"Don't be stubborn," she said.

"I'm not the one-!" He bit back the words. He couldn't stand here and argue with her. She couldn't hear. She'd win. He scooped her into his arms. She was light and warm. "You're coming with me," he said.

"I can't, Han," she said, but she didn't struggle. "I'm fine. Really."

"I don't want you to die because you don't know when to quit," he said as he stepped past the wounded.

Either her hearing was coming back or she could read lips. "I'm not going to die," she said.

His heart was pounding against his chest. He cradled her close. "Lady, I wish I were as sure of that as you are."

Jarril stopped running when he reached the hangars. He had seen activity all around the flight bases, but he figured it wouldn't reach his ship yet.

He was right.

Although he probably didn't have much time.

He had left the ship, the Spicy Lady, in the far corner of the hangar, behind two larger ships. The Spicy Lady was small but distinctive. Brown, shaped like the Millennium Falcon crossed with an A-wing, she was of Jarril's own special design. She was built for carrying cargo, but if things got difficult, he could jettison the storage unit and let the fighter ship move on its own. The fighter could be remote-operated; he could lead a pursuer on a wild-goose chase with the fighter while in reality he was on the storage ship with all the cargo. He had only had to use that scenario once, and fortunately he'd been able to recover the fighter part of the ship later.

He was never so relieved to see anything in his life.

He had to get off Coruscant before they put a clamp on s.p.a.ce travel. And they would, once the source of that explosion was located. He had to get back to the Run before anyone noticed he was missing. He was afraid someone already had.

This part of the hangar appeared to be empty. Odd. If he were in charge of Coruscant, he would close down access to and from the planet immediately. But the New Republic did things democratically, not logically.

He only hoped he had piqued Han's interest enough. They wouldn't have another chance at a conversation.

He hurried across the platform to his ship. Then he dropped the ramp and climbed in. It felt strange to enter an empty ship. Usually he traveled with Seluss, a Sull.u.s.tan. They had started in the business together.

Seluss was supposed to cover for him while he was gone.

The Spicy Lady smelled of cool processed air. He had left the interior pressurized, a mistake he didn't usually make. This time it didn't matter, though. It would be easier for him to leave.

He would pilot out of the storage section. Safer. If the Coruscant command gave him any troubles, he would separate the sections and let them worry about the fighter while the storage unit escaped. He had just slid into the pilot's chair when he heard something behind him.

He stiffened but did not turn. He might have been mistaken about the sound.

No. There it was again. The hollowy inhale of someone breathing through a mask.

Jarril swallowed. As he turned, he put his hand on his blaster.

Two stormtroopers faced him, blasters already trained on him. "Where do you think you're going?" one of them asked. The voice was unrecognizable through the helmet's mouthpiece.

Then Jarril realized they weren't stormtroopers. They were wearing his cargo. He recognized the battle scorch on the helmet on the right.

They must have come on the ship wearing other clothing. They had put on the stormtrooper uniforms to scare him? He wasn't afraid of stormtroopers. At least, not stormtroopers wearing his own haul.

"I think it's high time to leave Coruscant, don't you?" Jarril asked. He wished he knew whom he was addressing.

"We plan to leave," the other trooper said, "after you tell us your business here."

"I was visiting an old friend," Jarril said.

"Strange time to be visiting," the first stormtrooper said.

"Strange time to be helping yourselves to my equipment," Jarril snapped.

"It's ours ultimately," the second stormtrooper said.

"You don't want to get caught wearing those on Coruscant," Jarril said.

"We won't get caught," the first stormtrooper said. He nodded his helmet toward Jarril. "Put down the blaster." Jarril shrugged and let go. "I wasn't going to use it anyway."

"Tell us again why you're on Coruscant."

"Why are you?" Jarril said. "Did you have anything to do with that bombing?"

"We'll ask the questions," said the second stormtrooper.

Jarril swallowed. His head was woozy from exertion on top of too many drinks. It was his ship. He should be able to find a way out of this. "I was following a lead."

"A lead," said the first stormtrooper. "I thought you were visiting an old friend."

"Where'd you think I was going to get the lead?"

"From Han Solo, husband to the leader of the New Republic?" They had followed him. He wasn't going to be able to talk his way out of this one.

He grabbed the control console, but too late. A well-placed blaster shot hit his hands. He screamed as pain burned through him.

He clutched his hands to his stomach and looked at the troopers. "What do you want with me?" he asked, voice shaking.

"To silence you forever," said the first stormtrooper.

And then they did.

SIX.

Luke had seen the medical center near the Imperial Palace this full only once before, and that had been in the days after the Empire attack that had forced the New Republic leadership to lead. A long time ago now, but it felt close, with all these wounded around him. Wounded waited in reception areas just like guests, while medical personnel found beds for them, or moved them to more-specialized wings of the medical center.

Luke walked among them, feeling more shaken than he had when he learned of the attack.

Familiar faces, some gray with pain, others so scarred he could barely recognize them, looked away from him. The attack had to have been horrible. He had been worried when he approached Coruscant and all the defenses were up. He had had to get special clearance from Admiral Ackbar-no one could raise Leia-and it wasn't until he had spoken to Mon Mothma that he had known why.

As he strode through the hallway to the recovery areas, something grabbed him around his booted leg. He looked down to see Anakin clinging to his thigh.

"Uncle Luke," Anakin said, his face upturned, his blue eyes tear-streaked, his eyelashes gummed together.

Luke bent down and picked up the boy, even though, at six, Anakin was getting too big to be held in this way. Anakin clung to him so tightly that Luke could barely breathe.

"Is your mother all right?" Luke asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

Anakin nodded.

"Then what is it, little Jedi?" Luke kept his voice soft, soothing. And suddenly he knew. His own words had brought it clear to him. But before he could say anything, he heard his name. Jacen and Jaina were running toward him, looking as ravaged as Anakin.

"Hey, guys," he said, gathering them around him.

"Uncle Luke," Jaina said. "Daddy said you could talk to us." He didn't know if they had felt the cold and heard the screaming. Many of his students hadn't. But his students weren't as talented in the Force as the children. Or maybe the children had felt some impact from the explosion.

Whatever had happened to them, though, had traumatized them in a way the other adults weren't able to deal with yet.

"Come on," he said. He led them to a bench alongside the metallic wall. A medical droid pa.s.sed without giving them a second glance.

"Did we do it?" Anakin asked.

"Do what?" Whatever he had expected, it wasn't this.

"Hurt Mama." Luke set Anakin back on his lap. Jacen and Jaina squeezed beside him. They had obviously discussed this. Luke suppressed a sigh.

Raising Force-sensitive children was more a trial than anyone had thought. Each time something new came up, he found himself wishing he could talk with his aunt Beru. She had managed with him despite his uncle Owen's hostility, on a planet so far away that no one knew about it.

Except Ben.

She had probably talked with Ben.

"How could you have hurt your mother?" Luke asked.

All three children started to speak at once, hands moving, arms waving, voices raised in concern.

"Wait, wait, one at a time," Luke said. "Jaina, you explain it, then you boys can add if you want." Jaina glanced at Jacen as if for support. The movement always made Luke's heart ache. Would he and Leia have been like that if they had been raised together? They would never know.

"Something came into our nursery, Uncle Luke," Jaina said. Her small face was a replica of Leia's, round and beautiful, sincere brown eyes, and small, purposeful mouth. "It was cold and it yelled with a thousand voices. And it hit us all at once." As he had suspected. They had felt the deaths. Just as he had. As Leia had. He resisted the urge to close his eyes. When Leia was better, he had to talk with her. They had to realize that the children, though young, felt everything as strongly as others trained in the Force did.

"So we joined-" Jacen began.

"I'm telling it," Jaina said. "We joined hands and beat it back." That caught Luke by surprise. "You what?"

"We made the room hot," Anakin said. Jaina shot him a malevolent glance, but he ignored it. "It was my idea."

"It was not," Jacen said.

"Was too."

"Anyway," Jaina said loudly, "we pushed it out of the room, and then a little while later, the whole... the whole..." She took a deep breath.

"The whole..."

"The whole building shook," Jacen said, clearly finishing for her. "And Mother nearly died."

"And sometimes," Anakin said softly, "when I don't plan it, something I do hurts somebody." Luke nodded. A lot of things he had done had inadvertently hurt someone. If he hadn't bought R2 and 3PO, his aunt and uncle would still be alive. But if he hadn't, he wouldn't be sitting here now, with these precious beings beside him. But he couldn't explain that.

It would sound patronizing. Ben hadn't tried when Luke returned from the ruined farm. Luke shouldn't try either. They would learn it on their own.

"What you felt," Luke said, "was something pretty terrible. Somewhere in the galaxy, thousands, maybe millions, of people died at one time. I felt the same thing, that deep cold, and all of their pain."

"Did Mom feel it?" Jaina asked, her voice still quivering.

Luke nodded. "And a few of my students on Yavin 4 felt it too. That's part of being a Jedi. When something destroys life on a grand scale, we feel it as if it happened to us. Because, in a sense, it did. It ripped the fabric of the Force for just an instant." The children's faces were serious. Jacen's mouth was set in a thin line reminiscent of Han's when he was angry.

"Sending heat to that cold place was brilliant," Luke said. "I wish I had thought of it. It's like sending love to a place that's only known hate.

We can't go back in time and make those lives reappear, but we can help the people who have felt the loss heal."

"Or make the people who caused it pay," Anakin said.

The bloodthirsty one. Luke put his hand on his nephew's, knowing that he would always have to give this boy special attention. He understood what Leia had been doing in naming Anakin after her father-she had been trying to reclaim a good part of her past-but the name made Luke give extra attention to the recklessness behind Anakin's fierceness. Recklessness that Anakin shared with his uncle at times.

"If we're not careful, Anakin," Luke said, "that kind of vengeance will make us turn to the dark side. Then we are no better than those who fail to value life." Anakin looked away, a slight flush staining his cheeks.

"Look at me, children." Luke spoke firmly. He wanted their full attention for this next. "You did the right thing creating warmth. Your actions had nothing to do with the explosion that hurt your mother. Nothing at all."

"You promise, Uncle Luke?" Jacen asked. His voice was quivering too. He tried to be tough, just like his father, but beneath he was one of the most sensitive hearts Luke had ever met.

And that, too, was like Han.

"I promise," Luke said. He gathered the children close and hugged them.

They squeezed him back. He held them, letting his own warmth comfort them, as he thought about the conversation.

The children were on to something. But they had it backward. The deaths happened, and then, a short time later, an explosion occurred in the Senate Hall on the opening day of the new session. If the events weren't related, then that was a startling coincidence.

And the older he got, the less Luke believed in coincidence.

"Come on," he said when the children started squirming. "Let's go see your mother." The children slid off the bench, and he let them lead him to a large room. Leave it to Leia to insist that she was not given any special treatment. Five other senators filled beds in the room, with curtains between them. Leia's was at the far end. Her curtain was open.

Han sat beside her, while Chewbacca stood at the foot, holding his paws together, as if this were a state function and he didn't know how to dress. A medical droid placed medication on Leia's bedside table, then disappeared through the pulled curtain beside her.

Winter was sitting in a chair beside the wall. When she saw Luke, she smiled. Sometimes he wondered if she had special powers besides her fantastic recall. She rarely let the children out of her sight, and yet they had found him at exactly the right moment.

"Luke," Han said as he stood. "Leia's been asking about you." She turned her head then on its pillow. Her face was a ma.s.s of bruises and cuts.

Even though she had clearly been in the bacta tank, she still wore bandages on her hands indicating serious injuries that needed several more tendings.