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“Ah, that explains why you’re both still alive.”

“Right. Wedge pointed out that since you love the both of us, we’ve got a lot more in common than we do in conflict. He said, in essence, that we should grow up and start acting like adults.”

Mirax laughed lightly. “I bet that went over well with my father.”

“He listened, and the two of us were prepared to get back into it, but I let things bounce around inside my head and I realized I was disliking your father for the wrong reasons. Somewhere inside I figured it was my duty to my father to continue his rivalry with your father, then I realized my father hadn’t let it get personal. He might have hunted your father with a bit more gusto because your father didn’t make it easy, but he didn’t hate Booster. By allowing myself to do so, though, I was really going against everything my father had tried to teach me.”

“I can understand that.” Mirax’s voice softened. “And it kind of bothers you that your father never told you who your grandfather really was, doesn’t it?”

Corran thought for a second, then nodded. “I guess it does, but not in the sense that I would have expected. Part of me thinks I should feel betrayed because he kept that secret from me, but I don’t, really. In keeping it from me, he kept me safe. What I didn’t know I couldn’t reveal. I still don’t know if Grandpa Horn helped other Corellian Jedi families hide, but if one had been found out, more could have been discovered. And my father really did try to instill in me the code of honor the Jedi espoused. He also taught me to trust my instincts and hunches, which are glimmers of whatever talent I have.

“Where it bothers me is that, knowing my father, he had to have been inordinately proud of our heritage. He must have wanted to share it with me and would have, I suspect, after the Emperor died, but Bossk killed him before that happened. I would have thought he’d have come up with a way to get me the information if anything happened to him.”

“What about your grandfather, Rostek Horn?”

“He’s on Corellia, under the Diktat. I haven’t had a chance to communicate with him. Perhaps when this is all over, that’s an option. Still, I would have liked to hear my father talk about his father.”

Whistler tootled.

Corran glanced at his monitor. “Whistler, what do you mean by ‘All you have to do is ask’?”

The droid hooted at him.

“Okay, so the statement is self-explanatory. What will happen if I ask?”

Whistler piped a triumphant tune.

“What’s Whistler saying, Corran?”

“Just a second, Mirax.” Corran reached out and ran a finger beneath the letters glowing on his monitor. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. My father encrypted a holographic file and loaded it into Whistler. Apparently he did this back when I joined CorSec—though Whistler says the message was recorded well before that—in case anything happened to him. Whistler says he was instructed to play the file for me at any point where I asked about it and could provide the encryption key. I’m going to assume the key is either Nejaa Halcyon or my father’s true name, Valin Halcyon.”

Even as Corran explained to Mirax what the droid was telling him, a chill puckered his flesh. He felt as if his father were reaching back out of the grave to touch him, and he marveled how his father had anticipated Corran’s eventually learning enough about his heritage to find the file of value. Before he had ever heard of Nejaa Halcyon, Corran would have put his father’s foresight down to luck or even coincidence, but he knew the Jedi believed in neither. My father knew that someday I would want this information, so he prepared a way for me to get it.

That realization opened a whole new den of Hutts, with every one of them a criminal kingpin. He thought of Luke Skywalker’s invitation to join him and train to become a Jedi Knight. Did my father create this file in hopes that I would do just that? Because the file had been created well before the Jedi’s reemergence had been confirmed, Corran knew his father couldn’t have anticipated