". . . Jedi Council has tried to overthrow the Republic-"

"I can't believe that!" Padme exclaimed.

A furrow appeared in Anakin's brow. "I couldn't either at first, but it's true. I saw Master Windu attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate the Chancellor myself."

The golden droid's head filled the holo again. "Something important is going on. I heard a rumor they are going to banish all droids."

R2-D2 beeped loudly in the hologram, and Mara hissed, "That has to be Threepio. No other droid is that annoying."

"Shhhh . not so loud!" C-3P0 said in the hobo. R2-D2 beeped more softly, then C-3PO's head disappeared from the holo again. "Whatever it is, we'll be the last to know."

Padme was seated on a bench near the edge of the veranda now. "What are you going to do?"

Anakin sat next to her, his face growing resolute. "I will not betray the Republic. My loyalties lie with the Chancellor and the Senate."

"What about Obi-Wan?" Padme asked.

"I don't know," Anakin replied. "Many of the Jedi have been killed."

"Is he part of the rebellion?" Padme pressed.

Anakin shrugged. "We may never know."

They both stared at the floor for a moment, then Padme shook her head in despair.

"How could this have happened?"

"The Republic is unstable, Padme. The Jedi aren't the only ones trying to take advantage of the situation." Anakin waited until Padme met his gaze, and his voice a.s.sumed a more ominous tone. "There are also traitors in the Senate."

Padme stood, and her expression grew uneasy. "What are you saying?"

Anakin rose and turned her to face him. "You need to distance yourself from your friends in the Senate. The Chancellor said they will be dealt with when this conflict is oven"

"What if they start an inquisition?" Padme's tone was more angry than frightened. "I've opposed this war. What will you do if I become suspect?"

"That won't happen," Anakin said. "I won't let it."

Padme turned away from him and was silent for a time, then she said, "I want to leave, go someplace far from here."

"Why?" Anakin seemed hurt by her suggestion. "Things are different now! There's a new order. "

Padme refused to yield. "I want to bring up our child someplace safe."

"I want that, too!" Anakin said. "But that place is here. I'm gaining new knowledge of the Force. Soon I'll be able to protect you from anything."

Padme studied him for several moments, her expression changing from disbelieving to disheartened as she contemplated his battle-sullied clothes. Finally, she let her chin drop.

"Oh, Anakin . . . I'm afraid."

"Have faith, my love." Seeming to miss that it was him she feared, Anakin took her in his arms. "Have faith, my love. Everything will soon be set right. The Separatists have gathered in the Mustafar system. I'm going there to end this war. Wait until I return . . . things will be different, I promise."

Anakin kissed her, but he must have sensed the misgivings that Luke could see even in the tiny holo-the fear of what he was becoming-because he stopped and waited until she looked into his eyes.

"Please . . ." His voice a.s.sumed just a hint of command. "Wait for me."

Padme nodded, lowering her eyes in surrender. "I will."

Anakin studied her for a moment; then, as he turned and approached R2-D2's position, the file ended.

Luke and the others remained silent for a moment, he and Mara and Jacen pondering Padme's final words, trying to match her expressions to her tone. When she told Anakin that she was afraid, had she been thinking of the anti-war inquisition she had mentioned? Or of what the future held for them?

Mara was the first to break the silence. "No offense, Luke, but your father gives me the shudders."

"Why is that?" Jacen asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.

Mara raised her brow in surprise. "You didn't catch the subtext? That little threat when he told her to distance herself from her friends in the Senate?" She frowned. "I know you're more sensitive than that."

"What I saw was a man worried about his wife's safety," Jacen replied. "That's all I saw."

"You didn't find him a little controlling?" Luke asked. He was really beginning to worry about his nephew's emotional awareness; it was as though all of the tenderness had evaporated from his soul during his sojourn to explore the Force. "Even when he had completely dismissed her wish to go someplace safe?"

"He promised to keep her safe there." Jacen gave them a lopsided smile. "From what I've heard about Anakin Skywalker and his abilities, he was probably telling the truth."

"I guess that's one way of looking at it." Mara's tone implied that she chose to look at the exchange another way.

"But maybe Luke and I are reading too much into it, as you suggest. There's not much detail in a holo that size."

"And maybe you have more context to place it in than I do," Jacen allowed. "I'm not saying 'it was the right thing-just that I understand what he was thinking."

"Good point-sometimes we forget that Anakin Skywalker was only human." Luke turned to R2-D2. "Artoo, show us the next-"

"Uh, you might not want to do that," Ghent interrupted. Luke frowned. "Why not?"

Ghent frowned back. "Didn't I tell you that the omnigate is pretty . . ." He glanced at R2-D2, then apparently decided it would not be wise to mention how deteriorated the gate was in front of the droid. ". . . that it was used?"

"Yes," Mara said. "That doesn't explain why we shouldn't view the next file, though."

"In fact, it tends to suggest we should," Jacen said, "while everything is still working."

Ghent just stared at them blankly.

"Well?" Luke asked impatiently.

Ghent shrugged. "It's your omnigate, I guess."

Luke furrowed his brow, waiting for an explanation, but Mara-who knew the slicer far better from their days working for Talon Karrde-said immediately, "You'll have to tell us the problem, Ghent. Why is a used omnigate so risky?"

"Oh." He knelt beside R2-D2 and deactivated the droid again, then said, "You don't want to overheat a deteriorated gate. It's too easy to melt it."

"So we just have to wait for it to cool off?" Jacen asked.

"That would help," Ghent said.

"Only help?" Mara asked.

"Well, we're probably overheating the gate every time we use it," Ghent said. "It was in pretty bad shape."

"You're saying it's just a matter of time before it goes?" Mara clarified.

"Yeah-it could go the next time you use it, or the time after that," Ghent said. "I don't think it will last three times."

Luke exhaled in frustration. "Is there anything we can do about that?"

Ghent thought for a moment, then nodded. "I could try to copy its architecture."

"How risky is that?" Mara asked.

"It's not," Ghent said. "Unless, of course, I make a mistake."

"But then we'd have a backup in case the first gate melted?" Luke asked.

Ghent looked at him as though he had just asked a very foolish question. "Well, that is the idea of making a backup."

"Then why didn't you just say so in the first place?" Jacen demanded, growing uncharacteristically impatient with the communicationally challenged slicer. "What's the drawback?"

"Time," Ghent said. "It takes a lot of time-especially since I don't want to make a mistake."

"Time could be a problem," Luke said.

So far, he had been content to let the Jedi continue on the sidelines of the war, trying to rebuild Chief Omas's confidence in the order by hunting down pirates and adjudicating quarrels among the Alliance's member-states. But he was not willing to continue that approach forever. Sooner or later, the Jedi would need to take action . . . and a deepening tickle in the base of his head was beginning to suggest it would be sooner.

Luke hated to let his personal history interfere, but before the Jedi went into action, he needed to be free of his doubts. Mara had a.s.sured him that she had never been involved in anything concerning Padme Amidala, and Luke believed her. But the possibility remained that the Dark Nest's insinuations were true: that Padme might have lived under an alias for fifteen or twenty years, and that Mara-then Palpatine's a.s.sa.s.sin-might have been sent to track her down without knowing her true ident.i.ty. If Luke were to have any chance at all of defeating Lomi Plo, he needed to know what had happened to his mother-to banish utterly from his heart the last ghost of doubt about Mara's involvement.

When Ghent merely continued to look at him without speaking, Luke sighed and asked, "How long would it take to build the backup?"

Ghent shrugged. "It'll be faster than trying to figure the algorithm and original variables for the universal key you used last-"

"Okay, I understand." Luke closed his eyes and nodded. "Copy it-but don't do anything that would prevent me from taking the original hack and using it in an emergency."

"Emergency?" Ghent seemed confused. "How could looking at a bunch of old bolos be an emergency?"

"It could," Mara told him. "You don't need to know why."

Ghent shrugged. "Okay." He flipped his magnispecs down and reached for his micrograbbers. "No problem with the emergency thing."

Luke waited until the slicer had started work, then turned to Jacen. "Let's move to the outer office and leave Ghent to his work."

"Oh yeah-the conversation." Jacen started toward the door, then stopped and glanced over his shoulder. "Aren't you coming, Aunt Mara? After all, you're the really angry one."

"I wouldn't say angry, Jacen."

"No?" Jacen gave her a crooked Solo smile. "I would."

EIGHT.

The private hangar, hidden deep under several metallic asteroids on the rear side of the nest, appeared much more orderly than Lizil's main hangar. Two dozen Slayn Korpil transports hung on the walls in neat rows, taking on everything from blaster rifles to concussion missiles to artillery pieces. There was no "transacting"; nothing was being removed from the vessels, and there was not a membrosia ball in sight.

Han swung the Swiff into an open berth near the exit membrane, using the att.i.tude thrusters to stick the landing pads to the wax-lined floor extra firmly. The hangar was crawling with big bugs-Killik and otherwise-and he had no intention of firing the anchoring bolts until he was sure a quick departure would not be needed.

"We sure picked the wrong disguises for this job," Han said, eyeing the bustling swarm. "I don't see anything that isn't a bug anywhere."

"That's odd, Captain Solo," C-3P0 said. "I don't see any bugs at all. The Verpine are a species of mantid, the Fefze are more closely related to beetles, and the Huk are much closer to vespids than-"

"I don't think Han actually meant bugs, Threepio," Leia interrupted. "He was using the term pejoratively."

"He was?" C-3P0 asked. "Might I suggest that this is a particularly poor time to insult insects, Captain Solo. You and Princess Leia seem to be the only mammals in this hangar."

"Like I hadn't noticed," Han grumbled. He unbuckled his crash webbing and initiated the shutdown cycle, but remained in his seat staring out the forward canopy. "Leia, do you notice anything strange about the Killiks loading those transports?"

"Now that you mention it, yes," Leia said. "They really don't look like Lizil."

"That, too," Han said. Unlike Lizil workers, these Killiks were nearly two meters tall, with powerful builds, blotchy gray-green chitin, and short curving mandibles that looked like bent needles. "But I was wondering why there aren't any coming down the ramps."

Leia studied the ships for a moment, then said, "Good question."

"Actually, the answer is rather clear," C-3P0 said. "Those Killiks aren't loading the transports, they're boarding them."

"It certainly appears that way," Leia agreed. "The Chiss may be in for a big surprise."

"A surprise?" C-3P0 said, missing the obvious as only he could. "What sort of surprise?"

"You did notice all those S and K transports hanging out in the entrance tunnel?" Han asked.

"Of course," C-3P0 said. "All one hundred twenty-seven of them."

Han whistled. He had not thought it was so many. "Okay, let's say each one of those tubs can transport three hundred bugs . . . that's close to forty thousand troops, counting these ships."

"A full division," Leia said. "That's going to he a very nasty surprise for the Chiss-especially if the Killiks strike someplace they're not expecting."

"Oh, dear," C-3P0 said. "In that case, perhaps we should return to our own territory and send a messenger to warn Commander Fel."

"Not a chance," Han said, rising. "The Chiss are on their own-at least until we get our daughter back."