Invincible (12 page)

The hands were attached to a pair of arms attached to an unfamiliar woman in a tan Jedi robe. The lower part of her face was hidden by a breath mask, but above that she had the long barbed ears and upward-slanting eyebrows of a Codru-Ji female; still, there was something wrong with the eyes themselves. They were too big and round, and they were a rich deep brown that Jaina recognized as the color of her mother’s.

And then Jaina recalled that her mother had been disguised as a Codru-Ji in Monument Plaza. The whole mess came back to her, Ben’s capture and their pursuit into the Big Snarl, trying to catch the Doomsled before it disappeared into the…

…big white disk ahead, surrounded by a spiraling arrow of blue light. The Galactic City SpeedPipe. Leia was taking them in after Ben.

Something about that bothered Jaina.

Leia juked when she should have jinked, and a deafening bang rang out from the patient compartment. The medwagon swung into a sideslip, tail threatening to overtake the nose, and began to drop toward the busy traffic lanes below. Jaina glimpsed the bubble-topped wedge of a cannoncar pouring colored bolts of energy toward them, and then she remembered the problem with going into the SpeedPipe after Ben.

Tahiri.

A line of cannon bolts streaked along the pilot’s hatch, pinging and sizzling along the outer skin. The GAG gunners were good—almost good enough to make it look like they were really trying to shoot the Jedi down. But the medwagon was a big soft target at such close range, and Jaina had fired enough blaster cannons to know that even average gunners could have reduced it to so much fluttering jetsam within a few seconds. Now that there was no question of catching the Doomsled outside the SpeedPipe, Tahiri and her GAG cohorts had returned to the original plan and were trying to trap Ben’s backup team in a carefully controlled environment with no escape routes.

Leia brought the medwagon under control barely a dozen meters above the closest traffic lane, then raised the nose back toward the luminous white mouth of the SpeedPipe.

“Mom, wait!” Jaina grabbed the yoke, but did not try to change course while her mother was still steering. “We can’t go in there!”

Leia did not yield control.
“Wad?”
Her voice was so muffled by the breath mask that it was difficult to understand even that single word. “We hab to! Ben’s in there!”

“Along with a few hundred GAG troops, I’ll bet.” Jaina gently began to pull on the yoke, and her mother reluctantly yielded control. “It’s a trap, remember?”

“So?” Leia replied. “We still have to try.”

“We
can’t.
” Jaina began to juke and jink like she was in an X-wing, still continuing more or less in the direction of the SpeedPipe but keeping her eye on the traffic lanes below, looking for a small gap coming their way. “Tahiri
planned
this. She had this medwagon rigged and
waiting.
”

Leia glared into the SpeedPipe with a furrowed brow. “You think she knew Ben was coming?”

“I think she’s known for a while that Shevu has been spying for Ben,” Jaina said. “And I think she’s been sitting on Shevu, just waiting to pick up Ben
and
his backup team.”

Leia sank into her chair but kept staring into the rapidly swelling brilliance of the SpeedPipe.
“How?”
she asked. “No one knew about Shevu but a handful of Masters. Who would betray us?”

Jaina continued to watch the traffic lanes below. “Good question.” She thought back to the windswept turf near Fenn Shysa’s memorial on Mandalore, recalling a conversation with Fett—a conversation in which she had unwisely shared the recording Shevu had made of Jacen’s confession to killing Mara. Fett never broke his word, and he had said that he knew how to keep a secret. But
knowing
how to keep a secret was not exactly
promising
to do it. “We’ll figure that out when we get back to base.”

Leia looked over, tears welling in her upslanted eyes. “So you’re just going to leave Ben here?”

“We can’t get him back, Mom.” Jaina spotted the traffic gap she had been looking for and began to line the medwagon up on an interception vector. “Not now. It’s time to cut our losses and move on.”

That was something else Jaina had learned from Fett—not to buck impossible odds—and she hated him for it. It was not, after all, the Solo way.

The traffic gap started to disappear under the medwagon’s front passenger’s-side corner. Jaina dropped their nose and cut power to the repulsorlifts, and they shot through the opening like a falling star.

The cannon fire died away almost instantly, and a curving ribbon of lights appeared ahead and began to swell rapidly as the medwagon dropped toward the next traffic level. Jaina returned power to the repulsorlifts and dropped into a lane, becoming just one of an endless stream of vehicles descending into the shadows of Coruscant’s under-city.

If Leia noticed that they had escaped their pursuers, she did not show it. She simply slumped in her seat and stared out into the growing gloom.

“I don’t think I can do it,” she said, shaking her head. “How can I tell Luke that we lost his son?”

How long does Uncle Luke need to sleep?
One Jedi
night
!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

J
AINA AND HER PARENTS DID NOT MAKE IT BACK TO THE SECRET
J
EDI
base on Shedu Maad. The
Sweet Time
had barely entered Hapan space before the Mist Patrol intercepted them with rendezvous instructions. Now here they were, in the launch hangar of a Hapan Battle Dragon, just one short hyperspace jump away from their target.

With some very sad news.

After a moment of looking, Jaina spotted Luke at the far end of the StealthX line, a tiny black-robed form standing with R2-D2 at the brink of the launching deck. He was still as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted slightly forward as he stared out through the containment field into the fire-flecked velvet of deep space.

“There he is.” Jaina pointed and started forward, circling behind a long line of Wookiee-piloted Owool fighters to avoid disrupting operations on the ready deck. “I’m really not looking forward to this.”

“Then why’d you find him?” her father asked, coming alongside her. “I’d have been okay with putting this off for a while…like, until we figured a way to fix it.”

“We can’t fix
this,
Han,” Leia said. She came up on his far side and took his hand, leaving C-3PO to clump along behind. “No one can.”

“And it’s not like we’re telling him something he hasn’t already sensed through the Force,” Jaina said. “But he needs to know how it happened—and not just because it’s Ben.”

“Yeah, I know.” Han sighed. He glanced over at the bustling preparations on the ready deck. “He needs to know that someone close to him is a traitor.”

They passed behind the last of the Owools and started past a squadron of Skipray 24r Blastboats. A modernized version of the venerable Series 12, the Series 24 was slightly larger and deadlier than its predecessor. And the r-model was especially lethal—a pure ship-killer. Designed as a hit-and-run fleet raider, it was equipped with an advanced targeting computer, the latest jamming package, double-sized ammunition bays, and two overpowered sublight drives.

As they passed behind the squadron, Jaina was surprised to notice that most of the pilots and crews were, well, too
plain
to be Hapans. And many were still wearing military flight suits bearing the unit patches from various branches of the GA military.

As Jaina and her parents walked past, several crewmen interrupted their preflight checklists to turn and gape. Well accustomed to being gawked at in public, none of the Solos was offended. But Jaina did notice that instead of flashing the warm smile that had made her the darling of billions, her mother pretended not to notice the stares. Her father responded with his usual lopsided grin, but somehow it looked more sheepish than cocky.

Suddenly, Jaina understood how much guilt her parents felt over what their son had become…over what he was doing to the galaxy. On the trip back from Coruscant, she had overheard them talking about their sense of failure, asking each other in a dozen ways how they could have missed what was happening with Jacen, whether they had let slip some moment when they could have steered him back into the light. She had dismissed their conversation as the natural emotions any parent would feel when a child turned bad. But now she realized it was more than regret they had been discussing—it was
responsibility.
They were serving as her support team not only because they loved
her,
but because they felt it was their duty to stop her brother before he destroyed the galaxy.

Jaina didn’t know why that surprised her. They had started risking their lives to save the galaxy long before she was born—and for reasons a lot less personal.

They finally passed the last of the Skiprays and left the commotion of the ready deck behind. As they started across the relatively narrow expanse of the launching deck, Jaina began to take calming breaths, struggling to keep her mind clear and her chest from clenching up. It had been her call to leave Ben in GAG’s custody, and it had been the right decision. She knew that. But being right wasn’t going to make it any easier to look Luke in the eye and report that
she
had been the one who insisted his son be abandoned.

They were still five paces away when R2-D2 spun his dome around to tweedle a greeting.

Then Luke spoke without turning to face them. “It wasn’t your fault.” There was no disappointment or displeasure in his voice, only concern. “I knew Ben would be captured. I knew it before I sent you.”

All three of the Solos stopped cold, forcing C-3PO to step around them before he continued forward. “I beg your pardon, Master Luke,” he said. “I must have misunderstood you. Did you just say that you
expected
Ben to be captured?”

“Not expected.” Luke turned, revealing a face so ashen and haggard that Jaina almost gasped out loud. His eyes were a pair of black holes, seeming to swallow every ray of light that came near, and the wrinkles around his mouth were so deep and long that he looked like a Bith. “
Knew.
I saw it in the future.”

“
Before
you sent us?” Leia demanded. Her shock had given way to anger, and Jaina had the feeling that her mother was strongly considering Force-blasting Luke off the edge of the launching deck. “And you didn’t warn us?”

“I couldn’t,” Luke said. “It would have changed the outcome.”

“That’s the point,” Han said, stepping so close that Jaina reached out to grab his arm. He jerked free, then jabbed a finger toward Luke’s chest. “I don’t know what kind of spacesick got hold of you, but that’s my
nephew
you set up.”

“I know, Han,” Luke said, and Jaina could feel his heart breaking. “He’s also a Jedi Knight, and it had to be done. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, but that would have changed how you reacted.”

Leia’s boiling temper ebbed to a simmer. “I hope you can explain
now,
” she said. “And it had better be good, because I’m beginning to worry that my son isn’t the only one in this family who’s gone to the dark side.”

Luke’s faced twitched as though he had been slapped. But he nodded as though he had been expecting this reaction, and suddenly Jaina realized why her uncle hadn’t warned them about what he had foreseen.

“You did it to protect me,” she said, stepping forward. “You didn’t tell us because it would have betrayed something to Jacen.”

“That’s right,” Luke said. “He would have realized that I’m using visions of the future to plot strategy, and he would have started to grow suspicious of what
he
was seeing.”

Leia’s brow shot up. “You’re altering Caedus’s visions?”

“It’s…more like jamming,” Luke said. “When I meditate on the future, I’m focusing so hard on Caedus that when
he
looks into the future, I keep showing up.”

“Sounds like altering to me,” Han said. “If you were just jamming, Caedus would know it. But you’re fixing it so he sees you instead of the real future.”

“Not exactly,” Luke said. “Remember, the future is always in motion. Caedus sees what
might
happen—if I were there instead of Jaina.”

Han frowned and ran a hand over his brow. “My head hurts.”

“It’s not that hard to understand,” Jaina said. She turned to Luke. “You’re influencing what Caedus sees by focusing on him in your meditations—”

“Then forcing the future to move along a different course by not acting in accordance with your visions,” Leia finished.

“To an extent,” Luke said. “But it’s a balancing act. I try to stay close enough to what I’ve seen to prevent Caedus from realizing that I’m trying to mask something.”

“That something being
me,
” Jaina said.

“Right,” Luke answered. “I stay as close as I can to the future we’re seeing without actually fighting Caedus—at least, not physically.”