"When can we start?"

"It's very simple."

"Yeah," Ben said dubiously.

"No, it is. The principle is simple-it's the practice that's hard.

It might take you years to master it." Jacen motioned him to sit down on the floor. "Come on. Meditation position."

Ben sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes automatically, taking deeper and slower breaths until he reached the stage where the world beyond him seemed distant and he was hyperaware of his own body, even the movement of blood in his veins.

Jacen's voice seemed to be coming from another time and place.

"You're contained. The world can't touch you."

"Yes."

"Now break the sh.e.l.l. Break the container." Jacen's tone was even and soothing. "See the world in its component atoms. See yourself as atoms, too. Find the line where you end and the world begins."

Ben visualized the room around him and the air in it. It became a frozen snowfall of varying density, some particles cl.u.s.tered, some scattered; then he looked into himself, and saw the microscopic unevenness of the surface of his skin, and the overlapping plates of keratin in his hair, and then beyond that to where he was just like the room around him-a snowstorm of molecules. Some of the room was within him as oxygen and dust, and some of him was in the room as fragments of skin and droplets of water.

There was no line. There was no edge that divided Ben Skywalker from the room, or from Coruscant, or from the galaxy. He merged with it all, and it merged with him. There was nothing solid: just a warm, drifting sea of molecules, some of which a.s.sembled loosely and long enough to be Ben Skywalker.

"So you can do it . . ."

Jacen's voice drifted from a long way away. Ben suddenly felt as if he were dissolving and would never be whole again. Panic gripped him. He jerked his eyes open with a ma.s.sive effort like tearing open rock with his bare hands, an effort so immense that he found himself gasping for air.

"Oh. . .wow.

"Now," Jacen said softly, "you see why practice is necessary. But full marks for technique."

"How does that hide me?"

"You blend with the universe. Think of it as Force camouflage. The trick is to become so comfortable with it that you can slip into this state of being . . . dissolved, yet still carry on functioning, fully aware."

Ben couldn't even manage another wow. He was absolutely determined to master the technique, and at the same time scared by it because it felt like a seductive, comfortable death. He was afraid he might sink so deeply into it that he'd never get out again.

It was as close as he'd ever come to both knowing and feeling what the Force was. He felt he'd never be the same again, or see the world in quite the same way.

Wow.

If only all his Force knowledge had manifested itself that fast and that vividly.

"You need to practice regularly," said Jacen.

Ben nodded, worried about looking too enthusiastic. It was more than just a useful way to evade his father now. It was worth pursuing in its own right, for the sheer sensation of it.

"I will," he said. The moment of ecstatic revelation had pa.s.sed, and he felt oddly chilled. "Any orders for me? Or am I just going to be listening to comlinks now?"

"Oh, I have a mission for you."

"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.

"a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 a.s.sa.s.sination like that. The Corellians need to know we can reach out and take them, too.

Sober them up a bit. Way too c.o.c.ky."

"Isn't that what we're doing, though? How is our a.s.sa.s.sination 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated, 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 a.s.sa.s.sination was his mother, once the Emperor's Hands, the best a.s.sa.s.sin 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 ta.s.sels, into Lumiya's vague p.r.o.nouncements, 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- 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 s.p.a.cE 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 circ.u.mstances. She didn't have much to laugh about. "Do I have to give you a pa.s.sword?"

"I'll trust you." Mara checked her c.o.c.kpit 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 att.i.tude."