Текст книги "Sacrifice "

Автор книги: Karen Traviss

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head shot waiting to happen."

"What's the public mood like over there?"

"There hasn't exactly been a run on mourning clothes, but folks are nervous."

"So who's at the helm in Coronet now?"

"They're slugging it out. For the while, it's going to be a committee job."

"Who do you think did it?"

"The biggest task CorSec has is to work out how to manage the lines of suspects. Not that they need to dig up any—two different terror groups here have already claimed responsibility for it. Yes, we have 'em, too."

"I never realized how divided you all were."

"We're never divided about Corellia. Just who's the best candidate to run it."

"Are you and Leia okay?"

"Yes, we're fine, and no, I'm not telling you what we're doing at the moment. Stop worrying."

Luke almost raised the topic of a GA smokescreen. It was fairly common to carry out a hit and set it up to look like another faction to achieve maximum discord. But he thought better of it, because it smacked of Jacen, and Han didn't need to hear that his best friend thought his son—stranger though he was—had a hand in it. Some things were best dealt with by friends, cleaned up, and smoothed over. When Lumiya was finally brought down, Luke would spend his time putting Jacen back on track. It was the least he could do for Han.

Omas couldn't have picked a worse day to visit his doctor, but it was unusual for him to be so reticent about routine arrangements. Luke hoped

it wasn't something serious.

It was bad enough losing Gejjen, because at least he was a known quantity, and Luke had become used to his way of thinking. If Omas's future was in doubt, too—well, that was one unknown too many.

CORUSCANT MILITARY SPACEPORT

Ben sat in the cargo hold of the ship long after the ground crew had secured the landing dampers and the drives had cooled completely.

He was almost comfortable staring at the bulkhead opposite, in the sense that he feared taking his eyes off it. If he did that, the numbing meditation he'd slipped into would be broken, and he'd have to think.

Jori Lekauf was gone. It was one of those facts he couldn't take in even when he saw it happen. The guy had been alive and well the night before, even hours ago, and now he didn't exist. Ben simply couldn't feel death.

It was more than the biological facts, and he knew those all too well. The former CSF officers in the GAG had regaled him with fascinating stories from the police forensics labs, but knowing how to cause death and what it looked like, and being able to feel a life wink out of existence in the Force did nothing to hammer home the fact that his friend was gone forever, and that he wouldn't see him again, and all the things that made Jori Lekauf part of the fabric of the universe, someone who mattered, were so far beyond his reach.

And it was Ben's fault. Lekauf had died to protect him.

"Come on, Ben. The techs want to start stripping down this crate."

Captain Shevu stood in the hatch, fingers hooked over the top edge of the coaming. Ben felt that if he moved, the whole world would come unraveled.

"I'll be along in a minute."

Shevu waited for a moment and then came to sit down with him. Ben

suspected that if he'd been a grown man, Shevu might have been harsher, but he thought Ben was still a kid, too young to be on this kind of mission whether he was a Jedi or not. In many ways, Shevu was right. But nobody was ever old enough to lose a friend and not feel it cutting through to the center of his chest. If Ben ever got that old, he didn't want to carry on.

"We don't lose many troopers in special forces. It makes it harder when we do, I think. It's hard for me, anyway."

Ben gambled on whether to speak or not. He took a breath and waited to feel everything around him shatter.

"He didn't have to die, sir." Once he heard his own voice, Ben just felt like he couldn't breathe, nothing worse. "He could have taken off.

We could have run for it, or even been captured, and the job would still have been done."

"Ben . . . our orders were to make it look like a Corellian schism, and not to get caught or leave a trail. Can't have Jedi exposed as assassins, especially not you. We had to get you out of there."

"It didn't have to be me. Any trooper could have done the job. I wanted to do my duty, but if it hadn't been me, if Jori hadn't felt he had to protect my identity, he'd be alive."

"Ben, what do you think would have happened to him if he'd been taken back to Corellia?" Shevu lowered his voice. "You saw what we do here to prisoners. You think worse than that can't happen in Coronet?"

"So what if I had been caught? My dad would have been humiliated?

So what? Jori's life for Dad being upset?"

"I could give you a list of reasons why having Corellia think their own kind did it helps the GA. But you don't want to hear that right now."

Shevu stood up and beckoned to Ben to follow. He meant it. "There are

anti-Gejjen factions claiming responsibility, so the mission worked fine —strategically. Now go home and take a couple of days off. If you can't stand being around your folks, or . . . or around Colonel Solo, come over to my place. My girlfriend won't mind."

It was the first time Ben had heard Shevu hint that being around Jacen wasn't necessarily the best thing for him. Ben didn't care about Jacen right then, but the rational bit of his mind that wasn't drowning in shocked grief made a note of it.

"Thanks."

"Now I've got to tell his parents. I'll have to come up with a really good cover story, and thank providence that there's no footage of him splashed all over the news right now, because that'd be a really lousy way to find out your son was dead."

Shevu sounded beaten. He was probably pretty close to Lekauf, but he'd never said. Ben had learned a lesson about being an officer today, and it was that lives were to be spent in pursuit of an objective; it might have seemed obvious, but when you worked alongside the people who might lose their loved ones because of your decisions, it acquired a whole new meaning.

"I don't think I'll ever stop feeling guilty about this," Ben said, relieved that he had so far managed not to burst into tears.

"Me neither," said Shevu. "Because it was supposed to be me who blew the ship if things went wrong."

"We never planned that—"

"You didn't. We did. Need to know, and all that." Shevu stopped a passing ground crew speeder and told the driver to get Ben back to HQ.

"Wash that stuff out of your hair and go home."

An hour later, Ben found himself staring at his familiar reflection in the HQ

refreshers, toweling his hair and wondering if Jacen had set him up.

I didn't have to do the job. Any one of us could have passed unnoticed at a spaceport.

But it was hindsight. Jacen had tasked him to do it before anyone knew where the meeting would take place. Ben still felt something was wrong, but couldn't pin it down.

He'd just lost his buddy. Maybe that made you think crazy things.

When he left the HQ building and walked out into the late-afternoon sun, completely disoriented by the shifts in planetary time over the last forty– eight hours, he lowered his head and just walked aimlessly, hands in pockets.

Suddenly he felt someone's hand on his shoulder. He almost shrieked. He'd shut out everything around him. Then he found he was staring into his mother's face, and something was terribly wrong.

"Mom! Who hit you?"

"Forget that, Ben." She hugged him to her, a really desperate and crushing embrace. "I've got some questions and I will absolutely not be stalled this time." She had hold of his shoulders, eyes scanning his face as if she was looking for injury. "This is between you and me, I swear, not your father."

They ended up in a tapcaf in the Osarian quarter. The table was greasy and the elbows of Ben's jacket stuck to it every time he leaned on them, but nobody knew them here. Even if the food had been appetizing and not searingly hot, Ben wasn't hungry.

Mara lowered her voice. "I want to know why you've been to Vulpter."

Ben was stunned. How could she possibly know? Who'd talked? It was completely classified. Most of the GAG hadn't even been briefed on it.

"I haven't."

"You can stop the game. I know where you've been, and I have a horrible feeling I know why. The whole planet's seen the news."

Mara just stared at him, not blinking, suddenly not his mom at all.

He was supposed to deny everything. He stared back, silent.

"I could ask Jacen, sweetheart, but I'm not sure I could believe him if he told me what the time was."

"You know I can't talk about my work, Mom."

"Oh, I know. I've never hidden my past from you, so I know exactly what your work entails. I can talk to you like a grown-up, Ben, because once you do the kind of job you're doing, you're not a kid any longer. Do we understand each other?"

Ben thought of Jori Lekauf and felt his stomach starting to knot and shake. He desperately wanted to blurt out that his buddy had died and that he wanted to roll time back to before he'd fallen into this mess, and that —that—

"Mom . . ." He couldn't get it out. She put her hand on his and squeezed. "Mom, if I tell you, will you tell me who hit you?"

"Okay, it was Lumiya. I caught her, but she got away. I gave her a good hiding, and she won't get away next time. Now—your turn."

Ben took a deep breath. This was either going to make everything better, or be the start of something disastrous. He couldn't tell: all his Force impressions had deserted him.

"I did it, Mom."

"Involved ... or did it?"

Ben's mouth took over without his permission. "Folding-stock Karpaki,

frangible round."

Mara actually sat back in her chair and her left hand moved as if she was about to put it to her mouth. Her right hand was still clamped tight on his.

"Okay," she said.

"Lekauf was killed, Mom." Ben couldn't remember if she knew Lekauf or not. It didn't matter. He needed to say his name and tell someone.

"Jori got killed—he got killed to save my skin."

Mara busied herself sipping from the cup in front of her. Osarians liked very strongly scented herbs, and Ben knew he'd never be able to smell that aroma again without being dragged back to this awful moment.

"Why did you do it, Ben?"

"Orders. I was the best person to do it."

"Your whole company is suddenly short of snipers? Whose orders?"

"Jacen."

Mara was doing a reasonable job of not reacting, but Ben wasn't fooled. She was furious. He could see it in the whiteness of her skin, and the contrast with the yellowing bruise around her eye made it even more noticeable.

"Okay, sweetheart," she said. "Let's not tell your dad, because he'll rip Jacen's head off in the mood he's in at the moment. Can you face coming home?"

"I don't think I can sit and have dinner and not talk about this to him."

"Okay, so where are you planning on going?"

"Home. Jacen's apartment." Ben could see she wasn't keen on the idea.

"Or Captain Shevu's place."

"Wherever you feel safest, Ben. I won't force you to come back with me as long as you swear you'll come to me the second you have problems, okay? "

"Okay."

"I'm sorry about your friend. I really am."

"Nobody's ever going to know how brave he was."

"I know."

"Are you angry with me? Stupid question. You must be."

"How can I be, after what I used to do?" She gripped both his hands as if she was afraid he'd run away. "This is what we made you, isn't it?

We wanted you to be like us. We wanted you to be a Jedi and do your duty

. . ."

Mara was quiet for a while, gazing out the window onto the sky-lane packed with traffic and clearly thinking hard.

"You still haven't told me how you knew, Mom."

She jerked back to the conversation, blinking. "No. I haven't. But I know, and I'm the only one who does. And I also know you can hide in the Force like Jacen does, and it scares me because the first time I felt it I thought you'd been killed. Please, Ben, don't hide from me. Ever."

"I wasn't, Mom. I was just trying it out."

"Okay."

"Am I going to feel bad about. . . you know, the other guy? 'Cos right now I

don't care."

"I didn't," she said, seeming to understand he meant Gejjen. "Not until lately, and then it didn't feel like guilt. Just . . . not quite understanding why I did it, because being what I was didn't explain it all to me."

"I'd better go."

"You'll be okay. I'll always be there, remember. Call me."

Ben leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. He loved her so much right then; what other mom could take news like that, horrific news, and still be there for him? He leaned farther and whispered in her ear.

"He was having a secret meeting at the port with Omas. To discuss a cease-fire."

When Ben straightened up, she smiled, but there was a real glint in her eye that said she was anything but happy.

"Thank you," she said. "I love you, Ben. Call me, okay?"

"Love you, too, Mom."

Ben couldn't stand it any longer. He walked out of the tapcaf and spent the next couple of hours wandering around, staring in shop windows and not seeing anything, before he got an air taxi back to Jacen's apartment and shut himself in his room.

It was going to take a long time to make sense of this. He slipped the vibroblade under his pillow, reluctant to let it sit as far away as his desk, and wondered what Captain Shevu was telling Jori Lekauf's family.

chapter twelve

Ori'buyce, kih'kovid.

All helmet, no head.

–Mandalorian insult for someone with an overdeveloped sense of authority

REPUBLICA HOUSE, CORUSCANT:

0001 HOURS, GALACTIC STANDARD TIME

Jacen Solo, in the formal uniform of a colonel of the Galactic Alliance Guard, stood outside the lobby of the Republica building flanked by Sergeant Wirut and Trooper Limm.

It was a real shame about Lekauf. He was a great loss. Ben had done well, but he should have been back at work right away. Jacen planned to talk to Shevu later about sending Ben on leave without clearing it with him first.

"You sure this is going to be enough, sir?" asked Wirut. "Just the three of us?"

Jacen smoothed his black gloves down over his fingers. It was one minute past midnight, and that made what he was about to do thoroughly legal, justified, and overdue.

"I don't think Chief Omas has a platoon up there, somehow."

Wirut didn't reply. Jacen was the first to admit that going to arrest the elected head of the most powerful organization in the galaxy with a couple of troopers was low-key, but he saw no point flooding the area with an entire company. Omas wouldn't put up a fight. If he did, one Jedi and two armed troopers were ample to deal with it.

Jacen opened the comlink to Niathal.

"We're in position now," he said. "We're going in."

"I have an emergency appointment with Senator G'Sil in ten minutes," Niathal said. "He's not happy about it, but I told him it couldn't wait."

"He's got no inkling of what's happening?"

"If he has, he hasn't shown the slightest sign of acting upon it."

"Okay. There's no going back now. We're committed."

"Just do it . . ."

The security guard on the front reception was a man used to seeing all kinds of uniforms wandering in and out of Republica House. The luxurious tower housed the elite of the GA, and every Senator seemed to have his or her own entourage of bodyguards as well as military visitors.

Most Coruscanti knew what a GAG uniform looked like by now anyway —Jacen had made sure his secret police were anything but secret, at least in terms of their existence—but he gave the guard proper identification without being asked. There was no point being rude or throwing his weight around. The man was only doing his job.

"No need to announce me," Jacen said.

The guard checked his datapad. "You're on his admission list anyway. Go on up."

It took minutes for the turbolift to reach Omas's floor. As the cab climbed, the two troopers simply stared at the wail ahead of them. Jacen felt their reluctance, and wanted to know if it was due to a fondness for Omas or a distaste for military coups, but he didn't ask. Any army that liked the idea of a coup wasn't worth having. It had to be the last resort.

"How the other half lives . . . ," Wirut said as the turbolift doors

opened onto a lobby of extraordinary luxury. The air was perfumed, a

pleasantly neutral woody scent, and the broad corridor was lined with niches filled with rare Naboo crystal—Omas had a weakness for that—and iridescent Shalui ceramics. "I could fit my apartment and my ten neighbors in here."

"If we put fancy pottery in the corridors of my building, it wouldn't be there long," said Limm. She cast an envious eye at a shimmering red vase that changed gradually to green and turquoise as the angle of the observer changed. "Still, his insurance payments must hurt."

"Possessions are burdens." Jacen smiled. "What you have can always be taken away, so wealth breeds fear."

"I'll willingly face that kind of fear, sir," Wirut muttered. "And a nice big SoroSuub yacht. That would scare me very nicely."

The magnificent doors to Omas's apartment were engraved bronzium, an abstract design by one of Coruscant's top artists. Jacen couldn't recall the name. It seemed a waste of talent when the doors were seen only by Omas, his inner circle, the housekeeping staff, and repair droids. Republica House had the kind of architecture and design that warranted public tours.

Jacen paused, marshaling his thoughts before pressing the bell. The troopers stood back and pulled down their visors, standard procedure when entering a building. For a moment Jacen thought they were going to stack either side of the door, but they were simply taking a pace backward, Limm keeping an eye on the corridor as a routine precaution.

Omas answered the door himself. Jacen knew he didn't have day-and– night close protection these days, but somehow he expected a droid or even a real butler to receive callers. The Chief of State looked at him with a puzzled frown, and then at the two troopers.

"Good evening, Jacen." He stepped back and ushered them in.

"Wretched business, this shooting. I can't say I liked Gejjen, but it shows

how careful we have to be in our line of work."

He ambled down a long hallway that made the corridor outside look like a lower levels slum. The art on the walls was breathtaking, and most of it seemed to predate the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. Some gallery curator had a very secure hiding place, then. At the end, Omas turned around.

"Can I get you good people something to drink before we sit down?"

Somehow it would have been so much easier if Omas had been hostile.

"Sir," said Jacen. "I'm arresting you in the name of the Galactic Alliance for activity likely to compromise the safety of the state."

Omas frowned slightly, as if he hadn't heard right. He walked a few steps back along the passage where the downlighters cast pools of light on velvet-pile ruby carpet.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're under arrest, sir. We'll let you call your lawyer later, but right now it would be a good idea if you came with us."

Omas gave a little snort of amusement. "Jacen, my dear boy, this is Cal Omas you're talking to. Don't be such a prat—arrest me? Arrest me?"

Jacen reached in his jacket and took out a datapad. "Under the terms of the Emergency Measures Act, anyone, including heads of state, politicians, and any other individuals believed to be presenting a genuine risk to the security of the Galactic Alliance can now be detained. That's a quote, sir. The amendment to the law to include heads of state came into effect at midnight, and you are a head of state . . ."

Omas looked stunned rather than alarmed. Jacen was used to the GAG

producing fear when they paid a visit, but amazement was disconcerting.

"I saw that amendment come through on the notifications circular

yesterday," Omas said, still quite casually conversational. "Good grief.

You really did it, didn't you? You actually changed the law and planned this."

"Sir—"

"Am I allowed to know what risk I'm supposed to pose to my own state?"

"I can show you, sir," Jacen said, and switched his datapad to the strip– cam footage of the meeting with Gejjen. He cued it up and then held the pad so that Omas could see the screen. "Please feel free to view it all and then tell me if that's not you in the room with two Alliance Intel officers, the late Prime Minister, and his two CorSec protection officers."

The look on Omas's face was priceless. Jacen felt a flood of relief that he had finally, finally made Omas realize that he was now a man with no future. Omas stared at the datapad and did indeed watch the whole meeting. Behind Jacen, Wirut and Limm waited in patient silence.

"Well," said Omas. "What can I say?"

"Sergeant Wirut will accompany you to pack an overnight bag," Jacen said. "We'll take you out as discreetly as possible."

"Secretly? Oh, I see . . ."

"No, sir, you're not going to disappear and turn up floating facedown in some sewer. This will be conducted legally and openly."

Omas stared impassively into Jacen's face and then looked past him at the two troopers. Jacen could feel the man's fear even though he looked perfectly at ease. "Sergeant, I do keep a bag packed for eventualities," Omas said, almost smiling. "If you don't trust me not to blow my brains out in the bedroom, by all means go to the fifth door on the left and pick it up for me. It's in the first closet as you enter the room. Tan leather holdall."

There was nothing worse than a dignified detainee. Jacen knew that within