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She gave him a long-suffering look. “And when he asks about it—”

“It’ll be all my fault.”

She nodded. “He’ll believe that. You are male, after all.”

Luke, Mara, and Ben walked along Varganner Way, one level up from and running precisely parallel to Kallebarth Way. This passageway had been locked down for the brief duration of the GA/Corellia diplomatic mission; now Luke had it opened, temporarily, so he and his family could take a private walk.

They paused at a recess dominated by an outer-hull wall made up entirely of crystal-clear transparisteel. It showed the same view as the viewport in the Solo suite, but even less bounded, and at this moment the Skywalkers could gaze upon a majestic field of stars and the distant sun of Kuat.

Finally Luke said, “Ben, your thoughts are very close to the surface.”

“We should all go there together,” the boy said. “To Corellia. Us and Jacen and Jaina. And we should hammer on Thrackan Sal-Solo until he admits what he did, and lock him away so he doesn’t do it anymore.”

“All together as a family, yes?” Luke asked.

Ben nodded, but didn’t look at his father. He stubbornly kept his attention on a diamond-shaped nebula far away.

“We’re all mad because they attacked,” Mara said. “But we can’t use our Jedi abilities just because we’re mad. We can’t attack Thrackan under the assumption that he’s responsible; we have to have more evidence.”

“I know.” Ben sounded resigned. “If you’re mad, you can’t let your instincts guide your actions, ’cause it may not be the Force, it’s probably your anger. But we could do it when we’re cold inside. Jacen’s cold inside a lot.”

His parents exchanged a quick look. Luke said, “I think what you’re feeling as coldness is really submergence into the Force. His own emotions will go away for a while. That can seem cold.”

“Whatever.” Ben shrugged. “But we could still do it. We could grab Sal-Solo. And we could stop the Corellians from starting a war.”

“That’s another issue. What if the Force tells you not to beat them? Or doesn’t tell you anything at all about whether they should win?”

Finally Ben did look up at him. “Huh?”

“Ben, can you honestly tell me that the Corellians shouldn’t have freedom from the Galactic Alliance if they want it? Think about the Corellians you know—Uncle Han and Wedge Antilles, for instance. If most of the people in their system want to be independent, why shouldn’t they be?”

Ben frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. They’re part of the Galactic Alliance. They can’t just leave.”

“Why not?” Mara asked.

“It’ll cause unrest. That’s what Jacen says.”

Mara nodded. “It will cause unrest. There is a lot of unrest in life. The Force is created by life, so it has unrest in it. If you open yourself to the Force, how can you not open yourself to a certain amount of unrest?”

Ben gave his parents a suspicious stare. It wasn’t a look of mistrust, just the expression of a teenager anxious not to be tricked. “Whose side are you really on?”

Luke snorted. “The Jedi order protects and serves the Galactic Alliance, just as it did the New Republic. Just as the old order protected and served the Old Republic. But we choose to maintain a certain amount of latitude in interpreting our missions, our orders. For the good of everybody. And that means if we’re ordered into battle, but we discover we can achieve a victory through negotiation or a bloodless show of force, we do it. If we discover that we can bring peace by obliging the opposing sides to listen to each other, we do it—even if one side is supposed to be in charge of what we do.”

Ben returned his attention to the starfield for a moment. “I hear kids say they hate it when their parents say Do this because I say so. Sometimes I think they have it easy.”

Mara laughed softly and reached out to brush her hand across her son’s fine red hair. “I suspect they do. Of course, they don’t get to run all over the galaxy and practice with live lightsabers.”

“Yeah, I guess. But thinking is hard. And kind of unfair. There never