Sacrifice

"Why's she doing that, though?" Jaina had her own hunt—for Alema.

Now she was keen to help find Mara. "It's like she's taunting her."

"Or she's in trouble and she wants me to find her."

"No." Jaina closed her eyes for a moment, concentrating. "Doesn't feel like a call for help. Feels like ... a fight."

Luke decided to warn Tenel Ka that he was on his way purely as a precaution. Eighteen-standard-hour transit. Given the number of planets in the Hapes Cluster, it would probably take even the Hapans a lot longer than that to find a StealthX, but the more eyes that were out looking out for

Mara, the better.

Luke tried to appear casual as he climbed into his cockpit. Jaina stood looking up at him.

"I know I'm officially out of the service," she said, "but if someone authorizes it, I'm happy to join in. Please."

Luke gestured to the ground crew. "Thanks."

"It's Lumiya we should be worrying about." Jaina was trying to reassure him. "I can see Aunt Mara going in for braided scalps like Fett.

Red ones. Does Lumiya dye her hair, do you think? Will the stuff have icky gray roots?"

Luke knew she was trying to make him laugh, and he tried to oblige.

But just hearing the name Fett reminded him that pretty well every member of his family, Solos or Skywalkers, was at the top of someone's must-kill- today list.

Luke didn't want or expect to be loved by everyone. He just wanted to wake up one morning and find his loved ones left alone to get on with their lives.

When Mara came home—scalps or no scalps, war or no war—he was going to book a vacation for the two of them, somewhere soothingly uneventful.

He balled the flimsi note she'd left for him and wedged it into a gap in the cockpit fascia. The StealthX's drives whined into life.

It wouldn't be Hesperidium, though.

KAVAN

Jacen had expected to have to deal with an angry Mara after he killed Ben, not before.

He was still looking for meanings and patterns in the events around him, and he now saw in himself a certain desperation to try whatever was placed in his path to see if that did the trick and sealed his Sith status.

Will I notice? What does it feel like?

How will I know ?

There had to be something that changed the fabric of the galaxy—a tipping point. Meanwhile, Mara was challenging him, pinpointing herself in the tu

She was a superb assassin, but her Force skills were crude compared to his. Once Jacen removed her, it would be easier to deal with Ben. And Luke . . . he'd cross that bridge when he had to.

Jacen checked his belt, pockets, and holster, and decided to oblige Mara. Lumiya and Ben seemed to be elsewhere having their own showdown.

Now it all fitted. Lumiya had to be silenced for what she knew, and Ben would do it. It was tidy. It was a food chain.

Jacen loaded four poisoned darts into an adapted blaster and slipped the others into slots on his belt, wondering how he could think such things so calmly. He approached the tu

While he could sense the layout, Mara had vanished from the Force again.

There was about a meter of headroom as he edged carefully along the central tu

Jacen stood and listened.

"Okay," he said. "I know you can hear me, Mara. You can still back out of this."

His voice echoed. There was no response, just as he expected, so he began walking deeper into the maze of drains, lightsaber in his right hand and blaster in the other. The only light around him now was a green haze from the glowing blade of energy.

"I could," he said quietly, "go back, block the entrance to this complex with flammable material, and set fire to it." She could hear him, all right: he could hear water dripping slowly deep in the tu

Silence.

He held his breath, listening.

Crack.

His right knee exploded with blinding pain as Mara ca

It wasn't a good start. Jacen swore and made himself run after her, willing endorphins to numb his leg and telling himself that he knew she was setting up a trap. She wanted him confined, pi

If she thought tu

Mara found the perfect trap at the end of one of the culverts. She could hear Jacen's ru

From here, the vaulted ceiling became lower, and even Mara had to run at a crouch. It wasn't the place to swing a standard lightsaber. The tu

So he wouldn't oblige her by revealing his physical position in the Force. Fine. She spotted a rusty metal sheet about half a meter wide and laid it carefully across the tu

An intense Force shake of the brickwork and arches in front of and behind the metal plate weakened them, and then she stopped them from collapsing by Force pressure.

Hold 'em up. Wait for him to hit that plate . . .

Going after Jacen would never work. He could never be allowed to set the agenda. He could come after her.

Trap, immobilize, kill.

It wasn't pretty, and it wouldn't capture the public's imagination like a lightsaber display at the academy, but her training was in destruction. Jacen's was in deception.

She could hear him breathing, and the irregular vzzzm-vzzzm-vzzzm of his lightsaber as he stalked, jumping and turning to be sure she wasn't behind him. Then she could hear that he wasn't swinging the blade so much; the short staccato hums and buzzes told her he was ru

She was trapped too, of course, unless she counted the ventilation shafts every fifty meters. But when she said she was leaving here over his dead body, she meant it.

She felt the begi

Jacen's boots crunched over bricks. He was impatient. She was in his way, holding him up when he wanted to get on with something.

Crunch . . . crunch . . . crunch.

If she'd timed it right, he was close to stepping on that rusty plate.

Clang. . .

The rumbling began. She brought down both sections of tu

Mara waited, one hand over her mouth and nose, shoto drawn, and listened in the Force.

There was whimpering and the chunk-chunk sound of the last falling bricks. She didn't expect that weight of debris from a low ceiling to cause impact injury, but to engulf and immobilize him. He wouldn't be dead—yet.