I can do it. I got in and out of Centerpoint, didn't I?

Ben held his breath, let the Karpaki's smart optics adjust for wind and angle, and felt his finger tighten on the trigger. One second Gejjen's neat dark head was filling the scope, and the next Ben was staring at empty permacrete as the rifle kicked back against his shoulder. The muffled report seemed to come from a long way away. Nothing seemed to have gone down in the order he expected—shot, recoil, drop. He lay flat.

What happened?

Did I kill him?

He could hear shouts carried on the air from three stories below.

His body made the decisions for him and he found himself scrambling backward to the rear wall while Shevu's voice in his ear kept saying,

"Get out of there, Ben."

He ran at a crouch to the turbolift, found that it was on a lower floor, and took the fire-escape stairway. It was going to plan. He could merge into the crowd.

Back on the ground floor, he slipped through the fire doors and made a conscious effort not to look panicked. Maybe professional assassins could take this in their stride, but he couldn't. He'd put aside the fact that he'd just killed a man and found he was totally caught up in the simple act of getting away.

When Shevu put his hand on his shoulder from behind, Ben thought he was going to have a heart attack.

"Keep walking," Shevu whispered. Curious crowds were gathering at the transparisteel doors to gawp at the unfolding drama on the landing strip, and security staff were struggling to get through the crowd. "Just keep on walking."

If they sealed the doors . . .

It was chaos. Nobody seemed to know what had happened yet. That bought Ben, Shevu, and Lekauf a few more minutes. Charbi seemed the kind of place where passengers and freighter captains would walk right past a dead body if it meant their flight left on time.

They were counting on it.

"I'm right behind you," said Lekauf's voice in his earpiece. "If we walk down to the south doors, we can just go around the perimeter to Shevu's shuttle."

Ben was scared. He was happy to admit it. He hadn't been afraid at all on Centerpoint, but now he knew better. He kept a little distance between him and Shevu, remembering to pause every so often and look at the commotion as if he were genuinely curious about what was happening, but he carried on walking.

Above him, the holoscreen that usually showed arrivals and departures was turned over to the traffic-control tower's view of the landing strip.

Yes, he'd killed Gejjen, a textbook head shot.

I can't feel my face. My lips feel numb.

Now Ben was seconds away from those doors, walking with the steady but thinning stream of droids, repulsorlifts, and passengers heading out to the vessels.

Nearly there.

He was a few meters away from the transparisteel doors when he saw a man in familiar casual clothes running at full tilt toward them. The doors parted, and Ben was staring down the muzzle of a blaster.

"Armed officer, CSA!" the man barked. "Everybody—stay where you are—"

Ben balanced on a blade's edge between surrender and making a run for it.

chapter ten

Verpine negotiator Sass Sikili, speaking today at the opening of BastEx, has warned Murkhana that the Roche government will respond with

"appropriate measures" if it continues to breach trade agreements on technology exports. Murkhana is keen to move into the growing market for secure small-unit comlink networking, a field dominated by Verpine products.

—HNE business news, noted with interest by Boba Fett, Mandalore SPEEDER PARK, ROTUNDA ZONE, CORUSCANT

Lumiya had left a magnified wake in the force like a water speeder on a lake. While it was generous of her, Mara wasn't amused.

"I didn't get stupid overnight," she muttered. "Don't insult me, tin-can."

"And what were you saying about Luke being too close to all this?"

Jaina asked. "Deep breaths, Aunt Mara. Deep breaths."

"I'm psyching up. I find it helps. You use the Force your way, and I'll use it mine."

"Wow, am I calming you down now? That's a headline to save for the grandchildren."

Mara paced a ten-meter square of the area, feeling dark energies pulsing like shock waves. Jaina stood back and watched.

"She's taken off from here," Mara stated.

"Has she led us here to divert us from somewhere else on Coruscant?"

"She's got a narrow range of targets, Jaina. Ben or Jacen—or even Han and Leia, if she's teamed up with Alema. Your parents aren't on Coruscant, and if she's after Jacen, she must have had her chance to take him when

she got into GAG HQ to grab Ben's boots." Mara squatted down to touch the permacrete. She expected to get a jolt of some kind, a taste of Lumiya mocking her, but there was something disconcertingly benign about the impression the Sith had left behind. Yes, like she managed to convince Luke she meant him no harm. Lumiya seemed to have discovered a rare talent for Force-acting. "If she's after Luke, she's passed up two chances now."

"So it's Ben."

"Ben's . . . away. He's not on Coruscant."

Jaina looked at Mara with an expression that said she couldn't work out why Mara was stalling her. But Mara wouldn't budge. The less the family knew about Ben's situation, the better. Sooner or later, it'd slip out that she'd put a trace on him, and however old he was when that finally happened she'd lose his trust forever. It would hurt him.

"GAG business," Mara said, answering the unasked question. She cast around in the Force, groping for anything that said Lumiya was heading for Vulpter, but she had no sense of that at all. What she picked up was Ben, nervous for a moment, then disappearing as Jacen must have taught him. She'd have to tackle that when the current emergency was under control. "Okay, if she wants me to follow her, I'll follow."

"Let's call in Zekk and Jag, because I'm betting Alema's in town again, and—"

"No offense, Jaina, but I think it's me she wants. You go find Bug Girl."

Jaina's pursed lips looked like she'd decided to swallow an argument. "Okay," she said at last.

"It's just an old dark side feud. " Mara didn't want Jaina to feel that she was snubbing her. Relations were edgy enough at the moment.

"Let's not allow her to divert both of us."

So Lumiya was taunting her. / com get at your husband. I can get at your son. If she was so set on killing Ben for the death of her daughter, she still seemed to be missing chances. So what did Lumiya want from her?

Mara returned to base to find one of the ground crew waiting patiently by her allocated XJ7. She climbed into the cockpit and started her instrument check.

"Is Lumiya really a Shh?" the technician asked.

"The very last of her kind," said Mara, not asking what he'd heard and how he knew the name anyway. She felt a pang of guilt at her sloppiness for arguing loudly and forgetting there were other personnel around. She sealed the XJ7's hatches. "I'll make sure of that."

Mara ignored military air traffic regulations and circled over the area where she'd last picked up Lumiya's powerful wake. If she concentrated, it was relatively easy to follow, and she found herself leaving Coruscant orbit on a bearing for one of the moons, Hesperidium.

"Oh, yes, Palpatine loved that place," she said aloud. "You heading there for old times' sake?"

Lumiya was definitely playing a game. But she wasn't stupid enough to think she could offer Mara her hand and find it still intact like she had with Luke.