Sacrifice

KAVAN, HAPES CLUSTER

Mara set the StealthX down in the middle of nowhere and reminded herself that being the target or the assassin was simply a state of mind.

No doubt Jacen thought he'd forced her to land so he could finish her off. She thought she'd ditched to get him where she could use her fighting skills to better advantage.

It was a matter of who found who first.

I can stop this anytime I want.

After all she'd seen and heard, there was still the Mara within who couldn't really believe her nephew was dangerously and irredeemably evil.

If you don't do it, who will? And who'll blame you for not acting while he could be stopped? Palpatine, Palpatine, Palpatine . . . your lesson in twenty-twenty hindsight.

So here she was, telling herself that she was going to go through a very bad time after she killed him, but it had to be done. And Jacen was probably thinking the identical thing. They were the same. No moral high ground; just a leftover equation that said all other things being equal, Mara preferred to see Jacen dead than Ben, or Luke, or herself. Survival: there was nothing wrong with surviving.

Luke now kept reaching out to her in the Force, increasingly anxious, trying to find her, but she didn't dare reach back. There was no telling what Jacen could detect. When she wanted to be found by Jacen—he'd know all about it.

She grabbed her bag and everything from the cockpit that could be used as a weapon, then found some cover while she consulted her datapad for charts and surveys of Kavan. It was honeycombed with ruined monuments and tunnels. Fine. If I get him in a confined space, he can't use all his Force skills, but I can make the most of what I've got. She decided to make