"Then why didn't he succeed?"

"He wanted power. Not political power, but the power to shape reality for those he loved.

It diverted him and it flawed a great man. He also lacked your breadth of education in the Force. That's my belief."

Jacen thought of his astonishing lapse in failing to spot the simple truth that Ailyn Habuur had been sent to a.s.sa.s.sinate his parents, not Cal Omas. It was the kind of thing he should have been able to divine from the Force through a number of techniques, and yet he hadn't. He hadn't seen it coming.

I've been blinded by personal preoccupations, by family ties. That must be the reason.

"Sith lore teaches that we shouldn't avoid love and anger," said Jacen. "How can that be true if it was Anakin Skywalker's flaw?"

"You don't have to avoid it. You have to be able to pa.s.s through it and draw strength from it. Look at the Jedi now, all with their families and children, all fettered by them.

Luke's little wife ignores what she feels about you and looks for any excuse not to believe it because she puts her son's happiness first. Luke doesn't confront you because he fears alienating his wife and son. If they faced those fears and drew on them, they might well thwart our plans. But they won't."

Jacen knew she was right. "And Ben?"

"Ben will make a fine apprentice for you once he stops being defined by his father's name and resenting it. He's already on the path." Lumiya lowered her voice as if afraid to make the next suggestion. "You must become a Jedi Master."

"Isn't that what I don't need?"

"Ben needs you to be his Master so he knows he's made the break from his father's control.

The Jedi council needs to show it values what you do for the Galactic Alliance if it doesn't want to be seen as undermining government, because there are always those who will use that against them." She paused. "Besides, why shouldn't you be a Master? If what you've learned over the last few years doesn't qualify you, what does?"

"Lumiya, if I lobby for this, it's going to look like a weakness they can exploit."

"You don't have to, not yet. Let me shape opinion."

"Influence the Jedi council? Oh, come on now . . ."

"You have allies there apart from Mara Skywalker. Let me plant the idea in a few places-outside the council, of course. Ideas take on a life of their own."

"Like Admiral Niathal's."

"She already had ambitions. She merely needed not to be ashamed of being bold."

"Is there anyone else you've influenced to act?"

"I haven't had to influence much. This is a galaxy in search of order."

Jacen needed to ground himself again. Attractive as Lumiya's rea.s.surance was, he trusted his own feelings most. He would go back to the Jedi Temple tonight and see for himself-hear for himself, feel for himself-what was true and not true.

And he would risk time-walking to his grandfather's day again. He had to face it.

"You'll be ready to understand what your final pa.s.sage must be very soon," said Lumiya. "I know it."

"So do I," said Jacen, and clapped his hands together once in a burst of Force energy. The beautiful blue underwater illusion vanished like shattering ice on a pond, and he was back in his spa.r.s.e apartment again with a bag to pack and a war to win.

SKYWALKERS' APARTMENT, GALACTIC CITY.

The apartment doors opened before Ben could press the entry key. Luke felt him coming, a turmoil of emotions in the Force.

Is that what I do to him? Is he that scared of me? I think I preferred it when he just ignored everything I said.

"No need to look so scared," said Mara. She took Ben's shoulder and steered him into the living room. "We're just worried about you, that's all."

She sat him down and gave Luke a warning glance as he walked into the room to attempt to pull his son back from the brink. Ben was still wearing his black fatigues, which were actually no more than the standard special forces uniform but somehow looked a great deal more sinister. He certainly didn't look like a Jedi.

You tried to force him to be what he didn't want to be. This is what happens.

"Are you okay, Ben?"

"Yes, Dad."

"I'm not angry with you." Luke pulled up a chair. "But we see the kind of things Jacen is doing lately and we wonder if you should be part of it."

Ben just stared back at him. Luke had seen that expression on children's faces before, but they had been refugees, children from war zones who'd had to grow up faster than was reasonable or decent and who never went back to being carefree kids again.

"I'm learning a lot," said Ben.

"I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing you ought to be learning."

"Why, sir?"

Ben had always called him Dad. Suddenly he had become sir. Luke caught Mara's reaction, a little mental flinch beneath the rea.s.suring smile that seemed set in place.

"It's violent, Ben."

Ben swallowed. "Jedi do violent things. We fly star-fighters with laser cannons. We use lightsabers. How many people did you kill when you fought the Empire?"

Luke was stopped in his tracks. He found himself forming the words, "But they were all . .

All what? All evil? All people who didn't matter? Most of them had just been swept up on the wrong side-soldiers, pilots, people in uniform, even civilians, just cannon fodder-and it had been easy to see the good guys and the bad guys back then. Now he couldn't put his hand on his heart and say that he truly believed he had killed only evil men.

"I killed a lot of people," Luke said.

"And so did I," said Mara pointedly. "And I was on the other side."

Ben looked as if he was measuring his words. He'd acquired a little gesture-a habit of looking down at the floor, chin on his chest, and pursing his lips-that was pure Jacen.

"But I haven't killed anyone. I know I've saved a couple of lives in the last few weeks.

Just because it looks bad, it doesn't mean it is bad."

Luke had no answer. His gut instinct and his recurring dream of the hooded figure had not changed one bit, but his intellect was saying something else. It was whispering hypocrite.

Mara caught his eye.

"Ben, how would you feel if I asked you to go to the academy for a while?" Luke asked.

"Now?"

Luke had expected an instant eruption of indignation, not merely a one-word question. "I'd thought that, yes."

Ben looked down again, an echo of Jacen. "Are you going to make me?"

"I'd rather not."

"Then I'd like to carry on with the Guard a bit longer. There are things I need to understand before I study again. Things I can't work out at any academy."

Luke's Force-sense told him that Ben meant exactly what he was saying. He wasn't playing for time or manipulating the situation.

"Okay, son," said Luke. "We'll talk about it later."

They had a meal together, their first as a family in what seemed like a long time, and for a while Luke could almost pretend that nothing was wrong. Ben got ready to leave.

"Could we spend some more time together when all this stuff has calmed down?" Ben asked.

It was the a.s.sumption of an innocent child that the situation would resolve itself in a time scale he could imagine: days, weeks, months. Luke wished it were true.

"That would be great," he said.

When Ben had gone, Luke waited for Mara's reaction. It took a while.

"Now look me in the eye and tell me that Jacen is corrupting Ben," she said.

"I never used that word."

"You didn't tell him you wanted him to stay away from Jacen, either."

"Okay, Ben has grown up very, very fast."

"And he's making sense. n.o.body's ever asked that question before."

"What?"

"How we can justify what we've both done in the past. It's easy for me to look back and know what I did, but what about you? Ben's got a point."

"You're remarkably tolerant these days," said Luke.

"I'm a lot older now, and I'm more concerned about my own family than the galaxy's problems," said Mara. "It knocks the edges off a girl."

For a moment Luke wanted to believe that he'd overreacted to Ben and Jacen, and that Mara was right. His mind said that what he saw on the surface was true. But his gut said otherwise. It said that what he saw in his dreams was more real than his waking hours.

"I'm glad we could sort that without having a fight and Ben storming out," said Mara.

Everyone believed what they wanted to believe. If it hadn't been for that echo of Lumiya-and he couldn't have been mistaken about that-then Luke would have believed it, too.

KEBEN PARK, CORONET, CORELLIA.

He's going to have your wife and kids killed. That's all you need to know.

Han Solo wasn't one of life's natural-born killers and he knew it. For all the times he had fantasized about killing his cousin Thrackan, from his teenage years right up to a few hours ago, he now wondered if he could actually aim a blaster at him in cold blood and pull the trigger.

The man deserved it. But that didn't mean Han could do it.

He was going to try, though. Jacen might have intercepted Ailyn Habuur, but there was another potential a.s.sa.s.sin out there, this woman Gev. And if there wasn't, then Thrackan would just keep coming anyway, year after year. He'd blighted Han's life for as long as he could remember.

The plans that Gejjen had given Han were the public kind that any Corellian taxpayer could examine in the public library. The itinerary of the President could change, too, so that meant Han would have to do some serious recce work before he felt confident about taking a shot. For a sc.u.mbag, Thrackan didn't seem to surround himself with the ma.s.sive security typical of most paranoid tin-pot despots. But maybe he thought people loved him as much as he loved himself, and seeing as he had been voted back into power yet again after a career of sleaze and treachery that would have embarra.s.sed a Hutt, he was probably right.

Han found a good vantage point in the park overlooking the government offices and Presidential residence. The G.O., as Corellians now called it, was one large complex, a tasteful little village of colonnaded low-rise buildings in the cla.s.sical style set in well-kept formal gardens. The park around it sloped gently up an artificial hill that provided a safe gradient for board-skiing when it snowed. Han found a seat at the top of the hill and took out some breadsticks to chew on, every bit the regular man having his lunch in the park. He even fed the gliders that gathered to watch for crumbs.

I'll need to get him in a confined s.p.a.ce. I'm not a sniper.

Han wondered if he should have put aside old feuds and hired Fett after all. At least he'd have known the job would be done right.

Okay, he has his regular weekly press conference today, which means he has to be in his office either side of that slot. A nice grenade launcher. No, he'll have staff with him.

It's not their fault their boss is a sc.u.mbag.

Whatever it was going to take to eliminate Thrackan, it was going to have to be close, personal, and point-blank. And then there was the matter of getting out again.

Han broke off a piece of breadstick and rubbed it into crumbs between his fingers before scattering it on the gra.s.s in front of him for the gliders. They descended in a flurry of wings. Okay, maybe take him while he's in transit: but that means a sniper shot, too. Or a drive-by. Or a . .

. no, this is all going to suck in innocent bystanders. I have to get him alone in his office.

If Fett did this for a living, then Han understood why he wasn't the sociable type.

The gliders flew up in a sudden spiral like one animal and left him staring at a snowfall of crumbs. He finished the bread and walked down the hill, working out when the next public guided tour of the building would give him a chance to get inside and look around.

If I take Thrackan out and get clear of the building, will Gejjen turn me in?

No, this bounty-hunting business wasn't like fighting as a soldier at all. Han strolled through an avenue of trees that led past a construction site for a new sports stadium; work had ceased. There must have been plenty of places that were running short of materials now that the traffic between the orbital factories and the surface had been largely stopped. When Thrackan was done and dusted, he thought, that could be his new job.

He was great at running blockades. He could teach these kids a thing or two.

Han was just wondering if Leia had managed to get hold of Jaina by comlink when he heard a sharp hiss like a jet and felt as if someone had run up behind him.

He spun around and was face-to-face with a Mandalorian visor that he knew far, far too well.

"Long time no see," said Boba Fett, and Han went for his blaster without thinking.

Fett brought Han down with a forearm smash under the chin and sent him sprawling. Han tasted blood in his mouth and his head rang so hard he was convinced the sound was real and external. Getting hit by an armor plate was a lot harder to bounce back from than a bare fist.

He shook his head to clear it and propped himself up on one arm. He was now staring into the sawn-off muzzle of an EE-3 blaster.