Chapter 4

DOCKING BAY 29, SAFE DOCK HANGERS, SURFACE LEVEL, CORUSCANT

"Tell me again what you felt." Jaina asked, frowning into the exposed insides of Taq's StealthX. Lunch was over, and that meant they were back in the hanger bay trying to figure out why the steering yoke of the new fighter was shaking.

Taq shrugged. "It was just vibrating. It didn't get worse or anything. It wasn't even really hard to handle. It just vibrated," he shrugged. "I'm sure it's nothing, Jaina."

Jaina sighed and climbed up into the cockpit of the StealthX. She looked over the controls, and then turned it on. It started normally, humming softly beneath her. She scrolled through several screens of diagnostics but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"It does look fine," she said. "It's probably just a slight miscalibration of the steering," she said to Taq. "But just to be safe, why don't you fly my fighter back to the Temple? Mine's perfectly calibrated, so you won't have this problem."

"You're sure?" Taq asked. "I flew it on the way here. I can manage it back."

"There's always the possibility that flying the ship will make it worse," Jaina said. "This is just to be safe."

"Alright," Taq smiled and climbed into Jaina's StealthX. "You do realize that I'll have to move your seat back, right?"

"And I'll have to move yours forward," Jaina snorted. "It's not a problem, Taq."

Jaina watched as Taq climbed into her StealthX and started it up. She felt a strange shimmer of danger in the Force, but it was gone before she could pinpoint it. She searched the hanger with her powers. There was a whisper of slippery deceit and an odd scene of justice, but nothing that seemed to scream immediate danger.

"You ready, Jaina?" Taq asked.

"Yeah," she said. "You take off first, I want to watch you."

She watched as Taq lifted off the ground with a little less grace than she would have wanted. However, there would be time to fix that later. When he was clear, she lifted off as well. As soon as she left the ground she could feel the shaking Taq had been talking about. She recognized the feeling immediately. It was just something in the steering that needed to be tuned a little more. To an amateur the shaking probably felt pretty bad, but Jaina had flown a lot of ships in her day and had felt far worse shaking. The ship would be fine for the duration of the flight home. They didn't have to rush. However, she was careful about how she passed that knowledge onto Taq. She didn't want him to think he was a bad pilot or a cowardly one. She wanted to keep his confidence up.

They took a long route back to the Temple, one that involved several complicated turns for Taq to practice on. They were a couple klicks from the Temple when Taq cleared his throat nervously. "Uh…Jaina…Didn't you say this ship's steering wasn't going to shake?"

"What?" Jaina blinked. "What are you talking about?"

"The steering's shaking," Taq said. "Just like the other ship."

"That's impossible," Jaina breathed. "The steering's perfectly calibrated."

"I'm sorry, Jaina," Taq sounded crestfallen. "Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or I'm a just a bad luck charm."

"No," Jaina said. "There must be a perfectly logical explanation for what's happening. Let's just get back to the Temple."

They hadn't even flown five more minutes before Taq's turns became noticeably sluggish.

"You're doing fine, Taq," Jaina said, thinking that he must have been losing confidence. "Don't stress about it."

"That's not it," Taq sounded tense. "The shaking's getting worse and its getting really hard to steer."

That didn't sound like a calibration problem, Jaina felt the first twinge of real worry. "It'll be fine," she said instead of voicing her concerns. "Just keep flying. We're almost there."

They'd only gone a little farther when Jaina felt a flare of alarm from Taq. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"I-I-I…there's a warning," Taq stammered. "It says there's some kind of electrical failure, and something with the fuel cells."

What? That was impossible, Jaina and Zekk had been tuning that ship yesterday before she'd gone to see Jacen's apartment. The ship had been in tiptop shape. There was no way they'd overlooked a loose connection or a bad fuel cell.

"How bad is it?" She asked trying to sound calm.

"It says I should land immediately," Taq sounded terrified.

Jaina swore aloud before she remembered the connection with Taq was still open. "Sorry," she apologized cursing herself for letting him hear how bad the situation was. "If it says to land, then you need to land."

"Where?" there was a distinct note of panic in Taq's voice.

"Anywhere," Jaina said, "it doesn't matter. You just need to land right now!"

"But where, Jaina?"

Jaina forced herself to take a deep breath. Taq needed her to be calm. She scanned the buildings below them for one that would make a good emergency landing platform. "See that factory up ahead?" she asked.

"Yeah," Taq was practically squeaking.

"We're going to land there," Jaina said. "The roof is wide and flat. It'll be just like landing on an open-air platform."

"Okay…" Taq sounded far from convinced.

"You can do this, Taq," Jaina coaxed. "I believe in you."

They angled down towards the factory. It was one of the tallest buildings of the area, giving them plenty of room to loop around if they needed to. It looked like the roof was covered in gravel which would complicate things, but not much.

Jaina looked over at Taq and saw to her horror that the StealthX had started to trail smoke. Her heart leapt. "Taq, what's going on?" she snapped into her comm.

"The steering's practically gone," Taq sounded completely panicked now. "How am I supposed to land if I can't steer?"

"Slow down," Jaina ordered. "We're going to make this work."

Taq slowed, but the StealthX was still traveling at too high an altitude to even attempt a landing on the fast approaching factory. More smoke poured from the back and underside of the ship.

"Jaina, there's no steering!" Taq nearly wailed. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Don't panic," Jaina said despite the panic rising in her own chest.

Taq overshot the factory. He was going slowly now, but he couldn't turn. Jaina tried to figure out if it would be easier to pick another rooftop and guide him through a controlled crash. "Taq-"

She never had the chance to finish. A sense of danger roared through the Force. Jaina watched in horror as the StealthX's engines choked, fading to black for an instant then turning back on.

Then the ship was engulfed in a raging fireball.

Jaina felt Taq's last moments of utter terror before he vanished into the Force with a shudder Jaina knew all too well.

"Taq!" she screamed.

MEDITATION CHAMBER, JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT

The first thing Luke heard when he entered the Meditation Chamber was the sound of his son complaining.

"I'm bored, Jacen. Can't we do something else?"

Luke spotted his son and nephew seated facing each other on meditation cushions on the far side of the cavernous room. Ben was fidgeting, playing with his hair and robes. Jacen was sitting so still he could be mistaken for a statue.

"Please, Jacen?" Ben begged.

Luke watched as his nephew sighed. "Ben, you need to learn to meditate properly. It's important. Plus, you're disrupting everyone else in this room." Luke recognized the tone of voice; Jacen was frustrated.

Mara, who stood at Luke's side, snorted. "Our son is able to annoy the man who can meditate through just about anything," she whispered, trying not to disturb the other Jedi who were in the chamber, "I'm not sure if I should be impressed or not."

Luke smiled and made his way across the chamber. Ben opened his eyes as soon as he felt them coming and bounced off his cushion. "Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad! How are you?"

"Aren't you supposed to be meditating?" Luke asked, giving the boy a pointed look.

Ben's shoulders fell. "But it's boring!" he whined.

"It wouldn't be if you were to make a concerted effort to do it," Jacen said without opening his eyes.

"Can we do something else now, Jacen?" Ben turned back to his cousin. "We've been meditating for hours!"

"We've been meditating for twenty minutes," Jacen's tone was near snappish.

Luke had to smother a smile. Mara was right about there being something just a little impressive about seeing how well Ben could get under Jacen's skin.

Jacen heaved another sigh, then opened his eyes. "Fine. I can't focus with you this restless anyway, and you're not doing anyone else here any favors." He stood up and rolled his shoulders, probably more out of habit than to combat any actual stiffness.

Luke, Mara, Jacen and Ben walked out of the meditation chambers to looks of relief from the other Jedi in the room and started down one of the hallways. "Did you want to see us about something?" Jacen asked.

"Actually I was looking for Ben," Luke said.

"Why?" Ben asked.

"Master Cilghal told me that all those medications you sorted for her yesterday weren't really sorted at all," Luke said giving his son a stern look. "Did you actually sort them or did you just put them on the shelves?"

"It was boring!" Ben argued. "Besides they're all marked anyway!"

"You seem to be using that excuse a lot," Luke said. "Does everything you do have to be interesting?"

Ben glared up at him. "It should be."

Luke sighed. Why was Ben so stubborn? "Report to Cilghal at once. I want those medications sorted correctly this time. Then you will spend the day helping her with anything else she might need."

Ben's jaw dropped. "But Jacen and I were going to-"

"I don't care what you and Jacen were going to do," Luke said. "This is your punishment. Next time do the job right the first time."

There was a ringing silence as Luke and Ben glared at each other. Then Ben dropped his head. "Yes, sir."

"Good," Luke said. "You'd better get started then,"

Ben glowered at the floor and stalked off muttering under his breath. Luke shook his head and was just about to walk on when Mara asked, "Jacen, are you okay?"

Luke turned around. Jacen had gone chalk white. He was staring at the floor somewhere between Luke and Mara's feet like he was trying to set it on fire with his eyes. Concern welling up inside him, Luke reached for his nephew's shoulder. "Jacen?"

Suddenly Jacen shook himself and stepped away from Luke's hand. His eyes focused again, first on Luke then on Mara. He looked worried, bordering on terrified. "Jaina," he breathed.

Then he turned on his heal and ran down the hall in the direction of the transport pool, leaving Luke and Mara standing in his wake.

Well, I'm back. Summer is here!

I'll try to update this story more frequently. It's going to be getting more interesting soon. I also have plans for a lot of other things that I hope to be able to show to you all soon!

Please vote and comment!

Emjen