Keldabe had seen him without the helmet often enough now. Nobody would turn a hair, not about the helmet—and not about Admiral Daala.
BRALSIN, MANDALORE: NEXT DAY
“I knew you couldn’t leave it alone,” said Gotab.
It was early evening, and a haze was settling over the Kelita valley in the distance. Jaina helped the old man sit down on a smooth-worn outcrop of pale gray granite. Close-cropped grass ringed by stones large enough to sit on lent the spot the air of a small arena. Gotab laid his helmet down and shut his eyes, facing into the breeze as if to savor it on his face.
“I need guidance,” Jaina said.
“Fett’s still too busy … discussing vital commercial issues with Admiral Daala, then.”
“It’s not Fett’s experience I need. It’s yours.” What she said next would either shape the galaxy’s future, or make Gotab walk off in disgust. “I need to hear this from a Jedi.”
“Former Jedi. You’ve got the whole Jedi Council to ask, Jaina. I bet they answer your comm right away.”
“Maybe, but none of them have seen the galaxy from both sides. I haven’t ever spoken to a Jedi who walked away from the Order but who wasn’t a Sith.”
“I didn’t just walk away from the Order—I didn’t exercise Right of Denial. I stopped being a Jedi.” Gotab laughed. “I know the dark side, too. I lived alongside it for too many years, and I can’t say that it was always a bad thing. But you’re right, I’m no Sith. I’m just a man.”
“Do you think of yourself as Gotab?” Jaina looked over her shoulder, knowing Venku was around somewhere.
“In a way. It just means engineer. I was always good at fixing things. And people.” He took out his lightsaber and held the hilt in his palm, hefting it. “My name used to be Bardan Jusik, but I stopped using my second name in case it got me killed after the Purge. In private, to everyone who matters to me, I’m just Bard’ika.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Yes. But I know what you’re really asking. Did I father more little Mandalorian Force-users, and train them as some kind of armored Jedi? No. I had plenty of adopted sons to look after—and daughters. My wife, may she find rest in the manda, thought it was for the best.”
“You could have had children via a donor. Clinics can do clever things.”
“Mando’ade adopt. I chose the finest family a man could have. Why would we have wanted to conceive a child by donor?”
Gotab—Bard’ika—hadn’t struggled to his feet to storm off, nor had he rounded on her. His impression in the Force was relaxed and a little sad, in a bittersweet kind of way that Jaina envied; it was as if he was looking back on a substantially happy life that had nevertheless had its moments of grief. She was trying hard to stay detached from emotions at the moment, because if she felt the good things in life—and there still seemed to be many—then she also felt the pain that reminded her that Mara was dead, that Jacen was responsible, and that Jaina had sworn to deal with the problem. Things were fine as long as she held those events at bay, and stared at them as if they were a disturbing holovid. The moment she let them slip past her guard and merge with reality, they were almost too agonizing to bear.
“I’ve got a terrible choice to make,” she said. “I have to stop my brother. I think I’m the only one who can. Mirta Gev, of all people, begged me to think twice about killing him and to leave him to someone else. There is no one else.”
“Not even Master Luke Skywalker? My, my. So this one’s bigger than Palpatine, is he?”
“You sound very bitter about the Order, sir.”
“I might be ancient, but I’m not an officer. Bard’ika, please.” Flying creatures that Jaina couldn’t identify wheeled and jinked high in the dusk sky like fighter craft; Gotab watched them in silence for a moment. “The Order has long been about justifying its own existence, about acquiring and holding power, and from what I see now, nothing much has changed since my day. I know what I swore to do as a Jedi, and it didn’t have anything to do with turning a blind eye to social evils because the Sith were a bigger evil. But every act of evil we commit creates an environment where the Sith can exist. So Jedi who cut corners—a Jedi Order that cuts corners—forfeit their right to hold the moral high ground. Yes, I’m bitter. That’s why I stopped being a Jedi and just became someone who had Force skills and wanted to do no harm. I’ve killed—and not regretted it. I’ve never wrung my hands while whining about my conscience. So if you genuinely want my advice—well, to hear my view, because that’s all it is—then, Jaina Solo, we talk purely as individuals who can use the Force. I won’t help the Jedi Order.”
Jaina was still aware of Venku wandering around the hill, keeping an eye on the two of them. She couldn’t see him. But he was there.
“This is about me and Jacen,” she said at last.
“And you could have stopped him, any of you, if you’d united against him. One Sith can’t stand against hundreds of Jedi. Your problem is that he’s your own flesh and blood, and none of you have had the courage to do the job. You’ve been hoping that he’ll see the light and stop so that you don’t have to do the dirty work. How many ordinary beings have died while you made excuses for him because he’s family?”
“I know. Okay, I know.” Jaina’s gut twisted with guilt again. Yes, if Jacen had been any other Sith with Jacen’s track record, she’d have cut him down without a second thought. Had anyone tried to redeem Palpatine, or that apprentice of his on Naboo? No. But Vader … Vader had turned out to be family. Uncle Luke had bothered to look for the good in him. “You’re going to give me the speech about no attachment, aren’t you?”
Gotab turned to face her and smiled. The light was failing. He still seemed to have a luminosity about him, the sweetness of great age, despite the harshness of his words.
“Attachment—and you inevitably use your powers to serve your own family, or in your case … you fail to use them,” he said. “Avoid attachment—and you become an enactor of ritual, a sterile creature unable to truly understand love and sacrifice. There’s no easy answer for a Force-user except rigid self-control, and I do not mean avoiding the dark side. I mean not using the Force at all.”
“That’s not going to help anyone stop Jacen becoming a galactic tyrant.”
“Lovely job title, that. Galactic Tyrant wanted—apply within.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“You want to know what I would do in your position.”
“Yes.”
“I’d kill him, out of love.”
The reply shocked Jaina because she felt it. He meant it. He wasn’t serene; he was full of swirling passions, with hints of darkness in there somewhere, but he’d loved deeply, and still did. It was vivid within him.
“I can’t avoid this, can I?” she said.
“It’s a lot more common than you think. People kill the one they love all the time. The motive can be anything, but in the end … you end the life you would’ve done anything to preserve, and then … then, you go on living. You can kill out of jealousy, passion, revenge, mercy, duty, justice, greed, carelessness. How many people have you killed in combat? In war? More than one, I’ll bet. You didn’t love those people, but they’re no less dead, so the only difference is how you square it with your conscience each day. We’re talking about selfishness here—how will I feel? How will Jaina feel?”
“And the rest of my family …”
“Oh, sorry. I thought we were talking about the welfare of the galaxy. How foolish of me.”
“Mind my asking why you killed?”
“Duty, fear, animal survival, and protecting those I loved. Mostly, to eat.” Gotab looked at her and nodded. “It’s about all living beings, don’t forget that. Not just the ones we recognize as our own kind.”
It wasn’t getting any clearer for Jaina. “I thought I’d made up my mind so many times, but Mirta brought me up short today. My brother killed her mother, and she still begged me not to kill him, just in case I was wrong.”
“And what if you let him live, and you’re wrong?”
Jaina shut her eyes. She could sense Venku still taking a slow walk around the perimeter, a little irritable, growing impatient. The two men didn’t live around here. They came down into Keldabe from the remote north, the Oyu’baat regulars said. Even Mandalorians didn’t drop in on them for a cup of caf and a chat.
“They call me the Sword of the Jedi,” Jaina said. “That’s supposed to be my destiny. It’s odd how these prophecies start to make sense when it’s too late.”
“Or maybe you’re importing meaning into it that isn’t there.”
“What do you think?”
“A sword is a symbol of justice in many cultures, Jaina. Real justice is blind, and personal feelings don’t matter.”
But it wasn’t about justice: she could suddenly see that. It wasn’t so much about what Jacen had done as what he would do in the future—cause the deaths of many more beings. There was no possibility that he would stop of his own accord. There was no intellectual or ethical argument about this. It was simply about a continuing threat to life.
She realized Gotab was staring into her face. If they didn’t activate a glowstick soon, they’d be sitting in the dark. But they didn’t need to see each other’s faces to know what was going on in their heads.
“It’s not justice, and it’s not punishment,” she said at last. “It’s about saying: this is as far as it goes. I have to stop him now.”
“It hurts to say it.”
“Not as much as I thought, but at the moment, it’s just words.”
Bardan finally resorted to a glowstick. He pulled it out of his belt and wedged it into a fissure in the rock to cast a soft yellow light. Then he took off his glove and held up a hand torn by old scarring, and gazed at the puckered skin as if recalling a long-lost happier time.
“We keep strills,” he said. “Hunting animals, the ones with folded skin and six legs that you might have seen around. A friend of mine loved his, but it started going crazy and attacking everyone, including me. He had to shoot it. Poor thing—it had a brain tumor. It wasn’t itself. Killing it broke his heart, but he couldn’t let it carry on, not just for everyone’s safety, but for the animal, too, because it was utterly miserable. You sometimes have to kill what you love, end their pain and take it on yourself—because that’s what love is, sometimes.”
That struck a raw chord in Jaina. Not the thought that Jacen might be mad—if that made any difference to what he did—but that he was miserable somewhere in his soul. She thought of the Embrace of Pain, and the Jacen who had survived it, and wondered if his torturer Vergere had been even more poisonously subtle than anyone had ever imagined. Pain was central to Jacen’s life now. He thought he couldn’t avoid it or forget it. So he used it.
And in the end, he’d grown to need it, and thought others did, too, and that there was a virtue in necessity, because he could do nothing to stop that pain as long as he lived.
Better that it’s me, then, Jacen. Better someone who loves you and knows you, than an executioner who just sees you as vermin.
Did that make any difference?
“To think I blamed Jacen’s weakness for getting my other brother killed,” she said. “It was me who was going to the dark side then.”
“Forget about you,” Gotab said sharply. “You have a job to do, that’s all. Personally, I never bought this pious nonsense about Jedi violence being fine as long as it was done with a pure heart. Sophistry, my dear. You’re going to kill your brother because he’s a power-hungry, murdering dictator, no one else in your Jedi circle has the moral courage to do it, and you stand the best chance of stopping him. Finish the job like Fett and Beviin showed you. Then you can worry about your motives when the galaxy is safe again, and you have time for the luxury of contemplating the state of your soul.”
It was as harsh as a slap in the face. But Jaina felt a cold certainty cascade over her as if she’d been doused with icy water, making her instantly alert.
It wasn’t the kind of revelation that left you feeling enlightened and uplifted, understanding the galaxy better.
It was the sort that said there was only one way out of the burning building if you wanted to live, and you would have to pass through fire.
She stood up and stretched her legs. “Thank you, Bard’ika,” she said. “I didn’t come here to feel better about this situation. I came here for clarity. You’ve given me that.”
“It has to be your choice, Jaina. Not my orders.”
“I choose, then,” she said. “I bet you have grandchildren, yes?”
“Great-great-grandchildren, actually … twenty of them.”
“Then, Bard’ika, I’ll do it for them, so they have a galaxy to grow up in.” Her heart broke, and not for the first time. She thought of the strill, desperate and unhappy, biting those who loved it, and knew the burden of being the Sword of the Jedi. Her biggest fear now wasn’t that she would have to live the rest of her life with Jacen’s death on her conscience. She had found a way to replace it with what mattered—not her personal problems, but the threat to the future of kids like Gotab’s great-great-grandchildren, and—yes, even Fett’s.
She took out her lightsaber and handed the hilt to Gotab for him to admire in the dim yellow light.
“Do you still use yours?” she asked.
“I spar occasionally,” he said. “But slowly. As much as a man of my age can. It keeps the joints more supple.”
“If you could choose, would you give up your Force powers?”
“Yes, all except healing. I justified my existence with that many times.” He activated the blade and it hummed into life, casting a violet light. He made a few practice passes. “Well made, Jaina.”
“Can Venku use one?”
“He has two, actually.”
“Did you teach him to use them?”
“Yes. But not for the reason you think.”
Gotab shut down the lightsaber and handed it back to her. She could feel Venku getting closer. He appeared over the ridge, the lighter-colored plates of his armor picked out by the glowstick.
“Buir, it’s time we got you home,” he said.
“I’m enjoying talking to Jaina,” he said. “Come on, Kad’ika. Join us.” The old man smiled to himself. “Funny, Venku’s nickname is Kad’ika—Little Saber. He’s a sword, too, Jaina, but the sword of the Mandalorians. The one who persuaded us to look after ourselves and not venture out to fight other worlds’ wars.”
Right then that sounded like a good idea for anyone. She activated her lightsaber. It was a beautiful weapon, but Fett was right about recognizing it for what it was. Venku walked toward her and then stopped.
“Want to practice?” she asked.
“I’m not a Jedi.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Okay.”
Venku took out two lightsabers, both blue, and looked at them for a moment with a terrible fond longing that completely shut out everything around him. Whoever had owned those before … Jaina would never know, but she understood that sorrow when she felt it.
She took up her stance, saber held two-handed. Beviin’s beskad technique was for another day.
“Begin,” said Gotab.
Far into the evening, the darkness was illuminated with the bright humming blur of blades. And Jaina was illuminated too, and saw that the only way out of her dilemma was an agonizing but necessary passage through flame.
epilogue
JEDI CAMP: UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN THE TRANSITORY MISTS, NEAR THE HAPES CLUSTER
Perfect sanctuary was just a bedroll and a blanket on the dirt floor, and it was all that Ben needed right then. He just wanted to sleep. He crawled into the tent and let himself collapse facedown on the bed.
“You okay, Ben?”
Luke’s voice drifted over the faint whisper of breezes, cracking with fatigue. Ben rolled over and stared up into the tent’s ridge. “Yeah, Dad. I really think I am now. You?”
“You bet. Just checking.”
“Get some sleep.”
“Look who’s talking …”
But Ben couldn’t sleep, not yet. He settled for letting his mind churn, wondering how Lon Shevu was doing and if he’d been able to see Shula since he’d sent the transmission, and if Jori Lekauf’s folks were coping, unable to tell anyone that their son died a hero. There were so many broken people and shattered families in this war. Ben felt as if he knew them all personally.
I do, or at least I know too many.
Sleep would come when his brain decided it was good and ready, so he didn’t fight it. He just let his mind drift for what felt like hours until his father’s voice jerked him fully alert.
Yes: Dad was talking to someone.
Who’s woken him at this time of night? Nobody’s going to track us down here. But Ben slid his arm to his side and felt for his lightsaber anyway, because now he would never wake suddenly without reaching for it, for as long as he lived. It was one more legacy of this war.
“Oh … sweetheart … you found me. You found me. Stay awhile.”
Ben wondered if his father was talking in his sleep, then knew that he wasn’t, because he could feel Luke’s sudden emotion like a light being shone in his face. His reflex was to scramble out of the tent and rush to his father’s side, elated, with so much more to say and ask this time; but he stopped himself. This was Dad’s time, not his.
Ben knew exactly who’d found Luke Skywalker.
He smiled, laid his head on the makeshift pillow, and let the tears run down his face unchecked until sleep claimed him.
For Ray Ramirez
acknowledgments
My grateful thanks go to editors Shelly Shapiro (Del Rey) and Sue Rostoni (Lucasfilm); my agent Russ Galen; comrades-in-plotting Troy Denning and Aaron Allston; Jim Gilmer, for unerring insight and unstinting support; Ray Ramirez, for technical advice, the real Tra’kad, and generous friendship; Lance, Joanne, and everyone in the 501st Dune Sea Garrison, for bringing Mandalore to life; the Bloodfin Garrison of the 501st; and all my other good friends in the 501st Legion, who have been a rock and an inspiration.