Caedus sensed Niathal coming along the corridor. Her timing was impeccable; she must have seen Tahiri pa.s.s the lobby outside her own office.

"The small icons are mines, "he said. "I'm not making the same mistake as we did in blockading Corellia. Then, we still deluded ourselves that we could bring the planet to its knees by maintaining a civilized picket line... like some customs and excise operation. No, that eats resources, es-pecially when there's a ring of orbital stations to isolate from both planet side and s.p.a.ce side. When I deploy warships and fighters, it will be to wage war and fight, not to be run ragged stopping Confederates from walking on the gra.s.s. I'm taking the first element of the Fourth Fleet to Fondor today. The minelayers have already left."

"Around the whole planet?"

"That's the only option. Mining the main transits from the Rimma Trade Route simply allows supply vessels to by-pa.s.s the minefields, or catches the careless ones, and while I want to deter commerce from supporting Fondor, there's nothing to be gained in alienating the trade worlds with civilian casualties."

Niathal's presence blew in like a storm building on the horizon a few moments before she appeared. Caedus and Tahiri paused and turned together.

"Bad form, yes. I agree. No dead civilians." Niathal walked over to the chart, hands clasped behind her back; in her pristine whites and gold braid, she was the quintes-sence of admiralty as she c.o.c.ked her head to study the holoschematic chart of the system. Caedus knew that Mon Gals'

eyes were positioned so that the tilt was necessary to focus closely, but to a human the gesture always smacked of doubt, as if she thought he was the dim boy in the cla.s.s who never got the right answer. "So, the impenetrable ring of detonite, eh, Jacen?" She turned to Tahiri. "How smart you look in a proper uniform, my dear. Welcome to the fleet."

Caedus cut in. Niathal was in one of her irritating smug moods, no doubt thrilled at the prospect of his absence. "I'm deploying to Fondor tonight, remember. I'm sure you'll miss me."

"That begs a joke, but I'm no comedian."

"Five minelayers should be in position a few hours ahead of the rest of the task force." Jacen glanced at the wall chrono. "There'll be a sh.e.l.l around the entire planet when I get there."

Niathal extended a long bony fin of a finger into the nest of tangled, glowing lines dotted with multicolored lights. "Don't forget that you lay the inner ring first, though, will you?"

"Oh, you're too modest when you say you're not a co-median, Admiral..."

Niathal felt as if she was savoring the carefully worded fight.

"And these won't be activated until we've warned Fondor and given a one-standard-hour general shipping alert, will they?"

"Not issuing a warning about planetary mine nets would be a war crime, Admiral, because of civilian traffic..."

"That's why I ask. You're so forgetful lately. And we'll take the decision to activate jointly, won't we?"

"I'm a team player. I look forward to it."

He didn't need his Force senses to tell him that she wouldn't miss him. "I've put the Third Fleet rapid-reaction force on alert, so if you need help, do call."

"I'll give the blockade a week before we move to the a.s.sault phase."

"We didn't discuss that."

"Oh, I thought of it later..."

"Why create a mine sh.e.l.l if you don't intend to sit it out? It's not as if we have hulls and troops to spare."

"Because I still think we should take the yards sooner rather than later, and we can pick them off once the planet is locked down. Then, when the yards are secured, I intend to capture the capital and main regional centers."

"Yes, you did say that, but let me remind you that there are still five billion Fondorians, at least half of them on the planet's surface, and most in those cities."

"I'm hoping it won't get to that stage. I may sacrifice one yard to show I mean business, but Fondor won't want its industrial infrastructure destroyed. Will it? Small, rich world, one that will see sense."

"Corellia has an even smaller population, and look how well that went." Niathal checked the splendid gold fob chrono on her jacket. "My, is that the time? I must be going." She headed for the doors.

"Wow, "Tahiti said, when Niathal was long out of earshot. "Are you two always that barbed with each other?"

"It's how we keep on our toes." Caedus would have been much more worried if Niathal oozed sweetness and light to him; as long as he felt that she despised him-and he felt it-and she paraded her disdain openly, he knew he could still trust her not to attack him. She was much more transparent than he'd first expected. "She's actually very, very good at her job. I just wish she'd accept that she's not very good at mine."

"You can feel her hatred. I certainly can."

"It's not hatred, Tahiri, "Caedus said. "It's disdain, con-tempt and a certain superior pleasure at being better and nicer than me-as she sees it. That's loathing, perhaps. Not hatred. Hatred is close to fear, and always has an element of dread in it. Like love has a component of pity, and it's just as hard to see the line between the two."

Tahiri might have taken it at face value, or she might have been unpicking hidden meaning in it. He hoped she was doing the latter. "I'll turn to at eighteen hundred, "she said, as if she'd learned all the new jargon to impress him and possibly secure another fruitless, tantalizing glimpse of Anakin. "Sir."

She walked out of the office with a more rigid spine. Perhaps she's choosing pain, too.

"You did well with Admiral Pellaeon, by the way, "he called after her. "Good job, Lieutenant."

Something else had just shifted in the Force, a small thing, a cog turned by just a single tooth, but it had moved, and with it the rest of the machine was subtly altered. That was the nature of destiny. Caedus felt around in the Force for where Luke and his entourage might be. But his mind was too restless now, fixed on the need to bring down Fon-dor.

It will be a short siege, I promise. A decisive one.

He tried to search out his twin sister, just out of... curiosity.

Jaina. I can't believe how easy it is to forget people. I can go for days without even remembering you exist. Jaina...

He reached out in the Force, but something else in the great machine had changed, too. He couldn't feel Jaina, not the familiar mix of temper and pa.s.sion and-always ap-plied too late-the urge to control it all. Perhaps Ben had taught Jaina how to shut down in the Force, too, like he'd probably taught his mother so she could kill Jacen Solo more efficiently. Caedus checked himself as he realized that he saw Jacen as a separate ent.i.ty. It was more than having changed: it was separation.

Jacen still existed for the family who tried to understand him, but he wasn't the man sitting here now.

Better not teach Tahiri to Force-hide. It just complicates matters.

Jacen Solo. Gone, now; not concealed. Gone, and never coming back.

Caedus spent the afternoon moving a.s.sets around imagined Fondor s.p.a.ce, feeling fresh pleasure each time his fin-ger connected with the amber lights representing the new a.s.sets, the battleships and fighter squadrons of the Imperial Remnant. This would not be the long, groaning, humiliat-ing failure of trying to subdue Corellia. He had a good chunk of the Fourth Fleet, and n.o.body else was placed to come to Fondor's aid.

Everyone else now had their own woes and war to keep them busy.

This time, it'll be different.

It would be different because there was no more Jacen Solo, or any of his levers left to pull.

And if there was no more Jacen Solo, then Darth Caedus had no twin sister. Caedus relaxed.

GA FLEET HANGAR, GALACTIC CITY: SIX HOURS LATER.

"We're on, "said Shevu. "The Anakin Solo has cleared orbit."

Ben could see Shevu on the monitor that was set in the CSF speeder's dash. He didn't know-or ask-how the captain had managed to borrow a police traffic patrol vessel, but it was handy cover for anyone who wanted to sit waiting at a skylane intersection near a military installation without drawing the wrong kind of attention.

It was also linked to a network of skylane surveillance holocams.

All Ben had to do was sit there and monitor the images that the forensics droid relayed from the interior of the StealthX c.o.c.kpit.

"Okay, "Ben said. "Let me know if you need a spot of disruption."

Shevu adjusted his helmet as he walked toward the hangar's open doors. Yellow light spilled out onto the per-macrete ramp. "If you ever take up a life of crime, Ben, you'll do staggeringly well at it. Just as well Jedi are pretty honest."

Ben had learned that, even for him, there was a principle of need-to-know-and he didn't need to know how far CSF was involved now. The police looked after their own, no questions asked; and as far as they were concerned, Shevu was still one of the lads, even if he now wore the black of the Galactic Alliance Guard.

It was just a matter of slipping the CSF forensics droid into the StealthX. It was a small sphere about the size of a smashball, disturbingly like a thermal detonator, and packed into its innards were probes, spectrometers, reagents, sample packs, and a full array of sensors that recorded everything at the crime scene it was sent to record. It was perfect for send-ing into dangerous or inaccessible places that a flesh-and-blood CSF scenes-of-crime officer couldn't reach, and it was also small enough to be discreet.

The only problem was that it didn't look like a maintenance droid, and someone might notice. Ben's job was to make sure they didn't.

Shevu, in uniform and taking advantage of the fact that GAG officers could do as they pleased in Jacen's new galactic order, ambled into the hangar, and the external traffic remote lost him in the shadow.

There was a brief fog of sta-tic on the monitor as Ben switched from the traffic-control holocam to Shevu's helmet cam.

"Here we go, "said Shevu. The forward image showed Jacen's personal StealthX sitting in its bay, canopy closed, in a line of X-wings connected to the diagnostic grid by ca-bles and wires. Maintenance droids and a couple of human technicians walked in and out of eyeshot looking hara.s.sed. "Got the droid ready."

"I'm watching."

Ben followed Shevu's field of view as the captain walked up to the technicians and asked them when Colonel Solo's StealthX was starting its maintenance cycle. They a.s.sumed they were being nagged to make the vessel a priority.

"Okay, we'll do it before the next batch of X-wings, "one technician said in an exasperated tone. "Look, we can only process them so fast, you know."

"It's okay." Shevu sounded as if he was relenting. "I'll hang around, if you don't mind. You know what a pain in the neck he is about efficiency."

The technicians lapsed into stunned silence, mouths slightly slack with horror. It was just a figure of speech, but with the gossip about poor Tebut doing the rounds of the fleet, it sounded like a very sick joke. They didn't seem sure whether it was safer to laugh at it or not.

Armed forces humor was very tasteless sometimes, right on the border-line between laughter and tears. Shevu shrugged and walked away.

It was a perfect excuse for him to mooch around the hangar, looking as if he were killing time by sticking his nose in everywhere. He was a secret policeman. It was what they expected him to do. He clambered up the ladders on a couple of X-wings, prodded cables, and generally made all the movements of a man wanting to get on with something because he had a very unreasonable boss.

Did the rest of the fleet still like Jacen? A few days ago, he'd been their hero, one of the team. He sent procurement managers to the front line for providing poor-quality kit to the troops, or not providing it at all. He led from the front; he never asked his personnel to do anything he wouldn't do himself. This, Ben knew, was what created the loyalty that made beings put their lives on the line for an officer. It wasn't political fervor or a desire for glory. It was devotion based on shared risk, on knowing that comrades-whatever the rank-looked out for each other.

But Jacen hadn't looked out for him. He'd tortured him. Ben couldn't imagine doing that to someone he was sup-posed to care about, especially for their own good.

Do you really know how much he's changed, Jaina?

"Ben, stand by."

Shevu's helmet link showed he was at the StealthX now. It was one of three left. The Jedi had taken the others with them, and a StealthX wasn't much use to non-Force-users, seeing as they had to use comlinks.

Ben watched Shevu's field of view shake with the one, two, three of climbing the small ladder up to the c.o.c.kpit, and the flash of a transparent canopy lifting followed by the dark interior and matte instrument panel as Shevu looked inside.

"In the hole...., "Shevu muttered into his helmet link. Then he climbed back down and wandered apparently aimlessly around the hangar.

"Droid on the case."

Most of Ben's attention shifted to the monitor showing the droid's-eye view of the c.o.c.kpit; a fraction of it re-mained on Shevu's monitor, watching for complications that might require a little Force ingenuity from Ben. He could see the smooth matte-black curves of the instrument panel, and the small brush-like projections from the droid skimming over plastoid and durasteel, picking up traces and a.n.a.lyzing them before storing the swabbed samples in-side the case. An icon on the monitor showed the results as the droid worked; there were traces of skin cells, machine lubricant, microscopic shavings of metals, and sweat from hands.

There was even dust with the mineral profile of Kavan, but then Jacen had landed to find Ben. It wasn't evidence.

The droid worked methodically, covering the c.o.c.kpit deck and bulkheads. It was picking up the odd hair, too, five-centimeter lengths-short, and male. Ben's heart sank; the c.o.c.kpit must have been cleaned several times in the last few weeks.

Then the droid worked over the apparently clean seat. Again, the icons showed skin cells, dust, oils. The probes worked down into seams, and then between the sections that formed the angle of the seat, deep folds of fabric.

The icons changed.

PARTICLES: BRICK, ORIGIN UNKNOWN. CLAY. SILICATES.

ORGANIC MATERIAL: HAIR, FEMALE, 2.9 CMS. FOLLICULAR TAG PRESENT. TRACES.

OF BLOOD ON HAIR SHAFT. DNA MATCHES HAIR.

"Oh, oh, oh, "Ben whispered.

"Got it?" Shevu's view showed he was near the doors, head moving slowly as if watching nothing in particular.

"What is it, Ben?"

"Hair with blood, and a follicular tag. Female hair."

"If it's got a tag, Ben, it's probably been pulled out." Ben saw his mother in his memory, tugging her hair and dropping strands into his palm as he stared dumbfounded at her ghost on Kavan.

You did it, Mom.

"Let's get out, "Ben said. "We've got it."

"Stang, "said Shevu.

When Ben switched his attention back to Shevu's moni-tor, he saw what had made him curse. Captain Girdun was walking toward him, hands deep in pockets, whistling soundlessly.

"Walk him away, "said Ben. "I'll extract the droid."

"Wait until he goes. I'll get rid of him."

"No, just get him away from the StealthX. Leave it to me."

"Okay." Shevu's voice was now totally different, exter-nal, addressing Girdun. "Keeping you up, are we?"

"Don't see you down here often, "Girdun said.

"Just making sure Solo's toy is ready if he decides to come back early. Don't want him to shake me warmly by the throat, do I?"

Girdun made a snorting sound. "Hah, you're his little Master Perfect. He won't throttle you. Besides, he's going to be stuck at Fondor for a long time."

Shevu began walking away from the StealthX very slowly, getting Girdun to follow him without even thinking. Ben watched Shevu's helmet cam shift perspective from the speckled, irregularly shaped fiberplast airframe of the fighter to a long view of the hangar with the X-wings stag-gered along the length of both walls, and waited until it had pa.s.sed three of them before extracting the droid.