"Tell me I don't have to wear makeup to cover my freckles . . ."
Ben's mind was a couple of hours ahead, thinking of the few hours' sleep he could get on the flight. He could study the layout of the spaceport on his datapad. It was all going to go fine, he told himself. "So the second vessel's for backup in case he diverts?"
"Partly. And partly so we have something incriminating to abandon on Vulpter. Read the label, dye your hair, and report to the landing strip at twenty-two thirty. I'll see you there."
Shevu started to walk away. Ben jumped to his feet.
"Sir, what's going to be incriminating?"
The captain always seemed old to Ben, but he was younger than Jacen; twenty-eight, maybe. He looked at Ben with that mix of sadness and patience that Ben had seen on his dad's face too often.
"I think anyone would believe Corellians had neutralized Gejjen, given the right vessel abandoned at the port. You now . . . Corellian-registered, Corellian trace for forensics . . . you can do a Corellian accent, can't you? If push comes to shove and you need to speak, that is.
There have to be plenty of Corellians with a grudge against him, knowing their politics."
Ben thought of Uncle Han's accent, or what was left of it. He sounded more Coruscanti these days. "Can do. But how do we know we won't fall over real Corellians trying to stop Gejjen doing a deal with the enemy?"
"That," said Shevu, "would be unbelievably hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Assuming he has a deal to put on the table anyway."
I'm going to kill someone, and in twenty-four hours I'll be back here as if nothing's happened.
"Any reason why I can't take my vibroblade?" Ben fished it from his pocket and held it out to Shevu. "My mom gave it to me and . . . well, you know."
"You can take whatever works for you, as long as you don't leave or carry evidence that links the hit to us." Shevu examined the blade.
"Yeah, I understand." He pulled down the neck of his shirt a little to reveal a gold chain. "No ID, of course, but my girlfriend gave it to me, and I never go on patrol without it."
It helped to know everyone got edgy before a mission and needed a little reminder of their loved ones. Shevu got halfway to the doors before he turned around and seemed to be working up to saying something.
"I realize your father might find it hard to accept what you do, Ben, but I'm proud of you," he said. "Still, if I had a son, I wouldn't be letting him do this kind of thing until he was an adult. It's not as if we haven't got enough trained men to do it. But . . . well, Colonel Solo has his reasons, I'm sure."
Ben sat thinking over that statement for a while, and realized that Shevu had said father—not parents. Maybe he thought that his mother would understand a job like this. Ben felt he was hanging on to the relationship with his family by his fingertips, but there had been no more fights, and he didn't feel quite so angry about having to compromise. Maybe that was really what growing up was about—an increasing distance from parents, knowing that there would always be tomorrow and that he didn't have to get what he wanted right now, and starting to understand the things they'd been through when they were younger.
I wouldn't be letting him do this kind of thing until he was an adult.
But his father had done this kind of thing, more or less. He'd just been a little older, that was all. This was no different from blowing up the Death Star, and plenty of ordinary people just doing their jobs had died when Luke Skywalker had done that. Ben was removing a single man—no bystanders.
He'd remind Dad of that if it ever came out and he had to defend his decision. Dad would probably say Jacen made him do it.
Ben stood in the refresher with the dye worked into lather on his head, and
caught sight of himself in a mirror. He felt ridiculous. The foam looked mauve, and he wondered if something had gone horribly wrong.
When he rinsed it off, though, his hair was brown, just brown, and he was looking at a stranger.
Good.
He needed to be someone else for all kinds of reasons.
When his hair had dried, he took out the civilian clothes Lekauf had left for him—all Corellian style, all Corellian labels. This is in case I get caught. The thought chilled Ben, but it was standard procedure. Nobody had spoken to him about what would happen if he did get caught, and what interrogation might be like, but he could guess. They probably didn't know what advice to give a Jedi about resisting interrogation anyway.
Maybe they thought he could just nudge a mind here and a thought there, and walk out of the cell.
Maybe he could.
Ben checked himself in the mirror a few times, trying to see himself as a stranger might, and was satisfied that he looked unlike Ben Skywalker, and disturbingly like a Corellian boy a little older than he was, but blond—Barit Saiy.
He hadn't seen Saiy since they'd rounded him up with the other Corellians. After that, Ben had stopped asking what happened, but he still wondered silently.
He squatted down and placed his boots in the locker. Then he counted the various pieces of kit. Daily pair, battered raid pair for good luck—but no parade-best pair.
He couldn't imagine where they'd gone. No, actually, he could: Lekauf. Ben would find them full of something unmentionable just before kit inspection. Or painted bright pink.
"Jori, I'm going to think up something special for you," he said aloud, and grinned, wanting the diversion.
It was nice to be one of the boys. Ben slipped his datapad into his pocket, wondered where he was going to leave it for safekeeping, and went to pick up the Karpaki and some ammo packs from the armory.
It was just a job, and he had to do it.
THE SKYWALKERS' APARTMENT, CORUSCANT
Luke woke in a heart-pounding panic and reached out toward a hooded shape at the foot of the bed, knowing he was dreaming but unable to stop himself from reacting to the specter that dissolved as he became fully awake.
He hadn't had the dream of the menacing figure in the hooded cloak for a while. Now it was back. It was four in the morning, and Mara still hadn't come home.
Usually, the Force dream vanished and just left him with that sick jolt in his gut as if he'd seen a speeder crash. But this was different; as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, he had a sense of someone still being in the room, and he was sure he wasn't asleep. He checked the chrono to make certain he wasn't still mired in the nightmare.
0410 hours.
He wasn't.
Luke reached for his lightsaber, which he'd been keeping on the nightstand lately, and made a cautious inspection of all the rooms. He couldn't sense flesh and blood anywhere, but he could detect something.
The presence was so close now that he could almost feel breath on the back on his neck.
And then he sensed . . . amusement.
The presence—now at the door to the apartment, he was sure—was like a cloud of billowing smoke in his mind. He could almost see it. As he felt it becoming more solid, more real, more here, it suddenly lit up as if a silent explosion had lifted it in a ball of soaring flame.
Lumiya.
Lumiya.
Luke rushed to the front doors, at the same time concentrating hard on using the Force to jam the two sets of doors in the corridor outside that stood between the apartment and the lifts. He'd trap her. She'd lied. Mara was right. All that nonsense on the resort satellite, all that I-mean-you-no- harm was just a feint, mocking his indecision—
The doors parted with a gasp of air and Luke sprang into the corridor with his lightsaber raised. One set of doors was wedged open with something, trying repeatedly to close and making little mechanical groans each time the inner edges hit the obstruction and bounced back a few centimeters. There was no sign of Lumiya.