"I hope so. I'm Master Skywatker's age and probably in as good physical shape as he is, but I'll bet he's going to be bring-ing in a bunch of kids. I'll really have to push myself. Gotta do it, though, because Mirax is counting on me."

"You'll do fine, Corran. Or should I call you Keiran?"

"Corran will do."

"Okay. How do you feel about eating Ithorian?"

I wrinkled my nose. "Food's good, but I want something with a bit more animal protein."

"There's a new Twi'lek place that opened up a couple of sectors down and away from here."

"Car'ulorn's Kavsrach ?"

She nodded. "I think that's the place. I heard they do some-thing special with mynock."

"If I'm eating mynock, it will have to be very special." I winked at her.

"Nawara said the food was good there, so it looks like that's a go. Let me pull on some real clothes and we're out of here."

While I changed leila consulted the Imperial City directory and discovered the restaurant was actually closer than either one of us thought it was. We decided to walk there and slipped into the easy gait we'd used when walking patrol duty together back on CoreIlia. A lot of years seemed to melt away as she pointed out the things she knew I'd find amusing and I did the same for her.

I elbowed her gently in the ribs. "You ever figure we'd end up on Coruscant back when we were partners?"

Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she shrugged. "Maybe on vacation, though I can think of hundreds of worlds where I'd rather go. Diric always wanted to come here, to see the hub of the galaxy. Back then I thought of it as too urban."

"And now?"

"Once you get here you find out that it's not all one big city, but it has neighborhoods and little city-states. It's not just one big uniform block of grey." She shot me a sly grin. "I'd still like to head out to some place like Alakatha."

I stopped abruptly as two small RodJan children went racing past me, and leaned heavily on Iella for support. "You might ask General Cracken to send you there to check out how Ri-izolo picked his target."

"Thought of that, but I'd have to haul that piece of pirate Huttpuss along with me, so I don't think it's an a.s.signment I want."

I smiled. "Talk to Wedge. He could use a vacation."

"There's an idea." Iella slipped ahead of me as the walkway we were on became more crowded. She slipped past a knot of Whiphids, then pointed at a small ball of lurid red light a cou-ple of levels down. "That's the place."

We hurried on over and down. Car'ulorn's Kavsrach had quite a crowd in it already, and most of them Twi'leks. We took this as a good sign, even though we found it somewhat unset-tling as we were led on a twisting path to a small table back near the kitchen. Because Twi'leks use the twitches and shakes of their braintails-more properly, lekku-the way humans use their hands to emphasize things they say, the whole room was alive with serpentine writhings.

I looked over at Iella through the holographic projection of the menu.

"Remind me, I don't want anything with noodles."

She laughed and pointed to an item three down from the top. "Mynock Coronet City. A spicy combination of marinated my-nock strips with vweilu nuts and Ithorian chale, in alum sauce."

"Sounds good, but the roast gornt sounds better to me." I smiled at her.

"Reminds me of a joke I heard from Wedge the other day."

"Not the Bothan and a gornt in a cantina?"

"You've heard it? You talked to Wedge?"

"There are about a billion Bothan and gornt jokes, Corran, and I've probably heard them all. Tend to be rather popular in Intel." Iella glanced down at the table. "But, no, I've not spo-ken to Wedge."

Our server came and took our order. She told us we'd made good choices, but the quick shiver running down one of her lekku suggested to me she'd rather drink rancor spit than have the roast gornt. I refused to let that intimidate me. "And a little extra of the gravy on that, please."

As she whirled away, I fixed Iella with a stare. "What's going on between you two? You both seem to like each other and get along well."

Iella frowned and picked at a thumbnail, which I recognized as a sign of her not being certain how to answer me. "I wish I knew. We definitely hit it off and he was very understanding when Diric returned and very supportive after Diric died. You know what our duties have been like, so there hasn't been that much time to get together. And now he has new responsibilities that take up even more of his time."

"Yeah, but you could convince him to make time."

"I'd like to think so. I don't know." She sat back and shrugged. "You remember back when Inspector Sa.s.sich made CorSec chief? She was all of forty at the time, a great accom-plishment."

I thought back. "She ditched her husband, bought that chirq red ZRX-29 airspeeder and started taking personal training lcssons from those twins about half her age. I remember that."

"You just wish you were one of the twins."

"No, at that point I just wished I could borrow the air-speeder." I laughed. "I seem to recall my mother had a few choice things to say about her."

Iella frowned. "Your mother actually said something critical of someone?"

"I didn't say that. As I recall my mother commented that the Incom ZX-26 would have been a more practical vehicle." I shrugged. "That's about as critical as she got. She always thought gossip was in such poor taste.

However, your point about Wedge is what?"

"I think he's in that same sort of transitional phase of his life. For better than a decade he's been responsible for the life-and-death decisions that have cost a lot of people their lives. That's not saying someone else wouldn't have caused more people to die by making worse decisions-that's pretty much a given-but he's been going like that since before you joined CorSec. He's, what, two years older than you? That means he's had a lot of pressure since a time when you were still a kid.

Given the death of his parents and his trying to make a living ship-ping . . .".

"And his time spent with Booster Terrik . . ."

"... right, he's never had a chance to cut loose and be himself. I think that's what he's doing and I'm not certain he wants that many reminders of his previous life around right now."

Her a.n.a.lysis of Wedge's situation seemed to hit pretty well dead on, but she'd always been a good judge of character. "So that means you're just going to back off?"

She nodded, then smiled at our server as the Twi'lek female placed our meals in front of us. "That smells wonderful. Thank you."

I glanced down at a bowl filled with gravy. A lump floated to the surface and a couple of bubbles thinned from brown to khaki, then burst. "And the thing is, I'm pretty sure this will be lots better than the academy food."

The server gave me an "I told you so" twitch of a lek and wandered off.

Iella popped a forkful of her mynock into her mouth, closed her eyes and sighed. "This is really very good."

The aroma of her meal wafted over my way, starting my mouth watering. To curb that behavior, I poked my fork at a lump of what I hoped was gornt, but it just sank away out of sight. "I'm so happy for you, Iella." A growl from my stomach underscored my sarcastic remark.

She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially to me.

"It's your own fault. Twi'leks consider gornt to be tourist food.

You might as well walk into a cantina and order nerfmilk."

"Hey, I'd order it straight up."

She laughed and I realized I was going to miss that sound. "If I didn't feel I had to go to the academy, if I didn't feel my father wanted me to go, I don't think I would."

"Yes, you would, Corran." She shook her head at me. "Once you heard about the academy you would have been going-even if Mirax wasn't missing."

"What do you mean?" I manfully speared a chunk of gornt and tucked it into my cheek. "How can you say that?"

"I was your partner, remember? You're very compet.i.tive, which can be cute and endearing at times, as long as someone stays out of your way. You want to know why you were the first person ever to escape from Isard's Lusankya prison? Because there was no way you were going to let her beat you."

"What's that got to do with the academy'?"

"You've always wanted to be the best, and becoming a Jedi Knight will be that for you. Look at yourself. You're already beginning training before you begin training. You've figured out that Master Skywalker will be bringing in folks who are younger than you are, and you're already figuring out how to be better than they are."

1 chewed on the gornt and thought. And chewed some more. Actually I was finding acknowledging the truth in Iella's words about as tough as the gornt I was chewing, and swallowing either would hurt. Despite the impending discomfort, I knew she was right. I swallowed the gornt, then coughed lightly and nodded to her.

She reached out and tapped a finger against my forehead. "The one thing you haven't figured out yet is that the person you're really in compet.i.tion with is yourself. Luke Skywalker will be a tough taskmaster.

Of that I have no doubt. And I know Wedge was, but they weren't as hard on you as you'll be on yourself. I know you well enough to know you won't back off, so I just hope you remember that when you feel all that pressure on you, the majority is coming from right inside your thinkbox."

I thumped a fist against my breastbone to help the gornt go down. "You know, you could have told me this a long time ago."

"I did. Several times. You weren't much into listening back then."

I glanced down. "Back when my father died."

"Right." Her voice softened. "You can learn a lot from Luke Skywalker. It may be part of being a Jedi, but he seems to work a lot from his heart, following his feelings. You work primarily in your brain. Thinking all the time is definitely you, Corran, and was very useful back in CorSec, but ! think you'll need to open up more with this training."

I nodded slowly. "You're probably right. I guess we'll see how long it takes for old habits to die."

Iella rolled her eyes. "That means you'll be a Jedi, what, about the time the sun goes nova?"

"I get your point."

"Good." She gave me a wink. "Want to try some of this mynock?"

I looked back up and shook my head. "Nope. I laid in my course, now I'll fly it. This gornt isn't bad once you get past the tasting, chewing and choking part."

"Yeah, tell me that in half an hour."

That prospect began to sour my stomach. I sighed. "Look, Iella, I appreciate what you've just said, and just knowing you were here and would have helped me out with Mirax's disap-pearance, that was enough to help me keep going. I want you to know that."

Her brown eyes studied my face for a moment. "I believe you."

"And I want you to know I really do value your help. With the dye and with those rumors." I forced my fork into a smaller piece of gornt. "I have a question that you can probably answer more easily than anyone else."

"Go ahead."

"I've talked to everyone about my decision except for my grandfather.

What are the chances, do you think, of my being able to slip onto CoreIlia, seeing him, and getting back out?"

She thought for a moment, then set her fork down. "I don't think anyone in the Diktat's regime is watching Rostek, so see-ing him wouldn't be a problem. You still do have the murder warrants out for your arrest, however. Kirtan Loor's legacy could still cause you trouble if you were to be identified and apprehended. As for getting in and out, the current govern-ment really isn't much better than any other Corellian regime at keeping smugglers out. With what you know about the sys-tem, you could manage to get in. The real problem is that with the relationship between the Corellian government and the New Republic being something less than a happy one, I wouldn't want to get caught on CoreIlia if I were you."

"I see. I get the impression that the last hologram I sent my grandfather was chopped to bits before he got it. Even reading between the lines of what little of his return message got back to me, I know he didn't track a lot of what I said to him." The new piece of gornt I started working on kind of forestailed further speech, so I just shrugged.

"If you want, Corran, I'll see about finding you a secure com-munications route in to Rostek. Shouldn't tax our resources that much. That way you won't make a run and risk getting caught before you have a chance to train."

I nodded, then chanced a swallow. "I appreciate it."

'q don't mind keeping you out of trouble. That's what friends do for friends."

"Thanks." I smiled up at our server as she asked if everything was to our liking. "Oh yes, quite."

Both her lekku shuddered. "And you would like a confection to finish the meal?"

I smiled, then winked at Iella. "We would. And my friend will order for us. That's what friends do for friends."

Wth Ooryl in the co-pilot's seat beside me, I flicked on the Lambda-cla.s.s shuttle's descent warning indicators, then angled the ship into the atmosphere of Yavin 4's jungle moon. We were coming in on the night side of the moon-its rotation had it facing away from the star at the center of the system-but it faced the day side of the gas giant around which it orbited. This meant we had a fair amount of reflected orange light by which to make our approach.

I looked over at the Gand and smiled. "I appreciate your letting me drive this thing down."

Ooryl's mouth parts opened. "I understand you will not be flying while you are here."

"Yeah, Whistler is not happy about being left behind on Co-ruscant, but Master Skywalker wants to minimize the distrac-tions here. It makes sense, and I'll be far too busy to be taking flights. And Whistler should have plenty to do reviewing all reports on the Invids and pulling a criminal activities a.n.a.lysis for me."

"Ooryl will see to it that Whistler is taken care of."

"Thanks." The controls bucked a bit beneath my hands as we hit some turbulence coming down through the atmosphere. The jungle moon had fairly humid air which, if the doc.u.ments I'd read were accurate, remained fairly stable except in the transition from day to night and vice versa, when cooling and warming took effect. I maintained control as we dropped down through a thin canopy of clouds.

Luke Skywalker appeared between us and pointed dead ahead. "There it is.

Bring us down on this side."

"As ordered." I glanced over at him. "You want to strap in, sir'?"

"As smooth a ride as you're giving us?" He patted my shoul-der. "I will if it will make you feel better."

"No reason to have more variables in play than I really need." I cut the throttle back and began to boost the power on the repulsorlift coils.

"Stand by to retract wings on my mark, and lower landing gear."

Ooryl leaned forward, his fingers poised to flip the appropri-ate switches. "As ordered."