[Legacy Of The Force] - 08(56)

It’s true, I tell you. He killed her. Snapped her neck. He’s the best officer we ever had. He cares. He killed her, I tell you. Tebut was all right. If he can kill her….

Lots of people have ended up dead since he took over. Omas, Gejjen, Luke Skywalker’s wife…. Don’t be stupid. She was family.

Caedus snapped out of the listening trance and his office looked dead, its colors washed out for a moment. He was furious. I killed Mara? They’re saying I killed her? She came after me. She was trying to kill me. If I hadn’t killed her, I’d be the one getting a state funeral now. Destiny steered by the Force or not, she tried to kill me. She was an assassin. It was all she ever was, all she was destined to be, for the purposes unfolding now. He felt his face flush, hot and hurt. The strength of his reaction shocked him. He could face himself when he shaved each morning, and however many lives this war was costing, he did what he had to do; each life spent was to save many others, and he would not apologize for it, or be regarded as a common criminal.

“Sir, are you okay?”

Caedus settled himself and embraced the temporary distress as another inevitable pain in the road to mastering the Sith way. If he couldn’t feel stung and wounded, if he could ignore the barbs…. then he couldn’t harness the passions a Sith had to feed upon. They were his strength. The pain was his strength.

If only Ben had realized the value of pain. He was so much sharper, more thoughtful, more worthy than Tahiri, for all his sentimental shortcomings. Where will I find the right one? When will I find a deserving apprentice?

It would have to wait.

“I shouldn’t have to do the foot-soldier work, Tahiri. Be my eyes and ears. I’d hate to have to use ch’hala trees. You’re smarter than a tree-aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir, “she said, and her resentment tasted like sour vattle juice at the back of his tongue. That was a positive sign, better than the needy desperation that had motivated her to effort only when she wanted to see Anakin again. If she was going to be more than just an errand runner, he had to find the durasteel in her spine, some powerful emotion that would make her fight back and even challenge him. Her fire, her drive, needed to come from her living self and not from a dead boy she could never have.

It was unhealthy, this fixation with what was gone forever. Caedus sometimes felt uneasy using the flow-walking bait, but it was just a way of placing Tahiri in the right position so he could then show her something real and lasting. It was a necessary, temporary evil.

“Then you’ll understand this, “he said. He beckoned her over to the holochart table, even though she could easily see the plot if she twisted in the chair. “Come here. See my strategy for Fondor.”

Caedus moved clouds of small icons like miniature star clusters into an irregular ring around Fondor.

“Your strategy.” Tahiri wasn’t cowed down by Caedus’s verbal slaps. Good. She was still smarting and angry. “Is Admiral Niathal not involved?”

“Who runs the state while I’m away? We need to avoid having both Chiefs away at the same time unless there’s an overwhelming crisis away from Coruscant that demands it.” Caedus thought of how often they’d both not only been offplanet, but in the same engagement. No attempt to overthrow us, though…. how compliant beings can be. “She’s aware of my plans.”

“But you trust her enough to turn your back on her.”

“My back, “Caedus said, “is never turned, no matter where I am.”

Sowing seeds of doubt, either because she wants to rattle me, or because she’s genuinely suspicious. Both worthy of a Sith. Perhaps Tahiri has turned a corner a last.

“So what am I looking at?” she asked.

Caedus sensed Niathal coming along the corridor. Her timing was impeccable; she must have seen Tahiri pass the lobby outside her own office.

“The small icons are mines, “he said. “I’m not making the same mistake as we did in blockading Corellia. Then, we still deluded ourselves that we could bring the planet to its knees by maintaining a civilized picket line… like some customs and excise operation. No, that eats resources, especially when there’s a ring of orbital stations to isolate from both planet side and space side. When I deploy warships and fighters, it will be to wage war and fight, not to be run ragged stopping Confederates from walking on the grass. I’m taking the first element of the Fourth Fleet to Fondor today. The minelayers have already left.”

“Around the whole planet?”

“That’s the only option. Mining the main transits from the Rimma Trade Route simply allows supply vessels to by-pass the minefields, or catches the careless ones, and while I want to deter commerce from supporting Fondor, there’s nothing to be gained in alienating the trade worlds with civilian casualties.”