Legacy Of The Force_ Bloodlines Part 27

"Let me think about that," said Luke.

The meeting broke up shortly afterward. Mara said nothing to Luke until they were well out of earshot, sitting in their speeder on the way back to the apartment.

"I want Ben away from Jacen," Luke said at last.

"Honey, we've discussed that . . ."

"I'm sorry it came up in the meeting, but I can't turn a blind eye to it any longer. It stops now. No thirteen-year-old should be out on raids with Jacen's secret police."

"Or with Jacen at all, right?"

"Mara, everyone sees it."

"He's having a bad affair."

"Bad affair? He's interning Corellians! You heard Cilghal. I'm not delusional. Have you spoken to Leia? Han?" Don't mention Jaina. "I haven't heard a word from my sister and my best friend in days. If you genuinely believe there's nothing odd or worrying about Jacen right now, then open up that comlink and call Leia and ask her what she thinks."

"Okay, and if she says yes, her son's turning into Palpatine, what do we do? Drag Ben away from him kicking and screaming?"

"If need be, yes."

"When did you last talk to Ben?"

Too long ago. "When he came back after being ga.s.sed."

"Well, I speak to him most days and he's a changed kid. He's happy, he's respectful, he's calm. He's grown up, Luke. Jacen did that."

"Well, bully for Jacen. I still don't want our boy being trained by him."

"So you can tell Ben he's back to square one, then."

"I will."

"And then you can work out who's going to take him on."

"Maybe I'll have to do it for a while."

"Oh, that'll work . . ."

And this was why they had come to this point: because there was n.o.body else who could handle Ben like Jacen could. Luke was no further forward. But he could ask Jacen not to take him on raids.

As for Jacen being seen as the Jedi who kicked down doors . . . he couldn't touch him.

People were rea.s.sured by his hard line. And even if the Jedi order threw him out-by whatever mechanism they might have to draw up for that Jacen would still be a ma.s.sively powerful Force-user, and nothing could take that from him.

It was probably better to have him inside the tent than outside throwing rocks. For the time being, anyway.

Mara wasn't stupid. So why wouldn't she concede that Jacen was dangerous?

"There's something else you need to know, honey," said Luke. "And it's not good."

"It can't be worse than this."

"It could be." It was time. Luke couldn't hold it back any longer. He was grateful for the autonavigating skylanes of Coruscant, because he doubted if he could have flown straight unaided right then. "Lumiya's back. I don't know where, or how, but she's back."

Chapter Thirteen.

Unless Corellia reconsiders its intention to make Centerpoint Station operational again, in contravention of the Senate instruction to all member states to disarm, I have no option but to authorize sanctions against Corellia in the form of traffic interdiction. A naval blockade of Corellia will begin at 0500 tomorrow unless undertakings are given that Corellia will not rearm. This means that no vessel will be permitted to enter or leave Corellia or any of its industrial orbiters.

-Chief of State Omas, to the Senate and the Corellian amba.s.sador ALLIANCE FLEET FLAGSHIP OCEAN, CORE LLIAN SYSTEM. 0459 HOURS CORUSCANT TIME.

Admiral Cha Niathal checked her personal chrono and then looked up at the bridge bulkhead to check the ship's readout.

"Any signals?"

Jacen hadn't seen Flag Lieutenant Vio's eyes leave the comm console for an hour. If Corellia had backed down, he'd have known.

"None, ma'am," said Vio.

"I'll take that silence as a get lost, then," she said. "Flag, make this to all ships.

Interdiction measures are now in force. Corellia is under blockade."

The ships had taken up stations in two distinct zones, one encircling Corellia at two hundred thousand kilometers, the other between the surface of the planet and the orbiting factory complexes and shipyards where Corellia's industrial heart lay. Corellia was cut off now from outside traffic and more significantly-from its own factories and power stations.

Jacen watched the deployment of the ships, from destroyers to fast patrol craft, on the tactical holodisplay that mirrored the larger chart in Ops. Nearly three hundred small craft now patrolled the inner cordon, ready to stop traffic movement from Corellia's surface to the industrial orbiters. Beyond the orbital ring, destroyers and cruisers waited for the inevitable.

"Anyone laying bets as to who comes to Corellia's aid first?" Jacen asked Vio. He knew that crews couldn't resist that kind of thing.

Vio didn't blink. "Jabiim and Rothana are obviously favorites . . ."

"Rothana?" Jabiim was always swimming against the tide. Its national sport was intransigence. "Why Rothana?"

"More to observe than support. Shipyard rivalry thing."

Niathal eyed the holochart and waited. There were a million flights a day through inner Corellian s.p.a.ce; the first confrontation would come very soon.

"I was going to ask why the Supreme Commander is out here and not back at Fleet Ops running the show from there," Jacen said quietly.

"Same reason the head of the Galactic Alliance Guard is on the front line." Niathal watched the unnaturally frozen chart that should have been showing the transponder icons of thousands of commercial vessels going about their business. "To be seen."

Ocean hummed and throbbed with the mechanical voices of a thousand systems, feeling almost like a living creature to Jacen. It was fascinating to be close to something that had no living substance and so wasn't transparent to his Force-senses. He could only influence Ocean using the physical Force. He couldn't feel her.

He sought Ben in the Force, magnifying his own presence to rea.s.sure him. The boy was back on Coruscant, safe in the care of Captain Shevu. He'd wanted to accompany Jacen, but, as Jacen pointed out, he needed his liaison to stay with the Guard. Ben was enjoying his newfound status as part of a team that respected his skills, and took little persuading.

He had shaken off his father's shadow for the first time. Ben now truly believed he was a person in his own right, and not just the Skywalker kid. Jacen admired his resilience: he knew what it was to be the child of political celebrities, but being a Solo carried nothing like the stifling expectation of being Luke Skywalker's son.

"Ansta has contact at five hundred thousand klicks, ma'am," the comm officer announced.

Niathal didn't move a muscle. "So Admiral Cheb gets first bite."

Jacen could feel Jaina's anxiety, many decks below in the hangar. He knew she couldn't feel his, because he had withdrawn from the Force, cloaking himself against detection. For a moment he considered reaching many light-years away, into the Hapes Cl.u.s.ter to brush gently against Tenel Ka's presence, but he didn't dare. He tried not to think of her at all. Even thought might put her at risk of discovery if he was careless. Lumiya's Force skills were still not to be taken for granted, and Tenel Ka and Allana were in a far more dangerous position than he would ever be.

It was time to make his impressions on the thousands of officers and ratings in the interdiction task force. "Permission to put Rogue Squadron on alert five, ma'am?"

"Carry on, Colonel Solo."

Reputations spread like wildfire in ships. Jacen knew what he wanted his to be: the officer who would never shirk his responsibility, and who would never ask anyone to do what he wouldn't do himself.

It made you friends. Jacen knew he would need every one of them in the months to come.

HIGH-SECURITY CELL BLOCK, GALACTIC ALLIANCE GUARD HEADQUARTERS, CORUSCANT.

Ben checked his comlink and saw that he now had five calls waiting from his father. When he was with Jacen, he felt shielded from the weight of Luke's presence, but now he felt very alone and hunted.

He was pretty sure his father could sense where he was. He hated that. He felt he had no privacy. But so far the interference was purely calls, even though Luke must have known that Jacen had joined the blockade.

Ben concentrated on the matter at hand, which was learning from Captain Shevu. Shevu was head-to-head with another captain, Girdun, having one of those whispered angry fights that adults had.

"We have rules," said Shevu. "And until the Senate tells me those rules have changed, I live by them."

"Yes, and let's hear you taking that fine moral stance when someone gets a.s.sa.s.sinated and we might have stopped it."

"Prisoners get five hours' break from questioning in twenty-four. You want to do it different? Not on my watch."

The man and woman they had detained in the apartment block were in separate holding cells.

The man was a smalltime Corellian agent-possibly called Buroy, possibly not-who had been identified from the NRI's database. The woman was probably Kiffar, judging by her facial tattoo, and her name was Ailyn Habuur. Shevu had taken a comlink from her and it had stored three messages since she'd been captured, all from someone called Mirta Gev.

Shevu got his way. Girdun stalked off.

"You don't have to stay," said Shevu, tapping the security code into the cell's lock.

Ben was afraid that if he went back to the apartment, his father would find him and confront him, and that he wouldn't have the will to stand up to him. Either that-or they'd fight, and Ben hated having fights. "I might be able to help."

The doors slid open. Shevu gave him a dubious look. "This is just a regular interrogation, the way we did it in CSF. If you can mind-influence, great. If not, don't worry."

"You know we do that?"

"I don't think it's cla.s.sified information somehow."

Ailyn Habuur was sitting at a table, hands on the surface in front of her. She was handcuffed, and her face still bore the marks of the scuffle when she was arrested. The tattoo that surrounded her left eye was unnerving, and she was the hardest-looking woman Ben had ever seen: wiry and unsmiling, with thin, sinewy forearms that made her look as if she spent her time strangling people.

"Okay, ma'am," said Shevu, sitting down opposite her. "You keep some unsavory company."

"It's not illegal to be a bounty hunter."

"Depends what you're hunting."

"Not illegal to be in the same apartment block as Corellians, either, but I see you're working on that."

"Look, ma'am, this is how we do things." Shevu was quiet and polite. "You give me a good reason why you're holed up with a Corellian agent and carrying some serious hardware, and why you chose to shoot it out with the Nine Six Seven, and I let you leave. Otherwise I tend to think you're a threat to security. And in that case, you stay here until you rot, if you're lucky."

Habuur slid back in her seat, all ice, and then glanced at Ben.

"What's the kid here for?"

"Training."

"You start your thugs young on Coruscant."

Shevu laid Habuur's comlink and datapad on the table in front of her. Ben watched, feeling how stressed she was. There was something unfocused about her, as if her hostility and anxiety were directed at something that wasn't in the room.

"You like s.p.a.cecraft for some reason?"

Habuur shrugged. "Beats walking."

"You got a lot of images of them on your datapad." Shevu switched on the 'pad and showed them to her. "Who did you have under surveillance?"

Habuur just stared back at him. Ben craned his neck to get a look at the images on the 'pad, but it was all just a blur from this angle.

Shevu went on, still with that tone of bored patience. "Just cut the poodoo and tell me why you're here. If it's just some lowlife you've been sent to vape, I'm too busy to worry about that."

"Don't I get a lawyer?"

"Under the emergency powers I've been granted, no. You get zip."

"You'll be banging my head on the table pretty soon, then."

"Want me to call your friend?"

"I don't have any."

"The one who keeps contacting you."

"Who?"

"Mirta Gev," said Shevu.

Habuur's face was completely unmoved, but Ben felt the little flare of strong emotion-fear, dismay, yearning-well up and surround her like an energy field. Shevu reacted to it, too. Ben wondered how non-Force-users could sense things that well hidden.

"She was recovering some jewelry for me." And that sounded like the truth. The whole timbre of her voice and the feel of the Force around her changed. "My mother's necklace."