"Like the Amulet?" Maybe he shouldn't have said it, but he felt bad about the whole thing, as if it had been not only a waste of a man's life but also nowhere near as important as he'd been led to believe. He hated being humored. "I can handle the truth, Jacen. You'd be surprised."
Jacen was all serene composure. "I've got a job that only you can do, and it's critical. You might not want to accept the mission."
"If it's an order, it's an order."
"Better hear it first." Jacen reached into his jacket and pulled out a datapad. "Read this. It's the original sources of the intelligence I received, so you can judge for yourself."
Ben took the datapad and studied the screen. There were transcripts of comlink conversations, and even grainy images of a meeting taken from such an odd angle that it must have been captured by a spy droid in a very awkward location, probably on the top of a cupboard. Men in expensive suits and tunics, sipping caf and talking in hushed tones: a man with well- cut dark hair, younger than Jacen. Ben recognized him as Dur Gejjen.
"That's the Corellian Prime Minister," he said.
"That's all intel gathered from our contacts inside the Corellian government offices. Read on."
There was discussion of driving a wedge between Hapes and the Galactic Alliance. It sounded like the usual political maneuvering that always bored Ben until he started to read recurring phrases, like Queen Mother and seeing the disadvantages of siding with the Alliance.
And then there were references to removing obstacles. It all fell into place when he flicked to the next holoimage and saw discussion of appropriate bounty hunters and who might be willing to operate in the Hapan royal house.
Ben might have been bored by politics, but he understood better than he
imagined, and he knew he had to if he wanted to survive.
"This is about Tenel Ka."
"Correct."
"Gejjen really did plan the attack on her, then."
"Correct. We finally have hard evidence, and so we can act."
Ben should have felt outrage, he knew, but what filled him then was despair that people found it so easy and so necessary to plot to kill each other. It was happening to his own family, and to him, and it was happening between heads of state.
They were all crazy. They'd lost all reason. Or was this the way the adult world really worked, doing all the stupid, cruel, destructive, impulsive things that they swore they'd grown out of?
"What do you want me to do?" Ben asked, pretty sure what the answer would be.
"Assassinate Gejjen." Jacen rubbed his forehead wearily. "He's a piece of work, and he'll destabilize our allies. There's no negotiating with a man who routinely resorts to state-sponsored assassination like that. The Corellians need to know we can reach out and take them, too.
Sober them up a bit. Way too cocky."
"Isn't that what we're doing, though? How is our assassination different from theirs? Won't it just lead to more killings?"
"You want to do this by the book? Okay, call Corellian Security and report Gejjen for conspiracy to murder. Oh, and for having Thrackan Sal-Solo assassinated, too, even if we can't call my father in court to testify to that. Let's see how fast they arrest him."
"I know
"You don't have to do it." Jacen had that slightly wounded tone that said quite the opposite. "But you proved you were competent at covert ops when we hit Centerpoint, and you can get close to Gejjen a lot more easily than some big hairy commando like Duvil. You can look like a harmless teenager."
I am a teenager . . . and I'm usually pretty harmless. But Jacen had a point. If anyone was going to do it—and the fact that Jacen had mentioned it meant he'd already made up his mind—then Ben had the best chance of getting close enough to Gejjen without being spotted.
Jacen stared at him, head slightly on one side, with that almost-smile that said he was sure Ben was going to say yes.
"I can't exactly ask Boba Fett to do this, can I?" Jacen said quietly.
"They're taking bets on how and when he's going to try to kill you." An officer shouldn't ask his troops to do anything he wouldn't do himself. I can't leave this to one of the 967. "Okay. I agree Gejjen's rotten to the core. And once we can go public on this stuff. . . then the warrant on Uncle Han and Aunt Leia is dropped, right?"
"I can't, Ben." Jacen sighed. "Everyone knows they had nothing to do with the attack. But they're still working for Corellia, and I can't suspend arrest warrants just because they're family. That's how corruption starts. Besides, what example does that set the troops? Will they ever trust us again if officers bend the rules for family?"
Ben was reminded once more that he didn't take after his father, who would have insisted on arresting Gejjen.
It was dirty work, but he should have realized that by now. He couldn't hand it on to someone else if he wanted to think of himself as a man—or an officer.
"I'll send you with good backup," Jacen said. "Shevu and Lekauf.
Our contacts on Corellia are working out a time and place. You'll have to be ready to go at a moment's notice."
Ben wondered how he was meant to kill Gejjen. It seemed a sacrilege to use a lightsaber. He concentrated on the practicalities and logistics, pondering briefly on where the hit would take place, how close he could get, and what would work best—blaster, projectile, or something more exotic.
There was his mother's vibroblade, but Ben wasn't sure he had the stomach to use it in cold blood. He only knew how to defend himself and others, not how to hunt for the sole purpose of killing.
"You can do it," said Jacen, who always seemed to know his thoughts. "Same techniques you use already—just a different mindset. Go talk to the sniper team."
The best person he could have consulted on the finer points of assassination was his mother, once the Emperor's Hands, the best assassin of her day. Hey, Mom, is a head shot best? Double tap or triple? Do you think a silenced blaster is a better option than a lightsaber?
Ben knew that was a conversation he could never have.
Jacen watched Ben leave the briefing room and took a deep breath.
It was all he could do to keep the breath steady and not let it become a sob.
I can't do this.
I can't kill him.
If the Force had made things clearer, explained explicitly what he had to do —go here, kill this, recite that—then it might have been easier.
It was not knowing that was unbearable; not knowing if he was reading too much into the uncertain interpretations of knotted tassels, into Lumiya's vague pronouncements, into parallels with his grandfather that might not
even have been there. He knew his destiny was to be a Sith Lord more surely than he knew anything, but it was this final test that left him in agonized turmoil.
What if I'm wrong? What if Lumiya's wrong? What if I don't have to kill anyone at all, and I kill Ben because I couldn't translate a stupid prophecy straight?
The prophecy said: He will immortalize his love.
It said a lot of other things, too, like he'd make a pet. He still didn't have anything fluffy, scaly, or feathered to his name, and it was stretching it to apply that to the faithful Corporal Lekauf who served him as selflessly as his grandfather had served Vader.
Immortalize doesn't have to mean kill.
But he had no idea what else it might mean. This—this was the worst thing about Sith teaching. There weren't just two possible interpretations of anything, but three, four, five . . .
So only the Sith deal in absolutes, do they, Obi-Wan? You told Vader that, or so Lumiya says. You liar. The Sith deal in anything but absolutes, because—