Legacy Of The Force_ Bloodlines Part 12

"If that's what you want."

"I'll arrange a safe house for you." This wasn't the place to carry on a conversation in any detail. "And I'll want to discuss what my further instruction might consist of."

"Speed will be important," Lumiya said.

Oh, I know how fast events are moving. "Why?"

"I feel what you can feel-that we're on the brink of another war, and there are some wars from which people might never recover."

"I don't think there's ever been a time in our recorded history when there wasn't a war going on somewhere."

"All the more reason for changing the future, then."

Jacen took her around as much of the rest of the Temple as he could access with a visitor, but no Jedi reacted to her. She didn't betray a single emotion that indicated any agenda beyond what she claimed she had: to help him fulfill his destiny as the supreme Sith Lord.

He checked his chrono. A wild idea occurred to him, and he was getting used to listening to those as suggestions from the Force. The scheduled high council meeting would be ending soon.

All his study in a hundred different ways of harnessing the Force had come to a single point of fruition now. The only gaps in his knowledge of the Force were those of the Sith.

Sith techniques are just another weapon.

And they weren't inherently good or evil: they just existed, like a blaster, and you could just as easily use a blaster to murder as to defend. It all depended on who held it, and who stood within its range.

That much he knew.

"All right. How do I change the future for the better?"

"The next few weeks will determine what more you need to learn," said Lumiya.

"Did you arrange for that bombing to happen?"

Lumiya laughed, one of those little indignant snorts of disbelief.

"I don't need to create chaos, Jacen," she said quietly. "People are only too willing to do it for themselves. No, I had nothing to do with that."

He checked his chrono again. Yes, he had to do it now. It was time for her final test of sincerity.

"Let's take a walk," he said.

He led her through the corridors to the main lobby through which the pa.s.sages to the high council chamber pa.s.sed. Lumiya should have been able to detect Luke's presence, but it was essential that Luke not detect hers. Jacen concentrated on forming a Force illusion around her, not to make her appear as anyone else but to simply erase her presence as a Sith, in case her own subterfuge wasn't powerful enough to deceive Luke.

You're insane, he told himself. What if you're wrong? What if Luke can sense her? Who's going to help you attain full Sith knowledge if Lumiya is killed or imprisoned?

Jacen had thought of this test of Lumiya's intentions and so it was meant to be. He had to get used to that. He had to trust his reactions not as impulses to be doubted, but as decisions.

Steady. Trust yourself.

Jacen cloaked Lumiya in a Force illusion and projected his own unconcerned calm as Luke approached. It was an exhausting maneuver, nothing beyond him when dealing with ordinary people, but something that took all his strength when deceiving a Jedi Master of Luke's stature.

Luke strode toward them and glanced back over his shoulder a couple of times as if someone were following him. He acknowledged Jacen stiffly and paid Lumiya no more than polite attention, as if his mind was more on what was down the corridor.

Jacen strained to hold the Force illusion steady, like a ball of heat within his chest that he had to balance to keep it from touching his rib cage. That was exactly how it felt. And Lumiya . . . Lumiya, somehow nestled in miniature within that ball of heat, felt not vengeful or trying to disguise her intentions, but genuinely worried about being discovered before her work was complete.

Luke seemed baffled.

Suddenly Jacen realized that it wasn't anything in the office at the end of the corridor that was distracting Luke: he could sense something amiss and wasn't sure where it was coming from.

Luke was sensing Lumiya, but very faintly. Jacen knew it.

"Good morning, Uncle."

"h.e.l.lo, Jacen." Luke's gaze rested briefly on Lumiya, but he concentrated on Jacen.

"Morning, ma'am. Where's Ben?"

"Admiral Niathal is showing him around the Fleet Ops center." Jacen knew Luke was in a hurry to see Omas, the way he always was after a council meeting. "Have you time for a caf?"

Luke shook his head, as Jacen expected. "Sorry. Perhaps later." He was making an effort to disguise his uneasiness with Jacen in front of a stranger. He nodded politely at Lumiya, and then glanced briefly behind him again. "Ma'am."

They watched him go. Eventually Lumiya let out a breath.

"You didn't have to do that."

Jacen kept the Force cover in place. "I think I did."

"My issues with Luke Skywalker are long over, Jacen."

"Really?"

"Yes. If I wanted to get to him, I wouldn't need you as a route. Please understand what's at stake here. This is beyond our own little personal grievances." She picked up her folio case. "I should go now."

He felt a surge of real anger in her. He believed her. Events were unfolding as they were because it was his destiny. He grew more accepting of it by the hour.

"I'll see you out," he said.

They walked back through the main entrance and paused halfway down the promenade to look back at the Temple. "So how does it feel to have walked in your enemy's camp?"

"I don't see Jedi as the enemy now," said Lumiya. "That's far too simplistic."

"What, then?"

"They're people with only half the picture who believe they have all the facts. It makes their decisions flawed."

"It's hard to want to see the rest of that picture."

"You already do."

He watched Lumiya walk away toward the taxi pad until he could no longer see her; only sense her. He was so engrossed in exploring the ripples she left in the Force and searching them for signs that he was startled by what touched his mind then, almost as if someone had tapped him on the shoulder.

He felt his mother. She was in trouble.

His future as a Sith Lord was very easy to lay aside for a moment while he reached out to find her.

CORELLIAN QUARTER, GALACTIC CITY, CORUSCANT.

I should have told Jacen where I was going.

Ben hadn't exactly lied to Jacen: he really had visited the Fleet Command Center, and Admiral Niathal really had showed him around the ops rooms. It just hadn't taken as long as he had expected. And now he was still desperately curious about the Corellians who lived on Coruscant and who were now quite possibly what Niathal called the enemy within.

Ben was having trouble working out what was truly Coruscanti on a world of a thousand species. But they were at war with other humans. What was them? What was us? How could Coruscant be both a separate world and the embodiment of the galaxy, all of it?

Maybe that was the problem.

Ben found himself in one of the Corellian neighborhoods near the heart of Galactic City, wandering along the catwalks among shops and homes and businesses. He was looking for an engineering workshop called Saiy's, owned by Barit's family. This looked like any other neighborhood: the names on the stores didn't look any different from those on the rest of Coruscant. The people looked like him. The more he saw of nonhuman species, the more Ben was intrigued by the ease with which beings could fight among themselves. It was as if the small differences mattered more than the really big ones-like you had to recognize something before you could hate it properly.

No wonder Jacen wanted to bring a bit of order to the galaxy.

Jedi weren't exactly invisible, but there was something about wearing a brown robe that gave you a certain neutrality, as Jacen called it. Ben ambled along the catwalks, taking in the detail; and although people glanced at him with vague curiosity, n.o.body bothered him.

Maybe they're seeing a kid and not a Jedi.

Ben was pa.s.sing in front of a small grocery store when he heard the distinctive thrum of a large vessel behind him. He looked back to see a Coruscant Security Force a.s.sault ship, the kind the police used for patrols, making slow progress down the skylane with its side hatches open. Maybe the officers were looking for someone. But then he heard a booming voice from the vessel's public address system.

". . . do not use your water supply." The vessel was almost level with him now and the disembodied voice filled the narrow skylane, reverberating off the walls of buildings. "I repeat, contamination has been found in the water supply, and as a precaution all water has been cut off. Do not use your supply, because water standing in the pipes may be contaminated . . . please listen to your news station for updates .. ."

The ship pa.s.sed, repeating its emergency message as it advanced, and Ben saw four blue-uniformed CSF officers standing inside the crew bay, one with a voice projector clutched in his hand.

"Contaminated with what?" said Ben. But he was talking to himself. People had come out of their homes and businesses to stand on the walkway and stare after the a.s.sault ship. One woman came out of a tapcaf with a holonews receiver and set it on one of the tables outside, and customers crowded around. Ben paused to watch.

The news channel was running a live report from someone at one of the water company's pumping stations. Problems with utilities were rare on Coruscant, but it still seemed to Ben like a lot of fuss for a routine problem. Then he heard the reporter use the word sabotage.

"What's he saying?" Ben asked, trying to peer between the customers for a better look.

"Someone put toxic chemicals in the water supply," said the tapcaf woman. "They've had to shut down ten pumping stations, and that means half of central Galactic City hasn't got any water." She slapped a cleaning cloth down on the table, clearly angry. "Which means I have to shut the 'caf until they sort it out."

"If it's sabotage, you know who'll get the blame," said a man clutching a small boy by the hand. "Us."

"Could be anybody."

"Disgruntled water employee," the tapcaf woman muttered.

"Maybe the water company screwed up and put the wrong chemical into the treatment plant,"

said another customer.

"And maybe it is us, because the government was asking for it."

The debate raged. Ben interrupted. "Who's us?" he asked. Ident.i.ty was beginning to concern him. "Why would anyone living here want to poison their own water supply?"

The group turned away from the holoscreen for a moment as if they'd just noticed Ben, and the tapcaf woman gave him a sympathetic look. "People do stupid things when there's a war on," she said. "Don't they teach you that at the academy?"

"But there isn't a war," said Ben, and didn't admit he'd never been to any academy. He knew what a war was. War had to be declared: politicians had to get involved. "Not yet."

"Well, there is now . . ." The man picked up his son in his arms and began walking away.

"Whether we want one or not."

Ben leaned over the edge of the safety rail on the walkway to see what was happening on the levels above and below him. People had done exactly what the tapcaf customers had: they gathered outside their shops and homes, talking and arguing. He could hear voices carrying. Traffic had slowed to a crawl. The police public address system boomed in the distance.

"Jacen?" Ben spoke quietly into his comlink, but Jacen wasn't receiving. The message service clicked in. "Jacen, I'm in the Corellian quarter and-" He searched for the words.

But there was no point alarming Jacen. "I'm heading home."

Ben's sense of danger was becoming acute now. There was anger and violence building up exactly like the pressure before a thunderstorm; he could feel it pressing on his temples, making his sinuses ache, telling him to get away, run, hide at an instinctive level. He hoped he'd learn to read it better one day. Right now it was uncontrolled and animal. He ran back the way he had come, two hundred meters to the nearest taxi platform.

An air taxi was sitting on its repulsors, hovering silently over a dark pool of shadow.

The pilot, a thin-faced human with a shaved head, glanced up from his holozine and opened the hatch.

"Senate District, please," said Ben.

"Where, exactly?"

"Rotunda Zone."

"Nah, I'm avoiding the center." The pilot looked at Ben as if he'd just arrived from Tatooine. "There's a riot going on over the water contamination. Should you be out on your own, lad?"

Ben was beginning to wonder the same thing himself. "How close can you take me to the zone, then?"

The pilot sucked his teeth thoughtfully. "The intersection of skylanes four-seven-two and twenty-three. Two blocks away. Will that do?"

"Okay."

Ben sat in the backseat of the taxi with one hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, fidgeting. He hadn't been worried when he'd infiltrated Centerpoint Station: that had been exciting in an unthinking, reflex kind of way, even though he stood a good chance of getting killed. It seemed impossible that anything could happen to him. But now he was among crowds that seemed ready to explode into violence, and although he was home in Galactic City, he was scared. There was something . . . animal about it all, something wild and unpredictable.

The taxi slowed and pulled in at a landing platform. Ben could see police speeders ahead at the intersection of the two skylanes, diverting traffic the hard way. A CSF a.s.sault ship swept overhead as he stepped out onto the walkway, and his instinct was to follow its path.

So what are you going to do when you get there?

It was a good question, but instead of answering it rationally, Ben just headed for where his Force-senses told him he was needed. Jacen always encouraged him to trust his feelings; and this was as good a time as any. He raced down the walkway in the opposite direction from the rest of the pedestrians, who were doing the sensible thing and moving away from the riot area.

When he rounded the corner, he found himself at the back of a mob facing the Corellian emba.s.sy. The building was under siege; there was no other way to describe the barrage of missiles smashing against the permagla.s.s front of the building and piling up in its marble forecourt. The emba.s.sy was in a plaza, not on a broad skylane with a thousand-meter drop beneath, making it an easy, close target for anyone hurling missiles. The CSF a.s.sault ship hovered overhead. Ben could see officers taking aim with rifles and then lowering them again.

n.o.body on the ground seemed to have drawn weapons yet. But the crowd was screaming abuse.

"You sc.u.m! You poisoned the water!"

Ben dodged a lump of masonry that cleared the heads of the mob in front of him and landed at his feet, sending fragments flying.