Legacy Of The Force_ Bloodlines Part 31

"He's thirteen years old, for goodness' sake."

"And you thought that was old enough to send him on a commando raid. I hate to question your logic, Uncle, but this isn't making sense to me." Go on, say it. Tell me that you think I'm turning to the dark side. That's what you think, isn't it? Let's have it out in the open. Accuse me. "He isn't using violence. Why is it okay for Jaina, Zekk, and me to fly combat missions that end in the deaths of other pilots, but it's not all right for Ben to find terrorists and help arrest them?"

Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. Mara's face was ashen; she looked drawn and strained.

Jacen decided to make his move. He could carry on without Ben as his apprentice, but sooner or later he would need one, and Ben was progressing by leaps and bounds. He liked the boy; he wanted to see him make the most of his potential. "I don't want to put you on the spot, Mara, but do you agree with this?"

"I think we need to talk this through with Ben," she said carefully. "He's settled down well, and I think we need to discuss this when we're not so tired and irritable."

"Actually, no," said Luke. "I think there's something that needs to be said right now.

Jacen, you need to know that Lumiya is on Coruscant. You know who Lumiya is, don't you?"

It took all of Jacen's control to maintain his facade of ignorance and use the past tense, relegating her to history. "Yes. She was a Dark Jedi."

"She's back. She's here. I had terrible Force dreams about a hooded figure threatening us all, and then I felt her somewhere near."

Look patient, as if you're humoring him. "What's this got to do with Ben?"

"I don't know yet. But I feel it has everything to do with Ben. Don't put it past Lumiya to engineer events to serve her purposes."

"Okay." Jacen feigned a half smile as if embarra.s.sed. "I'll be on my guard."

Luke appeared slightly deflated, as if he had heard his own words repeated back to him and had second thoughts about them. "When Ben's finished whatever he's doing today, ask him to come and see me. He's not answering his comlink."

There was no point having a confrontation. Ben wouldn't listen to Luke, and Jacen could sense that Mara wouldn't, either. "Whatever Ben wants, I'll go along with it," he said.

Jacen left and walked out to the turbolift lobby. He was torn between returning to the blockade and concentrating on his security role, but the latter was clearly more urgent.

Outside, the protest had been broken up and CSF a.s.sault s.h.i.+ps were loading handcuffed men and women who had been arrested. The situation was going to get worse before it got better. It was time to get back to the GAG headquarters and have Shevu brief him on progress with the detainees and especially the bounty hunter they had picked up.

There was one other urgent task, though. He opened his comlink and keyed in the code on his secure link.

"Lumiya," he said. "I need to talk to you."

GALACTIC ALLIANCE GUARD HQ, QUADRANT A-89, GALACTIC CITY.

More rioting had broken out in one of the commercial zones, and a couple of the GAG intelligence officers were poring over images being relayed back to them via helmet cams worn by CSF riot squads. Ben watched them for a while, trying to learn how they recognized faces and tracked the movements of what they called "persons of interest" around the city.

When a Jedi relied on his Force-senses, he never learned how to do the thinking that regular people had to do to solve problems. Jacen always reminded him about that, telling him not to let his brain rust just because he had Force powers.

"Are we doing riot control now?" asked Ben.

One officer turned to him, but his eyes were still on the screen. "That's CSF's problem.

What we're looking for are faces we might know from the last job." The intel officers were ex-CSF Anti-Terrorist Unit. He pointed to a figure masked by the press of bodies. "I think we've got an old buddy here who we could never quite nail on explosives charges."

They seemed pleased. Ben looked forward to accompanying them when they turned his place over, as they put it. It was interesting to learn how many terrorists had pretty basic criminal backgrounds; Ben's impression of them as fanatical people with a political cause wasn't the whole picture. It seemed that a whole range of people ended up getting involved, and for all kinds of reasons. He was learning more every hour.

"Ben?" Shevu leaned around the open doors. "Colonel Solo's back. Report to him in the cell block."

"Yes, sir." Ben found himself marching down to the cell block, which happened to be the fastest and most dignified way to move without breaking into a run. He found Jacen with Captain Girdun, having one of those hissed close-quarters conversations that showed they were angry with each other. The words results and unacceptable drifted toward him. Jacen stopped and motioned Ben forward with a crooked finger; Girdun was clearly dismissed for the time being.

"I saw the news," said Ben. "Nice shooting."

"Shooting's never nice." Then Jacen switched from annoyed to benign in an instant. "But sometimes necessary. Look, your parents want to see you. Will you do the diplomatic thing and visit them?"

"Dad's mad at me, isn't he?"

"What makes you say that?"

"He always is. I never do things right for him."

"He's worried about you, and he needs some rea.s.surance that I'm not teaching you bad ways." Jacen put his hand on Ben's shoulder. "He'd rather I wasn't teaching you at all, but your mother is okay with it. In the end, I can't make him or you do anything, but for what it's worth, try not to have a fight with him."

Ben heard the meaning clearly enough: he'd be sent to the academy. He couldn't face that now. He might have a lot to learn, but he felt he'd pa.s.sed the point where he could go back to lightsaber drill and meditation. He'd done real work, made a real difference, and he knew he would have no patience with theory again.

Perhaps Jacen could teach him more diplomacy. It seemed to be almost as handy as Force-listening and disguising your presence, two other things that Ben badly wanted to learn.

"Okay," he said, filled with dread. "I'll visit tonight."

"Now let's see what Ailyn Habuur has to say for herself."

The bounty hunter had been in custody for nearly a week, and this was the first time Ben had seen her since Shevu had questioned her. She hadn't been a glamorous woman to start with, but she looked terrible now; Girdun didn't appear to have taken good care of her in Shevu's absence. There were bruises on her face. She was leaning forward, arms braced on the table, breathing with some effort.

"I really need to know who you were sent to kill," said Jacen, reasonable and earnest. He sat down at the other side of the table and indicated to Ben to take a seat near the doors. "Was it Chief Omas?"

"I'm just a debt collector." Habuur wasn't quite as defiant as she had been a few days earlier, but she wasn't cracking, either. "Don't let the blasters fool you."

"You were carrying enough hardware to take out a platoon. You were with a known Corellian agent, so I know which government is paying you."

"Like I said, debt collection . . . it's a compet.i.tive business."

"If you've come to Coruscant, you're looking for a high-value Alliance target."

"You've got all you're getting out of me. Can I call a lawyer now?"

Suddenly Habuur's head slammed down on the table without warning. Ben flinched at the loud crack. Jacen hadn't lifted a finger. Habuur pulled herself upright again, blood trickling down her chin. She looked more surprised than hurt, although she appeared to have broken a tooth.

"Nice trick, Jedi boy."

"I've got plenty of those."

"I'll bet."

"Let's try again. Was Omas your target? And who else is working with you?"

Ben still didn't believe what he'd seen. He believed it the next moment when Jacen used the Force to crack her head on the table again.

"Jacen. . . ," said Ben. This wasn't right. And it wasn't Jacen. "Jacen, should you-"

"Later." Jacen glanced back at Ben, startled, as if he'd suddenly remembered he was in the room. "Go and wait outside."

Ben realized he should have waited a long way from the interrogation room where he couldn't hear anything, but he felt he had to stay close, as if distancing himself too much would have somehow allowed Jacen to do worse things than he was already doing. So he hurts people. I was pleased that he shot down an enemy fighter, but that guy's dead. So why do I feel bad when I see him hurt someone? Ben took out his lightsaber and stared at the hilt, trying not to listen to the interrogation. This is a weapon. He'd been trained to use it to defend himself, but he also knew that it was a blade packed with enough pure energy to slice off someone's head or cut clean through armor.

He'd never killed anyone.

What was a lightsaber for, then, if you couldn't face the fact that it killed people? He tried to think of Jacen as using a weapon-his Force powers-to defend the Galactic Alliance against people like Ailyn Habuur, but all he could feel was that Jacen, a man he respected more than his own father, was hurting a woman who couldn't defend herself.

He heard things he knew no kid should have heard. But still he couldn't walk away. He sat there for an hour, then two, staring at his hands, hearing the raised voices, then the thuds and occasional cries of pain, and then only Jacen's voice repeating the same question over and over again: Who sent you, and who were you sent to kill?

Ben couldn't bear it. Jacen, you have to stop.

Girdun and Shevu appeared at the double doors at the end of the corridor and took one look at Ben before walking briskly to the interrogation room.

"Jacen's in there," Ben said weakly.

"Oh, boy." Shevu nudged Girdun. "Come on, we can't let this go on."

"He's the commander."

" 'Dun, you moron, he's going to kill her. That's not how we do things."

"It was how we did things."

"Really? Not on my kriffing watch." Shevu appeared to have lost his cool. Ben watched, not wanting to stop them because he knew deep down that he should have stopped Jacen somehow.

Shevu overrode the lock and Ben tried hard not to look inside the cell. "Medic! Get a medic, someone."

Jacen snapped at Shevu to get out, but Girdun bundled in behind him and the two officers laid Habuur flat on the floor and tried to revive her mouth-to-mouth. Ben watched as they took turns pumping her chest, hand on fist, checking her breathing and pressing fingers on her throat to try to find a pulse. Jacen stood back.

"Where's the kriffing medic?" Shevu demanded.

Girdun felt her neck, then her wrist. "No pulse."

"Ben, call the medic."

Girdun shook his head. "Too late. She's gone."

Ben stared in horror. Habuur looked terrible. He'd never seen a dead person before, not like that, not with his own cousin standing over her as if it was just a little inconvenient for her to die before she'd answered his questions.

"What were you thinking, sir? We can't handle prisoners like this. You've got to report it. If you don't-"

"I've entered people's minds before and they've always been fine afterward," said Jacen.

He seemed surprised that his Force technique had caused so much damage to Habuur, but not sorry. Ben noted that. Ben was forgotten in the brief panic, invisible once again to adults having a fight. "We have to know who she was working with."

Shevu stood his ground. He didn't seem in awe of Jacen at all. "You should have left this to me, sir."

"Time is critical in a.s.sa.s.sination attempts. They could be out there now."

"I know that, and I also know that you don't let prisoners die during questioning. I have to report this."

"You report it, then, Captain, but right now I have to find out who she was after, and my only lead is some woman called Mirta Gev."

"There's the Corellian agent, sir," Girdun said, straightening up. "He doesn't know who Habuur was after, only that Corellian Intelligence told him to give her a safe house and provide weapons."

"Some agent, if he yielded that much."

"I'm very persuasive, sir," said Girdun.

Shevu rounded on him. "We don't want another dead prisoner."

Jacen looked through Shevu as if he weren't there. "Get working on him, Girdun, just in case."

I have to do something. Ben couldn't bear to think of someone else dying like that woman had. He had an idea: work through the information again, just like the ex-CSF men had told him. It was stupid, because Jacen was smart enough to have spotted anything useful, and the World Brain's network of Ferals-enslaved spies-knew plenty. If his Force powers couldn't shake the information out of Habuur, then Ben stood little chance of doing any better. But he decided to use the tricks that ordinary people had to when sorting through information.

"Can I see the datapad, please?" Ben fought to stay calm. He had moved from disbelief to shock. He didn't know why Jacen had done what he did, but he had to have a reason. It had to be that Ben just didn't understand it yet. He had to stay calm. But he wanted to run back home to his mother and-yes, his father.

You can't keep doing that. It's not a game. You've grown up now. You can't do the things you do and then run home when it gets scary.

Jacen handed him the datapad, suddenly all reason and concern. "You sure you're all right, Ben?"

"I-I just never saw a dead body like that before."

"It's okay. You want to go home? I mean home to your mom. It's okay if you want to."

"I'm okay."

Ben took the datapad and retreated to the nearest empty room. It was the cleaning droid's station. He settled down on an upturned bucket and tried to look through the data in a sensible and rational way, but it was hard when you'd seen your hero do something terrible.

There. He'd dared think it. Jacen wasn't perfect.

He flicked through the images in the datapad, hundreds of them, and they were all pictures of vessels just as Shevu had said. He had to scroll through them a number of times before the idea that was nagging away at the back of his mind suddenly became clear and he spotted what was in a lot of the pictures: not every one, but most of them. Sometimes it was just a detail, and sometimes it was almost half the s.h.i.+p, but it was the same cla.s.s of s.h.i.+p.

It was a YT-1300, an old Corellian transport model that was still a common sight around the Core Worlds. They ran forever. Uncle Han's Falcon seemed ready to run for eternity.

Ben had a flash of insight.

Ben trotted down the corridor and approached Jacen cautiously, hoping that he was right-and hoping that the information might save the Corellian agent from Girdun.

"She was after Uncle Han, Jacen." Ben handed back the datapad. "That's the s.h.i.+p they were doing surveillance on. It's in more than half of the images. They thought he was still here. She was looking for the Falcon."

Jacen shut his eyes for a moment and swallowed. "I a.s.sumed she was in the right place. I a.s.sumed, Ben. That's a lesson for all of us-never a.s.sume anything." He concentrated, eyes closed, holding the datapad in his hands as if he was visioning something in the Force.

"She didn't feel focused on Dad, either."

I thought you could do anything in the Force, Jacen. Why did you miss that? What blinded you to it?