Legacy Of The Force_ Bloodlines Part 8

"I looked up Gejjen in the comlink directories."

Han laughed out loud. A large woman in a bright orange suit that really didn't do her any favors turned to look at him for a second. "Funny, we always think this is cloak-and-dagger stuff."

"Gejjen doesn't need to hide. He's an elected representative of a legal political party, the Democratic Alliance. They have a lot of seats in the Corellian a.s.sembly now. With the Corellian Liberal Front, they actually form the largest bloc of votes, but Thrackan's still hanging on."

"If that dirtbag comes anywhere near you or the kids, I'll kill him, I swear."

"You think he's got a chance, taking on three Jedi?"

"He won't. Contract, remember?"

"You think it's going to be Fett, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"No. Not Fett. Why would he? He saved us from the Vong."

"Because business is business, maybe." Han could feel something rising in his chest, and it wasn't the effect of way too much caf. It was something animal and irrational, something that was making his pulse pound in his temples. It was anger and fear; not for himself, though, but for Leia, Jaina, and Jacen. "Thrackan's done some dirty things, but he never went this far before. Not hiring hit men. That changes everything."

He had a thought, and it was one that almost made him recoil.

I'm going to kill the sc.u.mbag this time.

n.o.body touches my family.

Leia reacted as if he'd said it aloud. "No . . . you're not going to contact Fett, and you're not going to hire him to hit your cousin."

"That never entered my mind," said Han, and it really hadn't. She could see that and she could feel it, too, he knew. Unfortunately, he knew he'd have a hard job concealing the fact that he still felt murderously protective. "Besides, I haven't had to deal with guys like that in a long time. Maybe you place a want ad in Bounty Hunter Weekly these days. Or call their agents."

"Yes, so remember we can take care of ourselves," said Leia. "I'll just warn Jacen and Jaina."

Jacen: Han kept missing him every time he called or returned a message. He really wanted to talk to him now, and not to remonstrate with him: he just wanted to hear Jacen's voice.

Whatever insanity had put them on opposite sides of a divide, Jacen was his little boy and always would be, no matter how old or powerful or distant he might be.

n.o.body touches my wife and kids.

Han Solo wasn't one of the galaxy's natural a.s.sa.s.sins. He would fight to defend himself, but he'd never gone after anyone with the intention of killing them. There was always a first time; this would be his.

Lost in his thoughts, Han stirred the remains of his caf with a spoon, wondering how they got the foam to last that long, and then was jerked out of his trance by the one thing guaranteed to get anyone's attention: his own name.

The words Han Solo cut through the hubbub of voices and children's squealing as if the tapcaf had fallen into total and complete silence for a moment.

"In a statement issued by the Office of the State, President Sal-Solo has declared Han Solo and his family to be enemies of Corellia following the attacks on Centerpoint and Rellidir, and he's ordered their arrest," said the HNE holoanchor.

Han tried not to swing around in his seat or curse at the screen. He raised his head very slowly, caught Leia's eye, and focused on the screen as if bored. No, he wasn't bored at all. He was furious, and a little scared. He wondered how good an actor he was; but n.o.body seemed to be looking at him.

It was probably because the image on the screen was of a younger Han, a man still with brown hair and relatively few lines. The picture of Leia was way out of date, too.

"I think we'd better be going," said Leia. "Some urgent laundry."

"Right behind you," said Han.

He didn't like running, and there was nowhere safer to run. Coruscant wasn't going to welcome him with open arms, either. Either way, they were fugitives. They split up as soon as they left the store and met up again back at the apartment.

"Have I changed that much?" said Leia.

"What?"

"The picture of me that they're running."

"I hope so," said Han. Maybe he should have a.s.sured her she looked as good as ever to him, but he thought that practical rea.s.surance about her safety was more important than flattery right then. "And I'm going to grow a beard, just in case. How about you?"

Leia gave him a withering stare. "I didn't shave today. You didn't notice?"

"I meant change your hair or something."

"The Aurra Sing look? Yes, it's so me."

"I'm glad you've kept your sense of humor."

"You know what they say," said Leia, and took scissors from the kitchen. "If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined."

Chapter Four.

Vandals have desecrated the Corellian Sanctuary on Coruscant. The domed building, a resting place for Corellian dead, was daubed with paint during the night, and marble plaques were smashed. Inside, diamonds set in the dome-formed from the compressed carbon of cremated Corellians-were hacked out of the ceiling. Police are treating the attack as retaliation for yesterday's bombing of the Elite Hotel on skylane four-four-six-seven, which left six hundred and thirty-four dead and hundreds more injured. n.o.body has yet claimed responsibility for the explosion, confirmed as caused by commercial-grade detonite.

HNE Morning News UPPER CITY, TARIS.

"My name's Mirta Gev," said the girl.

Fett stared at the heart-of-fire necklace in the palm of his glove and wanted to clutch it in his bare hand, but he didn't know why. For the first time in many, many years, he felt grief.

None of that turmoil showed. He made sure of that and studied her: strongly built, heavy boots, practical armor, no jewelry, a battered shapeless bag over one shoulder, and no concessions to feminine fashion whatsoever. Pa.s.sersby gave them a wide berth on the promenade. "So are you a bounty hunter, or do you just like armor?"

Mirta-if that was her real name-nodded twice, just little movements as if she was measuring what she was going to say rather than blurting out a smart answer. She seemed utterly unafraid of him, and that was rare.

"Yeah, I'm a bounty hunter," she said. "Object recovery more often than prisoners, but I've survived so far. Aren't you going to ask me who killed Sintas Vel?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because we parted a long time ago."

Mirta shrugged and held out her hand for the necklace. "I know. You left your wife when your daughter was nearly two. Sintas left on a bounty hunt before Ailyn's sixteenth birthday and never came back. That's not common knowledge."

"Okay, that's proof you know Ailyn Vel."

"And I need to return that necklace. It's all she has left of her mother."

Fett hesitated and handed back the heart-of-fire. He wanted it very badly, but he didn't rob kids like her of their meager bounties.

So it's all Ailyn has left. Like all I had of my dad was his armor. And his ship.

"How is she?"

"What?"

Why am I doing this? "How's my daughter?"

"She's ... okay, I suppose. Angry. But she's surviving."

"I think you know she tried to kill me."

"She did mention it "Does she know I'm alive?"

"Of course she does."

Ailyn had chased him across the galaxy-or so she thought-and killed a clone she thought was him. If she knew he was alive now and hadn't tried again, then maybe she had changed her mind . . . no, that was stupid. You left Sintas and your baby, and you never looked back. Is that how Dad treated you? No, he was always there for you. So what kind of man abandons his own kid?

Every day of his life, Fett had thought of his father and missed him so much that he would have traded absolutely anything-sometimes even his life-for a few more minutes with him, for a chance to touch him and tell him he loved him. Right now it was unbearable. It was as raw as it had been on the day he saw him killed at Geonosis, perhaps more so, because the shock had worn off long ago and had been replaced by cold a.n.a.lysis and-sometimes-dull, gnawing hatred.

"Do you think I want to see her again? I wouldn't even recognize her. She was a baby when I last saw her."

"Why are you still talking to me, then?"

The girl was sharp. Not c.o.c.ky, not insolent; just sharp.

I wouldn't recognize my own kid. I see my own dad every day in the mirror, and never my own kid. What a thought to die with.

"Why do you care if I find her?"

"Because you might pay me."

"Right answer."

"I'm just trying to get by in a tough galaxy."

"How much?"

She paused. It was the first time he'd seen her confidence waver. She doesn't know how much to ask. "Five thousand."

It was the cost of a repeating blaster. "Done. Payable when I see Ailyn Vel and proof of who she is." He didn't need her as a guide at all. All he had to do was find Han Solo, and he'd find Ailyn hunting him. But that necklace had seized his interest. "You got transport?"

"Well-"

"Just so you don't skip out on the deal, you come with me." I can keep a good eye on you in Slave I, girl. I'm heading Ailyn's way anyway, so you're just ballast. "Take it or leave it."

"Okay."

"Let's go."

Mirta never said a word. She just followed him. She didn't ask to go back and collect her things, or pose any questions. She was either very cool or very naive. And maybe her whole life was in that scruffy shoulder bag.

But she had his wife's necklace. And sooner or later he knew he'd ask how she came by it, and how Sintas died. He'd wait a little: he didn't want to look as if he cared. She could carry on believing that he needed her to locate Ailyn.

But you wouldn't recognize your own daughter. Just her ship-your old ship.

And here he was, a man who trusted no one, chancing himself on the word of a girl he didn't know, when he should have been concentrating on finding Taun We and Ko Sai's data.

But he could do that as well.

And if the girl turned out to be trouble, he could always shoot her.

SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL MEETING ROOM, SENATE BUILDING.

"I think you could do this, Mara," said Chief Omas. "The enemies we face won't always be conventional armies, or even in a separate theater of war, so we feel we need a separate arm of the Defense Force concentrating on domestic security."

Domestic security. Sounds like a lock on the front doors and an intruder alarm. Jacen watched, still concerned by the speed at which events were unraveling.

Mara didn't move a muscle. She sat with her legs tightly crossed and arms folded, and Jacen felt her dismay from across the room without even wanting to. He tried not to look at Luke, who was standing by the window, staring out at the Coruscant skyline. There was something terrible about conflict with family that was even worse than with others. It felt much more savage and dangerous. You weren't supposed to have rifts with your loved ones, which was another good reason why Jedi weren't supposed to have loved ones -But that's not Sith. Avoiding attachment is not the Sith way. Are you really wrong about all this?

Jacen shook himself mentally. The moments of indecision would pa.s.s. And . . . he wouldn't have doubts if he'd been driven by ambition. Reluctance was becoming his touchstone, his proof that he was doing this for the right reasons.

"Why me?" said Mara.

"You've been an intelligence agent," said Omas.

The head of the Security and Intelligence Council, Senator G'vli G'Sil, sat to one side of Omas in silence, scrutinizing Mara and then looking slowly toward Jacen and Luke as if he had never seen a Jedi before.

Mara's reluctance wasn't even disguised. "I'll do my duty for the Alliance," she said.

"But I'm not sure I'm psychologically equipped to head up . . . well, a secret police force. There's no other word for it. Spying is one thing, and maybe even a.s.sa.s.sination, but this is new to me."

"We spent so much time dealing with the Yuuzhan Vong that we lost our focus on threats closer to home," said G'Sil. "But I'm old enough to remember that when terrorist activity starts, you need to move fast before it spreads and networks get established."

If they aren't already. The World Brain tells me they're on the move, gathering, meeting...

"Let me think about it," said Mara. But that was just words. Everything else about her was adding, . . . and then say no.

Luke turned slowly, hands deep in his pockets, and stared out the window, and for a moment Jacen wondered if he was going to volunteer instead. No, that kind of warfare simply wasn't Uncle Luke: he was head-on, lightsaber in hand, face-to-face with the enemy-the kind of enemy who came at you in open combat.