Let's talk elsewhere."

"Ben . . ."

"What about all the other people she killed and had killed? She's not worth your anguish, Dad. Save your tears for Mom, 'cos I will."

Luke managed to hang on for a few more minutes. When he couldn't stand it any longer, he strode off to his cabin, shut the hatch, and sobbed and raged in private until he was spent. He'd thought he was bearing up well, holding in all those tears, and then something like Lumiya added a straw to the scales and the floodgates opened. He hated her for that. He'd wanted to weep for Mara, his grief untainted by anything connected with the evil that had led to her death. He didn't want Lumiya intruding in this moment, and yet somehow she had.

Whoever had killed Mara was still around. He could focus on bringing them to justice, and that meant he had something else to hang on to while he struggled with grief.

But Lumiya had done it again.

She'd fooled him one last time, manipulated him one last time, thwarted him one last time, and it broke something deep, deep inside him.

chapter twenty-four.

Message to: Hapan Meet Ops Originating station: Terephon Unregistered and unidentified ship notified to us by Jedi Master Skywalker has been removed without authorization from Tu'ana City. Please advise Master Skywalker that we regret this act of theft while the vessel was in our jurisdiction, and will meet any claim for compensation.

MANDALMOTORS LANDING STRIP, KELDABE, MANDALORE.

Boba Fett meshed his fingers to push his gloves back tight on his hands, and looked up at the open c.o.c.kpit of the Bes'uliik. Under his visor, he allowed himself an intensely private, broad grin.

Beviin applauded, laughing. "Mando boys on tour! Come on, Bob'ika, take that jet pack off before you get in or you'll have a nasty involuntary ejection at alt.i.tude . . ."

Spirits were high. Fett hadn't led a Mandalorian strike force since the vongese war, as far as he could recall. There might have been others, but that was the big one, the one that counted.

There were cheers of "Oya manda!" as Bes'uliik prototype fighters were rolled out from the hangar. People were taking holorecordings and pointing out the finer points of the airframe to their kids. The mood around Fett felt like a heady blend of nostalgia and optimism for the future, which was perhaps inappropriate considering that they were about to violate Murkhana sovereign territory-only temporarily, of course-and bomb a couple of its factory complexes into Hutt s.p.a.ce.

It was all being done considerately. He'd made a point of sending a warning to factory staff and residents in the likely blast zone to evacuate well in advance. It wasn't as if the Mando flight was sneaking in and hammering them without decent notice. Mando'ade weren't savages, after all. Well, not recently . . . and only to vongese, if they were.

Besides, Fett wanted decent HNE coverage of the new fighter in action. It was worth an armored division in terms of deterrent. There was nothing sloppier than finishing an engagement before the media had a chance to set up and record it.

Dad would have loved this.

Fett was due to be the last pilot to embark, so he watched the other pilots getting into their c.o.c.kpits. Beviin had been looking forward to this like a kid before a birthday. Medrit lifted up their grandchildren, Shalk and Briila, so the kids could slap their handprints on the fuselage in paint. It was a discreet light gray, although Shalk insisted a good verdyc blood-red shade would have been heaps and heaps better.

"Ba'buir," called Mirta. "Hey, hang on! Pare sol!"

Fett turned. Mirta was running across the field, datapad clutched in her hand, and Orade ran with her. Either she thought Ba'buir was so senile that he wasn't capable of returning alive from a simple bombing raid in the hardest fighter on the market, or she wanted to do something unforgivably sentimental. He braced for mild embarra.s.sment.

But she didn't look like she was about to have a sentimental moment. She looked-distraught.

Fett automatically did a quick scan around the crowd to make sure everyone whose survival mattered to him was still there and in one piece.

Mirta was clearly bearing bad news that couldn't wait.

Ah well. It happens.

"Ba'buir," she panted. "I want you to be really calm about this."

Fett said nothing, and just pointed to his visor.

"I'm not sure how to tell you this." She brandished the datapad as if she wanted to show she had evidence, and that she wasn't kidding.

"It's . . . I don't know . . ."

"Spit it out."

"You know I started going through the Phaeda stuff?"

"Yeah."

"I did a search of all the archive material for names like Resada and Rezoda"

Fett could see he was going to have to drag it out of her a grunt at a time. "Yeah."

"Rezodar, gangster. Dead gangster, in fact. Died around thirty-eight years ago. That's the name stored in the heart-of-fire."

Fett noted Orade looking at Mirta as if he was more worried about her than about Fett's wrath for once. "That's going to be a significant date, I a.s.sume."

"It is. I found he had an outstanding estate, which is what Phaeda calls leaving stuff of value without a will or anyone to claim it. The state can't claim it, so they store it. The state lawyer's really annoyed about still having to store stuff, and he says if we want to file a claim, he'll be a happier man. It'll take some time."

Fett wasn't sure that news of a very dead sc.u.mbag's leavings was worth interrupting his Bes'uliik moment. But Mirta wasn't the drama-queen kind. This had to be something about Sintas's death that would make him very, very focused. She'd worked out that he'd been touchy-and then some- about slights to Sintas, even if he had left her.

"Mirta," Fett said firmly. He rarely used her name. "Just tell me the seriously bad bit."

She handed him the datapad. The screen was already set to show images of what was stored in Rezodar's lockup, all numbered by the inheritance court division. Fett thumbed through them.

"Just look for the carbonite slab, Ba'buir."

Fett didn't like the sound of that.

When he got to it, he couldn't quite make out the contours, so he magnified the image.

Oh, fierfek . . .

He wanted to blurt out something, but no sound came anyway, and n.o.body was any the wiser with a man in a helmet. His legs threatened to give way. He handed the datapad back to her, taking a deep, slow breath to try to control the tremor in his guts.

"What do you need from me to get this released?" Fett was sure his voice was shaking. "Credits? Signature?"

"Is that it?" Mirta demanded.

"Just tell me." It can't be true. It can't be.

"I can do it myself." She looked hurt, which wasn't easy for a hard-faced girl like that. "A thousand credits."

"I'll pay." Fett could hardly believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, all in the voice of a calm stranger. "She was-she's my ex-wife, after all."

Sintas was alive.

Sintas Vel, his first and only wife, was alive, provided nothing had gone wrong with the carbonite process.

She was going to have quite a bit of catching up to do with the galaxy-and her shattered family.

Ailyn, what can I say?

"Okay" Mirta was all sour grit again. "Play the hard man in front of your burc'yase, but I know you by now."

Fett had decided to visit the refresher before the sortie. Now was a very good time. "I bet you do."

He strode off, same as ever, because that was what everyone expected, then shut the refresher doors and leaned his back against the wall. He slid all the way down it and squatted there, head in his hands, shaking.

Sintas was alive.

He waited a few minutes, then got to his feet and walked out onto the landing strip to join his Bes'uliik as if nothing had happened.

CAPTAIN'S DAY CABIN, SSD ANAKIN SOLO.

I see it now. I know what I loved most and what had to be killed.

Jacen had laid on his bunk for hours, trying to slot the last piece into the puzzle that tormented him. It was the prophecy. It didn't fit.

He will immortalize his love.

It was only when Jacen considered that he might not refer to himself that he started down a complex path that showed the prophecy in its multifaceted complexity. It didn't just have one meaning: it had many.

And this is why I'm now Lord of the Sith.

There'd been no pyrotechnics, and no cataclysmic shift in the Force; and yet, from where he stood now, Jacen looked back and saw a landscape that had changed utterly. It had changed footstep by footstep, act by act, death by death, a change so gradual and incremental that he hardly noticed its pa.s.sage until- Until now.

He wasn't the same Jacen Solo who was shocked when Lumiya had told him he was destined to be a Sith Lord.

If he looked back far enough, Jacen saw its beginnings in Vergere's oddly concerned avian eyes as he suffered physical torment that had changed him forever, showing him that there was nothing he couldn't endure and pa.s.s beyond if his will wanted it.

And he'd killed not a person he loved, but something precious whose absence he was going to find very hard to handle. It was already searing a hole in him. It had mattered. And it still had the appearance of being alive, but it was walking dead.

What he'd loved and yet killed was Ben's admiration and devotion to him. Jacen had grown to love that adulation-and he had loved robbing Luke of the role of adored father and mentor.

He will immortalize his love . . . where immortalize means "dead."

And Ben-he knew Ben well enough to realize that he would never rest until his beloved mother's killer was caught, and that she would always be that perfect icon of beauty and courage to him.

Ben's love's immortal now. It'll last as long as he lives, unchanging, like his vision of Mara. And-like the hatred and vengeance he'll feel for me when he learns what I did. That'll live forever, too.

Jacen got up and looked at his reflection in the mirror on the bulkhead again. He'd studied it as if looking for changing symptoms, hour by hour, to see if his Sith status were manifesting itself in his flesh.

He didn't look any different.

But he kept seeing Ben's face as he walked up to the boy in that tunnel and found him keeping vigil over his dead mother. His eyes . . .

they knew something was waiting to be revealed, something that would rip him apart.

Mara made Ben start wondering why she didn't become one with the Force. Sooner or later, he'll find out. You played your part in my destiny, Mara.

And when Ben finally found out that it was Jacen who'd killed her, he'd hate him more than he could even begin to imagine. Jacen had injected a slow poison into Ben's love for him, as surely as he'd poisoned his mother, and seeded a terrible and wonderful hatred. A Sith needed that magnificent well of loathing to achieve greatness. Ben would eventually become greater than his Jedi father could ever be.

In the meantime, Jacen's war continued, now on the wider political stage as well as in the GAG.

He picked up the black GAG helmet that he rarely wore, rotated it between his fingers, and felt an odd queasiness in his gut as he put it on. It was standard GAG trooper issue, flared jaw section with a dispersal-gas-proof filter, the visor a single shallow V-band of toughened duraplast, just a basic tool of the job. It wasn't much different from the functional helmet troops had worn for decades.

But I don't need this, do I?

He stood in front of the polished durasteel bulkhead. The black outline in front of him was smeared and hazy, a mere impressionist suggestion of what he was. He could hardly look. He was everything his enemies said he was. He was embarra.s.sed; yes, the embarra.s.sment overshadowed any guilt.

He had killed, and killed again, and killed Mara Jade Skywalker, who was both family and friend. Friends . . . now he had none left except Tenel Ka and Allana, and they would come to hate him when the truth was known.

I've sunk as low as I can, in the eyes of ordinary people.

But now the only direction is . . . up.

Jacen thought of a brief conversation with one of the GAG troops, a former police officer from the Coruscant Security Force. Most murders, the officer had said, were committed by family and close friends. The random killing of strangers was relatively rare, even in the seediest quarters of the violent, lawless lower levels.

I'm not so unusual, then.

Jacen took a breath and stepped two strides sideways. He was now looking into the mirror set into the bulkhead of his day cabin again; crystal clear, sharp, merciless. He gazed at an image of all-encompa.s.sing black. He knew what people said behind his back: that he was trying to emulate Vader.

So? I'm proud of my grandfather, but not blind to the weaknesses that brought him down.

But that was wounded pride speaking. I have to be beyond that now.

He had to be beyond fear of small consciences and even beyond the hatred that would make Ben Skywalker a strong, worthy, and terrifying successor to the t.i.tle of Dark Lord.

But that would be years in the future. Now was the time for a man who'd once been Jacen Solo to shoulder that responsibility for the galaxy's sake.

Jacen took off the helmet, looked into his own eyes, and didn't flinch.

"Caedus," he said. "My name is Darth Caedus."