He jinked left, and she matched him, and right, and left, and still she was so close on his tail that he braced for impact out of reflex, arms locked out on the yoke.

There was no advantage: same starfighter. No edge: she was as good a pilot. No refuge: they were in open space. It was down to who hated more, and who was more prepared to die to take out the other.

All Jacen could think of was that now it was Mara who'd followed him here and knew about Tenel Ka. Her threats over Ben seemed irrelevant.

He had a whole new problem.

His comm crackled again. He braced for a stream of vitriol from his aunt. But it was someone else's voice.

"I have her, Jacen."

Lumiya. Savior, maybe, but she shouldn't have been here either. So Lumiya and Mara probably knew about Tenel Ka and Allana; and Lumiya certainly knew that he couldn't let either woman live with that knowledge. Now he had two assassins on his tail, and he couldn't trust either of them not to kill or betray him.

Laser cannons flared across his port side and he felt the impact in the airframe, but he was still in one piece. He smelled smoke. Brilliant white light filled the cockpit. Lumiya—if she was targeting Mara, if she wasn't trying to kill him in some bizarre Sith test—had the same problem: Mara was flying so close that any explosion put him in her blast radius, or would send her debris punching through his shields at this range.

Jacen did what he'd done many times: he simply dropped away by looping through ninety degrees. He needed to put a second of space between them, and he also needed to come back at her with an advantage.

Mara might have sent a message to Luke by now, revealing everything. She wanted maximum damage. His secret was as good a missile to be used against him as any ordnance.

As he climbed out of the loop, Jacen looked up through the canopy, desperate for any reflection or hint of movement. StealthXs had never been designed to fight one another. Their almost complete lack of sensor trace made tracking Mara impossible. That was why she was so close on his tail, too. They couldn't detect each other reliably, except through the Force, or by spotting silhouettes against the starfield.

And Mara seemed to be able to dip in and out of the Force, just like him. Just like Ben.

He should never have taught Ben to do it.

The fact that Mara hadn't said more than four words was the most disorienting thing of all. Now he needed to get her onto ground of his choosing. He could feel Lumiya somewhere off to starboard, moving at high speed, and he had no idea what the Sith sphere was capable of in her hands. All he knew was that it was obsolete—and old tech and brute force could often bypass more complex systems.

"Canopy," he yelled. Ben's report had said he'd used a magnetic accelerator in the Sith sphere. "Lumiya, crack her canopy. Weak shields."

He didn't have to explain it to her. Suddenly he could see an orange ball accelerating toward him on a collision course and he flipped ninety degrees just in time for it to pass under him. The next thing he heard was Lumiya's voice saying, "Hull breach, she's venting atmosphere."

As Jacen came around again in a loop, orienting by feeling Mara in the Force once more, he could see a thin white trail moving at high speed toward the center of the cluster. Mara was hit, a slow leak either in the canopy or straight through the skin into the cockpit, and she was trying to land before a crack spread and became an explosive decompression. Even with a flight suit, her chances of surviving that were slim.

She was heading for Kavan. That suited Jacen fine. Once he had her on the ground he could take her, because even if she called in support, who would respond to someone in a battle with Jacen Solo? Not the Hapans.

Who would believe her? People many hours away.

He felt no violence or malice at all, but then he never did in combat. He just felt an overwhelming desire to win and survive, and all other emotions were pushed into the background.

He turned his attention to Lumiya.

"It's okay, Jacen," she said. "I know what you have to keep secret.

I'll make sure it stays that way—"

"You certainly will," he said, and locked all eight proton torpedoes on the Sith sphere. "This is what you taught me to be."

Jacen fired on her, and felt no triumph or shame, only temporary relief.

But he saw no explosion, no white-hot ball or glittering cloud of slow- tumbling debris. His onboard sensors picked up nothing.

Where was she? Was it a kill or not?

He'd have to trawl for wreckage later. Right now, his priority was to silence Mara Jade Skywalker.

HAPAN SPACE

Ben couldn't feel his mother, but he knew she wasn't dead. She was hiding, just as he'd taught her. Lumiya was here in the Sith ship, though, streaking away on his starboard side, and he wasn't going to break off the pursuit now. She was the key to this. She'd be the key dead or alive. Ben knew he was capable of doing either.

The ship was speaking inside his head, just as it had before. It might have been talking to itself or addressing both him and Lumiya, but it was deeply unhappy.

He has tried to cause irreparable damage.

"Ship, shut up," Lumiya said. Ben could hear her, too, as if the ship's thought processes were an open circuit. "He has to survive. We don't."

The rule of ages is that I must not be targeted.

The sphere had clearly decided enough was enough, and looped back in the direction from which it had come. Ben could see it in his forward screens and on sensors, but he could also see it in his head. The general impression was that it was rolling up its sleeves and going back to knock ten bells out of whoever had fired on it.

"Ship, break off."

I do what I must.

"Ship!"

Ben's drives were screaming trying to keep up with it. There was no real up or down in space, but it was like plummeting in the slipstream of a raptor.

"Ship, my mom's down there," Ben pleaded. "She didn't fire on you."

Masters may use their ships to fight but not involve apprentices.

"Ship, Jacen made an error. Do it for me, so I can find my mom again. Please—don't fire."

The sphere decelerated dramatically.

Who is the enemy? the ship asked. Unless I know, I can do nothing except evade and protect.

"That's right," Ben said. Shevu had told him that humoring nutters, as he called it, was an essential police skill. Keeping them talking was what it was all about—and if Ben had the ship, he had Lumiya. "Ship, what's your task?"

Once I fought. Now I educate and protect apprentices.

"What do you believe I am?"

Apprentice.

"Who's the one within you now?"

Apprentice also.

Ben was starting to form a picture of the sphere's view of the world. It had been buried on Ziost for centuries and possibly millennia.

It had reacted to him when he was being targeted from orbit and running for his life with a terrified little girl.

"Ship, what do you mean—educate?"

I teach apprentices to fight.

Ben could sense Lumiya communicating with it. The ship was responding strongly in his mind, but there was a second stream of soundless words running almost like interference on a comlink from overlapping

frequencies. She was urging the sphere to fire on Ben, to ram his shuttle, to kill him.

Yes. I am now for apprentices, so they learn and come to no harm. I used to be for Masters at war.

It made sudden sense to Ben. "You're a Sith training vessel." It would see him as an apprentice because he was one, in a way, but Lumiya confused him. "Why do you think the woman in you now is an apprentice?"