Inferno (22 page)

Jacen spun around. “
Replace
isn’t really what I was thinking.”

“It wasn’t?” Ben pretended to struggle with Jacen’s meaning for a moment, then allowed his face to fall. “Oh.”

“What do you think?” Jacen asked, watching him intently. “Does your father care about his students enough to return to duty for them?”

Ben knew he was being tested—that Jacen was checking to see whether his loyalty was to the Jedi or to him. But Ben also knew by the gleam he had seen in Jacen’s eye earlier that his cousin was quite capable of carrying out the threat, and the thought of having the blood of young ones on his hands was too much for Ben. If he condoned something like that, even to avenge his mother, he would never be able to step back into the light—which could be exactly what Jacen intended. His head began to ache.

“Well,” Ben began cautiously, “the trouble with threatening the students is that nobody will believe you’d do it. So you’re going to have to kill a few to show you’re serious.”

Jacen nodded. “Go on.”

“But if you do
that,
the first thing the Jedi will do next is come after you,” Ben finished. “The Masters were already talking about arresting you when you’d only put the academy under protective custody.”

“
Were
they?” Jacen sounded interested but disappointed, and Ben had the distinct feeling he had been measured and found lacking. “They should have been grateful, don’t you agree?”

“Masters aren’t idiots, Jacen,” Ben said. “They called your bluff, and you’ve got nowhere to go. If you make good on your threat, you’re just adding enemies. But if you
don’t,
you’re wasting GAG resources protecting the academy while they run around causing you trouble.”

“Interesting point.” Jacen’s tone had turned bitter. “I imagine you’re about to tell me I should withdraw soon.”

“At least then the Jedi would have to protect the academy themselves.” Ben could see by the way Jacen’s eyes hardened that he was not reestablishing trust—quite the opposite. “But if I were you, I’d just stick to my first plan.”

Jacen scowled. “What plan would that be?”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Come on. You’re always telling me to think ten steps ahead, and right now that means thinking about where the Alliance is going to get its Jedi
after
the war. Seems to me the academy is full of potential, just waiting for you to shape it in your own image.”

Jacen actually smiled. “So you
were
paying attention.”

“Some of the time,” Ben said. “But Dad’s desertion is going to throw a real hydrospanner in your plans, isn’t it?”

“Eventually,” Jacen admitted. “But so far, your father is content to do exactly as you suggest—allow
me
to guard the academy while he stirs up trouble.”

“Then we’d better move first,” Ben said, sensing an opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Jacen. “I’ll handle it, if you like.”

Jacen glanced at his chrono, then asked, “
We,
Ben?”

“If you’ll take me back,” Ben said. “I’m sorry for what I said, but everything was so confusing—”

“That’s no excuse, Ben,” Jacen said. “Any apprentice of mine needs to be the master of his emotions, not a slave to them.”

“I know.” Ben thought he was doing a fairly good job of that now, forcing himself to appear humble when what he really wanted was to drop a thermal detonator at Jacen’s feet. “You taught me better than that.”

“I’m glad you recognize that,” Jacen said. “But I’m not sending you to the academy to kill the Solusars and Jaina, if that’s what you mean by moving first.”

Ben scowled. “You don’t think that will make Dad think twice?”

“It might—but if you can’t handle an old man like Omas, how are you going to eliminate two Jedi Masters and Jaina?” Jacen shook his head to indicate that Ben
wasn’t,
then checked his chrono again and started toward the door. “I’m due at a staff meeting.”

“What about me?” Ben asked. He could not sense anything in Jacen but distrust and disappointment. “Do I still have a place here?”

Jacen did not even hesitate as he reached for the control panel. “I don’t know, Ben. I haven’t seen any reason to take you back.”

Ben grew hollow and cold inside, not because Jacen was turning him down, but because he was asking for more—something that only Ben could give him.

“Whatever you decide, there’s something you should know.” Ben told himself it really didn’t matter
whom
he betrayed right now, because Jacen wasn’t going to live long enough to make use of the information. “Dad told me to meet him on Kashyyyk.”

Jacen’s hand dropped without touching the control panel. “Kashyyyk?” He sounded surprised—just not surprised enough to be hearing the information for the first time. “So he intends to join your aunt and uncle in asking the Wookiees to stay out of this.”

Ben shook his head. “He’s a lot madder than that.” Suddenly he felt very dirty inside—even dirtier than he had after he assassinated Gejjen. “I think he wants them to help throw you out of office.”

This time Ben did get the reaction he was hoping for—first confusion, then shock, then total red-faced anger. “He wants the Wookiees to move on
Coruscant
?”

Ben shrugged. “He didn’t say, exactly—just that it’s time to put someone else in charge.”

“Someone
else
?” Jacen punched the wall so hard that it triggered the opaque control, and the bustling Tactical Salon slowly appeared on the other side of the wall. “No one else can
do
this. No one else is willing to make the necessary sacrifices.”

“
I
am,” Ben said, sensing that he was finally starting to make some progress. “I just
did.
”

If Jacen heard Ben, he didn’t acknowledge it. His gaze was fixed on the tactical display outside, and he had that blank look he got when he was seeing something in the Force. After a moment, Jacen opened the door and went to stand at the holodisplay, shouldering aside a Duros lieutenant and a Mon Calamari commander.

Ben followed and heard Jacen muttering to himself, saying the
Confederation
needed more members, that they couldn’t stand the attrition any better than the Alliance could. From what Ben could see, that was hardly news to anyone. The Battle of Kuat had been raging for over a week now, and both sides were losing several capital ships a day and suffering casualties ten thousand at a time. The holodisplay showed more derelict vessels than it did functional, and rescue beacons were glittering so thick they looked like electronic snow.

Jacen turned to his aide, Orlopp. “Get me the latest report on the readiness of the Wookiee fleet.”

“I
am
monitoring the situation—as ordered.” Orlopp pulled at the nose whiskers on his slender Jenet snout, then continued, “Military Intelligence hasn’t heard anything from our agents since the Solos escaped from jail, but the last report indicated that the Wookiees had just started lighting their reactor cores. We won’t be seeing their fleet for some time, I’m afraid.”

“That may be a blessing,” Jacen said. “Prepare orders sending the Fifth Fleet to Kashyyyk. Tell Admiral Atoko that the
Anakin Solo
will be joining him there—and open a channel to Admiral Bwua’tu. I need to discuss a change of strategy with him.”

“You’re going after Dad and the Jedi?” Ben gasped.

“No—
we’re
going to Kashyyyk to hunt down a band of traitors and deserters.” Jacen waved Ben to his side, then added, “Welcome back, Lieutenant Skywalker. You’re going to help me make an example of these people.”

fourteen

Be ready.
It was not an actual voice Jaina kept hearing in her dreams, not even words, but she recognized that this message came from Ben. He was terrified for her and the others, and he felt somehow responsible for…what? And suddenly her dream had her aboard her parents’ beloved
Falcon
at Hapes, turbolaser strikes slamming the old girl like a Nkllonian boulder storm, air whistling out through a breach in the central access core, Zekk lying wounded on the deck. Next to Zekk stood Ben, his face slack with horror and an ignited lightsaber droning in his hand, the children murmuring in confusion and pouring fear into the Force, her father telling her to take the kids and…the
kids
?

There hadn’t been any kids aboard when Ben wounded Zekk. Yet Jaina heard them whispering just beyond the bulkhead, sounding frightened and confused and resentful, and she could feel them in the Force, reaching out to her, seeking direction and reassurance, and then her dream had her someplace where there really
were
kids, back in the dormitory on Yavin 4, where she and Jacen and Zekk had been students at her uncle Luke’s Jedi academy.

All of you, be ready.

Ben still had no voice, but Jaina knew it was him, which seemed very strange since he hadn’t even been born yet. Luke and Mara would not be married for another…Mara was dead. That fact came crashing down on Jaina like a falling star, and now she realized that her dream had her in the wrong academy, that she was actually sleeping in the dormitory at the Jedi academy on Ossus. Her brother had sent a battalion of Blackboots to secure the students—to hold them hostage, actually—and she and Jag and Zekk had been forced to call off their hunt for Alema Rar to stay here and help watch over the students.

For a little over two weeks now, Jaina had been living with a group of the academy’s youngest students, acting as a dorm parent while Jag helped supervise the teenagers. Zekk continued to hide in the surrounding forest, a deadly surprise against the day it actually became necessary to defend the young ones against Jacen’s troopers. For the most part, it had been easy to believe that day would never come. The GAG commander, Major Serpa, was only mildly unbalanced, and as long as the academy remained orderly and under his control, he was content to leave the children to Jaina and the other adults and concentrate his efforts on planetary security. The Solusars had even begun to hold classes again.

But it felt far too early for the morning lessons, and the young ones in Jaina’s charge didn’t usually try to sneak off to class without disturbing her sleep. Just the opposite. Usually, she was the one who had to get
them
out of bed, begging and threatening and enticing until she had all twenty children at the refectory table playing with their breakfast.

So why were they out in the hallway
now,
whispering and trying to slip past her door without rousing her?

Jaina snapped awake—and found that her eyes remained closed. She sat up and discovered that her body was still lying in bed. She tried to roll onto the floor, then just to lift a leg. Her body remained fast asleep, and a dream-like quality began to creep in around the edges of her thoughts again.

Coma gas.

A long male face with sunken eyes and a blade-thin nose drifted across Jaina’s mind, and she began to understand what Ben was trying to tell her. Even deranged Major Serpa would need a reason to gas her; her brother had to have ordered him to do something bad, and he needed to keep her out of the way.

Jaina grabbed hold of that realization, held on tight to keep from sinking back into sleep, used it to pull herself back toward wakefulness. Jacen was going to hurt the young ones; she
had
to fight through the gas and stop Serpa.

Jaina began by expanding her Force-awareness, anchoring herself to the reality of the dorm master’s room where she was staying, locating first the desk, then the closet and refresher, the opaqued viewport and the door across from it. Just outside the door, she sensed a jittery male kneeling down near the floor. He seemed to be concentrating hard, his presence filled with worry and dark intent.

He was the one spraying coma gas into her room.

Jaina grabbed him in the Force, then hurled him against the far side of the corridor, slammed him into the wall twice, and pulled him back into the door. She felt him slip into unconsciousness and would have followed, save for the young ones reaching out to her, silently pleading with her to wake up. She found the door controls and used the Force to depress the slap-pad, then felt a welcome rush of air as the door
whoosh
ed open.

For several seconds, Jaina could do nothing but listen to the hoarse whispers of the GAG troopers as they cursed and threatened their prisoners. Frightened as they were, the young ones seemed to be doing a superb job of making their captors’ jobs difficult, shuffling their feet noisily and forcing the troopers to repeat their instructions over and over again. Still, the sounds were fading rapidly as the children were herded out the far door into the Ossan night.

Jaina filled her lungs with clean air perhaps a hundred times before her head finally began to clear. She opened her eyes to the dim illumination of the corridor’s night-light spilling through the open door. After a moment, she rolled off the bed and saw a GAG trooper sprawled across the threshold, a small canister with a slender delivery hose lying on the floor next to him.

Jaina crawled toward him, rapidly growing more alert as the effort of moving began to circulate her blood and carry the toxins out of her brain. Despite a queasy stomach and throbbing head, by the time she reached the door she was strong enough to stand. She dragged the trooper into the room and gave him a lungful of his own coma gas, then took his comlink and slipped into her clothes. She would have taken his blaster, too, except he wasn’t carrying one.

A muffled voice called down the corridor, “Got ’em all, Delpho. Time to go.”

Jaina lowered her voice into the male range and, buckling her belt around her robe, grunted an acknowledgment.

“Delpho?”

Jaina cursed under her breath, then reached into one of her robe’s inner pockets and withdrew her only weapon, a spoon that she had laboriously sharpened into a knife over the last few days.

“Delpho?” The voice sounded closer now, as though the speaker was entering the corridor. “Report!”