“Ship’s company,” Caedus said quietly. “We have, at best, a criminally careless fool in the fleet, and, at worst, a traitor.”
Loccin turned to him. “Sir, we’re continuing with the mission, are we?”
“We are,” said Caedus. “We’re not turning tail and slinking home just because we haven’t established a cordon. Battle plans always change. This is a setback, nothing more. I’ll be in my day cabin. Let me know when you get Admiral Niathal, and if Admiral Pellaeon makes contact, tell him nothing and patch him straight through. Let’s not alarm the Moffs, shall we?”
Caedus stood in his cabin and wondered how he had managed not to vent his anger. He started working mentally through the sequence from deciding the hyperspace exit points to the minelayers actually emerging, and whose eyes had seen the detail. He thought of flow-walking back into the ops center and listening, but it was effort he wasn’t prepared to expend when he had a shortlist of fools—no, traitors—and an invasion to replan.
He caught his own reflection in a mirror as he sat down, and suddenly realized why the young lieutenant on the bridge couldn’t look away from his gaze.
Caedus’s eyes were yellow. He had that brief disoriented moment when he thought he was looking at someone else, but then his own face—his own eyes—grew rapidly familiar, and he watched the citrine yellow darken into his normal brown irises.
Then he sat down and began work with the holochart, and a new but equally harsh plan for Fondor.
chapter ten
Yes, I regret that we did hear Mara Jade Skywalker threaten Chief of State Solo. She told him to “leave Ben out of it” and that she would “skin him alive,” and that it was his last chance to drop something called Sith, or “take what was coming.” It seemed most unlike her.
—Senator Nab H’aas, Bith delegation, to Captain Lon Shevu, GAG, logging threats against joint Chiefs of State Solo and Niathal
FREIGHTER SPIRIT OF COMMERCE, EN ROUTE FOR ENDOR: CARGO BAY
Ben Skywalker reached inside his jacket to touch the small forensics droid again, avoiding the eye of the flight engineer. He wasn’t in the mood to chat.
But the two freighter crew were bored out of their skulls, and seemed to preserve their sanity by interrogating any ad hoc passengers. Ben was the only one hitching a ride this trip, huddled in a space between giant sealed containers lashed down to the deck of the cargo bay. He settled on looking angst-ridden and teenaged.
“I can only drop you at the trading base, you know that, don’t you?”
Ben looked up. The uncommunicative teenager act didn’t work any longer; he was tall, showing the first fluffy traces of beard, and he was suddenly aware that nobody had called him kid in passing these days. He must have looked as old as he now felt.
“I know,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Have you actually been to Endor before?”
Ah, the engineer was worried for him. “Yes, I know folks there. Someone’s meeting me.”
“Just checking. I wouldn’t dump my worst enemy in that place. Ewoks. Savages. I’d shoot them all, to be honest.”
“Some of my friends are Ewoks,” Ben said mildly, not wanting a fight, but unable to let it pass. “And I feel safer in the forest than I do in Galactic City.”
“No offense.”
“None taken.”
The engineer walked away slowly, gripping hand-overhand along the deckhead rail to pick his way between the tanks and containers that would be filled with plants and fungus for the pharmaceutical industry on the return journey. “Coruscant … yeah, I know what you mean. If it’s not the lowlifes and gangsters, it’s the secret police.”
And some of my best friends are secret police. They truly are. But Ben kept his mouth shut this time. It was the last leg of a tortuous route back to the Jedi base, and in a couple of hours he’d be safely among family and friends.
And so would the forensics droid, still holding its samples from Jacen’s StealthX in its sealed compartments. It was encased in flexiwrap, just in case. Ben felt it was his last tenuous link to resolution and some kind of peace.
Where do I start with Dad?
Have I got all the evidence I need?
And when—how—do I tell him that Mom came back to see me?
Out of all the things that plagued Ben in his quiet moments, when there was no distraction to stop him picking over events until they were just jumbled bones, that one was the most frequent. It was a privilege he was pretty sure Luke hadn’t been given, and it made Ben more uncomfortable as the days passed. Why just me? He’d become less accepting of mysteries and the will of the Force since he’d lived in Lon Shevu’s world of show-me and prove-it. He wanted to know why these days, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and maybe every time from now on.
The Spirit of Commerce set down in a clearing a few hundred meters from the trading post buildings; Ben did diplomatic hand-shaking and promised to use the service again sometime. He walked through saplings trying to reclaim the cleared land for the forest, bag over one shoulder, aware of eyes everywhere in the undergrowth and above him in the branches, and found himself thinking tactical thoughts about what a tough planet this would be to invade and occupy. Luke was already waiting for him; his father sat on a sawn-off stump as big as one of the huge circular park seats in the Skydome Botanical Gardens at home, wearing his flight suit.
Home.
What did that mean?
“Dad …” Ben had no problem throwing his arms around his father now and crushing him to his chest. He couldn’t remember why he’d felt awkward about it even a year ago. Grown men in the GAG, the toughest guys he knew, hugged and cried and didn’t care what they looked like doing it. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to get back.”
“You look whacked.”
“Been busy.” He’d tell me if Mom had appeared to him. Wouldn’t he? Ben prodded Luke’s flight suit, trying to get the banter going. “Been putting in flying hours, then? Worried about skills fade?”
“Going to be putting in more, Ben.”
“What did I miss?”
“Jacen’s lined up to take Fondor, and we’ve put one hydrospanner in his works, and we’re going to add a few more. Oh, and Han and Leia are still scouting for a new base.” Luke started walking to a rank of parked swoop bikes in various stages of decay. None of them gave a hint that the Jedi fighting elite was holed up here. He half turned as he walked, gesturing to his chest. “You taken up smashball? You nearly broke my ribs with whatever’s in your jacket.”
It was as good a time as any. “It’s a CSF remote forensics droid. It’s evidence.”
Luke swung his leg across the saddle of the first bike in the line. Ben climbed up behind him. “My son the soldier, now my son the cop. Did you find anything? Your expression says you did.”
“Yes, I did.” The bike shot off. “Plenty.”
Luke twisted his head to look at Ben. “And?”
“Hey, eyes forward, Dad!” The swoop swerved and straightened again. “Look, I’m not the jury or the judge. Remember that I wanted to kill Jacen on the spot? You stopped me, and I learned a big lesson. I’m just the detective, the prosecution. When I show you what I gathered—and Uncle Han and Aunt Leia, too—then you decide.” The swoop whipped through thin branches, and Ben ducked his head this way and that to avoid a smack in the face. Dad seemed to relive his wild Rebel youth whenever he got on a bike. “So I’ll lay out the case as objectively as I can. I’ve shown you the Force-hiding trick, and you know Jacen couldn’t have found me on Kavan by chance, but that’s not enough on its own. I’m laying out supporting evidence—and anything else I’ve found that’s relevant, whether it supports my theory or not, like Lon Shevu taught me. I want to know the truth, even if it I don’t like it.”
Luke didn’t reply, but his shoulders lifted as if he’d shrugged, and Ben heard him gulp a breath. He didn’t look over his shoulder this time.
“Ben …”
“Yeah?”
“Ben ??
?” Stang, he was crying. “Ben, you make me so proud. You know that? You’re so … decent.”
“Hey, come on … come on …” Ben patted his back. “Doing the right thing isn’t something special. It’s the minimum. It’s where we start each morning, not where we try to end up one day in the future. You taught me that.”
Luke started to say something, but just shook his head and steered straight and more slowly.
“You asked me a question when you first joined the Guard.”
Dad was getting too serious. “How to fasten my boots? Which end of the blaster I had to hold? Hey, I was just a kid then …”
Luke managed a snort of laughter, the kind that could have tipped over too easily into a sob. “A rhetorical question, I think. How many people I killed when I fought the Empire.”
“Oh, that.”
“And I said, ‘But they were all …’ and then I had to stop, because I hadn’t thought about it before as much as I should have. I should never have said ‘but.’ ”
“Dad, if you slow down any more, we’re going to stall—”
“Okay. Sorry.” Luke landed the swoop and they sat in knee-high spiky grass listening to the ticking of the cooling drive and the chorus of forest noises from animals they couldn’t see. Ben laid his hand on his lightsaber, just in case. He didn’t feel quite as safe in the wilds as he’d thought. “And you were right—most of them were just ordinary troopers, or ship’s crew, who maybe didn’t like the Empire very much but had to earn a living, or couldn’t say no. They weren’t all Imperial fanatics set on galactic oppression. They were just people, and I was nineteen and I probably felt deep down that if they weren’t as ready to resist Palpatine as I was, then they had to be cowards, or evil, or something that made them unlike me … made them worth less than me.” Luke swiveled as far as he could in the saddle to face Ben. “I hadn’t a clue about the politics, Ben. It wasn’t really a cause I thought hard about. I just felt I had to save someone in trouble. So … yes, I killed a lot of people I wish I hadn’t. And their lives weren’t cheap or meaningless. And now … five crews are dead because I let Fondor know too much, and I feel terrible about that, too.”
Ben hadn’t been expecting to unleash the floodgates. While a hug and tears didn’t feel soppy or embarrassing now, complete baring of souls was another matter. He didn’t realize Luke had taken the comment to heart and fretted over it. He was mortified; he’d burdened his father at a time when it was the last thing he needed. He should have kept it to himself.
“I don’t know what to say, Dad.”
“You were everything to your mom.” Luke just sat there, nodded as if he’d answered a question Ben hadn’t heard, and started up the swoop bike again. They lifted clear of the grass and shot off. “Rightly so.”
It had to be now. Ben had to say it, but it would have been better to look into Dad’s face than stare at the back of his head. “I saw Mom on Kavan. I mean I saw her. Not like thinking you see someone in a crowd. She was a Force ghost. She spoke to me.”
Luke’s knuckles were white as he gripped the steering vanes. “What did she say?”
“She said she loved me.”
“Yeah, she would. What did you say to her?”
“Same.”
“You feel any easier now?”
Go on. If you can’t be totally open with your father now, when can you be?
“Have you seen her, Dad? I didn’t want to say in case you felt—ignored. No, that’s the wrong word—”
“No, I haven’t seen her. But that’s okay. The Force gives us what we need. I’ve learned that.”
Luke didn’t say anything else. Ben struggled not to think of Jacen, because all he could do was rage silently; how could have done this to Dad? How could he have made him suffer so much? If Jacen had wanted to destroy Luke Skywalker, killing Mom was the way. It was worse than killing Luke himself. And Dad knew that, and yet he didn’t let it finish him or change what he believed in. So Ben drew strength and example from that, and when he had these backsliding moments of angry, chest-crushing grief, as he probably always would, he reminded himself that this was why Dad always knew what was right, and why Jacen either didn’t know or didn’t care. It was that start of the fork in the road, one atom’s deviation that became two and then four and then diverged into different roads and then to different worlds. It was that baseline of right that Ben and Luke had just talked about. It was every new moment when you had to ask: Is the next thing I’m going to do right, or is it wrong?
It was a hair’s width of a gap, and yet repeated with each breath, in each being, it became a chasm wide enough to swallow a galaxy.
I don’t know why Jacen did it. I don’t even have one hundred percent proof. No point getting more upset about motive. Stay objective. Stay with the facts.
Luke headed into the approach to the old Imperial outpost. Ben could now see two StealthXs being towed into launch positions and milling activity through the screen of trees and vines; loyal ground crew who had abandoned everything they had on Coruscant to keep the Jedi squadron operational—droids, pilots, stewards, even the occasional Ewok party ferrying rustic packing crates out of sight.
Ben walked around the landing gear of the nearest StealthX and rehearsed how he’d recount the mission with Shevu to his father.
“We voted to evacuate to a less accessible planet,” Luke said. “Depending on how Fondor goes.”
“More remote than Endor? That’ll take some doing.”
“Less findable. The Mists. Han and Leia really know how to pick a hideaway.”
“Good move. How much time do I have to collate my evidence before we deploy to Fondor, then?” Jag was wandering in their direction, hands thrust deep in his pockets. Ben patted his jacket. “I don’t want to have to take the forensics droid around with me just in case. Losing evidence is—”
“You’re not coming on the Fondor mission, Ben.”
Usually—or at least until recently—Ben would have launched into an argument about why he wouldn’t stay behind and how much Luke needed him, because he didn’t want to miss anything. Now he had just felt a pang of alarm at yet another separation from his father, but his gut said Do what he needs you to do. He listened.
“Okay, Dad.”
Luke waited a moment and then smiled, as if he’d been expecting the wrangling to start, too. “I’m not cosseting you, you know that. This is for operational reasons. Not protecting the boss’s son.”
“Understood. What do you want me to do while you’re gone?” And you’re coming back. “Have you an estimate of how long you’re committing the StealthXs?”
“I want you to plan the evacuation so that we’re ready to hit the button and go at a moment’s notice. I’m leaving at least half the Jedi pilots here, too.”
“Relocation,” Ben said. He’d never planned and executed anything like that before: with the ancillary staff, there were nearly a thousand beings and droids to move, plus equipment. He’d make sure he learned fast. “We’re not running from anyone.”
“I’m glad you’re not daunted by the task.”
“It’s common sense, Dad.”
“You’ve got plenty.” Luke patted his shoulders with both hands. “And you’re a moral compass. If some of us don’t come back, I want someone around who’ll keep asking hard questions and saying, ‘Should we do that? Is that right?’ and who won’t quit unless he gets answers.”
Ben hadn’t seen himself in that light. He was the methodical one, the problem solver, the one who unpicked an issue, looked at the components, and tried to rebuild it better. Logistics—he knew he could do that. But moral certainty—Jacen probably had his, too.
I got this far on how Mom and Dad raised me. I’ll deal with that as it comes.
He focused on his task, and not the fact that the maintenance crews were running up the StealthX drive.
“Now, Dad? Right now?”
“I waited until you came back. It’s okay. The rest of the flight should be
at Fondor by now.”
“What are you planning, Dad?”
“The usual. Help Jacen see the error of his ways.”
Okay, if he wanted to play cryptic, Ben could handle that. A tech jogged up to Luke and handed him his helmet, which somehow made it all much more imminent and final. “And … Jacen’s enlisted the support of the Imperial Remnant,” Luke finished.
“Admiral Pellaeon? Wow. I’m not sure if that’s good news or bad.”
“Yes, I hope everyone’s moral compass is working …”
Ben found himself doing what the GAG troops did before an operation kicked off. He locked down the inevitable dread and let his mouth take over, laying a veneer of grim jokes over the anxiety to keep it from being seen. “Don’t get killed, Dad. You know what it did to Fett. I don’t want to end up like him.”
“Filthy rich?”
“No, polishing my dad’s old ship and hassling Uncle Han.”
“It’s okay. Jaina can get you a good deal on property in Keldabe.”
“I mean it, Dad.”
“So do I. Now go, and stop worrying, or I swear I’ll come back as a Force ghost and bug you while you’re on a date.”
Ben winced inside. “Love you, Dad.”
“You too, Ben.”
Ben followed orders and didn’t look back, but it hurt. Having Jag’s grim face to focus on was a big help; the two of them walked on a collision course across the compound and ended up almost nose-to-nose.
“You’re grounded, too, then,” Ben said. “Never mind.”
Jag looked a little frayed. “I love being rear party. I live to stand around waiting for the comm to buzz. Have you heard from Jaina? Because I haven’t.”
“No. But it’s only been a week or so.” Ben had been too tied up to think too much about Jaina. He added that to his list of things to feel bad about. “She got there okay, didn’t she?”
“I got a pre-composed ‘arrived safely’ alert, yes.”
“Jag, if she’d had problems—Aunt Leia would feel it.”