And there was Slave I, sitting on a makeshift landing pad. That was home. His ship, his father's ship, the cockpit where he had spent literally years of his life.

"So am I coming with you or not?"

Mirta was more trouble left to her own devices. Besides, he didn't want to let that heart-of-fire necklace stray too far. It was the one link he had to finding out how Sintas had died.

"Okay," he said. She was his grandchild, even if she had tried to kill him. He didn't care about that, but he struggled to find that protective devotion he'd seen in his own father. Something just didn't click. So he acted it out, because that was how he'd learned everything that became second nature to him—he went through the motions until it was part of him. He could learn to be a good grandfather, too. He could excel at it. "What's the best way to find another bounty hunter?"

"Think like him?"

Fett shook his head and set the speeder down with a thud. He'd have to tell Beviin where he was going. If anything happened to him, Goran Beviin was his chosen successor.

Fett hadn't told him yet, but Beviin took that kind of news in his stride.

"No," Fett said. "You hire him."

chapter two

If you can't beat them, divide them.

—Cal Omas, Chief of State, Galactic Alliance.

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF STATE, SENATE BUILDING, CORUSCANT

"Not exactly our finest hour admiral."

Chief of State Cal Omas looked a much older man than he'd been just a few months earlier. Cha Niathal prided herself on a decent understanding of human facial expressions and the telltale little signs of fatigue and stress. Omas had them all: fluid-filled bulges under his watery blue eyes, a peppering of reddish spots on his chin, and a sour smell of caf when she got too close to him.

But mainly it was the eyes. Human eyes told her everything she needed to know. When she glanced at Jacen Solo, he was a model of confidence and composure—except for his eyes. There were no signs of poor health, but he was far from the glacially calm facade he presented. She could see the changes in the pupils of his dark eyes.

Small, almost imperceptible: but his pupils flickered, showing that some things got to him.

That was useful to know.

"We didn't lose the battle at Gilatter Eight," she said. "Whatever the Confederation claims."

"We didn't win it, either," said Omas. He'd developed a habit of moving sheets of flimsi around his desk. He didn't need hard-copy records, but it seemed to give him some comfort to handle them, as if they were the last tangible grip he had on his own government. "Consider this a wash-up."

"We've had our wash-up," Jacen said. "We know what went wrong and why we fell for a trap."

"Poor intel," said Omas. "As a Jedi, do you not sense these ambushes?"

Niathal noted Jacen's three rapid blinks. There was little love lost between the two men now. That remark really stung Jacen for some "

reason, even though he was far too smart to delude himself with ideas of omniscience.

"We're neither invincible nor infallible," he said softly. That was when he was at his most lethal, when he sounded quietly reasonable. "I had unreliable intelligence, and that's an occupational hazard. The fact that we got out in one piece is largely due to Jedi skills. Ironically, my parents' and my uncle's skills . . ."

Don't mind me, Jacen. Or the fleet. "You're too modest, Colonel Solo," she said. "I hear you fought quite remarkably."

Jacen let the comment pass without reply or a self-effacing half smile, which was his usual response. Omas flicked the controls of the holoscreen set in his office wall. A fly-through image of a planet resolved into a cityscape; hololinks showed inset three-D images of explosions and smoking skylines. "Now we have reports of fighting breaking out on Ripoblus."

"Why?" Jacen asked. "Nobody in the Sepan system has any interest in the Confederation. I've had no intelligence—"

"They don't need any love for either cause," said Niathal. "We've reached the free-for-all stage. What better time than during a civil war to resurrect their dispute with Dimok? Like a cantina brawl. One fight breaks out and everyone suddenly remembers they have a score to settle."

"There'll be plenty more me-too conflicts." Omas sighed. "And we have to ask where we draw the line."

Jacen looked as if he was studying the schematic of Ripoblus's capital. Niathal judged that he was actually fretting about the limited scope of his

intelligence.

"Chief of State, even the Empire never managed to stop the Sepan wars, and it was prepared to take far more extreme measures than we are,"

she said. "We should resist any pressure to get involved. We're getting perilously close to overstretch."

Omas changed the holoimage to a tote board of the Senate composition. The names of most of the member planets were listed in red, but some were in blue; there were more blue names than she remembered from the last time she'd seen this list.

"Two more members seceded last night," Omas said. "Las Lagon and Beris. Minor worlds, but let's do the arithmetic. The more planets that secede from the GA, the fewer military assets I have to call on, and the more assets there are that are potentially available to the Confederation."

Jacen was a master of expressionless contempt. "I think I can work that out, yes."

"And you still believe in responding with maximum force—within the boundaries of ethical treaties."

"Yes."

"Then we're on the downward spiral." Omas walked into the center of the room and gave Niathal a glance that verged on pleading: Come on, you're the military, you know this is true. "Sooner or later, secessions reach a point where the GA becomes the rump—where the Confederation equals and then outnumbers us." Omas held up two fingers and counted off theatrically. "Problem one: We would be outgunned. Problem two: Where's our legitimacy? What peace would we be enforcing? "

Niathal decided to let Jacen respond and keep her powder dry. Omas had an excellent point, but it was a politician's point, not a chief of staff's. Her job at that moment was to decide how to use force to achieve Omas's objectives, not to define what those objectives should be.

That was a battle for Jacen Solo. She watched.

"In that case," Jacen said, so softly that it was almost a whisper,

"they can defeat us without a shot being fired. They can break us with a sheet of flimsi. I'd call that surrender."

"I'd call it war-gaming the worst scenario." Omas looked to Niathal again. "And you, Admiral, will know when we reach the military tipping point."

Niathal had two strategies—one with all the GA pieces she had in play at the current time, and one with Coruscant-based forces alone. It made sense to work on the basis of the latter if support was falling away. She glanced at the list of red names and the growing tally of blue ones while keeping an eye on Jacen—humans always had a hard time working out where Mon Calamari were looking—and realized that the graph wouldn't be a straight line. If there was to be an erosion of the Alliance, it wouldn't be a tidy progression; it would be a sudden collapse.

"That point hasn't come," she said at last. "I'll let you know as soon as I start getting nervous. But I can tell you that we're already overstretched because of the geography. Multiple fronts. Not good."

"And if we withdraw support from allies, then we magnify the problem," Omas said. "They'll switch."