—HNE news update

HAPES

Mara dropped out of hyperspace still putting together scenarios to explain why Lumiya had gone racing down the Perlemian to the Hapes Cluster shortly after a GAG StealthX was signed out of the GA Fleet hangar by Colonel Jacen Solo.

There was no sign of the StealthX. If Jacen wasn't making himself detectable in the Force, Mara couldn't spot the stealth fighter any better than an enemy could. But ideas were forming in her mind.

Either Lumiya was fermenting more trouble to break the Alliance, in which case Hapes was a wasted journey, or she was meeting someone here like Alema—sorry, Jaina, I'll try to bring her back alive for you, but no promises, not in this mood—or . . . she was pursuing Jacen.

Or . . . maybe she'd found the transponder and was back to playing tag.

Mara thought it was odd that the ship hadn't spat out the tiny device, given that it was smart enough to throw a line around her neck to save Lumiya's tin backside.

It could have killed me easily enough, too. But it didn't.

Mara disliked reasoning in a vacuum. She didn't quite trust the crazier things that crossed her mind lately. But maybe the ship still saw her as a dark sider. It would be academic soon, but the thought that she might still have that tang of darkness about her produced some mixed emotions.

Yeah, I'm going to kill my sister-in-law's son. On the dark scale of ten, that's a twelve.

Now that her anger had ebbed, she was beginning to wonder what she was doing here. The Hapans would wonder that, too, if they managed to spot a StealthX hanging around their system unannounced. Lumiya's transponder showed that her ship was sitting in a cluster of asteroids, but she wasn't showing up on scans.

What was she waiting for?

Mara ran a discreet check on her instruments. If she went active on sensors, she'd give away her position, so it had to be a case of passive detection only.

She was watching, or waiting, and how the Hapans hadn't taken an unhealthy interest in the sphere was anyone's guess, but Lumiya had a talent for evasion.

Follow the credits. But in this case, follow the Sith.

Mara shut down as many systems as she could afford to do without and waited. The temptation to launch a spread of proton torpedoes took some resisting, but until Mara worked out what Lumiya was waiting for, the Sith had a stay of execution.

It had to be Jacen that Lumiya had followed, although how she'd managed that Mara wasn't yet sure. Maybe Tenel Ka had summoned him, to intercede and get him to drop that stupid warrant on his parents. That didn't explain Lumiya riding escort, though, or why she'd tailed him for eighteen solid hours.

It was staring Mara in the face, whatever it was. She knew that.

She was missing a piece again. But all she needed was to locate Jacen, not work out his pension plan.

I could just comm Tenel Ka and ask . . .

However tightly the Hapans controlled access to their space, a thirteen- meter piece of stealth technology drifting between planets was just a speck of dust. Mara was effectively hidden, and so was Jacen. If he was on the surface, she might—just might—detect him when he took off for a moment, but that meant going active and attracting attention.

Think. Think.

She could wait until he reentered the Perlemian Trade Route, but that made the assumption that he was returning to Coruscant the way he came. I don't have infinite oxygen, either . . . There was an easy solution, but it would blow her cover.

An hour later, she was ready to use it. She opened the secure corn-link and readied herself for a little social engineering.

"Hapan Fleet Ops, this is GA StealthX Five-Alpha requesting assistance." That would cause a flap, but it had to be done.

"Five-Alpha, this is Hapan Fleet Ops. We don't like surprises, even from allies."

Oops. This was paranoid country. "Apologies, Fleet. I'd like to stay off the chart, but can you confirm that Chief of State Solo is unharmed and that his vessel is undamaged?"

There was a brief silence. Knowing Hapan Fleet Ops, they were checking her out to be sure she was a GA pilot and that her transponder—now obligingly active—matched their security code list.

"Confirmed, Five-Alpha. His ship landed in the Fountain Palace compound without incident. Should we be aware of any special security issues?"

Ahh ... definitely visiting Tenel Ka, then. Probably explaining himself: Believe me, Tour Royal Highness, I had no choice, I had to depose Omas . . .

"Fleet, he's not aware that we have concerns for his safety and that we've put close protection on him in transit. He thinks he can handle it himself. Discretion on your part would ensure he doesn't try to shake me. I've detected a vessel following him but I lost it in your space. Unknown origin, ten-meter red sphere with distinctive ocular front viewscreen and cruciform masts and vanes."

Mara's warning displays were lighting up: Now that the Hapans had a fix on her transmission, they were checking out the StealthX with sensors while they had the chance. She could have blocked them, but she let them probe around to keep them happy.

"Understood, Five-Alpha. We'll give you a heads-up when he makes a move. If we detect the sphere, do you want us to detain or neutralize?"

"Your space," she said. Have this with my very best wishes, Lumiya.

"I have no orders to detain. Feel free to neutralize."

"Copy that, Five-Alpha. Unless you flash us in the meantime, we won't ping you until the Chief of State takes off."

They were such nice, helpful people, the Hapans, even if they were paranoid. And they understood plots, assassins, and keeping their mouths shut. Mara shut down all noncriticals and meditated in darkness, marveling anew at how very vivid and exquisitely beautiful starscapes were without the gauzy filter of an atmosphere.

She allowed herself one quick glance at her datapad to reassure herself that there was one thing she didn't have to worry about.

Ben's transponder said he was still safely on Coruscant.

GAG SHUTTLE, TAANAB SPACE

Ben had learned a lot from his GAG comrades about tailing suspects discreetly, and one basic trick was to overshoot an exit and double back.

He dropped out of hyperspace and headed back Coreward to Taanab, not Hapes, even though he was sure the Sith sphere was there.

He could feel it, but he couldn't detect it conventionally; he could have spoken to it, but he stayed shut down in the Force to avoid Lumiya's attention. He tried to work out why she was interested in Hapes, and failed, but there was nothing of Jacen that he could feel, just a trace of his own mother. The closer he ventured toward Hapan space, the more powerful her presence became. Don't tell me we're both following Lumiya.

He'd have some explaining to do. But it didn't matter: he'd happily take being grounded for a year and even sent to Ossus as long as he could keep an eye on his mom right now. He set a course for the freight corridor and dropped out into realspace again, merging with the convoys of transports then with a group of ore haulers. Running a loop had also served another purpose: almost like listening to the source of a sound, Ben made a mental map of the silent voice of the Sith sphere and got a good sense of where it was in physical space. It was close to Hapes itself.

And—he felt it now—so was his mother. She'd found Lumiya, then.

She'd beaten him to the target.

Ben savored a brief fantasy of emptying the shuttle's cannon into the sphere, felt strangely sorry to destroy the ship just to finish Lumiya, and wondered if all boys went through a stage of feeling aggressively protective toward their mothers. Maybe that went with finding it so hard to deal with fathers as you grew up. It was that alpha-male thing.