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Eventually, he’d offered his services to the Rebel Alliance. Though he had little interest in politics—his primary political conviction was a profound interest in his own safety and comfort—he’d recognized that the prospective government the Rebels planned to install would, owing to its youthful amateurish untidiness, afford him a great deal more opportunity for the freedom to make his own way in his own way. Which was another way of saying: to live and work in the lucrative shadows outside official scrutiny.

Which made his current situation all the more ironic.

He sighed. Nothing ever works out how we wish, yes? Doesn’t mean one can’t turn it to one’s advantage. He sighed again and raised a finger to trigger the cabin’s door chime … but before he could, the door slid open, and a voice that sounded a great deal older and wearier than Geptun had expected said, “Inspector Geptun. Please come in.”

Geptun grimaced again. He’d become accustomed, this twenty-plus years past, to a galaxy without Jedi. He wasn’t at all sure he was looking forward to their return.

He took a deep breath and waddled through the door. “General Skywalker,” he said with a slight bow—no salute, as the Judicial Service was outside the military chain of command—and a pleasant smile. “How may I be of service?”

The young general sat on the edge of his desk, head lowered and hands clasped before him. He wore close-fitting civilian clothing of a somber black, very much in the style his celebrated father had made famous. Geptun reflected with a flash of annoyance that if he’d known Skywalker would be out of uniform, he would have come to this meeting in a comfortable blazer instead of this bloody jookley suit.

Skywalker lifted his head as though he had felt Geptun’s annoyance—and he might very well have, Geptun reminded himself. Bloody Jedi. “Inspector Lorz Geptun,” Skywalker said slowly. “I know a little about you, Inspector. You were a military governor and director of planetary intelligence for the CIS during the Clone Wars.”

Geptun’s too-tight collar suddenly seemed to tighten further. “Briefly. At the beginning of the—”

“Then you were a Republic spy.”

“Well—”

“And after that, you made your living tracking targets for bounty hunters.”

“Not specifically for—”

“And now you’re a JS investigator. Through all this, there’s a running theme. You have a talent.”

Geptun said carefully, “Do I?”

“You seem to be pretty good at finding the truth.”

Geptun relaxed. “Oh, well, thank you for—”

“And at making money off it.”

“Erm.” He cleared his throat, but found he had nothing to say.

Skywalker pushed himself to his feet. His face was drawn, and far more deeply lined than Geptun had expected from a lad of twenty-four. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping for some few days now. His movements were slightly unsteady, and the shadows under his eyes were shading toward purple—but they were nothing compared to the shadows within his eyes. “That’s what I know about you. What do you know about me?”

Geptun blinked. “General?”

“Come on, Inspector.” Skywalker sounded even more tired than he looked. “Everybody knows stuff about me. What do you know?”

“Oh, well, you know, the usual—Tatooine, Yavin, Endor, Bakura, Death Star One and Two—” Geptun realized he was babbling and shut up.

Skywalker nodded. “The usual. The stories. The press releases. The problem is that those stories and press releases aren’t really about me at all. They’re about the guy everybody wants me to be, understand?”

Geptun eyed him warily; he sensed that he’d been maneuvered onto dangerous ground. “I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “that I don’t understand.”

Skywalker nodded with a slow, tired sigh. “That’s because you don’t know that less than a month ago, I murdered about fifty thousand innocent beings.”

Geptun goggled at him, then blinked and cleared his throat again as he figured out what the young Jedi was talking about. “You mean Mindor?”

Skywalker’s eyes drifted shut; he winced as though he were looking at something painful on the inside of his eyelids. “Yeah. Mindor.