"Spit it out, Mara."

"I just don't get how you can be so caught up in worrying whether you want Jag or Zekk when your own brother's going to pieces and taking others with him."

"Whoa

"Sorry. I said it was none of my business."

"Well, you said it, so—yes, I want to be distracted by personal issues, because otherwise I'd go nuts trying to understand why Jacen's doing what he's doing to our parents."

"Maybe it's time we all faced that. Together."

There was an awkward silence. Mara wanted to tell Jaina that she was a grown woman now and it was time to stop messing around like a teenager, and that Ben was more adult at fourteen than she was at thirty-one. It was spiteful, partly true, and partly fueled by Mara's incomprehension of anyone

who wasn't as totally focused on the mission as she was, to the exclusion of all else.

She kept her thoughts to herself. It was a sign of weary middle age, along with gray hairs and fading stretch marks.

I spent my whole youth on duty for the Emperor. I never had the freedom that Jaina's always had. And a little bit of me . . . resents that now.

It wasn't Jaina's fault. She was headstrong and passionate like her father, but she hadn't quite found the silent, hidden durasteel of her mother yet.

She'll rise to the challenge when it comes. But if this isn't it, I don't know what is.

Jaina had her head down, hair forming a dark curtain as she leaned over the desk, pretending to be absorbed in the chart, but Mara could feel she was hurt. It wasn't the first time in recent weeks.

Mara would make it up to her when she calmed down. Families had spats all the time. The storms blew over.

"Change of plan," said Luke, stepping out of the turbolift with his hair disheveled and a bag in one hand. Sometimes he had that Don't-stop-me look, and he had it now. It always made Mara want to stop him. "I'm going after Lumiya. Enough."

"No, you're not," Mara said. "You're too close to this. She's baiting you."

Luke dumped the bag on the desk, disrupting the holochart. Jaina stepped back.

"Ben's boots," said Luke.

"And the point is . . . ?"

"Deposited at our apartment by Lumiya."

Mara put her hand on the boots and felt the remnants of dark energy. Now she was mad: cold, clear, icy mad. "She's been into GAG HQ.

Or Jacen's apartment. I don't know which idea I like less."

"/need to settle this with her."

"It is, as some admiral once said, a trap—"

"For her. Biting off more than she can chew."

Jaina glanced at them both, still looking a little wounded. "Uncle Luke, I'll stick my nose in here and say it's better if we go after Lumiya now, because she's clearly playing a game, and . . . I've never seen you angry like this before."

"Luke, the question to ask yourself is this," Mara said, pulling on her jacket and checking her personal weapons. "What will you do when you catch her?"

Luke swallowed hard. "I know what I have to do."

"And what was that conversation we had the other day, about being fit for the role? Me trained killer, you honest guardian of right?"

Lightsaber, vibroblades, hold-out blaster, flechette launcher, and the last of my transponders. Check. "Here's the plan. You keep an eye on Jacen while I go after her."

"I'm coming, too," Jaina said. "I'd hate to miss Alema if she shows up."

Things were getting back to normal, then. Mara would apologize when they were on their way and Luke was making sure that he knew what Jacen was up to—in case Lumiya was staging an elaborate diversion to draw them all away from Coruscant.

Luke looked at his hands. "I know you're right. It doesn't feel right, but I know I shouldn't be going after her bent on vengeance, and I don't know

what it's going to take to make me kill her. And nothing short of that makes sense now."

Mara nodded and hit the comm to the hangar ground crew. "Stand by an X- wing, please." She pulled on her gloves, the fingerless ones that gave her a good grip but still let her feel the weapon. "I'm going back, starting from the apartment, and tracking her from there. She wants to leave a nice trail? She's found just the right person to follow it."

I'll sort this out, because it's my fault it got this far.

"I should have gone straight after her, and then you wouldn't have talked me out of this," said Luke.

"Jaina's dead right. You have too much history with Lumiya, and you're too stoked up. You have to kill cold."

Luke looked heartbroken for a moment. It wasn't disappointment that he was losing the argument to her, because there was no argument. It was common sense. lust because they were family didn't mean that military best practice went out the window. But something had struck him that he didn't like, something more than Lumiya's constant threats to Ben.

"I hate it when you're right," he said, and managed a smile. "Jacen says Ben's asleep, and it seems that way. So he's okay."

"There you go," said Mara. She still hadn't told Luke that Ben could shut down in the Force. She'd have a little chat with her son about that first. "We're off now. Keep tabs on Jacen. Go and have a concerned avuncular chat with him over caf if you have to. But be around in case that's where your ex is heading." She patted Luke's cheek and winked, wanting to make light of it so he didn't see how much Lumiya was getting to her. "I might be going gray, farmboy, and I don't have her dramatic dress sense, but at least what I've got is all flesh and blood . . ."

Luke almost laughed. Mara tapped her forefinger to her brow in a mock salute and walked off with Jaina. When she got in the turbo-lift, she

checked her datapad to see where Ben's transponder had gotten to.

If you've left that blade in your locker, Ben . . .

A little earlier, it had shown up on the datapad's small screen as a static blip in Galactic City, in GAG HQ. Now—it didn't.

Mara never panicked, but she reserved the right to professional apprehension. She switched the scale of the chart.

"What's wrong?" Jaina asked.

"Nothing." Where are you? "Nothing at all."

Mara flicked through ever-larger scales of screen until she picked up the transponder blip again, and the coordinates didn't make sense.

Ben appeared to be on Vulpter.

What takes you there, Ben? Vulpter's not in the war.

If she told Luke, with the head of steam he'd built up, she knew he'd go in with all cannons blazing.

So she simply smiled at Jaina, ready to let Lumiya play her game of tag before Mara finally separated her smug head from her metal body, ending her feud with the Skywalkers once and for all.

I'm coming, cyborg. It's time.

chapter nine

I don't want to worry, you, sir, but I've just heard something on the metal commodities market that might concern us. Someone's talking about offering futures in Mandalorian iron. And MandalMotors shares are being snapped up for the first time in years.

—Investment analyst, Galactic Alliance Treasury MANDALMOTORS RESEARCH WING, KELDABE, MANDALORE

"What do you think then Fett?" Jir Yomaget was the kind of man who probably had to be anesthetized to get him into a business suit. He stood with his arms folded, gazing rapt at an airframe that Fett hadn't seen before, an incongruously scruffy and disturbingly young man in dark green coveralls and partial armor. "Prototype?" Yomaget nodded. "Started life as the Kyr'galaar. Up to three crew, or two with extra payload, atmosphere- capable, configurable for anything from planet pounding to hunter-killer roles, and fast. Now tell me it's not gorgeous."