It was his small fears, his reluctance to accept responsibility, and that was something he had to ignore.

"She says some of the front-line units are having problems getting the kit they need," Lekauf said. "Annoying stuff. Specialist ordnance, comm parts, but some seriously non-negotiable items like medical supplies, too. They're also complaining that the cannon maintenance packs aren't up to standard and they've had some malfunctions." Lekauf raised his eyebrows. "We're starting to find problems acquiring what we need, too, sir."

That got Jacen's attention. "This is the richest and most technically advanced planet in the galaxy, and we can't keep our forces adequately supplied in a war?"

Lekauf gave Jacen a significant nod that directed him to his holoscreen. "I think the admiral put it a little more emphatically, but that's her general reaction as well."

"Is there a reason for this?"

"Procurement and Supply seem to be dragging their feet, sir."

"Time I undragged them," Jacen said. He hit the comm key and opened the line to Procurement. "I'm sure it's fixable."

"If you'd like me to talk to them, sir . . ."

"I think they need a full colonel to motivate them, Lekauf, but I'm grateful for your offer." Jacen suddenly felt it was the most pressing task on his list. He and Niathal expected a lot from the armed forces, and it wasn't too much to expect the military bureaucracy to back them up. "I'll get things moving. Find Captain Shevu for me, will you?"

"He's out on surveillance, sir. Intercepted some nasty ordnance, so he's out with Sergeant Wirut watching a drop-off point."

Shevu was hands-on. He didn't seem to be as enthusiastic about the GAG's role as he had been a few weeks earlier, but he did his job and led from the front. There was nothing more Jacen could ask of an officer.

"Okay, I'll catch up with him when he's relieved."

Procurement frustrated Jacen from the start. When he got an answer from the comm, his status as commander of the GAG didn't seem to open as many doors as it did in the rest of the Alliance. By the time he was put through to a senior civil servant in Fleet Supply-a woman called Gellus- he wasn't impressed, and his caf was cold.

"We can't bypa.s.s the supply system, sir," said Gellus. "All requests are dealt with in sequence."

"Shouldn't they be dealt with by urgency, as in front line?"

"I don't have the power to do that under the procurement regulations, sir."

"Who do I talk to about quality of supplies?"

"Which supplies? You see, we have four item departments-"

"Cannon maintenance packs. We're getting complaints about poor-quality replacement parts."

"That would be Engineering Support. They have their own system.

You'll have to-"

Jacen had learned patience and a dozen ways to calm his mind in crisis from as many esoteric Force-using schools. He didn't want to use any of them. He wanted to lose his temper. He wanted action.

"There's a war on," he said quietly. "All I want is for the right kit to get to the people fighting. What's the fastest way to do that?"

"You're not Fleet, are you, sir? GAG is domestic."

"Meaning?"

"This isn't your chain of command. We'd need authorization from a senior officer from Fleet to pursue this request. It's the regulations, sir."

But I'm commander of the Galactic Alliance Guard. I don't even have this much trouble getting to see Chief Omas. The apparently limited scope of his authority galled him. He could call on Star Destroyers and entire armies, but getting past a bureaucrat was impossible.

"Would the Supreme Commander's word do?"

Gellus swallowed audibly. "Yes, sir."

"Then I'll come back with that."

Jacen closed the link, furious. Rules. He wasn't used to these arbitrary limits. If he couldn't get simple supply issues ironed out, then his future as a Sith Lord looked limited.

His rational mind told him this was an annoyance that could be solved with a message to Niathal and a little delegation to a junior officer, but another sense entirely told him he had to stick with this.

Good for morale, he thought.

No, it was something else. He couldn't put his finger on it.

Rules and regulations. He scrolled through the comm codes for the Alliance defense departments and found Legal and Legislative. He tapped the sequence, and a human voice answered.

"Can I borrow a legal-a.n.a.lyst droid?" he asked the a.s.sistant. Jacen preferred his legal advice from the most dispa.s.sionate and unimaginatively honest sources. A droid could grind through the small print in the statutes for him.

"Right away, sir."

That was more like it. Jacen's mood improved.

In the meantime, he still needed that simple authorization from Admiral Niathal to get the kit moving.

Good officer. Good tactician. Hidebound att.i.tudes.

But he needed her as much as she needed him.

Lekauf returned with fresh caf. He should have been off-duty, according to the roster. "You're too busy to do routine administration, sir," he said. "Are you sure I can't take it off your hands?"

"I'm sure," said Jacen. "Procurement and I need to get a few things straight between us."

Lekauf grinned. "You show 'em, sir."

Something told Jacen that it was more important to "show 'em" than he could ever imagine.

And that voice-he listened to it.

THE SKYWALKERS' APARTMENT, CORUSCANT.

Luke looked at his hands, right then left. One was prosthetic, and one was flesh, and had been touched by someone he was beginning to think of as his nemesis.

Lumiya.

In the middle of a battle, he'd had the chance to kill her, and they'd ended up touching hands in a gesture that between normal people might have been considered reconciliation.

I said I didn't want to kill her.

Luke Skywalker had never wanted to kill anyone. Sometimes it happened, though. He stood up and took the shoto out of his belt, the short lightsaber that he felt he needed to deal with Lumiya and her lightwhip.

What's happening? What does she want?

She'd never been one to play mind games like Vergere. She was a soldier: a pilot, an intelligence agent, a fighter. He'd yet to put the pieces together, but she was connected to Jacen's slide into darkness in some way.

Luke made a few idle practice pa.s.ses with the shoto and tried to visualize what might happen if he ran into Lumiya again. Then he wondered what he'd have done at nineteen, and he knew he wouldn't have thought about it too much. He wanted things to be that clear again.

The doors to the apartment opened, and he heard Mara and Ben talking. Relief flooded him. He laid the shoto on the table and every rehea.r.s.ed line of warning and disapproval vanished, replaced by a simple need to grab his only son and crush him in a hug.

Ben stood rooted to the spot and submitted to it. Mara gave Luke a warning with a raised eyebrow, but he wasn't planning to scold Ben.

"I'm glad you're safe," Luke said. "But if anything I did made you go off like that, we need to talk about it."

Ben looked at Mara as if seeking a cue to explain. "I was working.

I was on a mission, that's all."

Jacen, you liar. You said he resented the fact that I stopped him being your apprentice.

Only Jacen would-could-send him on a mission.

Luke considered casually asking Ben who'd sent him, but he knew anyway, and he didn't want to descend to tricking his own son into giving him information or putting him on the spot about Jacen. He didn't need any more proof that his nephew wasn't going to turn back to the light without some substantial help. It was help that Han and Leia couldn't give. It was beyond the Jedi Council, too.

This was family trouble. He'd sort it out, with or without Mara.

"Comlink silence?" he asked.

"Yes, Dad. Sorry." Ben might have been surprised by the hug, but he hadn't recoiled, either. "I can't discuss it. You understand, don't you?"

"Of course I do, son." And I bet I know who told you not to. "I really hoped you weren't going to stay in the GAG."

"I'm good at that kind of work."

"I know."

"I can't ever be a good little academy Jedi now, Dad. I have to see this through. We've had this argument before, haven't we?" Ben's tone was regretful, not a whiny teenager's protest about his parents' unfairness.

It was sobering to see him growing up so fast. Growing up? No, aging.

"There's a war going on, and once you've served, you know you can't walk away from it and sit it out while your . . . while your friends risk their lives."

"Luke . . ." Mara's tone was reproachful, with that slightly nasal edge that said she wanted Luke to stop. "Is this really the time for all that?"

He ignored her. "I understand, Ben. I do. But the GAG isn't the place you should be."

"Isn't it?"

"It's not the way the government should deal with dissent."

"Then that's why I should stay in," Ben said quietly. "If it's a bad organization, then it needs good people to stay in it and change it from the inside, and not abandon it to the bad guys. And if it's a good organization, then all you're really upset about is my safety, and I can handle that better than you think. You wanted me to be a Jedi. I'm beings Jedi."

Ben's logic and moral reasoning were impeccable. "You have a point."

"So am I a good person, Dad? Or do you think I've gone bad like you think the GAG has?"

It was a question Luke had never wanted to consider. What was a bad person? Most people who did evil things were neither good nor bad, just fallible mortals; the only truly irredeemable being he'd ever known was Palpatine. And presumably even Palpatine had once been a little boy, never dreaming he would be responsible for the deaths of billions and savoring his power.

Luke realized he wasn't sure he knew what a good person was when he saw one, or at which point they turned bad. He was painfully aware of Mara's gaze boring into him, green and icy like a river frozen in its flood.

"You're a good person, Ben." If he doing anything I didn't'? "You think about what you do."

"Thanks. And I'm not leaving the GAG, Dad. You'll have to make me, either physically or through the courts, and none of us wants that. Leave me where I can do some good."

Fights could be had without raised voices or angry words. Ben had fought and given his parents an ultimatum. Luke knew he would have to tackle this another way.

And blast it, Ben was actually right. The GAG couldn't be abandoned to the bullyboys.

"Just look out for Lumiya," Luke said. "You told him, Mara?"

"I told him."

"So are you going to stay for something to eat, son?" he asked, feeling Mara's gaze thaw a little.

"I'd like that," said Ben, fourteen going on forty.

It was hard to have a family conversation over a meal without mentioning the war. Ben wanted to know how Han and Leia were doing. Mara shunted vegetables around her plate as if trying to sweep them under a carpet.

"Things aren't too good between Jacen and your aunt and uncle at the moment, sweetheart," she said. "But whatever he tells you, they still care about him and want him to be okay."

"It's not personal," Ben said. "Hey, I tried to arrest Uncle Han because it was my job. I didn't mean him any harm."

Luke thought about Jacen's haste to abandon his parents during the attack on the resort satellite. He couldn't see Ben doing the same thing.

If he could, he didn't want to see it.

"Dad, was the Empire really a reign of terror?"

"Just a bit . . ."

"I know you and Uncle Han and Aunt Leia had a rough time of it, but what about ordinary people?"

Mara chewed with slow deliberation, her gaze in slight defocus on a point in the mid-distance. "You might want to ask Alderaan. No, wait-it's gone, isn't it? Oops. That's what happened to ordinary people, and I know better than most."

Because you did some of it. Luke faced up to the fact that he couldn't expect Ben to believe a word either of them said to him. They'd both done things that they were telling him he couldn't do now.

"But most people didn't really notice, did they?" Ben seemed to be fixed on course. "Their lives went on as before. Maybe a few people who were political got a midnight visit from a few stormies, but most folks got on with their lives, right?"