"None of us is thinking straight at the moment." He didn't need Jaina going off on an impulsive quest for vengeance. He had to focus- somehow. "Why don't you call . . . Zekk? Jag?" He hadn't a clue which of the two men she'd want to turn to now. "They need to know, too."

Jaina brushed the tip of her nose discreetly with the back of her wrist, and seemed to take an unnaturally fixed interest in the ornate carvings on a chair leg nearby. "I'll inform them, but I'm done with all that personal stuff. I'm going to concentrate on one thing, and that's making Lumiya pay. If I'm supposed to be the Sword of the Jedi, then it's time I took it seriously, and there's nothing that's worth my time more than this."

The duty captain of the guard came in later with a datapad on a bronzium platter and held it out to Luke. When he hesitated, Jaina took it and pored over it. The expression of I-told-you-so on her face told Luke that it wasn't going to be comfortable news.

"You want the short version, Uncle Luke?"

"Up to you."

"Mara shows up after Jacen, in Five-Alpha, and asks Ops to keep an eye out for an orange spherical ship with cruciform masts, because our new Chief of State might be under threat."

Luke always tried not to be swayed by circ.u.mstantial evidence, because two and two frequently proved to add up to anything but four. But he didn't know if they'd find any other evidence. He didn't know if they'd ever find Mara's body-or even if she'd left mortal remains. He couldn't ignore this.

"Jaina," he said. "I think you have to leave this to me."

"What was it you said about none of us thinking straight?"

"I don't want anyone acting on half the facts."

"What's it going to take, then?"

"She's-she was my wife. I insist that I handle this myself."

"You shouldn't have to."

"I want to. Don't take this from me."

Jaina actually flinched. Luke didn't think he'd snapped at her.

Maybe his pain was so intense that the sudden burst of it then had touched her in the Force.

"Okay, Uncle," she said quietly. "But you just say the word, and I'll be there."

There was still no sign of Jacen by the time Luke had tried unsuccessfully to sleep for six hours. He'd dropped off the charts, as Jaina put it. And Ben had not reappeared. Ben, at least, had good reason.

The search for Five-Alpha resumed early in the morning.

KELDABE, MANDALORE.

The fourth Bes'uliik off the production line rolled out of the hangar to meet the scrutiny of a small crowd of silent, armored men.

They'd folded their arms in that typical go-on-amaze-me Mando way, but as soon as the fighter came alive and sent dust pluming with its downdraft, they all applauded and yelled, "Oya!"

Yes, they thought it was okay. Fett watched it with a certain pride. The higher frequencies in its drives made his sinuses tingle.

"Who says defense procurement drags its feet?" said Medrit. He didn't seem bothered by the noise, even minus his helmet, but then blacksmiths had often been deafened by their trade. "Record time."

"Only another half a million of these," Fett said, "and we'll be in business."

"It's never about numbers, Mand'alor. Never was."

There was something about the fighter-its effortless hover and tilt, combined with the distinct throbbing note of its propulsion-that made it exceptionally attractive. Fett doubted if it would have looked quite so pretty if it was pounding your city to molten slag. He planned to claim the offer of a test flight.

Mandalore was resurgent, as Beviin liked to say, and it was gathering pace. A steady stream of Mandalorians was returning from diaspora. A few hundred thousand in a week was nothing for a trillion-body city-planet like Coruscant, but Mandalore was now creaking with the influx.

"You'd think a big empty planet like this could cope with a few immigrants," Fett said.

"Poor infrastructure." Medrit craned his neck to watch another Bes'uliik take off. "Got to fix that. Four million was always a nice stable population until the crab-boys messed everything up."

"How many incomers, worst scenario?"

"Impossible to tell. But you asked for two million to come back, and I dare say we'll get that."

Fett still marveled at the ability of people to uproot themselves, but then Mando'ade were traditionally nomads-and even he was happier in Slave I than with a roof over his head. "I'm always touched when people do things without my needing to hang them out of windows."

"Sometimes," said Medrit, "you have only to ask. Go read the Resol'nare. The six basic tenets of being a Mando. One is to rally to the Mandalore when called."

"Handy," said Fett. "But it doesn't always happen."

Fett had begun to see the recurring parallels between Mandalore the world and Mandalore the leader, and why the two terms had become synonymous in the outside world. He'd always called himself a figurehead, a reminder of what Mandalorians seemed to think they should be, social template as well as someone to hang the blame on: but it came true. He was recovering, and so was the nation. Mandalore seemed to move inversely to the rest of the galaxy, which was busy going down the tubes and ripping itself apart yet again. But that was good for business if you sold arms and military skills, so the correlation was expected.

"Time to celebrate," Medrit said. "A little, anyway. Come on, everyone's heading to the tapcaf First round's on you."

As he walked, Fett reflected that he was as close to satisfied with life as he'd been in a long time, except for the few nagging loose ends that had loomed large when he was dying, and still hadn't gone away.

One of them was Jacen Solo.

It always came down to Jedi and their schisms in the end.

"It's true, I tell you. She's been murdered." Beviin was holding court in the Oyu'baat, a tapcaf that brewed a sweet, sticky net'ra gal and never ran out of narcolethe. "Big search going on in the Hapan Cl.u.s.ter. Serious trouble."

Fett visited the 'caf once a week partly because Mirta said it was good for morale, but mainly because Beviin asked him to. Fett wanted Beviin to succeed him, even if most expected him to groom Mirta.

"Cabinet in session, then?" he said.

The chieftains and neighbors who drank here had become Fett's cabinet, and if there was any serious attempt at government going on- Mando'ade regarded that as a deeply unhealthy and aruetyc thing-then it would only be tolerated over a buy'ce gal in the tapcaf.

"Welcome to the foreign affairs committee," said Beviin. "Mara Skywalker's missing, presumed dead."

"How do they know she's dead if the body disappears in a puff of smoke?" Carid muttered. He was playing a four-way board game with Medrit, Dinua, and Mirta that used short-handled stabbing blades. Fett watched from the sidelines, never able to work out the rules. "They do that, don't they?"

Fett thought of his lightsaber collection. "Sometimes."

Carid, using his helmet on the floor as a footrest, winked. "So where's the forensics?"

Dinua stabbed her blade into the board, and there was a murmur of "Kandosii." "They sense it all in the Force."

"I'd joke, but I hear their son has gone missing, too." Carid tutted loudly. "What kind of parents are these Jedi?"

Fett wouldn't have traded places with any of the Solos or Skywalkers. They were a tragically unhappy dynasty, and even if sympathy was something n.o.body paid him to have, he understood the loss of a parent, and a child.

"Any mention of Jacen Solo?" he asked.

"That name has cropped up."

"There's a surprise."

"Mentions of a Lumiya, too. Alias Shira Brie."

Now, there was a name from Fett's past. Some things never went away. "It all ran better under Vader."

"I'm still waiting for justice for my mama," Mirta said quietly.

"Because if n.o.body else can be bothered to slit Jacen Solo's throat, I will."

She hadn't mentioned that in a while. Everyone-everyone-was waiting to see what retribution Fett had devised for the Solo brat. The longer he waited, the more s.a.d.i.s.tically just they expected it to be. But Fett could see something different in Mirta's eyes: if her grandfather was the most efficiently brutal bounty hunter in the galaxy, why hadn't he brought her Jacen Solo's hide?

The Jedi were right about one thing. Raw anger was a poor basis for action. He'd teach her cold patience, the best legacy he could bequeath her.

"Medrit," said Fett, "I want to send Han Solo a gift."

"Nice carbonite table?"

"Proper beskar crushgaunts, so he can throttle the life out of his vermin sp.a.w.n. And maybe a couple of armor plates and a small blade."

"Gift-wrapped, signed Please kill your son before we have to?"

"Just With deepest sympathy."

It was as deep as Fett could manage, anyway. It must have been terrible to have such a disappointment for a son.

HAPES Cl.u.s.tER.

Luke thought it was prudent for Corran Horn to take over the Jedi Council in his absence. He wasn't sure he could trust himself. It all felt very academic, even on a good day, and today was as far from one of those as he could imagine.

But apart from the fact that he was now minus everything good in his heart except Ben, Luke felt like his old self for the first time in years. He felt clarity. He knew what he had to do, and there were no gray areas or ambiguities about who was right and who was wrong. For all his pain, the sense of clean focus gave him something to cling to.

And old voices called to him.

He cruised the Transitory Mists in the StealthX, wondering if it had been a phantom effect of the region's ionization and sensor-scrambling phenomena that had guided him here. He magnified his presence in the Force again.

The comm alert broke his concentration for a moment.

"Luke," said Corran's voice. "This is land of hard to ignore.

Everyone's getting anxious to saddle up and lend you a hand."

"There's only one person I need to respond, my friend. And she's coming. But . . . thanks."

"What do you mean, She's coming!"

"Lumiya. I can feel her strongly now."

"It's a trap, Luke."

"For me and her, then."

"She's making it too easy."

"Corran, don't worry about me . . ."

"You know any one of us would gladly do it for you."

"I do. And that's why I have to."

Lumiya was here; Luke could feel her because she wanted him to, he knew that. He wondered how many times she'd pa.s.sed by him unnoticed and undetected, and congratulated herself on her stealth. He thought of the hand offered to him after they last fought, and how he hadn't detected any ill will. That level of skilled deceit would have been impressive if he hadn't felt so sickeningly betrayed by it-betrayed by his own gullibility.

Mara used to say he bent over backward to see the good in everyone.

"I won't be trying too hard today," he whispered. "In fact, not at all."

He didn't even miss Mara right then. To miss someone, he had to accept that they were gone so he could yearn for them. Mara was still there, just frustratingly silent and unseen, and he dreaded the moment when he finally said to himself, Yes, she's gone, she's really gone, and she isn't going to walk through the doors and complain how crowded the sky-lanes are these days.

The Transitory Mists were bandit country, rife with piracy, and Luke didn't care. He maintained a steady circuit off Terephon.

Eventually, the feeling of someone darting through his peripheral vision became one of someone in the same room. He rotated the fighter 360 degrees in each plane, ignoring his sensors and his Force-senses for the moment because he wanted to see this thing coming, to look it in the eye and take in the entirety of it in the fundamental way of a grieving husband, not a Jedi Master.

"I knew you'd find time for me," he commed.

Had she heard him?

His comm crackled. Lumiya's voice had never aged. He hadn't noticed that before. "I saw no point in running, Luke. Let's finish this."

The ship was exactly as he'd imagined: rough-skinned, red-orange, so organic in appearance that it might have suited the Yuuzhan Vong. The angular masts and webbed vanes at its cardinal points lent it an edge of predatory grace.

"I had to make sure she died," said Lumiya. "But you'll understand that, sooner or later."

She didn't open fire, and the sphere didn't move. Luke considered taking one kill shot, but he'd done that before, and a pilot called Shira Brie had survived the appalling injuries he inflicted to be become the cyborg facing him now. No, she had to die for good.

The sphere rotated to face Terephon and began to pick up speed, on a straight course for the planet. Luke set off in pursuit and the two ships accelerated, pushing their sublight limits in what Luke started to feel was a crash dive.

Oh no, Lumiya, you don't get away with a. suicide run. You're mine.

He stayed within his thoughts: he had next to nothing to say to her now. The sphere was streaking ahead of him, pulling away. He hung on it, closing the gap, calculating how long he had to intercept before it hit the upper atmosphere and plummeted to the surface, robbing him of every closure he needed.

And justice. Don't forget that. It's about paying the price for Mara's life.

The StealthX edged nearer its manual's recommended safe velocity.