Sacrifice

He dropped out of hyperspace and headed back Coreward to Taanab, not Hapes, even though he was sure the Sith sphere was there.

He could feel it, but he couldn't detect it conventionally; he could have spoken to it, but he stayed shut down in the Force to avoid Lumiya's attention. He tried to work out why she was interested in Hapes, and failed, but there was nothing of Jacen that he could feel, just a trace of his own mother. The closer he ventured toward Hapan space, the more powerful her presence became. Don't tell me we're both following Lumiya.

He'd have some explaining to do. But it didn't matter: he'd happily take being grounded for a year and even sent to Ossus as long as he could keep an eye on his mom right now. He set a course for the freight corridor and dropped out into realspace again, merging with the convoys of transports then with a group of ore haulers. Running a loop had also served another purpose: almost like listening to the source of a sound, Ben made a mental map of the silent voice of the Sith sphere and got a good sense of where it was in physical space. It was close to Hapes itself.

And—he felt it now—so was his mother. She'd found Lumiya, then.

She'd beaten him to the target.

Ben savored a brief fantasy of emptying the shuttle's cannon into the sphere, felt strangely sorry to destroy the ship just to finish Lumiya, and wondered if all boys went through a stage of feeling aggressively protective toward their mothers. Maybe that went with finding it so hard to deal with fathers as you grew up. It was that alpha-male thing.

Come off it. How many guys your age—or any age—have to worry about their family being attacked by Sith and insane Dark Jedi? This isn't normal life. The rules are different.

Ben got as close to the Sith sphere as he dared. As far as he could tell, it was holding its position, but when it moved—he'd go for the kill. Then his mom would know he was there whether he made himself detectable in the Force or not, because the GAG shuttle was about as stealthy as a brick.