Sacrifice

Lumiya was here; Luke could feel her because she wanted him to, he knew that. He wondered how many times she'd passed by him unnoticed and undetected, and congratulated herself on her stealth. He thought of the hand offered to him after they last fought, and how he hadn't detected any ill will. That level of skilled deceit would have been impressive if he hadn't felt so sickeningly betrayed by it—betrayed by his own gullibility.

Mara used to say he bent over backward to see the good in everyone.

"I won't be trying too hard today," he whispered. "In fact, not at all."

He didn't even miss Mara right then. To miss someone, he had to accept that they were gone so he could yearn for them. Mara was still there, just frustratingly silent and unseen, and he dreaded the moment when he finally said to himself, Yes, she's gone, she's really gone, and she isn't going to walk through the doors and complain how crowded the sky-lanes are these days.

The Transitory Mists were bandit country, rife with piracy, and Luke didn't care. He maintained a steady circuit off Terephon.

Eventually, the feeling of someone darting through his peripheral vision became one of someone in the same room. He rotated the fighter 360

degrees in each plane, ignoring his sensors and his Force-senses for the moment because he wanted to see this thing coming, to look it in the eye and take in the entirety of it in the fundamental way of a grieving husband, not a Jedi Master.

"I knew you'd find time for me," he commed.

Had she heard him?

His comm crackled. Lumiya's voice had never aged. He hadn't noticed that before. "I saw no point in running, Luke. Let's finish this."

The ship was exactly as he'd imagined: rough-skinned, red-orange, so organic in appearance that it might have suited the Yuuzhan Vong. The