"Oh, Alema?"

She comes and goes, broken, but sometimes very happy.

It was a good description of Alema's almost bipolar moods- murderous, bitter obsession punctuated by highs of . . . murderous triumphant obsession. The sphere was very attuned to feelings, it seemed.

Maybe it could sense darkness anywhere, like a homing beacon, so that it could go to the aid of Sith in difficulty. "I told her to tail Jacen, but I should have known better than to rely on a psychiatric case. But who else is there? Apart from me, that is."

Plenty of little darknesses. The two with my flame.

Lumiya repeated it to herself. Flame. "Ahh . . . red hair? Mara Jade Skywalker. She was the Emperor's Hand, an agent for the dark side, just like me. The boy is her son."

You darknesses should never fight. So few of you. I stopped her fighting.

"You certainly did." It was fascinating that the ship could still sense the dark side in Mara, even though she'd abandoned her roots. But to taste it in Ben, too ... it might have been in his genes, or perhaps the ship was reacting to his new career as a state a.s.sa.s.sin. Like mother, like son; Lumiya almost thought she'd written off Ben too soon. "Do you sense dark ones near?"

The broken one is looking for the Lord-to-be.

"If she looks as if she's going to interfere, remove her-dark or not." Lumiya had told Alema to track Jacen, but now wasn't the best time for Alema to interfere. "Jacen Solo is our priority."

The ship went quiet. It was impossible to get an accurate sense of speed in a vessel with no instruments in hypers.p.a.ce, but she could measure the duration of the journey on her chrono, and the ship could tell her where its equivalent location was in reals.p.a.ce.

Past Arkania. Past Chazwa.

Where was Jacen going? Not Ziost, unless he was taking an extraordinary route. He'd be brushing the Roche sector, if he dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce, and for a moment she wondered if he was simply panicking about the possibility of the Roche-Mandalorian arms deal turning the war in the Confederation's favor, and going to the Verpine to undermine the pact: but that was routine work for minions, for his admirals and agents, and she'd be annoyed if he was wasting his energies on that.

He leaves hypers.p.a.ce, the ship said at last.

"Where is he?"

Hapes Cl.u.s.ter.

"Follow him."

Perhaps he was going to enlist the Queen Mother's help. The Verpine seemed to be troubling him; that meant Lumiya hadn't heard the full story about the arms deal.

"This is beneath you, Jacen." She sighed. "Priorities. You really can't delegate, can you? That's one thing that your grandfather could do."

Jacen was heading for Hapes itself. Lumiya encouraged the Sith sphere to leave more distance between them by imagining a cord stretching to a hair's thickness. Eventually Jacen reached the edge of the Hapans'

security area, and slipped through.

He lands. He has an entry code.

Lumiya debated whether to use the code to follow him more closely, then decided against it. She didn't know if that would attract attention.

"Maintain position until he leaves."

She decided to sit it out, and hoped she wasn't misjudging the situation and that Niathal and G'Sil weren't now declaring the Glorious Third Republic or some such nonsense. The trouble with the small people was that they often left little in the Force for her to feel at this distance, and Coruscant's citizens were so pa.s.sive and compliant that there would be no great disturbance for her to detect even if Niatfial declared martial law in Jacen's absence. It was nothing that couldn't be put right on her return, but she'd have to explain why she'd been goofing off as Ben might call it, and Jacen would become petulant and uncooperative.

Jacen's like a moody teenager at the moment. When he makes the transition to Sith Lord, he'll settle down fast.

And she'd be no more use to him after she found him a replacement for Ben Skywalker. Lumiya accepted that her days were numbered.

She lost herself in meditation, wondering who might be Jacen's apprentice to come, when an explosion of feeling shook her as if she'd been grabbed by the shoulders and kissed by a total stranger. The Sith sphere reacted, too, a great soaring excitement that seemed to bounce between her and the ship's bulkheads.

"What's happening? Ship? What is it?"

But she already knew: it was Jacen, slipping out of his permanently repressed Force state and allowing himself intense, overpowering emotion for the first time in ages. The image the ship threw into Lumiya's mind was one of gulping down an icy gla.s.s of water after weeks in a burning desert. The sensation was intense enough to bring Lumiya to the point of gasping.

He has love, said the ship. He has loves there.

So Jacen Solo had a lover.

Stupid boy.

He could have had any number of lovers-after he achieved his full power. Pa.s.sion was fine, attachment could magnify strength, but running around the galaxy for a secret a.s.signation smacked of a teenager's total surrender to hormonal crisis.

Jacen, you're thirty-one, thirty-two, and a grown man doesn't have to sneak light-years away for a little romance, not even one in your position.

Unless . . .

Lumiya could think like Jacen now, even if his more vulnerably human side caught her wrong-footed.

Hapes. This was Hapes. And it involved something he'd kept secret even from her.

His lover was part of the Royal Court, then, the epicenter of paranoia when it came to alliances of any kind, because indiscretion often meant a blade between the ribs or a sprinkling of poison in the wine. That would explain a secret dash across hypers.p.a.ce at sporadic intervals.

And Queen Mother Tenel Ka was a Jedi to whom Jacen had been close for years. It was conjecture, but Jacen wouldn't consort with a palace maid. He was conscious of his lofty station in life; he would be drawn to a Jedi queen.

Lumiya risked searching the Force more closely for him to try to get an impression of exactly where he was. The sphere said he was in the palace itself, and although the tidal wave of emotion that had burst through had ebbed, it was still powerful enough to focus on. She shut out everything else-even her constant obsession, Jacen's destiny-and just opened her mind to the most basic impressions. His Force presence could be strong enough to drown out everyone else's around him. Now that he thought he was unseen and undetected, his presence was as deafening as a shout.

Lumiya couldn't even feel the ship around her.

The sense she was wrapped up in now wasn't taste or sight or sound, but. . . touch.

There was something soft, silky, and furry in her hands-Jacen's hands-and it yielded when he closed his fingers. It meant nothing to her, and then-then she understood.

"Ship, you said loves."

Two, the ship said. Yes, two.

The ship could detect Force-users, and it felt there were two more on Hapes, two more whose link with Jacen Solo had to be kept secret at any cost, and who would have an emotionally overwhelmed Jacen clutching something soft and covered in silky fur . . .

A toy. A soft toy. Jacen had come back to the apartment with a plain package gripped tight under his arm, and left with it. He'd bought a cuddly toy for a child he loved with his entire being.

Lumiya snapped herself out of the connection, and managed to stop short of beating her fists on the stark red deck of the sphere in sheer frustration. The ship might have taken it the wrong way.

Oh, Jacen, you had a child with Tenel Ka.

Lumiya now understood his fear and desperation. She thought of all the conversations she'd had with him about immortalizing his love, and suddenly realized who was in his mind when he looked so utterly tortured and desperate as she explained that he had to destroy what he loved most.

It explained everything. Lumiya never thought she could pity someone again enough to weep, but she found her vision blurred by tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks.

She settled in for a long wait in a state of mental silence, not even wanting to occupy herself with getting to know this extraordinary ship. She'd need to be there for Jacen after this. It seemed insultingly ba.n.a.l to kill time when he was about to make a sacrifice that almost no mundane being-or Jedi-would understand or forgive.

Yes, it was a very high price indeed.

chapter eighteen.

The Roche government has given Murkhana twenty-four hours to cease production of weapons command systems that are allegedly in breach of patents, or face what it describes as "immediate enforcement." GA Chief of Staff Niathal tonight warned Roche against military action and said GA fighters would be patrolling the system in a peacekeeping role.

-HNE news update HAPES.

Mara dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce still putting together scenarios to explain why Lumiya had gone racing down the Perlemian to the Hapes Cl.u.s.ter shortly after a GAG StealthX was signed out of the GA Fleet hangar by Colonel Jacen Solo.

There was no sign of the StealthX. If Jacen wasn't making himself detectable in the Force, Mara couldn't spot the stealth fighter any better than an enemy could. But ideas were forming in her mind.

Either Lumiya was fermenting more trouble to break the Alliance, in which case Hapes was a wasted journey, or she was meeting someone here like Alema-sorry, Jaina, I'll try to bring her back alive for you, but no promises, not in this mood-or . . . she was pursuing Jacen.

Or . . . maybe she'd found the transponder and was back to playing tag.

Mara thought it was odd that the ship hadn't spat out the tiny device, given that it was smart enough to throw a line around her neck to save Lumiya's tin backside.

It could have killed me easily enough, too. But it didn't.

Mara disliked reasoning in a vacuum. She didn't quite trust the crazier things that crossed her mind lately. But maybe the ship still saw her as a dark sider. It would be academic soon, but the thought that she might still have that tang of darkness about her produced some mixed emotions.

Yeah, I'm going to kill my sister-in-law's son. On the dark scale of ten, that's a twelve.

Now that her anger had ebbed, she was beginning to wonder what she was doing here. The Hapans would wonder that, too, if they managed to spot a StealthX hanging around their system unannounced. Lumiya's transponder showed that her ship was sitting in a cl.u.s.ter of asteroids, but she wasn't showing up on scans.

What was she waiting for?

Mara ran a discreet check on her instruments. If she went active on sensors, she'd give away her position, so it had to be a case of pa.s.sive detection only.

She was watching, or waiting, and how the Hapans hadn't taken an unhealthy interest in the sphere was anyone's guess, but Lumiya had a talent for evasion.

Follow the credits. But in this case, follow the Sith.

Mara shut down as many systems as she could afford to do without and waited. The temptation to launch a spread of proton torpedoes took some resisting, but until Mara worked out what Lumiya was waiting for, the Sith had a stay of execution.

It had to be Jacen that Lumiya had followed, although how she'd managed that Mara wasn't yet sure. Maybe Tenel Ka had summoned him, to intercede and get him to drop that stupid warrant on his parents. That didn't explain Lumiya riding escort, though, or why she'd tailed him for eighteen solid hours.

It was staring Mara in the face, whatever it was. She knew that.

She was missing a piece again. But all she needed was to locate Jacen, not work out his pension plan.

I could just comm Tenel Ka and ask . . .

However tightly the Hapans controlled access to their s.p.a.ce, a thirteen-meter piece of stealth technology drifting between planets was just a speck of dust. Mara was effectively hidden, and so was Jacen. If he was on the surface, she might-just might-detect him when he took off for a moment, but that meant going active and attracting attention.

Think. Think.

She could wait until he reentered the Perlemian Trade Route, but that made the a.s.sumption that he was returning to Coruscant the way he came. I don't have infinite oxygen, either . . . There was an easy solution, but it would blow her cover.

An hour later, she was ready to use it. She opened the secure corn-link and readied herself for a little social engineering.

"Hapan Fleet Ops, this is GA StealthX Five-Alpha requesting a.s.sistance." That would cause a flap, but it had to be done.

"Five-Alpha, this is Hapan Fleet Ops. We don't like surprises, even from allies."

Oops. This was paranoid country. "Apologies, Fleet. I'd like to stay off the chart, but can you confirm that Chief of State Solo is unharmed and that his vessel is undamaged?"

There was a brief silence. Knowing Hapan Fleet Ops, they were checking her out to be sure she was a GA pilot and that her transponder- now obligingly active-matched their security code list.

"Confirmed, Five-Alpha. His ship landed in the Fountain Palace compound without incident. Should we be aware of any special security issues?"

Ahh ... definitely visiting Tenel Ka, then. Probably explaining himself: Believe me, Tour Royal Highness, I had no choice, I had to depose Omas . . .

"Fleet, he's not aware that we have concerns for his safety and that we've put close protection on him in transit. He thinks he can handle it himself. Discretion on your part would ensure he doesn't try to shake me. I've detected a vessel following him but I lost it in your s.p.a.ce. Unknown origin, ten-meter red sphere with distinctive ocular front viewscreen and cruciform masts and vanes."

Mara's warning displays were lighting up: Now that the Hapans had a fix on her transmission, they were checking out the StealthX with sensors while they had the chance. She could have blocked them, but she let them probe around to keep them happy.

"Understood, Five-Alpha. We'll give you a heads-up when he makes a move. If we detect the sphere, do you want us to detain or neutralize?"

"Your s.p.a.ce," she said. Have this with my very best wishes, Lumiya.

"I have no orders to detain. Feel free to neutralize."

"Copy that, Five-Alpha. Unless you flash us in the meantime, we won't ping you until the Chief of State takes off."

They were such nice, helpful people, the Hapans, even if they were paranoid. And they understood plots, a.s.sa.s.sins, and keeping their mouths shut. Mara shut down all noncriticals and meditated in darkness, marveling anew at how very vivid and exquisitely beautiful starscapes were without the gauzy filter of an atmosphere.

She allowed herself one quick glance at her datapad to rea.s.sure herself that there was one thing she didn't have to worry about.

Ben's transponder said he was still safely on Coruscant.

GAG SHUTTLE, TAANAB s.p.a.cE.

Ben had learned a lot from his GAG comrades about tailing suspects discreetly, and one basic trick was to overshoot an exit and double back.

He dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce and headed back Coreward to Taanab, not Hapes, even though he was sure the Sith sphere was there.