Invincible (25 page)

So Jacen has lost something, too. And all Jaina can do is walk with him, to let him know through their twin bond how
she
sees him: a kind, thoughtful young Jedi who would never hurt a friend deliberately—a brave, resourceful brother whom she would rather have at her side than anyone…

What time is it when an Imperial walker steps on your chrono? Time to get a new chrono!

—Jacen Solo, age 14

T
HE STAIN RAN ACROSS
J
AINA’S JAW AND NECK DOWN TO HER
shoulder, a line of crimson ovals where she had been splattered by her brother’s blood. She had tried to wash it off with soap and water, with surgical sanitizer, even with the enzobleach Hapan orderlies used to keep the
Loyal Dragon
’s infirmary spotless. Now she was using a Relephonian sarsestone, literally trying to scour the spots away—but she might as well have been trying to rub off a blaster scar. Her efforts only seemed to make the stain brighter and redder.

A soft hiss sounded behind Jaina, and in the mirror above her sink, she saw the privacy partition at the front of her convalescence bay sliding aside. Before she could put the sarsestone down, her mother was coming through the opening, her thin brows arching in surprise.

“What are you doing up?” Leia demanded. Her mouth was frowning with reproach, but her brown eyes were sparkling with relief. “You should be in a healing trance.”

“I
have
been.” Jaina set the sarsestone on the sink and began to rinse the grit off her hands. “For a week now, I think.”

“Yeah, well you need another one—and maybe a whole lot more,” her father said, following Leia into the cramped bay. “Luke didn’t look this bad after the wampa tried to eat him.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad.” Jaina shifted her gaze to her father’s reflection and didn’t think he looked much better. The lines in his brow had grown so deep that his face had gone from ruggedly handsome to haggard; the bags beneath his eyes were so big they belonged on a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, not Han Solo. “That’s just what a woman standing in front of a mirror wants to hear.”

“I’m your father.” He slid the partition closed behind him. “It’s my job to be honest.”

“Okay, but do you have to be so good at it?”

Jaina smiled at his reflection, then wet a cloth and began to wipe the sarse grit off her neck. She couldn’t remember much about her extraction—or the last half of the fight—because that big ugly split above her right eye had come with a nasty concussion. She had hazy memories of a long aching run on legs so filled with shrapnel they rattled, of always being short of breath because it was impossible to fully expand her lungs with four broken ribs.

The next thing she remembered was stumbling into the hangar with a company of stormtroopers on her tail, then Jag, Zekk, her mother, and about half a dozen other Jedi—okay, Jag wasn’t a Jedi, but he had
fought
like one—coming out of nowhere to drive them off. And she recalled her uncle warning the others about her injuries as they rushed to help her, how he had seemed to know every blow she had taken without having to even glance in her direction.

But the thing she remembered most was the fear in her father’s face as they loaded her aboard his blastboat, how his head had somehow seemed to turn around 180 degrees to look over the back of his seat—how the color had drained from his face at the sight of the blood oozing from her red-soaked robes.

“Sweetheart, you can’t wash them off,” Leia said. She had come to the sink without Jaina realizing it, and now she was standing at her side, reaching for the cloth. “They’re burns.”

“No.” Jaina studied the little ovals in the mirror again. She could see why her mother might mistake them for spatter burns—they were certainly bright enough, and the edges were distinct—but her mother hadn’t been there. She hadn’t seen how those spots were made. “It’ll come off. It’s a bloodstain.
His
blood.”

Jaina felt the bottom sink out of the Force, and her mother pulled the cloth away.

“Jaina, they’ll fade as soon as we can get you into a bacta tank,” Leia said, turning her back toward her bed. “And if they don’t, we’ll have the skin repaired.”

“Mom, I’m
not
in battle shock,” Jaina insisted. “It’s blood! I got splattered when I cut off Ja—er, Caedus’s arm.”

“Okay, take it easy—we believe you.” Han came around the bed, then took her arm and started her back toward it. “But it’s not coming off. I’ll ask Luke if he’s got any special Sith-blood solvent.”

“Sith-blood solvent?”
Jaina allowed him to sit her on the bed. “Dad, please. I’m not inventing this. I
remember
getting splashed.”

“Really?” This from her mother, whose doubtful tone suggested she was at least going to treat Jaina like a not-too-brain-addled adult. “It’s interesting how you remember
that,
but not much else about the fight.”

Jaina frowned. “You think he brain-rubbed me?”

Leia shook her head, then pointed at the wound on Jaina’s throbbing brow. “I think
that
brain-rubbed you. It scrambled your memories, and you may not be remembering things exactly the way they happened.”

“Like what?” Jaina asked.

Leia didn’t even need to think before she answered. “Well, do you remember what happened with Jag and Zekk?”

Han bit his lip to keep from smiling, which only made Jaina frown harder.

“They helped with the extraction,” Jaina said. “They both fought very well. I remember that.”

“We’re talking about later,” her father said. “As they were loading you into the blastboat.”

“I, uh…” Jaina paused, trying to grab hold of a hazy image floating at the edges of her memory—one of Zekk’s big snowy smile, and Jag’s durasteel eyes doing something they hardly ever did—widening in surprise. “I thanked them?”

“I guess you could call it that,” her father said. He pulled a chair out from the wall beside her bed and dropped into it smirking. “You asked them to bunk with you.”

“
Bunk
with me?” Jaina asked. “Both of them?”

“Well, what you really proposed was taking quarters together,” Leia corrected. “All three of you.”

Jaina caught the twinkle in their eyes and realized what they were trying to do. “Very funny, guys, but I’m serious.” She tapped her throat. “These aren’t burns.”

“You think we’re making this up?” her father asked.

“Of course,” Jaina said. “You’re running a classic Zeltron Shift—embarrass the spoilsport.”

“We
could
be, except we’re not,” her mother said, chuckling. “See-Threepio filed the whole conversation in his memory. Do you want to hear it? He’s right outside.”

“That
won’t
be necessary,” Jaina said. Her parents were both great bluffers—which meant they never tried to pull one when calling it would be easy. She swung around and leaned against the headboard, then asked, “So…did they say yes?”

Her father’s brow shot up, then he shook his head and ran a hand down his chin. “You’re not ready for that,” he said. “You don’t have the patience.”

Jaina laughed and ran a finger over the spots on her neck. “If these are burns, how come they’re not sore? And why isn’t my skin dry?”

Her father closed his eyes in exasperation, but her mother said, “You
have
been in a healing trance, Jaina.”

“Which means they would be healed by now,” Jaina replied, “
if
they were burns.”

Her father opened his eyes, then reached up and took her hand. “Look, it was a tough fight,” he said. “And Luke’s pretty sure you’re remembering right about the arm. It’s natural to feel a little guilty.”

“I
don’t
feel guilty,” Jaina objected. She felt her mother’s gaze on her, then realized she wasn’t being entirely honest. “Not much, anyway—not enough to make me imagine things.”

“Okay, we’ll ask Cilghal to take a look,” Leia said. “There could be another explanation.”

“There is.” Jaina could tell that her mother didn’t believe another explanation was needed, but her reply was utterly reasonable—the kind designed to cut an unnecessary argument short. “The Force might be trying to tell me something.”

Her father fidgeted and began to look more uncomfortable than ever. Her mother nodded as though she believed that were a possibility, then sat on the foot of her bed.

“Okay,” Leia said. “Any ideas what that would be?”

“Maybe.” Jaina didn’t know how her parents were going to take this next part, because she wasn’t sure how she felt about it herself—whether she was just looking for an easy way out of a dirty job she had left undone, or whether she had given up on her brother too soon when she decided to kill him. “I can’t be sure that I’m remembering this right, but I wasn’t the only one who was confused at the end of the fight. After I cut off his arm, Caedus seemed surprised that it was me.”

“What?” Han asked. “He didn’t think a girl could do it?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jaina said. “He didn’t seem to realize he had been fighting
me
until after we stopped—and when he did, he stopped attacking.”

“Well, he
was
missing an arm,” Leia pointed out.

“But there were a couple of stormtroopers trying to blast me,” Jaina explained. “He ordered them to redirect their fire.”

Her parents looked at each other for a moment, then Leia asked, “And you think that has something to do with those marks on your neck?”

“I think it might.” Jaina took a breath, then said, “What if we’re wrong? What if Jacen is still in there somewhere?”

Her father’s face grew hard. “He
isn’t.
”

“But he let me go.”

“That’s not the way it looked when you entered the hangar with all those stormtroopers behind you,” her mother said. “As for what happened after you cut off his arm—he was probably in shock. You said yourself that he seemed as confused as you were.”

“That’s true,” Jaina agreed. “And my memory
isn’t
clear. But these stains—”

“Could mean anything—even if they
are
stains,” her father interrupted. “And if Caedus
did
let you go, it’s not because he felt bad about getting into a fight with his sister.”

“Your father’s right,” Leia said. “You’re about the only one in the family he
hasn’t
been trying to kill. It would be a mistake to assume that’s anything more than an accident of circumstance.”

Jaina knew they were right, of course. Even if Caedus
had
hesitated, it didn’t excuse what he had done in the past—and it didn’t mean he would hesitate again. But he
had
directed fire away from her. A part of Jaina wanted to believe that meant there was some hope of redeeming Jacen. The other part remembered that Caedus had been grievously wounded at the time, and he had thought he was seeing Luke somewhere else. That had made no sense to her at the time—it still didn’t—but what made more sense? That a Sith Lord had suddenly turned soft, or that he had been making a tactical choice based on a shock-induced hallucination?

“Okay,” Jaina said, nodding. “Let’s just figure out what these marks are, because they’re
not
burns.”

Her mother nodded. “We’ll have Cilghal take a look as soon as we get back to Shedu Maad.”

Jaina frowned. “We’re going back?” she asked. “But Caedus is on
Nickel One.
”

“Surrounded by three fleets of his own and about six from the Confederation and our coalition,” her father explained. “The Corellians and Bothans have jumped into the action, and the Roche system is turning into a firestorm.”

“Luke thinks
our
fight is going to move away from the Roche system,” Leia said. “And you need some time to heal.”

Before Jaina could ask exactly
where
Luke thought the fight was going to move, the privacy partition slid open and C-3PO’s golden form appeared in the opening.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” the droid said. “
Mand’alor
Fett is requesting a few words with Jaina.”

“Fett?” Han was instantly on his feet. “No way. Tell him she’s—”

“I won’t stay long,” Fett said, pushing past C-3PO. He was wearing his new green
beskar’gam
with no helmet—a concession, no doubt, to the stubborn efficiency of Hapan Security forces, who tended to frown on masked strangers wandering around their Battle Dragons. His dead-brown eyes did not betray the anger Jaina sensed in him through the Force. “I just need a quick post-action briefing.”

“Sorry,” her father said, stepping forward. Jaina knew that it was not the first time Han Solo had seen Boba Fett without a helmet on, but her father’s gaze still seemed riveted to Fett’s swarthy, square face. “She’s in no condition—”

“Dad,” Jaina interrupted. “It’s okay. He deserves to hear what happened—what I can remember of it, anyway.”

Her father looked at her and scowled, then turned back to Fett and scowled more. “Keep it short. She’s been through a lot.”

Fett nodded. “Haven’t we all.”