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Kyp’s face fell. “Yes, Grand Master.”

“I’ll leave it to the two of you to finalize details.” The conference done, Luke turned back to face the sunlit Endor forest and the momentary peace it offered him.

chapter five

HAPES, GALACTIC ALLIANCE SHUTTLE, APPROACHING THE PALACE OF THE QUEEN MOTHER

The engineering officer aboard the Galactic Alliance shuttle had a five-day growth of whiskers, a patch over his right eye with the edges of a blaster scar peeking from beneath at forehead and cheek, and a dress uniform whose tunic was pulled out from the waistband.

Anyone who had served a few years in any armed force would recognize the man—not by his name, not by his individual identity, but by what he was. Clearly, he was a lifelong military man, one who had risen to the highest rank noncommissioned personnel could attain. Indispensable in his role, he could flout regulations and authority with impunity. He was too valuable a resource to court-martial for anything less than a capital offense. New officers appointed over him would try in vain to make him shave, wear his uniform according to regulations, accept a prosthetic eye to replace the organic one he had obviously lost in a battle, and treat his officers with the respect their commissions warranted. He would ignore them for a year or two, and then they’d move on, to be replaced by other officers with equally futile agendas.

Military personnel would recognize this man, but they would be wrong. Under the synthskin appliances on his cheeks, under the pasted-on whiskers and cosmetic eye patch, was Darth Caedus. He sat quietly in the copilot’s seat of the cockpit, monitoring vehicle system diagnostics, assisting the pilot with various checklists, and responding in monosyllables to attempts at conversation.

He did perk up, though not visibly to the pilot, when the shuttle, in its final descent into Hapan airspace, came within sight of the cliffside approach to the palace of the Queen Mother. The entire cliff, towering as high as an office building, had been carved in the likeness of some long-dead Hapan noblewoman, down to the too-perfect features and intricately detailed jewelry.

His visible eye was alert, taking in every detail, as the shuttle entered the visitors’ hangar of the palace, incongruously through the mouth of the giant carving. Following space traffic controller directions, the pilot immediately turned to starboard, sending the shuttle along a series of bay spaces paralleling the giant queen’s left cheek.

Caedus calculated numbers of Hapan shuttles, crescent-moon-shaped Miy’til fighters, airspeeders, speeder bikes. He noted with satisfaction the continued presence of a StealthX starfighter, the one flown here by Tahiri. It was still awaiting transport back to the Jedi or the Galactic Alliance—doubtless still waiting for Hapes’s own allegiance to be resolved before it could be moved. The StealthX, with its odd, mottled fuselage covering—looking like a patch of starfield with illusory depth like a hologram—stood out, starkly dissimilar to the elegant and stylish Hapan vehicles.

Caedus’s shuttle, on repulsorlifts, cruised past many civilian workers and military personnel, the majority of them women. Then, directed by flickering landing lights, the shuttle maneuvered into a bay and set down.

The pilot, a white-furred Bothan male, turned to face Caedus. “Why don’t you inform our passengers they may…” Then he stopped, scrutinizing Caedus’s solemn, impassive expression and slovenly dress. His snout twitched. “Never mind. I’ll do that.” He rose and squeezed past Caedus into the main cabin.

Caedus half listened through the partially shut cockpit door as the pilot addressed the diplomat and aides who constituted all the passengers the pilot knew about. “…are cleared to leave the shuttle, but they do not confirm a meeting with the Queen Mother…be in for quite a wait…” Most of Caedus’s concentration was elsewhere, as he searched in the Force for the distinctive trace of his child.

This was risky. Opening himself up to the Force tended to make him easier to