Caedus could see Shevu unclasp his hands from behind his back to fold his arms, but that was all. There wasn’t the sense of nervousness around the bridge that might have been expected. The crew, as always, had faith in Caedus to deal with any situation. But Tahiri was rattled; she couldn’t sense Caedus’s intentions-he remained shut down in the Force as a matter of course now, emanating nothing to other Force-users-and now she could see the flight of Fondorian assault fighters streaming out to intercept them. She had never had control of a warship.
“That’s easy enough, “she said, not sounding convinced. He could feel her probing, groping around in the Force for hidden meaning, concealed traps. “If someone’s working out the firing solutions.”
“Are the fighters a threat to us, Tahiri?”
She was having doubts now. He’d sown uncertainty in her mind simply by asking an apparently obvious question.
“Possibly.”
“How will you know?”
“When they power up their weapons.”
“We have weapons online. Are we a threat to them or just ready to deal with an attack? What are your rules of engagement? What if they don’t fire?”
To her credit, Tahiri seemed to be thinking logically. The fighters were closing in. Bridge crew began shifting in their seats now, a little uneasy.
“Quickly, Tahiri. You only have seconds. A second is all it takes for a missile to penetrate the hull, vent a whole compartment, kill hundreds of our comrades…”
Caedus knew the Fondorian pilots would detect charged, targeted, locked-on cannon and yet no defenses. They’d think it was a trap. They’d hesitate, assess the target, wonder what they’d missed…
In range.
“They’ve powered up but not acquired us, sir, “said the weapons officer.
“Tahiri…”
“Fire!” she said. “Take, take, take.”
Cannon fire stabbed into the flight of fighters, streams of it taking out all six of them in sudden silent blooms of white light. Naval and air engagements were always impersonal, Caedus thought, machine on machine, not at all like the urgency of facing an enemy in a trench or street and seeing a face. It took awhile to sink in at first.
“Reactivate defenses and lay in a course for Coruscant, “said Caedus.
The Star Destroyer came alive with the lights and sounds of preparation for the hyperspace jump back to the Core. Tahiri was still staring at the viewport.
“Now… was that the right decision?”
“You tell me, “he said.
“I neutralized the threat.”
“Or you fired on vessels that hadn’t targeted you, and made widows and orphans for no good reason. Which do you think you did?”
“It’s a war…”
“Wars have rules.”
“You told me to fire.”
“I told you that you could fire.” Caedus could see the crew trying to pretend the dissection wasn’t taking place in front of them. They were all suddenly blind and deaf. “The decision was yours.”
“Is that what this is all for? You brought the ship here just for a few minutes to see if I could give a command to fire?”
“Yes.”
“And put the ship at risk? And kill pilots?”
“It’s what we do. How do you feel about that? Do you think about the living beings in those fighters, or do you think about us in this ship, and can you ever be sure you took the only reasonable path open to you? I can’t answer that. To become my apprentice, you have to be able to answer that in your own mind and live with the answer. You killed today. It should never feel easy or distant like some holovid game. If it does, or it doesn’t trouble you later at some time, then you’re not up to the responsibility.”
Tahiri stood silent and wide-eyed. She looked as if she was seriously considering the implications. Like him, she’d learned from her time among the Yuuzhan Vong: She knew that there was nothing like blood on your hands to make you grow up and understand all the things you had to sacrifice for duty. Caedus retired to his day cabin and sat reading the previous day’s intelligence reports on the journey home.
When he was still Jacen Solo, Caedus had been warned that command-rule-was lonely, but now he knew what Tenel Ka had meant when she told him it was the price of being a leader.
He was utterly alone now, rejected even by his daughter, Allana.
That…. that was my sacrifice.
He had convinced himself it was Mara Skywalker. Then he had convinced himself it was Ben’s adulation he’d sacrificed by killing her. Now he knew that whatever the ancient Sith tassels had prophesied in their arcane language of knots and colors, his sacrifice was an ordinary man’s precious connection to other beings-love, trust, and intimacy. He could never recover any of it. Allana was gone from him forever. His only comfort was that the galaxy would be safer for her.