewport at a lush Endor forest he was barely aware of, his body healing but his spirit sick and injured even after all these days.

Shocked almost beyond understanding by Ben’s blood-thirst, Luke had prevented his son from executing a death blow against Jacen. Nor had Luke chosen to finish Jacen himself. He had led Ben in sudden flight from the Anakin Solo-a flight to prevent Ben from taking the next, possibly irreversible, step toward the dark side that Jacen had planned for the boy.

But was it the right decision? At that moment, it had seemed like the only possible choice. Ben’s future, his decency, had teetered in the balance. Had either Skywalker killed Jacen, Ben would have fallen toward the dark.