Luke led the way. "Need to be careful. The stormtroopers we can pick out with the Force, but the Jensaarai, they're more difficult."

"Difficult, that's an understatement." Mirax tossed the blaster's old powerpack aside and jammed the new one home. "Their leader, this woman they call the Saarai-kaar, somehow thinks holding me is preventing her family from being destroyed. When she spoke to me, when she fed me-and I know I was sleeping for a long time between meals-she would speak in past and present and future. She said a Halcyon was her doom or destiny, but wouldn't go into details. It was confusing, but I never thought she was insane."

Luke shook his head. "She probably didn't understand it any better than you did, or than Keiran-Corran did when he lost contact with you. He didn't have the mental framework in place to make it make sense."

"I'm still not sure I do."

"No, but neither do the Jensaarai." Luke frowned. "They have training, but it's skewed and things have been added. It's not an independent Force tradition like the Dathomiri witches, but it's unlike anything else I know of." He shrugged. "That's not saying much."

"You!" The shouted words came angry, though the speakers in the comm unit at the hallway juncture couldn't quite produce all the outrage they were meant to convey. I glanced to my left and saw a hologram of Tavira standing there, just shy of life-size, her hands on her hips. "You were the Jedi at Courkrus."

I nodded. "At your service." Shifting my lightsaber to my left hand, I gestured with my right to Luke and Mirax. "I'd like to introduce Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, and Mirax Terrik and . . . but, wait, we're on our way up to see you. Introductions are so much nicer in person."

"How dare you!"

"Oh, I dare." I pointed to the sky. "New Republic will be here in no time. The days of the Invidious are over."

"Never!"

I laughed. "By the way, the month's not up, but the answer is no."

"Arrgghhh! When I get my hands on you . . ."

"In your dreams, deary." Mirax shot the comm unit. "Empire's been dead for years, and still she relies on those limping Imperial threats. 'When I get my hands on you!' Get with the times, woman .... "

"I like your Mirax a whole bunch, Corran." Luke smiled.

"And you're right, she and Mara should never meet."

We picked up the pace, racing into the main building and began working our way up. The staircase that wound around the inside of the building's tall atrium had a thick enough balus-trade to provide some cover, of which we took advantage as did those individuals trying to stop us.

Blaster bolts, red and blue, whined and streaked, ricocheted and smoked as they burned into white marble pillars or black wall tiles. The stairs'

gradual slope meant they wound around endlessly, it seemed, but was not sufficient to slow us down that much. They didn't have landings per se, so no easy points to defend, and our opponents had to put up with one unbelievably annoying problem: two of their targets bore these archaic weapons and were swatting blaster bolts out of the air. Luke was even able to redirect his at our enemies, knocking them down or making them break cover long enough for Ooryl, Elegos or Mirax to shoot them from a flanking position.

As we climbed toward the building's upper reaches, we felt a tremor course through it. "A shuttle's going up."

Elegos frowned. "Tavira must be running."

Ooryl and I exchanged glances. "That, or someone else is off carrying orders for her." I tried to push my senses to see if I could find Tavira in the shuttle or still in the building above us, but I got nothing.

"Something is blocking me."

Luke nodded. "Me, too. The Jensaarai."

"Must be."

We pushed on, clearing the last length of corridor, then topped several steps that opened onto the foyer of a grand chamber. This has been the Imperial Governor's audience chamber and clearly designed to impress.

While the s.p.a.ce itself was square in construction the inner design was circular, from the arrangements of the twisted basalt pillars holding up the ceiling, to the designs worked into both the floor and ceiling. At the far side, opposite our stairs, another set of stairs led up to an observation deck where transparisteel made up the walls. Through the viewports we could see the gas giant, its ring, and a bright light heading outbound.

Halfway up those stairs, on a broad landing, sat a ma.s.sive red granite desk and built into the front of it a cushioned chair made of the same stone. I found it easy to imagine the governor working at the desk, then moving around forward to sit in judgment over any issues brought before him. Elevated and imperial, he would have ruled as the sole, unopposable authority on Susevfi. All around the room, almost like courtiers waiting for a ruling, odd bits of fine furnishings, casks of credits, small chests of jewels and stacks of antiquities added a crude but opulent display of conspicuous wealth that smacked of Tavira.

Yet, all this, which I took in with a glance, faded to insignificance compared to the six creatures standing in the open central part of the floor. One, a woman wearing a grey cloak, with streaks of matching grey in her long brown hair, stood in the center. A mask hid her face, but unlike the others, it had not been fashioned after an animal, but instead showed a young woman, beautiful and smiling. The fire flashing in the blue eyes behind the mask, however, suggested the tall woman was anything but smiling underneath.

Arrayed behind her in an arc, five of the Jensaarai waited in their grey cloaks, their hoods up. The light flashing down from recessed glow panels above cast long shadows over their masks, but I caught details reptilian, insectoid and mammalian. The rightmost figure I had seen on the Invidious bridge with Tavira. The others, who were generally smaller, radiated little hints of anxiety.

The central figure raised her right arm and pointed a light-saber toward me. The gold blade shot out, but stopped well shy of crossing the five meters that separated us. "Finally you have come. The Halcyon. To destroy us." Her eyes focused beyond me. "The rest of you are free to go. You have done your part in bringing him here."

I frowned. "You kidnapped Mirax to get me here? You could have given me directions and this could have been over much faster."

Ooryl rested a hand on my shoulder. "It was not here that was important, but when."

"The choice of futures is made in the moment the future you desire is born." She let her cloak slip off, revealing her armored form. The armor, like the mask, had been styled after a beautiful woman and while alluring, was nonetheless deadly. She inclined her head toward me and struck a guard I found hauntingly familiar. She grasped the hilt daggerlike in her left hand, with her right hand riding on the pommel, pointing the blade toward the floor. "Now is the time."

Luke took a half-step forward and reached my side. "Wait, I am Luke Skywalker. There is no need for further violence here."

"The Skywalker. Your intervention here was not unantic.i.p.ated." She jerked her head. "My students will entertain you, then I will destroy you, too, that they may live."

The five people backing her moved to the left, letting their cloaks fall to the floor. Each brought out a lightsaber and set themselves.

"Saarai-kaar of the Jensaarai, do not do this." Luke waved a hand at her students. "I do not want to kill them."

"Then that would be a problem for you, Skywalker." She nodded at me.

"Come, Halcyon, destroy or be destroyed, there is no alternative at this juncture in time."

I lit my lightsaber as she drove toward me and blocked her first sweeping blow low and to the right. I antic.i.p.ated the wrist-twist that allowed her to rake her gold blade back across where I had been. I ducked beneath her cut, then slashed at her legs, but she danced above my blade. What she didn't expect was my remaining low, pivoting on my left hand. As she landed, I swept my legs through her legs, clicking her ankles together and toppling her.

I sprang up to press my attack, but she never hit the ground. She turned her fall into a languid backward somersault. The second she touched down, she drove at me again, feinting left and right. I backed away, moving to parry. When her blow finally came in on my left, I caught it on the forte of my blade and brought it up and over in a big circular parry. As I did so I slid forward so we stood shoulder to shoulder for a second. I cranked my left elbow up into her facemask, driving her back, then batted away a quick slash.

Off to my left, Luke moved through the Jensaarai with such ease and skill that I realized the only help he'd needed from me back on Courkrus the night we'd faced their brethren was for me to hold his cloak. A quick parry with his lightsaber and then a push with the Force and two of them went down hard. Another parry and the application of the lightsaber's dark end to a head dropped another to the floor. A telekinetic tug on a mask blinded one, while he fought another to a standstill, their blades arcing and screaming as they met.

The Saarai-kaar came at me with cold fury, her blade held in the style of the Anzati who slew my grandfather. She aimed a cut across my middle that I danced back from, then she slashed it down toward my trailing leg. The gold blade sliced through my robe and roasted a layer or two of skin off the top of my right thigh, but did no serious damage. I pivoted on that foot and arced my left foot around to catch her in the flank, pitching her across the room to where she crashed against a duraplast chest full of coins.

She clawed a handful of them back in mv direction and I realized a second too late what she was really doing. With a telekinetic push she accelerated them at me. I got my lightsaber up and deflected most of them, but two thudded against my chest and one skipped off my forehead, opening up a cut above my right eye.

"Enough of this." I opened myself fully to the Force and felt it flow through me. I came in at her, beat her blade aside and planted a front kick against her armored belly. She bounced back a step, but then slashed down and in at me as she quickly advanced. I parried her hard and to the right, then shifted my wrists and came up through a slash that should have cut right through her bracer and taken her left hand off.

I felt a jolt run through my lightsaber, numbing my hands as the blade flickered and died. She recoiled, clutching at her smoking armor, her own lightsaber going out as it fell from her hand. Snarling, she nodded sharply at me, and I heard a rustling. One of her students' discarded cloaks wrapped itself around my ankles and dumped me unceremoniously on my back. I blacked out for a second, then saw the Saarai-kaar standing over me, her golden blade raised for an overhand blow that would split my head in two.

Without conscious thought, I reacted through the Force. Into her brain I projected an image of Nikkos Tyris lying there in my place.

She hesitated. "Master?"

Mirax's stunbolt hit the Saarai-kaar square in the chest and dropped her out of my sight. I kicked my feet free of the cloak and sat up. Mirax slid down by my side, her blaster carbine still pointed at the armored woman's form. She pumped another shot into her, making the body twitch.

"Nice shooting."

Mirax smiled. "Thanks. Tried to shoot her earlier, but wasn't able to concentrate enough to hit her. Then things became clear."

"Right, right at the same time I broke her concentration by planting a picture in her mind. I linked her fighting style to that of my grandfather's killer, gave her his image and she hesitated." I rolled up to one knee and kissed Mirax full on the lips. "Thanks for the rescue."

"My pleasure." She stroked a hand through my hair. "By the way, you can keep the chin fur, but change the color."

Luke came over and knelt next to the Saarai-kaar: He worked her mask off revealing a face somewhat seamed from age and exposure, but clearly it was just an older version of what the mask had shown. Luke touched her forehead and nodded slightly. "She'll be fine. What happened to your blade?"

"I don't know." I picked it up and hit the b.u.t.ton. The blade sprang to life again with no shock and no sputtering. "I felt a lot of feedback.

Something in the armor shorted it? Cortosis ore maybe?"

Mirax picked up the mask. "Spun cortosis fibers in this? Not much of that stuff around-which is fine because it's fairly useless. Still, pretty in ornamentation like this."

"We have a problem." Elegos looked down at us from the governor's desk.

He punched a b.u.t.ton and a hologram appeared above a built in holoprojector plate on the desk. It resolved itself into a tactical shot of the system around the gas giant. "I've fed the system data from our ship into the projector here. I show the Invidious leaving the ring and it's headed this way."

I shook my head. "Tavira doesn't like losing, and she'll strafe us to get rid of us. Yumfla's done."

Suddenly several more ships appeared in the image, slicing in toward Susevfi, between the Invidiotts' attack course and the planet. "I have ships identified as the Backstab and the Er-rant Venture entering the system. They are deploying fighters: clutches and X-wings."

Luke looked at me. "X-wings?"

Elegos nodded. "From the Errant Venture. Invidious is deploying clutches and coming about to engage Errant Venture. They should close to range in five minutes."

Mirax shook her head. "We can't let them do that."

Elegos' head came up. "Both ships are evenly matched. They are both Imperial-cla.s.s Star Destroyers."

I snarled and stood. "Yeah, but Booster's ship doesn't have more than a token array of guns. Can you open up a comm line to the lientigre? Mirax, you can talk your father into running."

"Leaving us here to be lit up by Tavira? Not likely." She shivered.

"She'll vape the Venture, then vape us."

Luke looked at me. "Try to call Tavira. Maybe we can make a deal with her."

"A deal with her? No way." I shook my head. "If I know her at all, there's just no way we can convince her .... "I stopped and bounced the heel of my hand off my forehead. "Sithsp.a.w.n, I'm so stupid."

"What?"

I winked at Mirax and ran toward the stairs to the observation deck.

"Don't worry, I've got it. i'll take care of it. I'll move her right out of here."

"Move her?" The Jedi Master's voice came cool and even.

"Do you want help?"

"No."

"Do you need help?"

"Nope." I smiled at him. "Remember, 'size matters not.' And telekinesis is not the only way to move the Invidious."

I gathered the Force inside of me and projected my awareness out into a cone that sought the white dagger stabbing down from the ring. I found it with ease, just teeming with life and fear, anger and arrogance. I worked my way through it until I found a place where arrogance and anger and outrage all seemed to collect, then I pushed my way into Tavira's mind and flowed into the place where her fears and confidence dwelt.

I listened to her weapons-officers calling out ranges and preparing firing orders. I pushed a bit of doubt into her mind. It was impossible, wasn't it, that the New Republic would send so small a force after her?

Hadn't Jenos said a task force was on its way? He had sounded confident in a time when he should have known no confidence at all. He had worked with us and against us, learning our secrets. He knew how we operated and he communicated all that to the New Republic.

I let her listen to her people a bit more and latched on to the unease she was feeling with how simple her victory would be. We used the Jensaarai to hide our ship, but the New Republic, they would make more use of their Jedi. They sent two after us on the grotrod, to free the prisoner, but what about their other Jedi? Where are they? What are they, doing? Would they dare operate against me without them?

In an instant she knew the New Republic saw her as such a threat that they would stop at nothing to catch her, which meant they would use the Jedi against her. Not only that, but they would use the Jedi to trap her by reversing the methods she had used to elude the New Republic. I let her feel that if she sharpened her mind, she could pierce the veil of deception the Jedi were casting over her and her crew. She concentrated and pushed, accomplishing nothing really. but I rewarded her for it.

The holographic representation of the Errant Venture evaporated to be replaced by a bigger ship, a much bigger ship: a Super Star Destroyer that would eat up her Impstar Deuce as easily as the Invidious had destroyed the Harmzmo,. I fed to her every image I'd had burned into my memory of the Lusankya, Isard's old SSD, and channeled in a good dose of fear.

I touched her paranoia and let one of her own fantasies spin out for her.

From the SSD's belly a slender, needlelike craft shot. I fed her images of the Sun Crusher and let her calculate the damage that could be caused by that indestructible fighter-sized craft accelerating to just below light-speed, then ramming her ship. It would blow through it from stem to stern in seconds, shattering the Invidious. The SSD would just pound the sc.r.a.ps until their molten metal fragments congealed into debris that would make for a spectacular light show when they burned into Susevfi's atmosphere.

"Belay those orders," I heard her shout. "It's a trap, a Jedi trap.

Evasive maneuvers, plot me a course out of here. Far away!"

I retreated into myself and staggered back against the observation deck railing.

From below I heard Elegos. "The Invidious is coming about.

Tavira is leaving the system."

I turned around slowly, then tried to lean nonchalantly on the railing.

"Problem solved."

Mirax arched an eyebrow at me. "You think so, do you?"

I looked down at my wife. "She's gone, isn't she'?"

"Sure." Mirax smiled. "But my father's going to think she was running from him. He'll be insufferable. You'll never hear the end of how he saved my life, and just happened to include yours in the bargain."

"I don't mind," I forced myself to say. "After all, a Jedi does not know pain."

Things quieted down on Susevfi fairly quickly after the Invidious ran. We called Booster and through him got Jacob Nive. Jacob apologized for having brought Booster to us and having given him the data we'd left behind for Cracken, but Booster had been most insistent and had an Impstar Deuce to back things up. Nive contacted Colonel Gurtt, informed her of what was going on and offered to consider her and any ex-Invids who stopped their fighting to be members of the Survivors for purposes of the deal Luke and I had offered him. Colonel Gurtt, being the highest ranking Invid officer in the system, got the ground resistance to back off and Rogue Squadron set down in the palace grounds to hold back any misguided loyalists until Booster could shuttle down some of his security personnel and Nive could bring down some of the Survivor mudbugs to take care of ground ops.

Rogue Squadron had been on a long patrol circuit when Cracken had reached them and pointed them toward Courkrus. Though they came from further away, they plotted a tight course that got them to Courkrus before Booster. He arrived and offered them a ride to Susevfi, so they shipped aboard. Colonels Celchu and Gurtt met on the ground for the first time and were able to work out terms under which the Survivors would be allowed to keep their ships. They quickly began to bring local politicians into the meetings and I had no doubt that within several weeks, Susevfi would pet.i.tion the New Republic for entry as a full member, complete with a fighter force, and that the Survivors would find themselves a nice little home.

In addition to that, Elegos indicated that Susevfi struck him as a much nicer world than Kerilt. The possibility of moving at least part of the Caamasi Remnant to it seemed quite likely. Somehow I thought Caamasi fellowship and guidance for the Survivors and the Invids would go a long way to making Susevfi strong and peaceful.