"I'll be along in a minute."

Shevu waited for a moment and then came to sit down with him. Ben suspected that if he'd been a grown man, Shevu might have been harsher, but he thought Ben was still a kid, too young to be on this kind of mission whether he was a Jedi or not. In many ways, Shevu was right. But n.o.body was ever old enough to lose a friend and not feel it cutting through to the center of his chest. If Ben ever got that old, he didn't want to carry on.

"We don't lose many troopers in special forces. It makes it harder when we do, I think. It's hard for me, anyway."

Ben gambled on whether to speak or not. He took a breath and waited to feel everything around him shatter.

"He didn't have to die, sir." Once he heard his own voice, Ben just felt like he couldn't breathe, nothing worse. "He could have taken off.

We could have run for it, or even been captured, and the job would still have been done."

"Ben . . . our orders were to make it look like a Corellian schism, and not to get caught or leave a trail. Can't have Jedi exposed as a.s.sa.s.sins, especially not you. We had to get you out of there."

"It didn't have to be me. Any trooper could have done the job. I wanted to do my duty, but if it hadn't been me, if Jori hadn't felt he had to protect my ident.i.ty, he'd be alive."

"Ben, what do you think would have happened to him if he'd been taken back to Corellia?" Shevu lowered his voice. "You saw what we do here to prisoners. You think worse than that can't happen in Coronet?"

"So what if I had been caught? My dad would have been humiliated?

So what? Jori's life for Dad being upset?"

"I could give you a list of reasons why having Corellia think their own kind did it helps the GA. But you don't want to hear that right now."

Shevu stood up and beckoned to Ben to follow. He meant it. "There are anti-Gejjen factions claiming responsibility, so the mission worked fine- strategically. Now go home and take a couple of days off. If you can't stand being around your folks, or . . . or around Colonel Solo, come over to my place. My girlfriend won't mind."

It was the first time Ben had heard Shevu hint that being around Jacen wasn't necessarily the best thing for him. Ben didn't care about Jacen right then, but the rational bit of his mind that wasn't drowning in shocked grief made a note of it.

"Thanks."

"Now I've got to tell his parents. I'll have to come up with a really good cover story, and thank providence that there's no footage of him splashed all over the news right now, because that'd be a really lousy way to find out your son was dead."

Shevu sounded beaten. He was probably pretty close to Lekauf, but he'd never said. Ben had learned a lesson about being an officer today, and it was that lives were to be spent in pursuit of an objective; it might have seemed obvious, but when you worked alongside the people who might lose their loved ones because of your decisions, it acquired a whole new meaning.

"I don't think I'll ever stop feeling guilty about this," Ben said, relieved that he had so far managed not to burst into tears.

"Me neither," said Shevu. "Because it was supposed to be me who blew the ship if things went wrong."

"We never planned that-"

"You didn't. We did. Need to know, and all that." Shevu stopped a pa.s.sing ground crew speeder and told the driver to get Ben back to HQ.

"Wash that stuff out of your hair and go home."

An hour later, Ben found himself staring at his familiar reflection in the HQ refreshers, toweling his hair and wondering if Jacen had set him up.

I didn't have to do the job. Any one of us could have pa.s.sed unnoticed at a s.p.a.ceport.

But it was hindsight. Jacen had tasked him to do it before anyone knew where the meeting would take place. Ben still felt something was wrong, but couldn't pin it down.

He'd just lost his buddy. Maybe that made you think crazy things.

When he left the HQ building and walked out into the late-afternoon sun, completely disoriented by the shifts in planetary time over the last forty-eight hours, he lowered his head and just walked aimlessly, hands in pockets.

Suddenly he felt someone's hand on his shoulder. He almost shrieked. He'd shut out everything around him. Then he found he was staring into his mother's face, and something was terribly wrong.

"Mom! Who hit you?"

"Forget that, Ben." She hugged him to her, a really desperate and crushing embrace. "I've got some questions and I will absolutely not be stalled this time." She had hold of his shoulders, eyes scanning his face as if she was looking for injury. "This is between you and me, I swear, not your father."

They ended up in a tapcaf in the Osarian quarter. The table was greasy and the elbows of Ben's jacket stuck to it every time he leaned on them, but n.o.body knew them here. Even if the food had been appetizing and not searingly hot, Ben wasn't hungry.

Mara lowered her voice. "I want to know why you've been to Vulpter."

Ben was stunned. How could she possibly know? Who'd talked? It was completely cla.s.sified. Most of the GAG hadn't even been briefed on it.

"I haven't."

"You can stop the game. I know where you've been, and I have a horrible feeling I know why. The whole planet's seen the news."

Mara just stared at him, not blinking, suddenly not his mom at all.

He was supposed to deny everything. He stared back, silent.

"I could ask Jacen, sweetheart, but I'm not sure I could believe him if he told me what the time was."

"You know I can't talk about my work, Mom."

"Oh, I know. I've never hidden my past from you, so I know exactly what your work entails. I can talk to you like a grown-up, Ben, because once you do the kind of job you're doing, you're not a kid any longer. Do we understand each other?"

Ben thought of Jori Lekauf and felt his stomach starting to knot and shake. He desperately wanted to blurt out that his buddy had died and that he wanted to roll time back to before he'd fallen into this mess, and that-that- "Mom . . ." He couldn't get it out. She put her hand on his and squeezed. "Mom, if I tell you, will you tell me who hit you?"

"Okay, it was Lumiya. I caught her, but she got away. I gave her a good hiding, and she won't get away next time. Now-your turn."

Ben took a deep breath. This was either going to make everything better, or be the start of something disastrous. He couldn't tell: all his Force impressions had deserted him.

"I did it, Mom."

"Involved ... or did it?"

Ben's mouth took over without his permission. "Folding-stock Karpaki, frangible round."

Mara actually sat back in her chair and her left hand moved as if she was about to put it to her mouth. Her right hand was still clamped tight on his.

"Okay," she said.

"Lekauf was killed, Mom." Ben couldn't remember if she knew Lekauf or not. It didn't matter. He needed to say his name and tell someone.

"Jori got killed-he got killed to save my skin."

Mara busied herself sipping from the cup in front of her. Osarians liked very strongly scented herbs, and Ben knew he'd never be able to smell that aroma again without being dragged back to this awful moment.

"Why did you do it, Ben?"

"Orders. I was the best person to do it."

"Your whole company is suddenly short of snipers? Whose orders?"

"Jacen."

Mara was doing a reasonable job of not reacting, but Ben wasn't fooled. She was furious. He could see it in the whiteness of her skin, and the contrast with the yellowing bruise around her eye made it even more noticeable.

"Okay, sweetheart," she said. "Let's not tell your dad, because he'll rip Jacen's head off in the mood he's in at the moment. Can you face coming home?"

"I don't think I can sit and have dinner and not talk about this to him."

"Okay, so where are you planning on going?"

"Home. Jacen's apartment." Ben could see she wasn't keen on the idea. "Or Captain Shevu's place."

"Wherever you feel safest, Ben. I won't force you to come back with me as long as you swear you'll come to me the second you have problems, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'm sorry about your friend. I really am."

"n.o.body's ever going to know how brave he was."

"I know."

"Are you angry with me? Stupid question. You must be."

"How can I be, after what I used to do?" She gripped both his hands as if she was afraid he'd run away. "This is what we made you, isn't it?

We wanted you to be like us. We wanted you to be a Jedi and do your duty . . .".

Mara was quiet for a while, gazing out the window onto the sky-lane packed with traffic and clearly thinking hard.

"You still haven't told me how you knew, Mom."

She jerked back to the conversation, blinking. "No. I haven't. But I know, and I'm the only one who does. And I also know you can hide in the Force like Jacen does, and it scares me because the first time I felt it I thought you'd been killed. Please, Ben, don't hide from me. Ever."

"I wasn't, Mom. I was just trying it out."

"Okay."

"Am I going to feel bad about. . . you know, the other guy? 'Cos right now I don't care."

"I didn't," she said, seeming to understand he meant Gejjen. "Not until lately, and then it didn't feel like guilt. Just . . . not quite understanding why I did it, because being what I was didn't explain it all to me."

"I'd better go."

"You'll be okay. I'll always be there, remember. Call me."

Ben leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. He loved her so much right then; what other mom could take news like that, horrific news, and still be there for him? He leaned farther and whispered in her ear.

"He was having a secret meeting at the port with Omas. To discuss a cease-fire."

When Ben straightened up, she smiled, but there was a real glint in her eye that said she was anything but happy.

"Thank you," she said. "I love you, Ben. Call me, okay?"

"Love you, too, Mom."

Ben couldn't stand it any longer. He walked out of the tapcaf and spent the next couple of hours wandering around, staring in shop windows and not seeing anything, before he got an air taxi back to Jacen's apartment and shut himself in his room.

It was going to take a long time to make sense of this. He slipped the vibroblade under his pillow, reluctant to let it sit as far away as his desk, and wondered what Captain Shevu was telling Jori Lekauf's family.

chapter twelve.

Ori'buyce, kih'kovid.

All helmet, no head.

-Mandalorian insult for someone with an overdeveloped sense of authority REPUBLICA HOUSE, CORUSCANT:.

0001 HOURS, GALACTIC STANDARD TIME.

Jacen Solo, in the formal uniform of a colonel of the Galactic Alliance Guard, stood outside the lobby of the Republica building flanked by Sergeant Wirut and Trooper Limm.

It was a real shame about Lekauf. He was a great loss. Ben had done well, but he should have been back at work right away. Jacen planned to talk to Shevu later about sending Ben on leave without clearing it with him first.

"You sure this is going to be enough, sir?" asked Wirut. "Just the three of us?"

Jacen smoothed his black gloves down over his fingers. It was one minute past midnight, and that made what he was about to do thoroughly legal, justified, and overdue.

"I don't think Chief Omas has a platoon up there, somehow."

Wirut didn't reply. Jacen was the first to admit that going to arrest the elected head of the most powerful organization in the galaxy with a couple of troopers was low-key, but he saw no point flooding the area with an entire company. Omas wouldn't put up a fight. If he did, one Jedi and two armed troopers were ample to deal with it.

Jacen opened the comlink to Niathal.

"We're in position now," he said. "We're going in."