"All the time."

"Jedi parents really can—well, nearly."

Shevu's opinion of Jacen showed on his face now that he was off-duty. "I think Master Skywalker would be angry with the person who made you do it, not you."

"Oh, he's angry enough with Jacen."

"Sorry, I shouldn't put you on the spot about your family. It's not fair. Forget I said it."

"I think I did the right thing for the wrong reasons."

"Well, beats doing the wrong thing for the right reasons—classic excuse, that one. I was a cop. I know . . ."

"Do you want to stay in the GAG?"

"I miss CSF, actually. I miss catching real criminals and showing tourists the way to the Rotunda." He wandered into the kitchen, and there was a banging and clattering of dishes. He came back with a glass of juice and drank it in two gulps. "You sure you're all right?"

"Oh, yeah. Look, I'll be out of your way as soon as I can."

"No rush. Shula thinks it's great that you wash the dishes."

Shevu's girlfriend said he was a "nice polite boy." Ben thought that providing a safe haven for him was worth help with the chores, at the very least. "I can Force-dry them, too."

Shevu laughed and handed him the remote control for the lights. Ben got the feeling that Shevu was happier keeping an eye on him in the aftermath of the assassination because he didn't approve of the Jedi habit of letting "children" carry weapons and fight. As far as he was concerned, Ben shouldn't have been serving in the front lines before he was at least eighteen. He was just too polite to say that he thought Jedi made bad parents.

Poor Mom.

Ben slept. He had a few odd dreams about Lekauf that woke him up, and the grief when he woke up properly and remembered his comrade was dead was painful. He lay wondering about Lekauf's folks, and how they were coping, and then he thought he drifted off again because he could hear—no, he could feel a voice in his head asking where he was.

He sat up. He knew he was fully awake, because he could see the environment-control light on the wall, winking faint red every ten seconds. It took him a while to work out why he knew the voice but couldn't put a face to it when he shut his eyes again.

It was the Sith ship. He didn't know where it was, but it was calling him. It wanted to know where he was.

Sith sphere, color orange, no index number, last known registered owner: Lumiya. Ben decided to treat it like a stolen speeder, the way Shevu would. I owe Jacen this. He'd never have done these things without Lumiya twisting his mind. Shows he's not half as clever as he thinks he is.

Mom would probably try to talk him out of it. But they'd reached an understanding now that he had to do things his own way, because she couldn't expect anything else from him, given his pedigree.

Ben pulled on his clothes, left a scribbled flimsi note for Shevu, and set off for the GAG compound to liberate an unmarked long-range speeder.

The nice thing about being the secret police was that provided you signed out the kit, nobody asked you what you planned to do with it. And it was legitimate police business to catch criminals.

It was only when he fumbled in his pocket for his ID that he realized he'd left his vibroblade at Shevu's. He hoped he wouldn't need his mom's luck tonight.

SKYWALKERS' APARTMENT, CORUSCANT

Luke was asleep when Mara got back, and she was relieved. It saved a lot of awkward questions. She peered through the doors, counted the seconds between rasping snores, and decided he was out cold. Good. She slipped past the bed and selected her favorite working clothes: dark gray fatigues with plenty of pockets for storing small weapons and ammo. She had no idea how long it would take to run Jacen to ground, so she opted to pack for a mission—as much as she could cram into her backpack.

I've got to stick on his tail now. I've got to strike when I can.

She could track Lumiya, and he was still in touch with her. If she hung around Lumiya, then she'd eventually get Jacen where she wanted him

—away from the genteel, constitutional way of doing things on Coruscant.

Jacen had said he had an appointment, too, and while it might have been another of his lies, the chances were that he'd want to tell Lumiya that Mara was on to them.

I'll save you the trouble.

She made a conscious effort not to see Leia's face in her mind's eye, and somehow she'd erased poor Han from this altogether. It wasn't that fathers' feelings didn't matter, but she had a better idea of the pain Leia would go through; however old kids got, the memory of them as newborns never faded.

It might be true for dads, as well. But Mara only knew what a mother felt, and that was bad enough.

She checked her datapad for the transponder trace. Ben's showed he was still at Shevu's, and so he was one factor she didn't have to worry about. Lumiya's transponder indicated she was heading for the Perlemian node just off Coruscant. If Jacen wasn't with her, Mara thought, she might well get a lead to one of her bolt-holes; in the assassination business, every scrap of data on a target's habits and movements was valuable. It would be worth the journey, and the technician at the base was used to Jedi booking out flight time in StealthXs. She didn't have to fill out any forms that said her mission was to kill the joint Chief of State.

Mara closed the inner doors to keep the light in the hallway from waking Luke, and paused at the apartment's front entrance. Okay, I'll risk it. If he wakes up, though . . . it'll be another argument.

She put down her pack and tiptoed back into the bedroom, leaned over Luke—still snoring like a turbosaw—and kissed his forehead as lightly as she could. He grunted.

"Sorry I never spotted it," she mouthed at him. "But better late than never."

Luke grunted again, and his eyelids twitched. Mara debated whether to give him a little Force-touch deep in his mind and see if she could get him to smile in his sleep, but decided she was pushing her luck, and Jacen probably had a head start on her. Lumiya definitely did.

Mara paused at the doors and left a flimsi note stuck on them.

Gone hunting for a few days. Don't be mad at me, farmboy . . .

There was no need to say who the quarry was. She'd have a hard enough time explaining when she returned.

SITH MEDITATION SPHERE, PERLEMIAN TRADE ROUTE

Hush," Lumiya said aloud. "I have no idea if he can hear you." The meditation sphere had developed an annoying habit of asking her questions. It wanted to know why there were so few. Lumiya wasn't sure where to begin with such a vague question. The ship had been buried on Ziost for more time than it wanted to remember, it told her, and now it was curious to know where all the dark ones had gone.

"It's a long story," Lumiya said. "We haven't been in the ascendant for a long time. Jacen Solo will change all that."

What about the others?

"Oh, Alema?"

She comes and goes, broken, but sometimes very happy.

It was a good description of Alema's almost bipolar moods—murderous, bitter obsession punctuated by highs of . . . murderous triumphant obsession. The sphere was very attuned to feelings, it seemed.

Maybe it could sense darkness anywhere, like a homing beacon, so that it could go to the aid of Sith in difficulty. "I told her to tail Jacen, but I should have known better than to rely on a psychiatric case. But who else is there? Apart from me, that is."

Plenty of little darknesses. The two with my flame.

Lumiya repeated it to herself. Flame. "Ahh . . . red hair? Mara Jade Skywalker. She was the Emperor's Hand, an agent for the dark side, just like me. The boy is her son."