Legacy Of The Force_ Bloodlines Part 18

Start as you mean to go on.

Jacen wondered what Uncle Luke would make of the Mon Calamari officer. She would replace Omas one day. He hoped Luke would see that coming and support her so that the war would be short and sharp, and so Jacen wouldn't have to take up the mantle Lumiya had thrust upon him.

There you go again. You know this is meant to be. You can't avoid it; Lumiya is part of the inevitable, just as you are. Submit to it.

"Tell me you didn't influence Admiral Pellaeon," said Jacen quietly.

"I didn't need to. He's furious about your appointment and he's old." Lumiya's voice was so low that Jacen almost had to amplify it with the Force in his mind. "By the time he decides he wants to return, it'll be too late for him to stop you."

The resignation of an elderly chief of defense was no shocking news story for HNE, merely a chance to recap on Pellaeon's distinguished career; but the succession of Admiral Niathal was significant. She was known as a hard-liner. Jacen switched the wall-mounted holoscreen to a Corellian news station where her appointment was provoking reaction.

Thrackan Sal-Solo, Head of State, was holding forth on the certain threat to Corellia.

With the audio muted, Jacen lip-read.

Sal-Solo announced that Centerpoint Station would be brought back online for the defense of Corellia within three months.

"You have an interesting selection of relatives," said Lumiya.

"All the more reason for me to do the decent thing and sort out the problems the various branches of my family appear to be visiting upon the galaxy."

"You're more like your grandfather than you think."

Lumiya knew Anakin Skywalker as her Lord Vader. He'd selected her as an intelligence agent. "I haven't failed to notice the parallels," said Jacen.

"And that makes you wary."

"I've seen the steps he took." Literally, Grandfather: I stood behind you and watched you kill children. "I have to do things a little differently."

"And you still want Ben Skywalker as your apprentice."

"Yes."

Lumiya emanated satisfaction, as if this was an extra layer of vengeance on Luke, but he knew she was past that point. "That's a choice only you can make."

"If there's another candidate, I can't think of one."

"Are you still going ahead with the Galactic Alliance Guard?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You have an ally in the Supreme Commander now," she said. "You could go straight to the military solution."

"There's still a real job to be done in restoring security here. And Niathal needs time to stamp her leaders.h.i.+p on the GADF. And Chief Omas."

"Commendable, pragmatic a.n.a.lysis."

Jacen wondered if he was taking a risk by having this discussion in the Senate Building.

But if any of the Jedi council were as adept as he was at listening in the Force, he suspected they would be too tied up in their discussion with Niathal to hear. What would they be saying to her?

He could listen. He could s.n.a.t.c.h the sounds out of the air from behind closed doors at the far end of the floor and witness for himself, but it was irrelevant, and he didn't need to.

He knew they would be pressing caution on her.

He also knew Niathal would smile politely in that tightlipped way of hers, twist her head sideways to stare them out, and say that she thanked them for their counsel.

Then she would ignore that counsel.

Jacen's mind leapt away from the business at hand for a brief moment and he found himself wondering why the Jedi Council hadn't given his grandfather the guidance he needed as a Padawan. If they knew he was the Chosen One, why had no Master from the Council taken on the role of training him?

Poor Obi-Wan. They dithered and left the task to you. Now they're dithering over another galactic war.

On the holoscreen, Corellian political commentators had worked themselves into a froth of outrage at Niathal's appointment. Jacen switched channels back to HNE just as the sound of footsteps began echoing down the long pa.s.sage to his right. The meeting in the Supreme Commander's office had ended.

"Relax," said Jacen. He centered himself and projected a Force illusion around Lumiya to bolster her own cloaking of her ident.i.ty again. He felt the sensation of a ball of heat building in his chest, and he nudged her with his elbow. "Go on. Brief me on the strength of the Corellian fleet and don't react to anyone pa.s.sing by."

Jacen and Lumiya waited. The lobby and the corridor leading off it were empty. Eventually they heard boots thudding fast on the marble floor-Luke's, for certain-as if he hadn't much enjoyed the meeting and wanted to get out.

Okay, Lumiya, let's see how you react to Luke this time-and how he reacts to you.

Luke approached them, eyes downcast, distracted and frowning. He seemed about to walk past Jacen and then paused to acknowledge him as if it was an effort.

"Are you waiting for Niathal?" asked Luke.

"I'm paying my respects as head of the Galactic Alliance Guard." Jacen indicated Lumiya.

"This is a colleague from the university's Defense Studies Department."

Luke nodded politely at Lumiya then turned back to Jacen. "Are you certain that's the right choice?"

"If I don't do it, who will?"

"Maybe n.o.body should," said Luke.

"If Chief Omas needs the job done, I'll do what I can."

Luke fixed Jacen with a frank blue gaze for a few moments, but he didn't look at Lumiya again, and-more to the point-Lumiya didn't look at him.

"Mind how you do it," Luke said, a slight frown still creasing his nose, and walked away.

Jacen waited a full ten minutes, still holding the heat in his chest to maintain the illusion, before relaxing.

"I'm impressed by your ability to deceive Luke," said Lumiya. "And you appear to have no doubts or misgivings about it."

Jacen stood up. Lumiya had been given the best chance she had for decades to kill Luke Skywalker, and she hadn't shown the slightest inclination to take it.

"No doubts," said Jacen. "But no enthusiasm, either."

"That's as it should be," she said. "Tell me what your next task is."

There was no harm telling her. It would be all over HNE in a few days.

"Internment," said Jacen. "We're confining Corellians until this current wave of terror is contained. Come on. Let me introduce you to the officer who'll be in the Chief of State's office within the year."

Internment. Extreme, dangerous . . . and inevitable.

When you could let go of your own need to be the hero, the admired one, the respected, and face being reviled for doing a necessary job, then you had finally overcome the most poisonous attachment of all: the love of ego.

Jacen was prepared to be hated in pursuit of a greater good.

Chapter Nine.

I heard stories about his grandfather when I was a boy, and Jacen Solo struck me as walking the same path. Vader liked a loyal military elite at his back, too. And sometimes ends do justify the means. The protest from the media and civil rights groups that greeted our announcement that a Galactic Alliance Guard had been formed to deal with the new threat to public safety was to be expected. It did not, however, make it any easier to hear myself decried as the new Palpatine.

-Chief of State Omas, Memoirs CORELLIAN QUARTER, CORUSCANT.

Ben knew he was taking an insane risk by going back to the Corellian neighborhood, but he had to find Barit.

This time he made sure he was wearing regular clothes, not Jedi robes. He worried that he was a coward for hiding his status, but a sensible voice inside him said that there was no point in getting beaten up before he found out something useful. That was pragmatism, as Jacen called it.

Corellians didn't have a fight going with the Jedi. Just the Alliance. But the distinction between the two wasn't always clear.

He sauntered along the walkways, stopping to stare at things that made him curious, reminding himself that he was a thirteen-year-old boy and not a soldier this time. n.o.body seemed to notice him.

All he wanted to do was to look Barit in the face and ask a simple question: what made him see Coruscanti as the enemy?

The fact that two governments were behaving like idiots didn't seem like justification enough for Ben. He didn't want to attack Corellians just because the government had a problem with Corellia: even the raid on Centerpoint Station hadn't been directed against people. He felt no hatred for Corellians at all.

But Barit, who wasn't that much older than him, had tried to shoot a CSF officer. He hadn't aimed at the mob stoning the Corellian emba.s.sy. He had tried to shoot a complete stranger who was trying to stop the riot.

Ben didn't understand, and he needed to.

The Corellian neighborhood was quieter today, as if people were waiting for something to happen. Some of the shops were closed. Ben stopped at a grocery store to pick up a bottle of fizzade and ask for directions to the Saiy workshops. He drank as he walked the kilometer or so to Barit's family business.

Ben found two men who looked about his father's age leaning over a large repulsor drive with hydrospanners in their hands. They glanced up sharply but relaxed when they saw him.

Just a kid.

"Where's Barit?" he asked casually One of the men stood up. "Barit? Barit! Someone here to see you."

Barit emerged from a storeroom wiping his hands on a rag. He stared at Ben for a few moments as if he didn't recognize him and then didn't look pleased to see him. He walked out into the open air, and Ben followed him a little way from the workshops. There was an appetizing smell of frying and spices coming from an open doorway.

"Did you find your missing diamonds?" Ben asked. He meant the gems made out of Corellians'

ashes in the Sanctuary. "Did anyone give them back?"

"No," said Barit. "The sort of people who smash memorials don't have consciences."

It wasn't a good start. Ben plunged in. "I saw you outside the emba.s.sy the other day."

"What were you doing there?"

"Getting a faceful of gas."

"Yeah. So was I."

Ben wondered what Barit had done with his blaster. He knew he could draw his lightsaber instantly from his pocket if he had to find out the hard way. "When I say I saw you, I mean I saw you with a weapon."

"Everyone carries a piece. Even you."

I have to know. "But why shoot at a cop?"

"You going to turn me in?" So he hadn't seen Ben deflect the blast. He had shot and run.

"I didn't think I hit anyone. They never said-"

"I just want to know why you did it." You aimed to kill, or you didn't care who you hit.

"The officer never did anything to you. He was just trying to stop a fight."

"Coruscant's against us. The Alliance is trying to kill us. We've got to defend ourselves."

"But that's not people. The CSF wasn't trying to do anything to you. How can you shoot at someone who wasn't aiming at you?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"I want to."

"You wouldn't."

"If you're that scared of us all, why are you still living here?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you? Kick us out, send us back."

Ben didn't know how to respond. "You think you're at war with us?"

"We are. Maybe not properly, but we are."

"How can you think that when you live here? If you really believe that, how can you even want to live here?"

Ben stood staring at Barit in complete incomprehension. He had no idea what was going on in the Corellian's mind to make him feel that he was suddenly an alien on the planet where his family had been born. But he knew that it made him feel suspicious and wary of Barit in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that he was prepared to draw a blaster.