Jacen's voice seemed to be coming from another time and place.

"You're contained. The world can't touch you."

"Yes."

"Now break the shell. Break the container." Jacen's tone was even and soothing. "See the world in its component atoms. See yourself as atoms, too. Find the line where you end and the world begins."

Ben visualized the room around him and the air in it. It became a frozen snowfall of varying density, some particles clustered, some scattered; then he looked into himself, and saw the microscopic unevenness of the surface of his skin, and the overlapping plates of keratin in his hair, and then beyond that to where he was just like the room around him—a snowstorm of molecules. Some of the room was within him as oxygen and dust, and some of him was in the room as fragments of skin and droplets of water.

There was no line. There was no edge that divided Ben Skywalker from the room, or from Coruscant, or from the galaxy. He merged with it all, and it merged with him. There was nothing solid: just a warm, drifting sea of molecules, some of which assembled loosely and long enough to be Ben Skywalker.

"So you can do it . . ."

Jacen's voice drifted from a long way away. Ben suddenly felt as if he were dissolving and would never be whole again. Panic gripped him. He jerked his eyes open with a massive effort like tearing open rock with his bare

"Oh. . .wow.

"Now," Jacen said softly, "you see why practice is necessary. But full marks for technique."

"How does that hide me?"

"You blend with the universe. Think of it as Force camouflage. The trick is to become so comfortable with it that you can slip into this state of being . . . dissolved, yet still carry on functioning, fully aware."

Ben couldn't even manage another wow. He was absolutely determined to master the technique, and at the same time scared by it because it felt like a seductive, comfortable death. He was afraid he might sink so deeply into it that he'd never get out again.

It was as close as he'd ever come to both knowing and feeling what the Force was. He felt he'd never be the same again, or see the world in quite the same way.

Wow.

If only all his Force knowledge had manifested itself that fast and that vividly.

"You need to practice regularly," said Jacen.

Ben nodded, worried about looking too enthusiastic. It was more than just a useful way to evade his father now. It was worth pursuing in its own right, for the sheer sensation of it.

"I will," he said. The moment of ecstatic revelation had passed, and he felt oddly chilled. "Any orders for me? Or am I just going to be listening to comlinks now?"

"Oh, I have a mission for you."

"Like the Amulet?" Maybe he shouldn't have said it, but he felt bad about the whole thing, as if it had been not only a waste of a man's life but also nowhere near as important as he'd been led to believe. He hated being humored. "I can handle the truth, Jacen. You'd be surprised."

Jacen was all serene composure. "I've got a job that only you can do, and it's critical. You might not want to accept the mission."

"If it's an order, it's an order."

"Better hear it first." Jacen reached into his jacket and pulled out a datapad. "Read this. It's the original sources of the intelligence I received, so you can judge for yourself."

Ben took the datapad and studied the screen. There were transcripts of comlink conversations, and even grainy images of a meeting taken from such an odd angle that it must have been captured by a spy droid in a very awkward location, probably on the top of a cupboard. Men in expensive suits and tunics, sipping caf and talking in hushed tones: a man with well- cut dark hair, younger than Jacen. Ben recognized him as Dur Gejjen.

"That's the Corellian Prime Minister," he said.

"That's all intel gathered from our contacts inside the Corellian government offices. Read on."

There was discussion of driving a wedge between Hapes and the Galactic Alliance. It sounded like the usual political maneuvering that always bored Ben until he started to read recurring phrases, like Queen Mother and seeing the disadvantages of siding with the Alliance.

And then there were references to removing obstacles. It all fell into place when he flicked to the next holoimage and saw discussion of appropriate bounty hunters and who might be willing to operate in the Hapan royal house.

Ben might have been bored by politics, but he understood better than he

imagined, and he knew he had to if he wanted to survive.

"This is about Tenel Ka."

"Correct."

"Gejjen really did plan the attack on her, then."

"Correct. We finally have hard evidence, and so we can act."

Ben should have felt outrage, he knew, but what filled him then was despair that people found it so easy and so necessary to plot to kill each other. It was happening to his own family, and to him, and it was happening between heads of state.

They were all crazy. They'd lost all reason. Or was this the way the adult world really worked, doing all the stupid, cruel, destructive, impulsive things that they swore they'd grown out of?

"What do you want me to do?" Ben asked, pretty sure what the answer would be.

"Assassinate Gejjen." Jacen rubbed his forehead wearily. "He's a piece of work, and he'll destabilize our allies. There's no negotiating with a man who routinely resorts to state-sponsored assassination like that. The Corellians need to know we can reach out and take them, too.

Sober them up a bit. Way too cocky."

"Isn't that what we're doing, though? How is our assassination different from theirs? Won't it just lead to more killings?"

"You want to do this by the book? Okay, call Corellian Security and report Gejjen for conspiracy to murder. Oh, and for having Thrackan Sal-Solo assassinated, too, even if we can't call my father in court to testify to that. Let's see how fast they arrest him."

"I know

"You don't have to do it." Jacen had that slightly wounded tone that said quite the opposite. "But you proved you were competent at covert ops when we hit Centerpoint, and you can get close to Gejjen a lot more easily than some big hairy commando like Duvil. You can look like a harmless teenager."

I am a teenager . . . and I'm usually pretty harmless. But Jacen had a point. If anyone was going to do it—and the fact that Jacen had mentioned it meant he'd already made up his mind—then Ben had the best chance of getting close enough to Gejjen without being spotted.

Jacen stared at him, head slightly on one side, with that almost-smile that said he was sure Ben was going to say yes.

"I can't exactly ask Boba Fett to do this, can I?" Jacen said quietly.

"They're taking bets on how and when he's going to try to kill you." An officer shouldn't ask his troops to do anything he wouldn't do himself. I can't leave this to one of the 967. "Okay. I agree Gejjen's rotten to the core. And once we can go public on this stuff. . . then the warrant on Uncle Han and Aunt Leia is dropped, right?"

"I can't, Ben." Jacen sighed. "Everyone knows they had nothing to do with the attack. But they're still working for Corellia, and I can't suspend arrest warrants just because they're family. That's how corruption starts. Besides, what example does that set the troops? Will they ever trust us again if officers bend the rules for family?"

Ben was reminded once more that he didn't take after his father, who would have insisted on arresting Gejjen.