“Are you in?”
“Say it.”
Jacen looked around the room, trying to look as if he was simply thinking, but suspicious that someone else might be doing to him what he did to them—eavesdrop electronically. Was Niathal setting him up? No, he was sure he could sense bugs in a room. There were none. “You know what I’m proposing.”
“I don’t, actually. Not in detail. Say it.”
“Regime change.” Too late. But he couldn’t sense any risk. His logical brain was the paranoid, whispering voice, not his Force-senses. He realized he’d become less instinct-driven and more rational, and that was the problem. Thinking too much, feeling too little, just like Lumiya says. “We remove him from office long enough to get this war won, and then hand it back to Senator G’Sil when the situation is stable so that new elections can take place.”
His words emerged like uninvited strangers, and he didn’t even believe himself. Niathal made a little splutter that could have been laughter.
“I get the removal. It’s the gap in the middle between remove and elections that fascinates me.”
“We run the GA during the interim as a duumvirate. No dictatorship. Joint control.”
Niathal indicated her uniform and then reached out to jab a bony finger into the rank tab on his shoulder. “Military coup. That’s what it’s called. Let’s not prevaricate.”
“Okay, I remove him and you take over, alone.”
“I don’t think so. Duumvirate sounds best to me.”
Jacen liked two; two was the Sith way. Knowing Niathal’s ambition for the Chief’s office, he’d have the same circling, edgy power struggle with her as a Sith Master with an apprentice who was expected and encouraged to plot to overthrow him.
But he would rule as Sith Lord in due course, when the GA and elections were academic, and she would administer the state. That would satisfy her.
“I’ll take care of Gejjen, by the way,” he said. “He’s a massively destabilizing influence, and removing him will throw Corellia into disarray.”
“How will you take care of Omas?”
“I’ll remove him by house arrest.”
“Deposed heads of state tend to become martyrs and hostages.”
“We can’t be seen to kill our own, and framing Gejjen for it did occur to me, but it’s not necessary. We need to show ourselves as civilized people working within the law.”
“With a coup.”
“Under the law, as the law will stand, it won’t be.”
“Ahhhh. I forgot.” No, she hadn’t, he knew that. “Your amendment to the law.”
“I’m tabling it for next week, through Aitch-Em-Three.”
“And in the meantime?”
“Leave that to me. I’ll have someone there when Omas meets Gejjen.” Jacen checked his datapad. “He needs only a day to do his business with Gejjen, no more, so—my people have him under surveillance, ready to move. Then we have evidence to present to G’Sil.”
“And then you arrest him.”
“I was thinking I might arrest him at the same time you present the evidence to G’Sil. When we move, we have to move fast. No room to be outmaneuvered.”
Niathal let out a long breath. Jacen waited.
“I’ll be ready to move on your signal. Make sure you keep me up to speed with all this, won’t you?”
It was done. Jacen’s takeover was in place. He had the GAG at his back, and Niathal would deliver the fleet as well as the army. With the right presentation of Omas selling out to the Corellians, it would be a very orderly coup.
There was no need for unnecessary bloodshed. That was what this was all about: an end to violence, chaos, and instability.
That was worth everything he was risking.
Jacen took an air taxi back to a plaza a few minutes’ walk from the GAG HQ: just another citizen, no sleek black GA transport, no privilege. Either the driver didn’t recognize the uniform, or he hesitated to say, Here, you’re the chief of the secret police, aren’t you? It was a silent, contemplative journey.
It was time to make sure nothing went wrong, if manifest destiny could go wrong. He opened his comlink and called Lumiya.
“Shira,” he said, aware of the pilot up front. “I need you to do a job for me.”
chapter seven
Goran, in Fett’s absence, I think you really ought to see this. I don’t think it can wait. Sometimes the vongese do you a favor.
—Site foreman Herik Vorad, on examination of excavated rock from land north of Enceri, Mandalore
SAFE HOUSE, CORUSCANT
“So you’re going to do it before you achieve your full Sith powers,” said Lumiya. She lit the candles and closed the blinds. Jacen needed to shut out the world and feel what was happening; he was running increasingly on a mundane agenda, the agenda of the lesser beings he worked with. “Why?”
“If I do it afterward, when might afterward be?” Jacen watched the flames shimmering and settled down cross-legged on a floor cushion, but his eyes kept wandering away from the focus of concentration, and Lumiya felt obliged to rap him sharply on the top of his head and point at the candle. “Omas is doing a deal with Gejjen. The deal excludes me, and Niathal, possibly in a rather terminal way.”
Working in the world of those who couldn’t use the Force, Jacen was falling into conniving and manipulating just like them, and while Lumiya didn’t think that was a bad thing—all tools were valid to achieve the outcome—he was letting himself be bound by their rules. He was talking about timing. He had full mastery of the Force, but he seemed to enjoy using the limited tricks of ordinary people.
The admiral was irrelevant in the long term. He had to be aware of that. “Niathal is afraid of you, Jacen. Or at least wary.”
“Don’t you think I know that? She’d be an idiot if she trusted anyone at this level of government.”
“You waste too much energy playing mundane games instead of using the Force.”
“I’ll use it when I need to. Most of the time now, it’s overkill.”
Jacen always seemed to want to prove how much smarter, how much more skilled he was than his adversaries, how he could beat them on their own terms. Vanity wasn’t always a bad thing in a Sith—as long as it didn’t control him. It was just a matter of getting him to pause and refocus.
“Meditate,” said Lumiya.
Jacen stared through her for a moment, and then stared unblinking at the candle until he eventually closed his eyes. He opened one eye slowly, looking as if he might be about to make a joke. Lumiya didn’t feel in a humorous mood.
“Actually, I called you for a reason,” he said.
“I know. But I’d like to approach this like Force-users, not like some tedious little committee in the Senate.” It was time to remind him he still had one more step to take before he could begin to teach her anything. “Calm yourself and put the world to one side.”
Jacen shut his eyes again, and—for once—seemed to relax enough to allow a little of his state of mind to filter through the barrier that he now kept in place most of the time. Lumiya sensed the solid confidence and focus that typified him. But there was still the faintest hint of the old Jacen, wounded by bereavement and pain, scared of doing necessary things. That was the last tinge of doubt and reluctance that his final step would erase. It would enable him to cross the line into his full Sith legacy.
She didn’t know when afterward might be, either, or even who. She only knew it was soon.
“You don’t need to play their games, Jacen,” she said softly. “Even now your powers put you far beyond their reach. Omas can’t touch you. Neither can Gejjen. When you achieve your destiny, they’ll be less than irrelevant.”
“Powers or not, I can’t control a galaxy on my own. I need to persuade, to carry people with me. The Force can’t affect the minds of millions.”
Ah, you enjoy the power you can wield with simple mind games. Don’t make Palpatine’s mistakes. That’s an indulgence. It’s not worthy of you.
/>
“Jacen,” she said. “I want you to take stock and feel. Stop overanalyzing. It won’t reveal any truths to you. Just facts. Facts show you only what you want to see.”
Jacen opened his eyes again. “But it’s so fleeting. The line between a crazy impulse and guidance from the Force is getting harder to draw.”
“Because you think about it too much.”
The impenetrable wall went up again. Lumiya felt it as he lapsed into silence.
“It’s Ben,” he said at last. “It has to be Ben.”
Now she understood. “You’re fond of the boy. Perhaps he’s the child you don’t have. This will be hard, and that’s probably why it has to be him.”
For a moment, Jacen’s gaze flickered—too brief, too insignificant for any ordinary observer to spot—and she knew she’d hit a nerve. That was it: conscious of his own mortality, he wanted a son, and there was a little subconscious desire to possess what was Luke’s as part of the overthrow of the Jedi dynasty. Now that he had it, and Ben looked to him as a heroic father figure, he had to throw away that prize.
It was an odd sort of love, but if it was powerful enough, it would do fine.
“That’s probably it,” Jacen said, and looked down at his clasped hands. “And it’s hard to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“But you don’t know how it’ll happen.”
“Exactly.”
“You can’t see yourself taking a lightsaber to a fourteen-year-old boy.”
“Maybe it won’t be so literal. I’m sending him to assassinate Dur Gejjen when he meets Omas to do his deal. It’s a job that needs doing, it tests Ben’s skills and commitment, it’s far easier for a teenage boy to get past Gejjen’s security, and … perhaps it will put him in real mortal danger.” Jacen reached out to the low table nearby, leaning on one hand to stretch and pick up one of the candles in its transparent blue holder. “Now, is that a consequence of the task, or is that why I’m sending him? Am I sending him to his death?”
“Let it play out,” Lumiya said. “Stop rationalizing and let it happen.”
She stood up to take the candle from him. She could see he wanted to play that brinkmanship game again of how long he could hold his hand in the flame. Some men would do it out of bravado after too many drinks, but Jacen was testing himself, a private struggle rooted in his experience of pain at Vergere’s hands and his lingering doubts that he could stay the course and make himself do something he wanted to run from.
“I need your help,” he said. “I need you to distract Mara for a while.”
“Whatever you wish.”
“She’s taken the Brisha story to heart. Nothing like killing someone’s child to guarantee a blood feud, is there?”
“I thought that story might tie her up and explain my presence. In an ideal world, I would have avoided all contact with the Skywalkers.”
“So … why did you offer your hand to Luke instead of taking his head off?”
Lumiya was still considering that. She might not have meant Luke any harm, but she didn’t have to hate someone to kill him in the line of duty. Did it matter that he still thought all her actions were dictated by an old romance, and by a trauma that had been her destiny anyway? Why did she feel the need to show him they weren’t?
“It certainly had its shock value in the fight,” she said. “And killing him would have changed the course of events for all of us.”
“And you wanted to put him in his place. Show him he had no leverage … that you were over him?”
Jacen sometimes seemed to understand and then he’d say something banal like that, which made her think he had missed the point of passing through powerful emotions to become stronger.
“The Skywalkers are too mired in their domesticity to be effective Jedi, Jacen,” she said. “It’s a warning to us all. Luke can’t see what’s in front of him because he thinks my motive is lost love and revenge, because that’s the level he thinks at—family and friends. It would never occur to him that I want to see a Sith-controlled galaxy and that the personal issues we had are trivial by comparison.”
“You taught me that anger and passion are what make Sith strong.”
“There’s anger, and then there’s being controlled by it—not seeing the forest for the trees.” Lumiya had a moment of self-doubt and decided to meditate on it later. “So what about Mara?”
“She’s hanging on to that GAG connection she found to track you. Keep her occupied elsewhere.”
“I’ll let her find me. That should do the trick. Can you give me a possession of Ben’s, something that would prove to Mara that I could get at him easily, without being traceable to you?”
“I’ll get you a pair of his boots. He keeps several pairs in his locker, and Mara already suspects a GAG connection.” He gave her a little frown of concern, but she felt nothing emanating from him. “What if she actually catches you?”
“I might win, and anyway—it’ll buy you time.” Lumiya was still testing herself to see if she resented Jacen for leaving her to die, too. “I’m expendable, as you’ve proven. My life’s purpose is to enable you to become a Sith Lord, because that secures the stability of the galaxy. The ambition of most beings is just to stay alive, overeat, spend too much, and avoid hard work. I’m happy that I can achieve much more than that … and we all die sooner or later. A death in service of a great ideal is a fine thing.”
Jacen gave her a long, blank stare, and she wondered if the idea of an eternal principle being more important than the short confines of his own mortal life was alien to him. He had to pass beyond that. He would.
“When you think of Ben’s fate,” she said, “think of the legacy you’ll leave in years to come, and ask who’ll be able to name the Skywalkers, or even the Solos. This is about the fate of trillions upon trillions for millennia to come—not one small family over a few decades.”
Jacen got to his feet, but Lumiya could tell he was looking at her without seeing her now.
“I’ll keep telling myself that,” he said. “The boots will get Mara’s attention, for sure.”
“I think I’ll play up the maternal grief and do something emotional, too. What are you going to do when Mara and Luke come after you—when they find out about Ben in due course?”
“I’ll deal with that when I have to.”
“It might be sooner than you think. I suggest you make sure you’re properly armed.”
“I have quite an armory,” said Jacen. “And I’ll be ready when the time comes.”
“Think laterally,” Lumiya said gently. “Luke can still take you in a lightsaber fight.”
“I’m already a few steps ahead of him. Trust me.”
She had to. The future of the galaxy depended on Jacen. He was the end of chaos and the beginning of order, and—like all forces of change—he would not be hailed by everyone as a savior. Some wouldn’t see how necessary he was. Some would try to stop him.
She would do whatever it took to clear his path—even if the price was her own life.
SURVEILLANCE CENTER, GAG HQ, CORUSCANT
Captain Girdun loomed in the doorway, backlit by the light from the corridor. “Showtime,” he said. “Niathal’s just been designated as acting Chief of State as of midnight.”
The troopers on duty in the listening post looked up. Ben detached the bead amplifier in his ear and tried to make sense of that news. “What’s happened to Omas?”
“He’s going to be out of the office for a day.”
“Oh, I thought—”
“He has to give a little notice to hand over the reins of state to Niathal when he’s out of contact—you know, command codes, that kind of stuff. So we have a window for his trip to Vulpter. Tomorrow.”
It was all moving too fast. Ben could recall feeling excited by the turmoil of events, but now that he was part of them, they were too fast for his comfort. They brought him closer to his mission. He wasn’t relishing the prospect; he knew how he’d felt after killing a suspect h
e thought was armed, so he could work out that he wouldn’t be any happier after dispatching Gejjen.
I’m an assassin. And everyone else my age who isn’t a Jedi is in school.
“What cover story has he given?” Ben asked.
“Private medical matter.”
“Yeah, saving his backside,” said Zavirk.
“I think this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for, Ben.” Girdun beckoned to him. “Come on. Briefing room.” He turned to Zavirk. “I want to know his itinerary to Vulpter. He won’t be taking us along, but he’ll still need transport, a minder, and a pilot, so let’s keep an eye on the logistics.”
“Bet he takes an Intel zombie or two with him for company.”
“Well, we’re keeping an eye on them, too, so that’ll help us triangulate, won’t it? Get to it, Trooper.”
The captain strode off down the corridor whistling, which was unlike him. Ben hadn’t realized Girdun disliked Omas so much. Maybe he just enjoyed a really major hunt. It couldn’t get much bigger than tailing the Chief of State to an illicit meeting with the enemy. There was no hate in Girdun, just a wonderful sense of focus and excitement. Ben wondered if darkness was as easy to spot as Jedi seemed to think.
But what’s darkness? Killing Gejjen?
The worst thing about growing up was that there were fewer right-or-wrong answers every day. It wasn’t a math test.
When they reached the briefing room, Shevu and Lekauf were already there, poring over a wall full of illuminated holodisplays. Lekauf, looking far from comfortable in his brand-new lieutenant’s rank insignia, gave Ben a nervous grin.
“Our source in Coronet confirms that Gejjen’s rescheduled all his engagements for tomorrow,” said Shevu. “It’s on for sure.”
“Timetable?”
“No outbound timings, but he expects to be back in time for a meeting by oh-eight-hundred the next day.”
The displays on the walls showed two sets of charts and data: one was Coruscant, the other Corellia. Ben checked off the list of surveillance points—Omas’s private residence, the security cams from the Senate offices, the handful of private landing pads nearest to both, and a tally of flight plans filed for Vulpter. The Corellian status board also showed recent flight plans logged with that planet as a destination.