"I don't understand. Did he leave them behind?"

"He doesn't keep any of his uniform at our place. Someone's taken them from your headquarters, and as juvenile a prank as it seems—" Luke almost stopped short of mentioning Lumiya, because he had no idea yet how deep her inroads into the GAG had become, or even if Jacen was consciously aware of them. But he was angry and scared for his boy, and that always colored his judgment. "It's Lumiya. She's taunting me.

Showing me she can get at Ben anytime she pleases."

Jacen was silent. Luke waited.

"I can't give you an explanation for that, I really can't," Jacen said eventually.

"Well, Lumiya's jerking my chain, as she probably was at Gilatter, too." Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could I ever have been fooled like that?

"And she has someone inside your organization, so I suggest you get that sorted out fast."

"We've had one investigation already, and found nothing. We'll have another, if it makes you happier." Jacen's voice sounded both offended and irritated, but Luke couldn't even take that at face value any longer.

"But I can assure you Ben is safe—he's even got pretty good protection right next to him. Lieutenant Lekauf."

"Nice to see the guy get promoted. He strikes me as being very loyal to you."

"As his grandfather was to Vader, Luke. You can't buy loyalty like that. Ben's in good hands. Let's talk again in the morning."

Luke shut the link dead. No, the morning wouldn't do, and there was no point talking to Jacen, who was clearly trussed and tied as far as Lumiya's influence was concerned. She was right under his nose. So much for what he'd learned about arcane Force techniques during his five-year sabbatical.

Luke jogged to the landing pad and tore off in the speeder, maybe a little faster than was safe. Lumiya had left a very clear trail, beckoning Luke to follow. Well, he wasn't falling for that. It had to be a diversion—or an ambush.

I've never been afraid of an ambush, Lumiya. I'll walk into one happily, knowing my enemies are there. Nice try. I'm coming, don't you worry.

He resisted the impulse to drop everything and charge after her trail. She was still near, or at least still on Coruscant; he could feel it. But he had to talk to Mara first, and she was at Starfighter Command.

He opened the comlink.

How could I have let this go on for so long? I don't care if I'm expected to be the elder statesman. This stops; this stops now.

"Mara, we have a problem," he said. "Lumiya."

"I'm with Jaina, sweetheart. Do you want me to—"

"She's been outside our apartment." Luke picked his words a little more carefully now. Mara would go ballistic as soon as he mentioned Ben's boots. It was a sinister, silent threat. "Stay where you are. I'll be there in a few minutes."

"When there's a trail going cold?"

"Or a diversion."

"Or a trail she wants you to think is a diversion."

Yes, Mara and Lumiya both had that layer-upon-layer way of thinking, just as Palpatine had taught them. "I know what she wants," he said, and shut the link.

Luke broke the traffic regulations a dozen times. He skipped out of the regulated skylanes—always busy on Coruscant—and got a discordant blast of horns from vessels whose noses he nearly clipped. In the way of automatic actions, his mind slipped into deep contemplation as he took the familiar route to Star fighter Command.

I know what my problem is.

He thought back forty years, when he'd been ready to rush to the aid of a total stranger on the basis of a message in an intercepted hologram. The plea for rescue hadn't even been aimed at him, but he'd responded to it anyway, without thinking, without questioning, because it had felt like something he had to do.

And now I act sensibly and soberly, because I'm leader of the Jedi Council, and I'm not nineteen anymore.

But it wasn't his nature. It wasn't what he did best. Just because he had whatever gifts the Force had given him more generously than other Jedi, it didn't mean he was cut out for . . . management. Yes, management: that was it. He thought of the nagging frustration he always felt when he sent other Jedi on missions, and how he thought that was just reluctance to admit it was the turn of the young Jedi to take on the physical derring-do while he made wise judgments in the Chamber.

Sitting on my backside.

What he did best was right wrongs, and if he couldn't put this right for his only child, then what was he?

I forgot who I am.

He was an uncomplicated man who cared enough about his friends and family to die for them, if that was what it took to save them. He was, as Mara told him at least once a day, a farmboy.

He was Luke Skywalker. And if he could take on the Empire without a second thought, he could certainly finish off one of the last pitiful remnants of its rule—Lumiya.

GA STARFIGHTER COMMAND, CORUSCANT

"Y' know, this always works on the crime holovids . . " Mara added another illuminated marker to the holochart of the galaxy and stepped back to see if a pattern of Lumiya's movements emerged. It was a big galaxy, and Lumiya seemed to cover a lot of space, which now included Mara's own front doors.

Keep it up, cyborg girl. You're just focusing me better.

"Might as well use the time productively." Jaina leaned over the desk and tapped in more coordinates. Now that she was a civilian again, she was here in her capacity as a Jedi working for Luke Sky-walker and the Council, but she slipped back into fleet ways fast. "So let's add in Alema's

known whereabouts . . ."

"Well, there's no pattern there, either . . . Do you think it's a case of Alema stalking Lumiya, looking for scraps from her table? Why do'

those two seem to hang out together?"

"They both need a lot of spare parts?"

Mara stifled a laugh. "That's not nice, Jaina . . ."

"Seriously They haven't got enough functioning parts to make one decent humanoid between them."

"They're both good at hiding, whether by disguising their presence or erasing the memory of being seen." Mara was feeling around her in the Force, just waiting for Lumiya to spring from nowhere. She could sense her, but not near. "Lumiya's broken her cover, and she's not stupid, so she wants to be seen."

Jaina kept checking the chrono on the wall and then looking at her own timepiece. "Did you go to see Jacen?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"You want the truth, Jaina?"

"Don't I always?"

"Lumiya's bending him somehow. Okay, no need to tell me I was the last person to notice that."

"I wasn't going to. Did you . . . mention that?"

"Yes. I thought it was time someone dropped a hint that we'd noticed our Jacen had turned into a monster." Mara was getting angry, and her honest

inner voice told her that the only person who deserved that anger was herself, for defending Jacen while the fact that things were going disastrously wrong was staring her in the face. But Mara was human, and scared for Ben, and it boiled over onto Jaina. "Forgive me for asking, but being his twin, have you never had this out with him?"

"I tried. He responded with a court-martial charge, remember?"

"I can't help thinking that you might have tried slugging him."

"Suddenly he's my responsibility? I'm the one who said he was going dark, way back."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry." Mara put her hands up in mock submission.

She could apologize, but she couldn't retract her acid tone, and she regretted that. "I just—okay, none of my business."