"Looks like someone's found a way to do what we can't, " said Jet. "In which case, we're no longer needed. Out of the seat, Director Vii. It's time for us to go our separate ways. "

The announcement had taken Ula completely by surprise. "What are you talking about? I'm staying with you."

"No, you're not. " Jet had produced a blaster and covered him while Clunker dragged him from the c.o.c.kpit. The droid's strength was too great to resist. "We've got business elsewhere. "

"Wait!" Ula had clung to the lip of the air lock. "Take me with you, please!"

Jet had shaken his head, but not without compa.s.sion. "You have to find your own place, mate, and I don't think it's going to be with me. Say cheerio to that lovely lady-and stop faking it, if you ever hope to have a chance with her. "

The air lock had hissed shut, explosive bolts had fired, and Ula had been flung out into the void. Had the pa.s.sing shuttle not found him, he might have fallen to the planet below-or even into the black hole-but Ula didn't suppose that Jet would have left something like that to chance.

Now he was within waving distance of Larin, and he didn't know what to do.

The ma.s.s of hexes that had overwhelmed Darth Chratis retreated into the lake, leaving just the young Sith behind. She turned to face the lake, raised her arms above her head, and spoke to them. The hexes responded, forming new agglomerations, turning their collective mind to new tasks. Some descended back into the lake; others swarmed toward several different places on the crater wall and combined their pulses into powerful cutting lasers. Vibrations reached him even through the walls and floor of the shuttle. He saw Larin and the others shift on their feet, as though the ground was kicking beneath them, too.

Master Satele approached the young Sith. They exchanged a few words, then parted. The Grand Master returned to Larin and Shigar and the officer who had run out to meet them. Together, they hurried into the shuttle.

"Recall the rest, " she was saying as she mounted the ramp and entered the main pa.s.senger hold. "If they can't make it here in time, send another shuttle. "

"What's happening?" Ula asked. "What's going on out there?"

Master Satele had already left for the c.o.c.kpit.

"I don't know, " said Larin, smiling at him. The engines whined. "But it looks like we're leaving. "

Shigar acknowledged him with a nod, which Ula gravely returned. The Padawan looked no less battered than Larin and Master Satele. The ground war had obviously been just as grueling as that fought in the air.

The shuttle's repulsorlifts pressed Ula back into the seat. He took one last glimpse through the window and saw the crater walls collapsing around the b.l.o.o.d.y lake. Fiery lava from the molten sea outside crashed in, burning and destroying as it came. Clouds of smoke thickened and curled, hiding the young Sith from view.

"You're going to destroy them, "said Master Satele.

Ax didn't respond. It wasn't a question, but it demanded an answer, and she was careful to keep it to herself. The hexes were streaming downward to tear the flooded habitat to pieces. When they were done, they would break into the geothermal shafts and keep drilling until raw magma flooded in from below. What the real lava sea didn't burn, the heat of the core would melt and turn to slag.

"What about Lema Xandret?" Master Satele pressed. "There's not much of that amniotic fluid left, but it could be saved. "

"Do you think it should be?" Ax asked, thinking of her clone's life in the tank, cut off from the Force, so insulated from the universe around her that she didn't even know what the Empire was. Cinzia could have stopped the hexes at any time, but she hadn't. Lema Xandret's daughter reborn, and herself, mutated into a horrible echo of motherhood, were more responsible for the damage than the hexes themselves.

It was all about control, she realized now. Xandret had tried to control the cloned Cinzia, and had lost control of the hexes. Darth Chratis had tried to control Ax, but she had turned on him. Anger wasn't enough on its own.

She could still hear her mother screaming.

"It's not up to me to decide whether you should save her or not, " Master Satele said, "but you did promise Cinzia. "

Ax had promised many things, to herself, to Darth Chratis, to the Dark Council, and ultimately to the Emperor.

But that had been before. Before she had understood that she had choices.

You can expect no mercy from me, Master, the day our positions are reversed.

"I lied, " she said.

The Grand Master nodded. Ax didn't know whether she understood or not. That she stopped talking was enough.

Ax stood and watched the hexes at work while the others fled. The smell of burning blood was sweet in her nostrils. The ash that gently rained on her felt soft and warm, like feathers. Slowly, the voice faded from her mind. She breathed deeply, feeling at peace. Only the constant bleating of the shuttle's pilot disturbed her tranquillity.

She stayed as long as she could. When the ground threatened to dissolve under her and the sky lit up with shooting stars...o...b..tal hexes, falling to their doom-she turned to leave the home her mother had made, forever.

PART SIX.

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR.

CHAPTER 46.

Larin had never met Supreme Commander Stantorrs before, and she barely felt that she had met him now, even after half an hour of debriefing in his office. There were so many aides hurrying about bearing messages and sudden crises needing an instant decision that she rarely had his attention for more than a few seconds at a stretch. Even when she did, she found him very hard to read. Instead of watching his dour Duros face, she concentrated on his long fingers. They tapped, curled, folded, and rested in ways that, she hoped, gave her an insight into what he was thinking.

"You say you were followed there?"

"Yes, sir, " she said. "The Hutts placed a homing beacon in the Auriga Fire. "

"You knew about that before you left Hutta. I seem to recall reading about that somewhere. "

"That's correct, sir. " This had all been in her report, and was no doubt in numerous other reports about the incident, but she let no sign of impatience slip through her guard. If he wanted to hear it from her face-to-face, so be it. He was the Supreme Commander, after all. "We thought the beacon left with Jet Nebula, but it later turned up in the capsule he used to expel Envoy Vii. "

"This 'Jet Nebula.' Is he a real person?"

"Yes, sir. His parents had a strange sense of humor, he says. "

"What, yes?" An aide had pressed a datapad in front of him. His left index finger stabbed at something on the screen. "That one, of course. Was Ta.s.saa Bareesh herself present in her expedition to Sebaddon?"

"No, sir. She placed someone else in charge, a deputy called Sagrillo. "

"He's the one who claimed ownership of the planet and declared the remaining joint forces trespa.s.sers. "

"Yes, sir. At the time, he outgunned us. His mistress was taking no chances. "

The tips of the Supreme Commander's fingers joined to form a triangle in front of him. "I can imagine his surprise when your reinforcements turned up. "

Not just our reinforcements, she wanted to say, but the Imperials' as well. It had only been a matter of time before everyone else arrived. The universe's usual freakish sense of humor had ensured that they all came more or less simultaneously.

She remembered those stressful hours very well, even though she hadn't been on the bridge with the senior officers and the negotiators. She had been down in the crew hold, exchanging stories with Hetchkee and Jopp and the others who had survived the ground a.s.sault. They had stopped to watch through the viewports as ships flashed in and out of hypers.p.a.ce around the black hole. There had been several clashes, leaving wreckage to spin helplessly into the impossibly steep gravity well, and several outlier ships had fallen afoul of the jets themselves. They had waited with minds and bodies poisoned by exhaustion for the call to arms, as it surely had to come. The Republic ships left over from the original mission were going to be pulled in eventually, and every available trooper would be desperately needed.

Then suddenly it had been all behind her. The Commenor had jumped to hypers.p.a.ce, leaving fresh ships and their commanders to sort out the mess. And that was the last she had seen of Sebaddon and its hexes. Every sc.r.a.p of data from the campaign had been erased-by some kind of exotic electromagnetic pulse, she had been told. All that remained were confused recollections and reports like the one she had filed on returning.

Very few of them mentioned Dao Stryver. During the confusion the Mandalorian had disappeared as though into the depths of the black hole itself, never to be seen since.

"Do you believe Captain Pipalidi acted responsibly in the ensuing confrontation?" Stantorrs asked her.

Larin chose her words with care. The matter of her reenlistment and promotion was still very much undecided, and she didn't want to jeopardize any chances that might remain.

"I think she did her best in a difficult situation, sir. No one could fault her for that. "

"The service asks of us not our best, but the best possible. Is that what Captain Pipalidi offered?"

It was the same question in different words, and Stantorrs didn't strike Larin as a being who repeated himself very often.

"I believe so, sir. Every installation on the planet was in flames. All our troops had been evacuated. The mission had already cost the Republic more resources than it could afford, and sticking around would have squandered even more. Withdrawal was therefore the most sensible action to take. "

The Supreme Commander's hands came to rest facedown on the desk in front of him.

"That's good to hear, Moxla, because I'm thinking of promoting Pipalidi to colonel over some pretty stiff opposition-the kind of people who think we owe everything to the Jedi, if you can imagine-and it's good to be backed up by the opinion of someone I can trust. I'm not wrong in thinking that I can trust you, am I, Moxla?"

He undoubtedly knew her history with the Blackstars, so there was no point prevaricating now. "Sir, you can always trust me to speak out if I think a superior officer isn't pulling her weight. "

"That's what I thought. And that's exactly what I need. There's-what? Can't he wait?"

Another aide, this time whispering in the Supreme Commander's ear.

"All right. " His hands rested impotently in his lap. "Well, I'll make this brief, Moxla. The SSO's you fought with on Sebaddon-a messy bunch, but showed a lot of guts. We're going to form a new Special Forces squad around them, and we want you to be part of it. We can't erase your record, but we can add a commendation or two, post factum, to spruce it up a little, and change some of the wording. You'll retain the rank you were given, brevetted of course, and have the first pick of the troops. What do you say to that?"

Surprise got the better of her tongue. "Uh, yes, sir. "

"You don't sound particularly enthused, Lieutenant Moxla. "

It didn't take her long to snap out of herself. Anything was better than sitting around in Coruscant's underbelly, waiting for the ax to fall. Either outright war with the Empire was going to break out any day, or the Republic's ability to maintain the peace on its own worlds would fail. This way, she would be right in the thick of it, where she could maybe do some good. She would be working-and if she was lucky, she might be able to bring some people she trusted absolutely along with her. Ses Jopp, for one. She snapped to attention and saluted with appropriate enthusiasm.

"You couldn't have picked anyone better, " she said. "Give me a month, and your squad will be as polished as your desk. "

"Don't get me started on that, Moxla, " he said with a sudden rap of his knuckles on the greel wood surface. "Nothing's as clean as it looks. " Another aide approached, and the Supreme Commander waved her away. "Get to it, Moxla. You have my absolute confidence. "

Larin saluted again and marched for the door. Aides parted before her, watching with eyes that gave away nothing.

"How did it go?" asked Ula, meeting her in the antechamber outside and matching her pace for pace along the corridor.

"Very well, considering, " she said. "Did you have anything to do with that?"

"Unlikely, " he said. "I've been shifted to a portfolio in data collection. "

So he wasn't being modest this time. "I'm sorry, Ula. "

"No, it's okay. I found my last job a little too... stimulating. "

He smiled, and she found herself smiling along. Ula-still acting as envoy then-had looked out for her on returning to Coruscant, greasing the path to the Supreme Commander's attention by making sure officers senior to her didn't dismiss her out of hand, or take credit for her actions. Captain Pipalidi might have played a role in that, as well. That the captain was being promoted suggested she had Stantorrs's ear on many things to do with Sebaddon, and Larin had certainly helped the whole affair from becoming a complete rout.

"What are you doing now?" Ula asked her.

She didn't answer immediately, remembering how Ula had cleaned up her wounded hand on the Auriga Fire, and how pleased he'd been to see her when the shuttle had collected them from the burning world. She flexed her new fingers-a proper prosthetic at last, surgically grafted to her, indistinguishable from a real hand-and wondered who would look after him in his new role.

"I have to meet someone right now, " she said, "and then it looks like I'll be on the move for a while. But I'd like to catch up with you when I get back. "

His smile grew wider. "I can wait. "

"That's a.s.suming you'll still be around, of course. "

"The chances of me going anywhere are very slim, now. "

"Great. We can drink Reactor Cores and talk about old times. "

"I'm sure we'll have lots more to talk about by then. "

"What, the birth and death statistics of Sector Four?"

"Just for starters. "

At the exit to the building, they stopped and looked at each other. Was it her imagination, or did he look younger, lighter, than he had before? It was probably the smile, she decided. She wanted him to stay that way when she was around.

She reached out and took his left hand in hers. Her artificial fingers squeezed lightly. When she walked away, she knew he was watching her, all the way down the steps to the plaza below.

Shigar was waiting for her at the Cenotaph of the Innocents, pacing back and forth in front of the first bank of asaari trees. The troubled cast to his brow perfectly matched the heavy gray skies above. He was back in Jedi browns, with a new lightsaber swinging at his hip, but he seemed a completely different person from the one she had met in the old districts not so very long ago. He moved stiffly, still favoring a wound in his side. His hair, cut shorter by Darth Chratis on Sebaddon, hung limply around his face. Watching him, Larin almost regretted coming.

He glanced up as she approached. The blue clan markings on his cheeks looked faded and worn.

"You're still in uniform. That's a good sign. "

"Did you think they'd strip me naked and throw me onto the street?" She came to a halt in front of him.

"And now you're smiling. Things must have gone well. "

"They did. "

"I'm pleased, Larin. "

"Well, likewise. h.e.l.lo, by the way. "

"h.e.l.lo. Let's go over here. "

He led her to a stand of trees planted as a memorial to the people who had died during the Empire's sacking of the Jedi Temple. One sapling for each victim had grown into a small forest, with grottoes and benches for people to pa.s.s a moment in contemplation. They sat side by side, close but not touching, and it seemed for a long while that Shigar wasn't going to say anything at all. The restless branches rustled above them, moving back and forth in ways that had nothing at all to do with the wind.