Sacrifice

chapter twenty-two

I don't know what's happening, Mand'alor, but the amount of secure GA comm traffic flying around the Hapan Cluster now has to be seen to be believed. Major panic ongoing. Stand by.

—Goran Beviin, surveillance expert, reporting back from the nearby Roche asteroid field prior to launch of the Bes'uliik GAG STEALTHX, LAID UP ON ZIOST

Jacen really didn't know where else to go. He stared at the cockpit panel facing him, knowing that he should have been back on Coruscant at least twenty hours ago, and that Niathal would be cursing him roundly.

He was alone, in creased black fatigues, in agonizing pain, and—hungry.

This wasn't the ascension of the Lord of the Sith that he'd expected. He wondered what ordinary people thought happened when the course of history swung on a single pivotal act. They probably didn't envisage that their future was now in the hands of a tired, sweaty man who kept thinking he needed a shave, and almost unable to believe that he'd—

Killed Mara Jade Skywalker.

Killing didn't get any easier. He was just getting better at it.

But it still didn't make sense. He rubbed his cheek, and the stubble rasped audibly under his fingers. Mara hadn't been the most precious thing in his life. In recent weeks, she'd changed from being his only friend to just someone else who didn't trust him and was getting in his way.

She was his aunt. She was family. When his role in her death became known—it had to be when, but not now, not anytime soon—the shock and hatred would tear apart what was left of the Skywalker and Solo families.

Maybe even Niathal, and all the others who understood that securing peace was a dirty business, would be disgusted.