"Sorry, sweetheart." He hated himself when he took it out on her. "I just get mad when he won't see history repeating itself here. Y'know, big empire making decisions for the galaxy, whether it wants it to or not?"

"Now, is that about Luke or Jacen?"

"Okay. Both."

How could Luke not see it? Didn't he see the warning signals? Didn't he see how much like the old Empire the Alliance was becoming?

You got a short memory, kid.

"I'll keep talking to Luke," said Leia. "But you talk to Jacen, okay? I'm worried about him."

"Will do."

"Promise?"

"Would I argue with you, Princess?"

"Yes. You always do."

"So ... promise me this will never come between us."

Leia laid her hand on his as he grasped the steering yoke, and squeezed harder than he thought she ever could. It almost hurt. "We've come through a lot worse than this."

"That's true."

"It's just a few more gray hairs." She grinned again. "And I like you better with gray hair, actually."

That was all he needed. She always put the galaxy back together for him. She was solid and certain, and she was usually right. He sometimes wondered what his life would be like today if he hadn't met her-if he hadn't met Luke. A s.p.a.ce b.u.m, and an old, tired one at that. Leia had given him a sense of purpose beyond himself and the energy that went with it.

She'd also given him three kids who were his heart and soul, and he had no intention of seeing his only surviving son sucked further into the Alliance's drive for galactic control.

Han took the Falcon on a high approach path over Coronet, looking down the green patchwork of parks, public gardens, and farmland beyond that made it so very different from the Coruscant landscape. He set the ship down on the civic landing strip, merging among a variety of vessels of all sizes and states of repair, and shut down the drives.

"Okay, time to be ordinary," he said.

They split up to walk the distance to the apartment they'd secretly rented a few days earlier, just two middle-aged people who weren't together and who were merely faces in the city crowd. No hidden pa.s.sages or disguises were needed. It was all about looking casual: ordinary clothes, ordinary apartment, ordinary people just going about their business, and not the Solos in the middle of a war at all. They walked along the tree-lined street, idly glancing at shops like everyone else. Han stayed twenty meters behind Leia. She could sense where he was but he needed to keep his eyes on her, even though she was well able to look after herself if she was spotted by the wrong people.

But who are the wrong people? Apart from my own cousin, the biggest risk is political embarra.s.sment to my in-laws. There's no real danger here.

He kept Leia in sight, sometimes losing her chestnut braid in the sea of people. It had come to Han as a surprise that the Solo family could be anonymous in public, but n.o.body seemed to recognize public figures unless they were holovid stars. Chief Omas could probably walk around here without anyone thinking he was more than just a vaguely familiar face they couldn't quite put a name to. Maybe he was the guy who read the evening holonews bulletin.

Han slipped into the lobby of the apartment building a little behind Leia and found her waiting at the turbolift. It was seedy compared with the apartment back on Coruscant.

Seedy was just fine right now.

"Now, what's the first thing you're going to do when we get in?" she said.

"Call Jacen."

"Good. You catch on fast. Don't shout at him, okay?"

The lift doors opened onto the fifty-sixth floor and a dull beige-carpeted hall with a few stained patches. Leia took three strides toward their apartment door and paused, left hand held out to her side to stop Han in his tracks. The fact that her other hand slid into her tunic and emerged holding her lightsaber prompted him into drawing his blaster.

"Hear something?" he whispered, confused.

They approached the apartment door with slow, careful steps.

"Felt something," said Leia.

"Threat?"

"No, but something isn't right."

They stood to either side of the door and looked at each other, sharing a thought: Who knows we're here? Leia ran her palm down the door frame, not quite touching it, and shook her head.

"n.o.body inside."

"Stand clear."

"But somebody's been here ..."

"b.o.o.by trap?"

"I can't sense any immediate danger, just a feeling that someone was very nervous when they came here."

Han touched the entry pad, blaster ready. "Maybe they knew what a warm welcome we give uninvited visitors."

The doors slid open and they paused at the entrance, seeing only the apartment as they had left it days before, and hearing nothing except the faint sounds of the environment controls. Leia looked down and bent to pick up something from the carpet.

"That's nice," she said, examining it, and then handed it to Han. "Nothing like a happy family reunion."

It was a small sheet of flimsi. Someone must have slipped it through the gap under the doors, and that took some doing. A strange way to leave a message: but it was one that could never be traced electronically. Just a few words, scrawled on a surface that was rippled as if someone had struggled to force it through the gap.

Han stared at it.

SAL-SOLO HAS PUT OUT A CONTRACT ON YOU IN REPRISAL FOR YOUR SON'S ACTIONS AT CENTERPOINT.

CALL ME.

GEJJEN.

Leia raised an eyebrow. "Has your cousin threatened to kill you before? Formally, I mean.

Random acts of violence don't count."

She always made light of things. Han knew that the cooler she became, the more worried she was. He joined in the mutual rea.s.surance. His cousin was to be loathed and avoided, but he refused to fear him.

"Thrackan hasn't got what it takes, Princess. He's all talk." But Han's stomach still churned. It wasn't the prospect of a.s.sa.s.sination that worried him: he reckoned he could handle that. It was realizing that they were being watched by someone, and not knowing how and where. "And I don't know any Gejjen."

"So how does anyone know we're here?" Leia took the flimsi from his fingers and smoothed it out between her palms as if she was trying to sense echoes of whoever had written it.

"Different names, new ID, no droids, no Noghri . . . are you sure you don't remember the name?"

"Should I?"

"Maybe not. I knew a man called Nov Gejjen who was very active against the Human League.

He loathed Sal-Solo." She referred to Thrackan as she would a total stranger. It was touchingly diplomatic. "But he'd be long dead now."

"He had kids?"

"I don't know, but it's time I found out. Gejjen didn't bother to include his contact details, so he thinks one of us will know where to find him."

"Or her."

"Okay, or her. I'll see what I can find out while you call Jacen."

Life used to be so clear-cut. Han missed clarity. He opened his comlink, entered a code to conceal the origin of the signal-for all the good it had done-and waited for Jacen to answer.

Another contract out on me. I thought I was done with Thrackan but he just keeps popping back up.

Sometimes he almost missed Boba Fett. Fett, at least, had no family axes to grind. It was just business.

Thrackan would send Fett. Han just knew it.

CORUSCANT: THE SKYWALKERS' APARTMENT.

The shrouded man wouldn't leave Luke alone now.

The image of the man-cloaked, hooded, anonymous, intent on evil-intruded on his dreams more frequently, not in the way of normal nightmares but as a clear vision in the Force; and that was worse than any nightmare.

It had the potential to be real, if it wasn't already.

He couldn't see the man's face. In his dream, he was chasing him, trying to grab that hood from his face, but he always woke up at the point where he felt his fingers close on the fabric. It felt like lightweight bantha wool.

His fingers clutched again. Both the robe and the man dissolved, and Luke woke, heart pounding, fighting a feeling of overwhelming despair and anger at himself for not seeing what was close enough to touch.

He decided he wasn't going to get back to sleep and got up as quietly as he could to avoid waking Mara. With the light that spilled from Galactic City's twenty-four-hour activity and his own Force-sense, he didn't need to switch on the lights to pour himself a gla.s.s of water.

There were messages on the comm board-the routine fretting of C-3PO informing him that Mistress Leia and Master Han were well, and that the Noghri were becoming most agitated at the separation, and was it really necessary for the droids to remain at the Solos'

Coruscant apartment when they might be needed ... elsewhere?

Luke managed a smile, something he was finding increasingly hard to do lately. He had long suspected that droids had something in them far beyond their programming. C-3P0 was as anxious and protective as any human relation would be of his family members, and it always gave him pause when anyone said, "just a droid."

"Yes, my friend," he said aloud. "Because the last thing they need is a big gold-plated droid advertising their presence ... wherever that might be."

n.o.body ever said Corellia, but it was very hard to misplace your sister and your best friend in the Force. Luke wished them some kind of peace. He knew how hard it was to find peace when the front line ran through the heart of his own family, even if his misgivings over Jacen's influence on Ben were a little way short of a full-scale feud.

Luke drank while he watched the constant movement of lights from the window. His discomfort over Jacen was definite in some ways-the lengths his nephew seemed prepared to go, the ways he used the Force-but vague in another way, a far deeper and more troubling one: he feared for Jacen. Maybe the hooded man was someone who would threaten Jacen or attempt to corrupt him. Whatever the man represented, he was a danger: not danger in the immediate sense, like someone wielding a weapon, but something far more general and all-pervading.

Luke didn't deal in words like evil, but that was the only word that felt as if it fit.

Maybe it's a vision of war. Well, I don't need a Force dream to warn me of that. n.o.body does.

He felt Mara walk up behind him and give him a soothing touch from the doorway, just a brief warm rea.s.surance at the back of his mind.

"You could have made us both a cup of caf," she said. "If we're going to give up sleeping, might as well do it right."

"You'd think I'd take times like this in my stride by now."

Mara tidied her hair with one hand as she fumbled with the caf dispenser. "Politics? I don't think that ever gets easier-not when your own family is tied up in it."

"It's Ben I'm most worried about."

"He gave a good account of himself at Centerpoint."

"But he's thirteen. Okay, I let him go, but he's still a child. Our child."

"How old were you when you dived headlong into the Rebellion? Not that much older . .

"I was eighteen."

"Whoa, veteran, huh?" She winked. He saw the grim, cold girl she'd been when he met her, and thought she looked lovelier now that life had been kinder to her for a few years.

"Sweetheart, Jacen is taking care of him. He couldn't have a better teacher."

"Yeah . . ."

"Okay, I know we aren't going to agree on that."

"You know how I feel. Jacen makes me uneasy. I've never felt that way before. I can't ignore it."

Her smile faded. "I feel something a little different."

"I can't shake it."

Mara looked about to snap back, but she nodded to herself a few times as if rehearsing a more measured response. "I feel some worrying things in the Force, too, but I've got a theory."

"I'm all ears."

She paused again, looking down at the carpet. "I think he's in love and it's tearing him up."

"Jacen? In love? Come on .. ."

"Trust me. I felt something like it before with someone I was pursuing and I read it all wrong then, too. A messy, painful love affair can make people feel pretty dark-all that anger and desperate love."

"But he's a Jedi. He can control all that."