Invincible (6 page)

“Fett has a family now,” Jaina continued, “and he has Mandalore. He still cares about his word, too.”

“Then I guess this war has accomplished something,” Leia replied bitterly. She was dressed in a white robe that was only a few shades lighter than the gray wisps now running through her hair. “Boba Fett has grown as a person. And here I was wishing the kriffing war had never started.”

“I’m not defending him,” Jaina replied. She could see the sad pain swimming just beneath the surface of her mother’s brown eyes, and was not surprised to find that it only served to make her appear more regal than ever. “I’m just saying he has more vulnerabilities now, and we should remember that. Of all the things I learned training with Boba Fett, the most important were these two: he isn’t a good guy, and he’ll never be our friend.”

This drew a crooked, deep-wrinkled smile from her father. “I always said you were our smart one.”

He was seated next to Leia, who sat on a stool at the end of the table—very much her own woman, but still
with
Han, as always. It was a stark contrast with Fett’s fifty years of loneliness, and Jaina found herself glancing at Jagged Fel’s square jaw and squarer shoulders, hoping she would survive long enough to someday have what her parents did.

Then Jag caught her looking at him, and his grim frown was replaced by a passably warm smile. Jaina glanced away without returning the gesture, telling herself that she had only been looking in Jag’s direction because Zekk wasn’t present, that she wasn’t ready to think about choosing
anyone
until she had finished with Jacen.

And to do
that,
she needed to win the support of the Jedi Council. The first step was to convince Luke and the others that the Jedi had to challenge Jacen no matter
how
strong he was; that they did not dare hide in the Transitory Mists until they could find some way to shift the balance of power back in their favor.

Jaina stepped to the corner of the table closest to her parents. “If I may, I’d like to express an opinion.”

Leia turned toward her with an air of attentiveness, but everyone else seemed taken aback. Her father’s jaw fell, Jag’s gaze grew even more penetrating, and the brows of several Masters rose in shock. During her tenure as a Jedi Knight, Jaina had hardly cultivated the reputation of someone who followed proper procedure.

“You’re requesting permission to talk to us?” Kyp asked. For once, his brown hair was neatly trimmed at his collar, his face was clean-shaven, and his blue robe had only a few wrinkles.
“Jaina Solo?”

“That’s right.” Jaina checked her posture, drawing herself up straight and formal. “I think it’s important.”

Kyp whistled in disbelief, then looked to Han. “I don’t know what Fett did to her, but I’ll help you hunt him down.”

“Come on,” Jaina complained. “Can’t a girl learn from her mistakes? I just want to do this right.”

“Then by all means, proceed,” Kenth said. He placed both hands flat on the table and glanced around at the others. “Unless there are objections?”

Saba snorted. “This one did not realize you had such a good sense of humor, Master Hamner.” She let out a long siss of Barabel laughter, her forked tongue flickering between her pebbled lips. “Who would not want to hear
this
?”

Jaina was fairly sure she could name two people at the table who were not going to like what she intended to propose, but she nodded her thanks and began.

“It’s obvious that we have no hope of actually stopping the takeover of the Verpine munitions industry,” she began. “By the time I left the system, the Remnant had already captured Nickel One and most of the other important hives. With the advantage of their aerosol weapon, it’s clear that they’ll have the rest before the coalition can mount any sort of response.”

“
If
we can mount a response,” agreed Corran. “Most of our partners’ fleets are already engaged near their own sectors, and they’re not going to pull out to defend an unaligned system—especially when that system has been selling arms to all three sides.”

“That doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore the Roche system,” Kenth objected. “Once Jacen has control of those munitions factories, the war is over.”

“Not necessarily,” Jaina said. She could not allow the Jedi to slip into a defensive frame of mind. She had to keep them focused on going
after
the enemy. “If Jacen can’t get the munitions to his navies, it doesn’t do him any good to control the factories.”

“You think we should forget the Verpine?” Kyp asked.

“Not
forget,
” Jaina corrected. “But the Mandalorians are the ones who have the mutual-aid agreement. All I’m suggesting is that we let them honor their contract and leave the asteroid fighting to Fett. In the meantime, we’ll concentrate on what’s important to us and—”

“Raid the supply train,” Kenth finished. “Classic guerrilla tactics—for which we happen to be perfectly positioned.”

“Exactly,” Jaina said. “We make them choose between defending their munitions convoys against a concentrated StealthX campaign, and keeping their fleet in the Roche system to protect their new munitions factories against a Mandalorian counterattack. They don’t have enough hulls to do both missions well, so I’m betting they’ll want to protect their new factories.”

“And that leaves the Jedi free to demolish their freighter capacity,” Jag said. “How many cargo vessels do they have?”

“Um…there wasn’t a lot of time to count,” Jaina admitted. She could have kicked him for jumping to details
now,
before she had a chance to talk about the other half of her plan, but that was Jag—focused, careful, and alert. “And I wasn’t thinking
demolish.
More like, um,
appropriate.
”

“You mean
steal,
” her father said, smirking in pride. “I like it. It shows your Solo blood.”

“This one likez it also,” Saba said. “There will be fewer pointlesz killz this way.”

“Yeah, that, too,” Han said. He winked at Leia. “But mostly I’m looking forward to playing pirate again.”

“All you had to do was ask,” Leia replied sweetly. “I’m always happy to clap you in leg irons, flyboy.”

“Okaaaay,” Jaina said, feeling herself blush. “We really don’t need to hear more—at least
I
don’t.”

A chuckle ran around the table, then Kenth, all business as usual, brought the discussion back to strategy.

“I think we’ve all heard enough to agree this is an idea worth exploring,” he said. “We can refine our tactics when we have a better idea of their shipping capacity, but fundamentally this plan makes sense. We’re just about directly between the Roche system and the Core, so we can knock out their convoys almost at will. And when they do decide to come after us, we can fade into the Mists and take them by ambush. Master Skywalker?”

Luke nodded without turning around, and Jaina congratulated herself for achieving the first part of her plan. Now all she had left were parts two and three—the hard ones.

Luke’s gaze shifted from the darkness outside to Jaina’s reflection. “Now—Jaina, why don’t you tell us what’s really on your mind?”

Jaina nodded, then summoned to mind the speech she had been rehearsing about how the coalition couldn’t win the war through military might alone; their only real hope was to dismantle the enemy command structure from the top down.

But then she glanced in her parents’ direction and saw the pain lurking in the depths of her mother’s brown eyes, and how her father seemed to have aged ten years in the weeks she had been gone, and she knew she couldn’t do that to them. It would be more honest to just come out and say it, to simply tell them about the awful decision she had made not so long ago, looking out over the beautiful Kelita valley with a forgotten Jedi general.

“Mom and Dad, I’m sorry for this.” As Jaina spoke, she did not take her eyes from her parents. “But I think we have to go after Jacen. I think it’s our duty.”

Their eyes grew instantly glassy. Her mother’s lip began to tremble, and her father’s face grew red and grief-furrowed, but they did not look away.

Neither did they speak. It was Saba Sebatyne who asked, “
Go after?
What do you mean by
go after
? Arrest? Capture?” She ruffled her scales in disapproval. “This one knowz you have been training with Boba Fett, but that has not worked before.”

Jaina shifted her attention to the Barabel. “I know, and it cost us some good people.” She glanced around the table at the other Masters. “I mean eliminate. I mean hunt down and kill.”

Not too surprisingly, it was her father who responded first.
“No.”
Instead of looking at Jaina or anyone else, he stared at the table and just shook his head. “That’s
not
Jacen. Jacen died in the war against the Yuuzhan Vong, just like Anakin did.”

Jaina frowned, wondering how badly she had misjudged the impact her decision would have on Han Solo. “Dad, Jacen didn’t die,” she said. “He escaped with Vergere and—”

Her mother grabbed her arm, silencing her with a short squeeze. “Jaina, we haven’t lost touch with reality. We’re just saying that the man you’re talking about
isn’t
our Jacen.”

“Jacen was a hero.” Han’s voice was as harsh as forge fumes. “He killed Onimi and won the war with the Yuuzhan Vong, and then he died of his wounds.” He stopped talking for a moment, drawing in a loud breath and seeming to gather his strength, then finally looked up at Jaina with more anger and despair in his eyes than she recalled seeing, even when Chewbacca died. “Caedus is just the monster who stepped into the hollow shell that was left behind…and if anyone here is capable of taking him out, I’ll gladly arm the detonator.”

Jaina did not know how to react to the raw hatred in his voice, perhaps because she had not allowed her own anger to play a part in her decision—because she had decided
dispassionately
that it was appropriate to put a blaster bolt through her twin brother’s head.

So Jaina merely nodded and reached over to take his forearm. “Okay, Dad…
Caedus
must die. We have to hunt him down and kill him.”

Jaina had not used Jacen’s Sith name earlier because she could not allow herself to pretend that she was thinking these things about someone other than her own brother—because when the time came, she knew it would not be Darth Caedus she saw in her sniper sight, but her brother, Jacen Solo, and if she wasn’t ready to kill
him,
then she would be the one who died.

Jaina shifted her attention to Leia. “Mom?”

Her mother’s eyes grew distant and unreadable; then she merely looked at the table and nodded. “That’s not Jacen,” she said. “And even if it was, I don’t think we’d have any choice.”

Luke finally turned away from the viewport. With sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, he looked like he had not slept in many nights. But there was also an eerie tranquillity about him that seemed both frightening and vaguely reassuring, as though he had been staring out that viewport for days, waiting for just this moment.

“Thank you,” he said, and Jaina knew she had accomplished the second step of her plan. Now all she had to do was convince them
she
should be the one to send. “I’ve been wondering when someone else was going to come to the same conclusion.”

“Then you approve?” While Kenth’s voice was condemning, there was something in it that did not sound quite sincere to Jaina—as though he secretly agreed with Luke’s decision, but felt the argument had to be made for form’s sake. “
Assassinating
a Head of State?”

“I doubt we’ll be fortunate enough to get away with simple assassination,” Luke replied. “But yes. For some time now, it’s been clear to me that our survival—and civilization’s well-being—depends on ridding the galaxy of Darth Caedus.”

Corran shook his head. “There are a lot of legitimate ways to be rid of Ja—” He caught himself and stopped, casting an apologetic look toward the Solos. Again, there was something missing from his tone, and Jaina had the sense that while he was sincere in what he was saying, he already knew that this was an argument he had no chance of winning. “To remove Caedus from power. Assassination isn’t one of them. It would make us no different from him.”

“We have
tried
arrest, and we have tried politicz,” Saba replied. “And we have failed because we refuse to see the truth: Caedus remainz in power because he never balkz at the kill. If we wish to remove him, neither can we.”

Kyp nodded in agreement. “That’s right. Caedus won’t be taken alive…and if we try, we’ll be the ones who end up dead.” He turned to Luke. “But if you’ve already decided we have to do this, why wait until Jaina brings it up?”

“To tell the truth, I was worried that my judgment might be clouded by a desire for vengeance.” Luke glanced in Jaina’s direction, and a look of genuine relief came to his eyes. “So I wanted to hear someone else say it first.”

Jaina’s heart sank. It was beginning to sound like Luke intended to go after Caedus himself, and she could not decide whether to feel betrayed or confused. She had no hope of convincing anyone—maybe not even herself—that she was more capable of slaying her brother than Luke. But what of the vision he had experienced on Mon Calamari, when he had promoted her to Jedi Knight? Hadn’t he foreseen that she would be the Sword of the Jedi, always leading the fight against enemies of the Order?

Then Jaina had a terrible thought: perhaps the vision had not referred to what
was,
but to what was
to be
—perhaps she would become the Sword after the current one fell.

“I’m going with you,” Jaina said. When she saw a look of disappointment flash across his face, she realized that she had reverted to the old Jaina—the Jaina who pronounced instead of offered—and amended her approach. “I mean, I’d like to help.”

Luke surprised her with a sad smile. “There’s nothing I’d like better, Jaina,” he said, “but I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”

“Do you mind if I ask why not?” Jaina knew by Luke’s tone that she would not get him to change his mind, but she intended to keep fighting until after the battle was over…something else she had learned from the Mandalorians. “You’re going to need support, and I
have
been preparing.”