"So am I coming with you or not?"

Mirta was more trouble left to her own devices. Besides, he didn't want to let that heart-of-fire necklace stray too far. It was the one link he had to finding out how Sintas had died.

"Okay," he said. She was his grandchild, even if she had tried to kill him. He didn't care about that, but he struggled to find that protective devotion he'd seen in his own father. Something just didn't click. So he acted it out, because that was how he'd learned everything that became second nature to him-he went through the motions until it was part of him. He could learn to be a good grandfather, too. He could excel at it. "What's the best way to find another bounty hunter?"

"Think like him?"

Fett shook his head and set the speeder down with a thud. He'd have to tell Beviin where he was going. If anything happened to him, Goran Beviin was his chosen successor.

Fett hadn't told him yet, but Beviin took that kind of news in his stride.

"No," Fett said. "You hire him."

chapter two.

If you can't beat them, divide them.

-Cal Omas, Chief of State, Galactic Alliance.

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STATE, SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT.

"Not exactly our finest hour admiral."

Chief of State Cal Omas looked a much older man than he'd been just a few months earlier. Cha Niathal prided herself on a decent understanding of human facial expressions and the telltale little signs of fatigue and stress. Omas had them all: fluid-filled bulges under his watery blue eyes, a peppering of reddish spots on his chin, and a sour smell of caf when she got too close to him.

But mainly it was the eyes. Human eyes told her everything she needed to know. When she glanced at Jacen Solo, he was a model of confidence and composure-except for his eyes. There were no signs of poor health, but he was far from the glacially calm facade he presented. She could see the changes in the pupils of his dark eyes.

Small, almost imperceptible: but his pupils flickered, showing that some things got to him.

That was useful to know.

"We didn't lose the battle at Gilatter Eight," she said. "Whatever the Confederation claims."

"We didn't win it, either," said Omas. He'd developed a habit of moving sheets of flimsi around his desk. He didn't need hard-copy records, but it seemed to give him some comfort to handle them, as if they were the last tangible grip he had on his own government. "Consider this a wash-up."

"We've had our wash-up," Jacen said. "We know what went wrong and why we fell for a trap."

"Poor intel," said Omas. "As a Jedi, do you not sense these ambushes?"

Niathal noted Jacen's three rapid blinks. There was little love lost between the two men now. That remark really stung Jacen for some "

reason, even though he was far too smart to delude himself with ideas of omniscience.

"We're neither invincible nor infallible," he said softly. That was when he was at his most lethal, when he sounded quietly reasonable. "I had unreliable intelligence, and that's an occupational hazard. The fact that we got out in one piece is largely due to Jedi skills. Ironically, my parents' and my uncle's skills . . ."

Don't mind me, Jacen. Or the fleet. "You're too modest, Colonel Solo," she said. "I hear you fought quite remarkably."

Jacen let the comment pa.s.s without reply or a self-effacing half smile, which was his usual response. Omas flicked the controls of the holoscreen set in his office wall. A fly-through image of a planet resolved into a cityscape; hololinks showed inset three-D images of explosions and smoking skylines. "Now we have reports of fighting breaking out on Ripoblus."

"Why?" Jacen asked. "n.o.body in the Sepan system has any interest in the Confederation. I've had no intelligence-"

"They don't need any love for either cause," said Niathal. "We've reached the free-for-all stage. What better time than during a civil war to resurrect their dispute with Dimok? Like a cantina brawl. One fight breaks out and everyone suddenly remembers they have a score to settle."

"There'll be plenty more me-too conflicts." Omas sighed. "And we have to ask where we draw the line."

Jacen looked as if he was studying the schematic of Ripoblus's capital. Niathal judged that he was actually fretting about the limited scope of his intelligence.

"Chief of State, even the Empire never managed to stop the Sepan wars, and it was prepared to take far more extreme measures than we are,"

she said. "We should resist any pressure to get involved. We're getting perilously close to overstretch."

Omas changed the holoimage to a tote board of the Senate composition. The names of most of the member planets were listed in red, but some were in blue; there were more blue names than she remembered from the last time she'd seen this list.

"Two more members seceded last night," Omas said. "Las Lagon and Beris. Minor worlds, but let's do the arithmetic. The more planets that secede from the GA, the fewer military a.s.sets I have to call on, and the more a.s.sets there are that are potentially available to the Confederation."

Jacen was a master of expressionless contempt. "I think I can work that out, yes."

"And you still believe in responding with maximum force-within the boundaries of ethical treaties."

"Yes."

"Then we're on the downward spiral." Omas walked into the center of the room and gave Niathal a glance that verged on pleading: Come on, you're the military, you know this is true. "Sooner or later, secessions reach a point where the GA becomes the rump-where the Confederation equals and then outnumbers us." Omas held up two fingers and counted off theatrically. "Problem one: We would be outgunned. Problem two: Where's our legitimacy? What peace would we be enforcing? "

Niathal decided to let Jacen respond and keep her powder dry. Omas had an excellent point, but it was a politician's point, not a chief of staff's. Her job at that moment was to decide how to use force to achieve Omas's objectives, not to define what those objectives should be.

That was a battle for Jacen Solo. She watched.

"In that case," Jacen said, so softly that it was almost a whisper, "they can defeat us without a shot being fired. They can break us with a sheet of flimsi. I'd call that surrender."

"I'd call it war-gaming the worst scenario." Omas looked to Niathal again. "And you, Admiral, will know when we reach the military tipping point."

Niathal had two strategies-one with all the GA pieces she had in play at the current time, and one with Coruscant-based forces alone. It made sense to work on the basis of the latter if support was falling away. She glanced at the list of red names and the growing tally of blue ones while keeping an eye on Jacen-humans always had a hard time working out where Mon Calamari were looking-and realized that the graph wouldn't be a straight line. If there was to be an erosion of the Alliance, it wouldn't be a tidy progression; it would be a sudden collapse.

"That point hasn't come," she said at last. "I'll let you know as soon as I start getting nervous. But I can tell you that we're already overstretched because of the geography. Multiple fronts. Not good."

"And if we withdraw support from allies, then we magnify the problem," Omas said. "They'll switch."

Jacen inhaled audibly. "This is why I advocated going in very hard and very fast in the first place."

Omas smiled, but without humor. "Ah. I told you so. I wondered how long it would be before we reached that stage."

"Chief Omas, I know hindsight gets us nowhere now, but we might as well be honest with each other, and recognize what we can each contribute."

Niathal was working through her phases of Jacen. First he'd been a useful ally; then an instrument for getting the tougher decisions past Omas. He was still good for the Alliance, she thought, but he was far more the politician than the soldier lately. His language had changed- less direct, more circ.u.mspect. She longed for plain talking.

But she wasn't doing any in front of Jacen now.

"My sources tell me the Corellians failed to recruit the Mandalorians fairly early on," she said. "For some obscure reason, they appear to be staying neutral. Unless they've had some collective lobotomy, I call that interesting."

Omas looked at Jacen pointedly, hands in pockets. "Have we approached them? Have any of your shadowy little operatives signed some of them up? They were pretty handy during the last war, as I recall."

Jacen looked serene-except for his pupils. "No, and I suspect we wouldn't receive a positive response."

"Why? Don't tell me they've discovered pacifism after millennia of pillaging and destroying. They're congenital thugs. Any excuse for a fight that they can get paid for."

You think I don't know what you did, Jacen. Niathal feigned mild interest. But word gets around. Let's see if you play this straight.

Jacen was completely still except for the fact that he meshed his fingers in his lap. It looked like a meditation pose, utterly at odds with his black Galactic Alliance Guard coveralls.

"There's the small matter of the fact that I . . . lost Boba Fett's daughter during an interrogation," he said.

Aha.

"Lost." Omas blinked a few times. "What exactly is lost?"

"She died while I was interrogating her. I had no idea who she was at the time."

Omas looked stunned for a moment but then let out a small involuntary "Hah!" of oddly horrified amus.e.m.e.nt. "And Fett knows this?"

Jacen's face was as calm and impenetrable as a statue's. "He does now."

"Then I imagine you'll be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life, Colonel."

Jacen looked as if he hadn't thought about that. His composure wobbled for a second as he rearranged his clasped hands. "Asking him for a favor wouldn't be the smartest thing to do, no."

Niathal wondered if Jacen had finally bitten off more than he could chew. Gossip reached her ears, and gossip from Jacen's secret police was a wholly different and much more reliable source than the murmurings in the pleekwood-paneled Senate corridors.

But it didn't suit her plans to have Jacen crash and burn. And she didn't have to like people to work with them.

"I've arranged to meet the amba.s.sadors from Las Lagon and Beris with the diplomatic corps later today," said Omas. "Let's see if we can talk them back inside the fold. I don't want to start a stampede."

"What's their problem?" asked Niathal.

"Unwilling to commit troops."

"Give them a waiver."

"And what kind of message does that send to Corellia? That's backpedaling." Omas seemed indignant. "That's why we went to war in the first place-the principle of pooled defensive capability for the Alliance."

"Las Lagon and Beris between them contribute twenty thousand troops, tops. The diplomatic benefit strikes me as outweighing both the principle and any use they might be." The worst thing in the world, Niathal decided, was a politician who discovered scrupulous principle halfway through the game. "They're badly trained and poorly equipped, so I don't think I'll miss their military input to the GA."

Jacen eased himself out of his chair and stood up, making it clear he was heading for the door. "Well, at least there's some positive news on the counterterrorism front. It's the second month running that arms seizures are up. We're shutting down their supply routes."

"Are you certain they're all politically motivated, and not just criminals?" Omas asked.

"If you were shot by one of them," Jacen said, "would you care about that fine distinction? Ordinary crime and terror tend to become bedfellows sooner or later. And ask Coruscant Security Force for their latest violent-crime statistics. It's becoming a lot quieter all around."

He gave them both a polite nod and left. Omas watched the doors close behind him and then wandered over to the main window overlooking the plaza to stare out in calculated silence.

"What have we come to, Admiral, that my first thought on hearing that Colonel Solo kills a prisoner is that he might now have enemies big enough to keep him off my back?"

It was a blisteringly frank admission. "You're only human," she said.

Omas didn't see the other side of that verbal coin. "It's an indictment of what we've all become that my inner circle of advisers isn't the security or justice secretary, or even diplomats, but the chief of staff and the head of the secret police." Omas began his ritual amble around the office, leaving faint and short-lived footprints in the pale blue pile of the carpet. "I think about that, you know. I wonder how a colonel rises to be so influential, and I really don't know if I let it happen because he's a Jedi, or because he's GAG."

Niathal thought it was smart of Omas to keep the real discussions to a handful of people who could be trusted not to shift allegiance to Corellia. There was no telling with some Senators. "In these uncertain times, it's necessary. We can convene all the emergency committees we like, but the conduct of the war is a matter for very few. The war beyond our boundaries, and the war within them."

"Do you think we still have a war within?"

"Enough Coruscanti think we do. There's no such thing as 'only'

thousands dying in terror attacks. Lose a ship with thousands of crew, and civilians say that's too bad, that's what they signed up for. Lose a few civilians, and it's a planetary tragedy." The GAG had smashed most of the terror networks in a matter of months: they were very efficient at tracking down funding and establishing links. But they were still active, and lacking down different doors now-Bothan, Confederation sympathizers, and a few people who just "breached the peace" while emergency powers were in force. "It's as valid to deal with the fear of terrorism as with the reality."

Omas paused to try to look her in the eye. "Admiral, you strike me as an officer raised in the traditions of decency. Honor. The rule of law. That goes out the window all too often in trying times."

"I stick to what I'm tasked to do, and I'm grateful I don't have to get involved in GAG business."

Omas appeared to note the ambivalence. "Nominally, the GAG is under your command."

Nominally . . . "You feel Colonel Solo is exceeding his boundaries and that I should apply them a little more emphatically."

"I'm concerned about his operating procedures with suspects, I'll admit that."

"What do you want-for me to admit I'm concerned, too?"

"Are you?"

"Sometimes."

Omas's brows lifted in a split second of hope. "I appreciate that it's not easy to curb an officer who does so much to rea.s.sure the public."

"We all need heroes in difficult times, even if we don't need their protection as much as we think."

"Indeed. And for all their muttering, I do believe the Jedi Council secretly relishes seeing one of their own kind adored for his two-fisted and muscular approach to keeping the peace. It dispels the image of their being pa.s.sive mystics out of touch with grim reality."

"Success is everyone's child. Failure is an orphan."

Omas smiled ruefully. "Well, he'll either win the war for us ... or bring us down." He went back to his polished plain of a desk, looking somewhat shrunken when he sat behind it now. The small bronzium vase holding a single purple kibo bloom made the desk look all the more vast and empty. "Heroes have a habit of doing that."

Us. Bring us down.

And politicians had a habit of sowing doubts and ideas that wormed into the subconscious. Niathal noted Omas's subtle warning and almost began to explain that she already had the required degree of paranoia for a more political career, but he probably knew that by now. If he didn't, she was slipping.