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“Hey.” Ben, wrapped up in the embrace of his cousin Jaina, sounded miffed. “You stole that line from me.”

“I first said it twenty years before you were born. Before I was even a Jedi.”

Han took Luke's hand and pulled him into a wampa-like hug. “You know, anywhere you are in the galaxy, give me a shout on the holocomm, or give Leia a squawk through the Force, and the Falcon will be right there.”

“I know. You'll take care of Artoo-Detoo for me while I'm gone?”

Han grinned. “Are you kidding? Having Artoo with us means See-Threepio only talks to us half as much. I should be paying you.”

Jaina tucked herself under Luke's arm for the last few steps out of the Great Hall. “Daala's going to be sorry she did this.”

Luke frowned at her. “That sounds suspiciously like a thought of revenge.”

“It's not. I just know how things work. Inevitably some mess will arise that she can't solve, that no other Jedi can solve, and she'll know what a mistake she made.”

“Be charitable.” On the steps outside the hall, in the afternoon sunlight descending in brilliant, steeply slanting shafts through the uneven cloud cover overhead, Luke paused to give Jaina one last hug. “She's trying to do the best she can for the Alliance, the only way she knows how.”

“Well, she's not very bright.”

“That's not ‘charitable.’”

“Oh. I thought you meant ‘honest.’”

The airspeeder that had been acquired for Luke and Ben's departure was not the Grand Master's usual one or Ben's red speedster. It was a big white air barge, a model with a built-in droid brain that would return the vehicle to its home when its current users were done with it. Luke let Ben take the controls for the trip out to the spaceport while he took in what might be his final view of Coruscant. In this late-afternoon hour, shadows in the canyons between mountain-high buildings were already dark as night, the thousands upon thousands of streams of airspeeder traffic were already putting on their nighttime cruising lights, and the sun, its lower edge peeking out below the layer of clouds in the west, seemed larger and more orange than at any other time of day. He burned it all into his memory, knowing he would miss it.

They spent their trip to the spaceport in near silence until they moved out of the high-rise districts and into one of the traffic lanes heading into the hangar portion of the spaceport. “Think they'll turn us back?” asked Ben.

Luke gave him a curious look. “Why would they?”

“Because we nearly wrecked the place a few days ago.”

“You exaggerate. The fight didn't even spill over into the secure zones.”

“True.”

Soon enough, they set down outside the hangar where Jade Shadow was berthed.

Luke entered the lengthy access code in the security console beside the main doors, then peered into its optic sensor to give it a retinal reading. Finally the great doors slid aside, admitting a wash of stale air, allowing Luke to look upon his dead wife's ship.

It had started its career as a Horizon-class star yacht from premier shipmakers SoroSuub, but had, over the years, been modified by Mara, family, and friends to become a combat vehicle that was fast and powerful for its size. Low and broad in the beam, with sleek, curving lines, it had a top-mounted airfoil that swept down toward both sides and ended in external ion engine pods. Forward of those, outrigger-style plates stretched from the fuselage and curved down to hold external weapons emplacements. The ship's organic lines gave it the appearance of some nautical shelled beast, and its nonreflective gray surface made its name an apt one.

It did not suggest Mara's appearance so much as her manner when she was on the hunt. It was practical and implacable. It scarcely seemed the sort of ship to become home to a middle-aged widower and his teenage son, but it was what he had.

Luke remotely activated its loading ramp and life-support systems, letting it open and expel stale atmosphere while he and Ben removed their possessions from the airspeeder. Luke gave the speeder's droid brain an all-clear order and it lifted off, accelerating