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To the left, and down.

She spun in that direction and ran, allowing the Force to lend her speed, leaving her father far behind.

chapter six

It was as though an invisible thrill killer had been on a spree within her palace. Tenel Ka ran past a group of courtiers huddled around an open door; beyond was a uniformed guardswoman, her throat slit, blue eyes open and fixed, blood pooling beside her. A few meters past, in a nook frequented by lovers and conspirators, a musician held the curtain aside to reveal a male courtier lying on the floor, his neck at an unnatural angle.

Tenel Ka felt a ripple in the Force at the next nook beyond. She tossed the curtain aside. No scene of murder met her eyes, but there was a hole in the floor, roughly circular, a meter across, its edges smoking.

A security officer running in her wake panted, “Queen Mother, we must precede you!” Ignoring her, Tenel Ka dropped through the hole.

She fell ten meters. Drawing on the Force to soften the impact, she landed on the hard, uncarpeted flooring of a service corridor, a gray-walled, cheerless passageway she had never seen before. The plug that had been cut out of the ceiling above was beside her.

Up and down the corridor kitchen workers and food servers, the subdued colors they wore indicating their lowly status, stood as if paralyzed by shock. There was no sign of the assassin’s passage. But a serving boy of perhaps sixteen years, his eyes more alert than most of those around him, jerked a thumb back over his shoulder…then shielded his eyes from the sight of the Queen Mother racing past him.

Ahead, around a bend in the corridor, there were more workers circling and staring at the body of a cook.

A minute later Tenel Ka took another ten-meter drop, this time to the roof of a stopped turbolift. She stepped into the access hatch and fell two meters to the turbolift floor.

The lift doors were open; beyond was the visitors’ hangar. Here, nothing as delicate as chimes indicated a security breach; shrill alarms screeched. Security and maintenance personnel ran toward her, away from her, some rushing to their alarm-situation duties, some just panicking.

At least two vehicles were active. Not far away, a shuttle painted in white, sporting the Galactic Alliance crest on its sides, had its repulsorlifts going. It was moving, but only to edge ever closer to the stone wall alongside its bay. A security team was in place behind stone and duracrete columns all around the shuttle; some were aiming at the vehicle with blaster rifles, while the leader, speaking into a field comlink strapped to her wrist, was doubtless broadcasting instructions to the pilot.

But Tenel Ka could not see a pilot through the shuttle’s forward viewports. She reached out toward the vehicle with the Force and detected something aboard, but that presence felt inert, nearly lifeless.

A diversion. She broadened her perceptions again, looking with increasing desperation for Allana.

There. Forty meters past the tableau with the shuttle, another vehicle had its engines running. It, too, was surrounded by a security team holding positions behind columns.

Tenel Ka raced past the shuttle, ignoring a salute from a startled-looking guardswoman, and got a good view of the other active vehicle.

Tahiri’s StealthX. The coldness in her gut intensified. She did not need to peer into the visor of the pilot’s helmet to know who had her daughter. It could only be Jacen.

She was halfway to the StealthX when she realized that while its repulsorlifts were being used at full strength, filling the air with what sounded like an animal scream, the starfighter was not moving. Its shields were up, too, though no member of the security detail was firing—Tenel Ka heard one of the guard officers shout, barely audible over the repulsorlift howl, “Hold your fire! He has the girl with him!”

Another two steps, and Tenel Ka could now just see the top of Allana’s head. Her daughter was in Jacen’s lap, webbing holding her to her father. Her head was forward as though she were asleep