Because life itself was like that. A million choices to be freely made, all of them to be lived with, and requiring the courage of conviction.
Just a clue. How will I know? What will the sign be?
Lumiya didn't know, either, or if she did—he wasn't going to listen. Enough games; enough guessing. This all rested on his judgment.
I'm looking for signs and portents like a Ryn fortune-teller. It has to be more rational than this.
It was.
Ben's comment from the conversation they'd only just finished leapt into his mind.
An officer has to make decisions that cost lives.
It was for the good of the majority, he said. And if Ben could think it, then Jacen had to, as well.
He thought it, activated the security locks on the briefing room doors, sat down in a corner with his head resting on his knees.
When he put his hand to his face, he found it wet with tears.
chapter five
The main barrier to getting the Galactic Alliance to talk sense is Jacen Solo. He leads Chief Omas by the nose and he makes Admiral Niathal worse by encouraging her short-sharp-shock tendencies. Get him out of the way, and things would calm down enough for us to maneuver around Omas. I think I'll have a statesman-to-statesman chat with him . . . privately.
—Dur Gejjen, Corellian Prime Minister, in private discussion GALACTIC ALLIANCE XJ7, IN NEUTRAL SPACE BETWEEN CORELLIA AND
CORUSCANT
Mara wondered if she'd bother to spin Jacen a line about why she needed to take an XJ7. Look, Jacen, it's like this. You've turned into a thug since Lumiya came on the scene, and the witch is trying to kill my son, so how's about I do what I do best, and kill her for all our sakes?
She would have loved to tell him that. But she still didn't know who Lumiya's accomplices were inside the GAG, and Jacen didn't take kindly to doubts about his precious secret police. He wasn't being helpful. He didn't even seem to believe that Mara and Luke had found convincing evidence of Lumiya's GAG connections.
Jacen might have been a gifted Jedi, but he could also be a very human idiot, too. Or at least she'd thought in those more benign terms before the debacle of Gilatter VIII. She'd never imagined that Jacen would leave his parents to die.
Mara tried Leia's comlink again, hopping from frequency to frequency in case she was being tracked. Old habits died hard, and she didn't want Crazy Woman Two, Alema, to get a fix on her—or Leia.
Or . . . maybe she did.
"We can't go on meeting like this," said Leia's voice. She laughed, and that
was pretty remarkable under the circumstances. She didn't have much to laugh about. "Do I have to give you a password?"
"I'll trust you." Mara checked her cockpit display, watching the frequency shift on the monitor in multicolored bars of light. "You okay?"
"For a woman on the run, I'm doing great."
"I don't know where to start."
"Try, Hey, did your son really abandon you to suck vacuum? Because that'd be my first question . . ."
"I'm so sorry, Leia, I really am. But I'm going to put a stop to this. Take Lumiya out of the equation, and I think you'll see a major improvement in Jacen's attitude."
"Is that where you are now?"
"I'm trying to work out how Lumiya moves around. Forget all this lightwhip garbage. I'm going to find her ship and finish what Luke started. They're always vulnerable in transit."
Leia's end of the link went quiet for a few moments. "Want me to play bait? "
"Don't you think you've been through enough lately?"
"I can guarantee that Alema would show up if I asked nicely," Leia said. "And maybe Lumiya wouldn't be far behind."
"Tell you what, why don't I lob in Ben and make certain of it?"
"Mara . . ."
"Sorry. I don't want to expose you to any more risk. But if I can devise a safer way of exploiting the fact that neither of those crazies can keep away from us, I'll do it."
"We're going to need to break this link soon," Leia said.
"Okay. Look, I have to see Jacen sooner or later. Do you want me to put it to him straight? Ask him why he ran when you'd come to save him?"
Mara couldn't think of a single thing Jacen might say that would sound plausible, but she didn't want to make Leia feel any worse than she did. My fault anyway. I defended him when Luke was telling me he was going dark. If I'd seen what was in front of me and acted then, things might be different now.
She had thought that about Palpatine, too. She was spending too much time looking back, and not enough getting on with the here and now.
The past couldn't be changed, just the future.
"What if he tells you," said Leia, "and it's a reason I won't enjoy hearing?"
"Your call." How much worse has it got to get before you accept he's treating you worse than dirt? Mara tried to imagine how she'd feel if Ben issued a warrant for her arrest or left her on a space station venting atmosphere. It would devastate her—but she'd take him back in a heartbeat. No, there was no advice she could give Leia about her wayward son. "But I want to know anyway, seeing as Luke and I were there to help him, too, and wasted our time."
"All I can say is do whatever you feel you must to get Lumiya. Then we'll see about bringing Jacen back into the fold."
"If I find Alema, I'll save her for you."
"I'd like that."
"Thought you might."
"You take care, Mara."
Leia's link went dead. Mara had to assume she and Han were on Corellia,
Take care. Oh, I will. I've got one advantage you haven't, Leia, and that's darkness. I've been that dark. I was trained by a Sith Lord. I can think like them.
At least Leia hadn't made any cracks about Luke not taking the opportunity to finish off Lumiya. Sometimes, when she considered her sister-in-law, Mara regretted her own temper and wished she could learn a little of that steely diplomacy.
Mara turned the XJ7 and checked Ben's transponder again. Still on Coruscant. That didn't guarantee his safety, but at least she could pinpoint him. She zoomed her screen in on the trace, and the coordinates resolved into a grid, and then into neighborhoods and skylanes. Ben was at GAG HQ. She could locate him accurately to within three meters.
He liked the vibroblade she'd given him. She felt bad not telling him it housed a long-range passive transponder, and that it had saved her more than once because she'd used it as a homing beacon, but that was just detail. It was a superb weapon, so it wasn't a lie.
The tagged vibroblade ensured she knew exactly where Ben was at all times now.
He'd never spot it. The GAG thought they had all the best kit, but she had a few devices that could get past them, using older technology, frequencies, and relays they'd never spot. A surveillance system using the most sophisticated technology wasn't looking for devices almost as basic as a code flashed with a piece of broken mirror. Tech could be blind. If they scanned Ben, they'd only find his comlink code, not the signal hiding within it, because they didn't have the active end of the transponder link. She did.
She had one more transponder left, and she was saving that for a rainy day.
Sorry, sweetheart. Had to do it.
She turned her attention back to Lumiya. Now Lumiya was showing up at confrontations with the Confederation. Perhaps everyone was looking in the wrong direction, and Lumiya was working for Corellia.
The last time she'd seen her on the resort satellite, Ben wasn't even around—but Jacen was. Who was Lumiya going after, Ben or Jacen? If Lumiya's presence was making Jacen forget what being a Jedi was all about, then maybe Mara needed to keep tabs on Jacen, too.