* Chapter 11 *

"Since when do council members keep secrets from each other?" asked Kyp Durron.

Ahsoka Tano answered simply, "Everyone has secrets that are personal to them."

"Personal?" he scoffed. "A Sith infiltrated the Jedi Temple and escaped, possibly with valuable intel! How the hell is that personal?"

"Calm down, Master Durron," Kenth Hamner interjected, holding up a placating hand. He then turned to Ahsoka and continued, "Not to question you, Master Tano, but he has a point. In light of today's attack, it is not a good idea for anyone to be withholding information about the Sith."

"This one agreez," Saba Sebatyne put in testily.

Octa Ramis said nothing, silently observing the exchange. But Ahsoka could sense that she, too, was not happy with her.

If she were not in better control of her emotions, Ahsoka would have thrown up her hands in exasperation. The rest of the Jedi Council members who were physically present in the temple all seemed to have turned on her. She suspected the rest of the council would follow suit sooner rather than later. All because Ben wouldn't listen.

For a long moment, the Tactical Ops Center was silent, save for the whirring of the holotable, which was still projecting reports and news coverage of the attack. Even the Jedi techs, still working at their consoles, had taken to communicating with hushed whispers. The Masters were clearly waiting to hear Ahsoka's response, but she did not know what she could say to ease their suspicions.

When the silence was no longer bearable, she finally responded. "Like I said, Master Skywalker will want to be the first to hear about it."

"Why?" asked Kyp. "Is he keeping secrets from us, too?"

"Not without good reason," Ahsoka shot back, a little more harshly than she intended. But she was tired of her colleagues not trusting her. "I wish I could tell you, but it's not my place to discuss Master Skywalker's personal business."

"Again, how is it personal?"

"That's his personal business," she repeated. "And that's all I can say, for now."

"This one doesn't like it," sissed Saba. "First, the Sith attack our world, and now Master Tano is keeping secretz. A pack is strongest when there is trust."

"I trust all of you implicitly." Ahsoka slowly turned her head to lock eyes with each master individually. "And you have always trusted me. We can't let one complicated situation break that trust. That is precisely what the Sith want. Now, more than ever, we need to—"

"People of the galaxy," a voice interrupted.

Ahsoka froze as an icy chill ran down her spine. That voice… she recognized that voice. It was a voice from her past, one which had been prowling her nightmares for the past two years. She became aware that, across from her, Octa and Kyp were gazing above her head, shocked expressions on their faces. Slowly, she turned around, bracing herself for what she knew she was about to see.

A larger-than-life-sized hologram towered above all the Jedi in the room. It depicted a man dressed all in black with chin-length wavy dark hair and stubble covering the lower half of his face. He was human, but he looked almost alien. Red striations snaked across his exposed flesh, and it seemed as though they emitted a subtle glow. But his eyes were his most alarming attribute. They glowed with an eerie red-orange color made even more pronounced by his sunken eye sockets.

He looked like a monster, but to Ahsoka, he was a ghost—one who had risen from the dead to haunt her. She had last seen him as an old, crippled man. Seeing him now with his youth restored was even more unsettling. His appearance was similar to that which Ahsoka had known during the Clone Wars, back when she was a teenage Padawan. To think that she was now physically older than him…

But other than his regrown legs and rejuvenated skin, he did not look the same as she had remembered him. His red eyes and skin tendrils were new. What happened to him? Ahsoka suspected she already knew the answer to her silent question: the Sith orb. He had been using the artifact's power too much for too long; now it had begun to physically transform him into a reflection of his rotten soul.

Once, he had been Demood Elppirc, traitorous Jedi Master. Now, he was Darth Hatus, genocidal Sith Lord.

The entire Solo family let out a collective gasp as the home construction holoprogram they had been watching dissolved into static and reconstituted itself into the form of a monstrous-looking man.

"A great tragedy has occurred on Coruscant," the hologram said. "Millions of innocent people are dead or wounded, and you all have the same question: why?"

"Grandma?" Allana whispered, as though she were afraid the man would hear her. "Is that—?"

"Darth Hatus," Leia confirmed, exhaling the name.

"What the hell happened to him?" Han asked.

Before anyone could venture a guess, another hologram appeared, depicting a man kneeling beside and slightly behind Hatus with his hands clasped behind his back. Allana let out a loud whimper. Jaina gave a shuddering gasp. Han swore softly in a deflated voice. Leia stared in silence as the sense of foreboding that had been plaguing her all day suddenly intensified.

Hatus spoke again. "Most of you recognize Luke Skywalker, Grand Master of the New Jedi Order and hero of the Rebellion."

Leia realized then that she had been wrong. The feeling of dread had not been about her nephew; it had been about her brother.

Ben Skywalker's ears perked upon hearing his father's name. He had not been paying attention to the holoprojectors in the cafeteria of the pop-up hospital. When he had heard the male voice addressing everyone, he had assumed that it was a politician giving a speech and decided to pay him no mind. Now, however, he had caught Ben's attention, along with that of everyone else in the area. Every holoprojector had been tuned in to a different frequency, but now they all played the same broadcast. Ben turned toward the nearest towering hologram and gasped. He gave the hideous man only a brief glance before his gaze settled on Luke Skywalker.

But it was not the same Luke Skywalker Ben had known his entire life. Instead of the proud, serene, strong, confident Jedi Master who had raised him, he saw only a bruised and battered, pale, disheveled husk of a man kneeling in subservience, but with a defiant expression on his face. The sight somehow terrified Ben more than anything else he had seen that day.

"You've all heard the stories of how he defeated the Empire, among his various great deeds." Ben's attention was drawn to the speaker: the ugly man whom he did not know, but whose identity he could guess easily enough. "Well, here he is—your shining symbol of freedom, brought to his knees by my power."

"Ben…" He felt Nysilla Zabeth grasp his hand and turned his head to look at her. She returned his stricken gaze, as though she could feel what he was feeling. But how could she? It was not her father kneeling behind a Sith Lord while everyone watched.

And then it hit him; they had been in this situation before, on Dromund Kaas. Except it had been Nysilla's mother kneeling behind Darth Volatis. Ben's blood seemed to chill as he remembered how that situation had ended.

The second Luke appeared in the hologram, every Jedi in the ops center gasped and murmured in concern upon seeing their grand master at the feet of a Sith Lord. More than that, Ahsoka felt the collective shock of every Jedi in the temple. It was nearly as great as her own. Her mind quickly began to whir as she scrambled for an explanation for what she was seeing.

Luke's been captured? How? Did he walk into a trap? Were the Sith waiting for him on Latru? She remembered that Luke had been concerned that the people of Latru would not welcome him with open arms, given their complicated history with the Republic during the Clone Wars. He had insisted on going alone so as not to put anyone else at risk. She wondered if his fears had proven correct. Did the people of Latru betray him? Did they turn him over to Darth Hatus?

Or did Darth Hatus find him there? If that was the case, Ahsoka wondered what the Sith had done to the innocent people of Latru. And then something else occurred to her. At the insistence of Leia, Luke had consented to bring Tahiri Veila with him. Ahsoka wondered what had become of her.

Don Dain reflexively clenched his fists and ground his teeth as he glared at the hologram of his sworn enemy. This man was the focal point of all of the chancellor's ire. You killed my son, he thought darkly. You killed my son. His mind ran through a list of scenarios in which he punished Hatus in various painful, gruesome ways.

The fantasy he always came back to was the one in which Don threw him out of a ship in low orbit and watched him fall to his death. He imagined doing it over Mustafar and watching him burn alive in a volcano. Or he could do it over Tatooine and leave his corpse to rot in the desert or be slowly digested by a sarlacc for a thousand years. Or he could dump him over Hoth and let his body freeze in a blizzard or become encased in ice to be preserved for eternity.

Don also imagined doing it over Coruscant and watching Hatus' body shatter on one of the durasteel surfaces. In fact, if he were positioned just right, Hatus could fall straight down into one of the vast shafts that led to the lower levels of the city-planet. That would be even more gratifying, watching him fall an extra five thousand levels to the uninhabitable natural surface of the planet. Even if Hatus somehow survived the fall, he would have to contend with the toxic atmosphere and mutated creatures that hunted in the pitch-black darkness.

Unfortunately, none of these options sounded painful enough to satisfy Don.

"Most of you do not know who I am," continued Hatus. "Some of you know me as Darth Hatus, Lord of the Sith. But only a select few know that I once had another name: Demood Elppirc, Jedi Master."

"Long before the Clone Wars, I faithfully served the Old Jedi Order. I was a paragon of what the Jedi represented. And how was I rewarded for my service? With betrayal."

Ahsoka bristled at these words. He had betrayed the Jedi, not the other way around. Elppirc had not been a paragon of anything but treachery. Hatus had no right to claim otherwise.

"There is a world that the galaxy has long since forgotten. A planet called Latru. That is where I was born. That is where the Jedi found me. And that is where my life was destroyed.

"I was sent there as a Jedi Knight to negotiate a mining rights dispute. What I did not count on was the native population being so friendly towards me. They lured me in with their kindness and simple way of life." His face contorted in disgust as he spoke. Then his expression hardened. "And then, in my complacency, I allowed myself to fall in love.

"She meant everything to me. So much so that I planned to leave the Jedi Order so that I could marry her. But then she became pregnant with someone else's child. And despite all evidence to the contrary, she insisted that she never cheated on me. She lied." His voice, which had been calm up to that point, morphed into something angry and venomous, and he began to slowly pace back and forth.

"But everyone else thought the child was mine, and everyone who had pretended to be kind to me accused me of being dishonorable. Every single friend I had made turned against me. And Monad Joisûr, the Mad King of Latru, reported me to the Jedi Council. I was called back to Coruscant to be punished for something I didn't do.

"The council refused to listen to me. They were more interested in protecting the Republic's relationship with Latru than defending one of their own. They sent me to live on a backwater world in the middle of nowhere for an entire year, with no one to keep me company. And when I returned, everyone I had known and trusted avoided me like I was a disease."

As Ahsoka listened to Hatus' story, she wanted to deny everything he said. She could not accept that he had once been a loyal Jedi and a loving man. Nor did she want to entertain the notion that the Jedi Council had pushed him to the dark side by being disloyal in return. Nor would she allow herself to feel sympathy toward him. The very idea spat in the face of every truth she held dear.

And yet, she could sense that his emotions were genuine. Whether or not his story was true, he believed it to the point that it had become ingrained into his soul. That seemed to indicate that at least part of it was true. Someone had indeed wronged Elppirc at some point, but who? Did the Jedi really betray him? Ahsoka wondered. Were they not as wise as I always thought they were?

"Ow!"

In response to Nysilla's exclamation, Ben turned to her to see what was wrong. She was looking down at her hand, which was interlocked with his. Ben realized that he must have unwittingly been squeezing it too hard. With a soft apology, he loosened his grip.

He could not help his reaction to Hatus' sob story. As if we're supposed to feel sorry for him. He'sthe one who's responsible for this war, this attack, and Dromund Kaas. Ben did not care what Hatus had gone through in his past or who had hurt him. The fact remained that he was a murderer and a slaver, and he deserved to suffer for it.

Hatus' voice rose in volume. "For too long, I have been lied to, betrayed, abandoned, hurt, and ignored by those around me! For too long, I suffered, and no one bothered to pay attention! They pretended nothing was wrong! They acted like they were innocent! I had to take drastic action in order to get everyone's attention. But, even then, they still refused to listen! They called me a traitor and locked me away!"

He paused for a moment to catch his breath. When he continued, his voice had returned to its initial calm. "But it wasn't just the Jedi who were out to destroy me. During the Clone Wars, the Separatists sent an agent to kidnap me and steal my knowledge to use against the Republic. But the Jedi pursued me, determined to make my suffering continue. And, in their efforts, I was nearly killed. They assumed I was dead and left me behind. For sixty years, I wasted away on a dead planet, constantly at death's door, but it refused to take me.

"But what I thought was damnation proved to be my salvation. It turned out I still had one ally left: The Force. It sympathized with my plight and kept me alive until the time was right. It blessed me with the Sith orb, an ancient artifact that restored my mind and body and gave me the power to stand against all who have wronged me. With the power of the orb, I have resurrected the Sith race, built an entire army, and conquered entire worlds."

Hatus spread his arms as if to say, Here I am. "Now you know my story. Now you see that I am not the villain, but the victim. But you must be asking, 'Who is responsible?' Who was that lying whore who betrayed me and set this entire chain of events in motion?" He pointed at Luke, still kneeling behind him, and said, "It was this man's grandmother, Shmi Skywalker, whose bastard child grew up to be none other than Darth Vader!"

All around Ben, he heard people gasping and chattering anxiously.

"Wait, did he just say he's Skywalker's grandfather?"

"That explains so much."

"No wonder Vader was so evil."

"Of course he had a rotten mother."

But their shock was nothing compared to Ben's. My great-grandmother almost married Darth Hatus? Why the hell would she even consider that? He could not accept that Elppirc had once been so good that no one ever suspected he would turn evil. If anyone should have seen that, it would have been the woman who considered taking him as a husband. Unless she was too blinded by love to see him for what he really was.

"He's lying," said Han. "He's just making stuff up to turn everyone against Luke." The forcefulness of his voice indicated to Leia that he was trying to convince himself as much as his family.

R2-D2 launched into an outraged flurry of shrill whistles and frantic beeps, to which C-3PO responded, "How would you know? You've never met Master Luke's grandmother. For all we know, he could be telling the truth!"

If things had turned out differently, Leia thought in bewilderment, Darth Hatus could have been my grandfather. Somehow, the idea appalled her even more than the fact that Darth Vader had been her father. She returned her attention to Luke's hologram to gauge his reaction to this revelation.

To her surprise, he did not seem at all fazed. In fact, he did not appear to even be listening to Hatus' speech. His eyes were closed, his brow furrowed in concentration. What is he doing? she wondered. It looked like he was meditating. Is he using the Force to try to escape? Or is he trying to find a way out? Or is he having a vision?

Ahsoka felt as though she had been struck by lightning. She stood frozen in place, eyes wide and mouth agape as she tried to wrap her head around this latest revelation. Anakin's mother was in love with Demood Elppirc? No, that can't be true; it's too big a coincidence. Unless… it was the will of the Force? No, that can't be true either. The Force wouldn't have brought Anakin anywhere near the man who had left his mother.

As much as she tried to convince herself it was not true, she knew in heart that it was. Anakin's mother was in love with Demood Elppirc. Did he know? Did he have any idea? Did they even interact at all? It was incredible to think that her master—and, by extension, Ahsoka herself—was more connected to Elppirc than she had ever realized.

But did she really cheat on him? Anakin had very rarely spoken to her about his childhood, but based on what little he had shared, Ahsoka could not imagine that a woman as kind as Shmi Skywalker would do such a thing. Anakin had been told that he had been conceived without a father, and the rumor in the Jedi Temple had been that he had been conceived by the Force itself, making him the prophesized Chosen One. Had that been a lie?

"And who gave me my powers?" asked Hatus. "Who brought me the Sith orb and used it to heal me? It was Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master!"

At that moment, the holograms of the Sith Lord and his captive vanished and were replaced with a video. Not just any video, however; it appeared to be security footage. Ahsoka's heart skipped a beat as she recognized the scene. It was in the Halls of Healing in the Jedi Temple. An old and crippled Elppirc lay motionless on the medical table, barely being kept alive by the several life-support machines that were hooked up to him. Luke stood over him, holding the Sith orb in his hands, while Master Cilghal and her apprentice, Tekli, monitored the equipment. Nearby, a hologram of Ahsoka stood off to the side, observing the procedure.

She knew at once what they were seeing. It was security footage from the day Luke had used the orb to heal Elppirc, unaware that the old man had already been planning to take the orb for himself. This was the day the Jedi had accidentally brought a serial murderer to life, and Hatus was showing it to the entire galaxy. He's discrediting us, she realized. He's going to turn the whole galaxy against us right when we're needed the most.

The hologram of Master Cilghal asked, "Are there any changes?"

Her Chadra-Fan apprentice answered in a high, squeaky voice, "He's still deteriorating. I don't think he's going to make it."

A moment later, Ahsoka said, "Wait a minute," just before the orb in Luke's hands began to glow.

Cilghal lifted one of Elppirc's eyelids open and gasped. "It's working!"

Don watched the scene play out several centimeters above the surface of his desk. As the Jedi continued to report that Elppirc was recovering, he felt his anger toward them grow as old wounds began to reopen. He had long ago put his hatred of the Jedi to rest, accepting that Luke and Ahsoka had had the galaxy's best interests at heart and choosing to work with them to build the New Republic. But here they were, using an evil artifact to resurrect a known terrorist, seemingly with no qualms at all.

And for what? he asked himself. What did they think they could gain from this? How arrogant must they have been to think that this could possibly turn out well? Now, because of their stupidity, my son is dead.

"Master Cilghal," began Tekli's hologram, "the life support machines have been turned off and his vitals are holding steady."

Don returned his attention to Elppirc, who was beginning to stir on the table. He opened his eyes and immediately squeezed them shut. He yelled in pain and covered his eyes, but after a moment, he removed his hands and let his eyes adjust to the light.

As he looked around, Elppirc breathed heavily. "I can see." He placed his palms on the medical table and tried to push himself upright. Cilghal moved to help him. Once he was sitting upright, he looked around again, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. He coughed and said, "Water."

In response to Elppirc's request, Cilghal went to the sink and filled a cup with water. She was about to bring it to Elppirc when he held up his left hand and ordered, "Wait. Let me." His eyes closed and his hand began to shake. The cup rose out of Cilghal's hand and floated into Elppirc's. He drank the water and exhaled.

Luke stepped forward and asked, "Master Elppirc, how are you feeling?"

Elppirc's lips slowly formed a smile. "Fine. The best I've felt in ages, in fact. Thank you, Master Skywalker."

Don's fist tightened in unbridled fury. In his mind, the Jedi were indirectly responsible for every heinous act committed by Hatus and the Sith, and they had never been held accountable. Perhaps it's time to fix that, he mused.

As the footage of Luke healing Elppirc played, the people in the pop-up hospital were growing angry. Ben could only make out what the people closest to him were saying, but none of it was good.

"Luke Skywalker created the Sith?"

"Typical Jedi, always causing trouble."

"It's Darth Caedus all over again!"

"All of this is Skywalker's fault! He destroyed our lives!"

It infuriated Ben to hear people talking about his father that way. His every instinct yelled at him to defend Luke and the Jedi, but a voice in his head argued, It's not worth it. No one's going to listen to reason. They're grieving and angry and looking for someone to blame.

They should be blaming Hatus, Ben argued back. They should all know better than to think Dad would do anything to hurt them.

Not willingly, at least. While he accepted that Luke's intentions had been good when he used the orb, Ben could not help but think that maybe all of this could have been avoided if he had not messed with things he did not understand. That single thought felt like a conduit worm crawling through his intestines. It felt wrong for him to be validating these people's hateful viewpoint. He felt like he was betraying his father, thinking like that.

The holorecording froze, and Hatus' voice spoke again. "And who is the Separatist agent who freed me from my prison and set me on the path to survival?"

His anger swiftly transforming into fear, heat flooded Don's face. No, he silently pleaded. Please, don't.

"It was Admiral Don Dain, who is now your chancellor!" As Hatus spoke, the still frame of the holorecording was replaced with a new image.

Don recognized it as his military service file from the Clone Wars, in which he had served as a Separatist admiral. It was the same file Luke had threatened to blackmail him with to force him to call off the Alliance military's planned attack on the Jedi Temple the previous year. He did not even think to question how Hatus had gotten it; he was too dismayed to see his darkest secret on display for the entire galaxy to see.

All Don could think was, I'm ruined.

As shocked as Ben was to learn about the chancellor's former allegiance, he was mostly just glad that the people were no longer talking about his father. The angry chatter escalated into a furious uproar, which signaled to him that they were more outraged by Chancellor Dain's offenses than Luke's.

"The chancellor is a traitor!"

"How the hell was he even on the ballot? They should have investigated him before letting him lead the galaxy!"

"He should be arrested for fraud!"

"He should be arrested for war crimes!"

But Hatus was not finished yet. "And who is the traitor who smuggled the Sith onto your galactic capital? Who gave us the command codes to hijack the Coruscant Defense Fleet? It was Commander Mek Dain, son of Chancellor Don Dain!"

The hologram changed again to display another security video. This time, it showed Hatus among a circle of people, apparently in the middle of a meeting. The group included his three apprentices, an officer Ben did not recognize, and Mek Dain.

"I'm transmitting the codes now," said Mek. His hand moved to type on a console that was not visible in the hologram. "These will give you remote access to every ship in the Coruscant Defense Fleet. May I ask what you plan to use them for?"

"You may ask," answered Hatus' hologram. "But all information about the attack is need-to-know. We can't risk the Alliance catching wind of what we're planning."

A thinly veiled scowl crossed Mek's face. "Don't you think I deserve to know?" he asked. "After all, if it weren't for me, none of this would be possible."

Hatus nodded and replied, "And we will be sure to recognize your contributions to our cause."

The Sith Lord's nonchalant tone seemed to aggravate Mek. "You have no idea how much trouble I went through to get you those codes and cover my tracks! I deserve to know what all the work I put into this will amount to! Besides, how do I know what you're planning doesn't put me at risk of being discovered?"

"If you're afraid of being caught," said the officer, "then you shouldn't have joined us in the first place."

"Perhaps you should have made the risks clearer when you recruited me, Hyke," Mek shot back.

"If you must know," began Hatus with an air of annoyance, "We intend to use these codes to upload a virus that will override the systems of every ship and turn them against one another. The fleet will destroy itself, leaving the planet unprotected. The people will see that the Alliance is weak and turn against it."

For a moment, Mek was silent as he appeared to consider this. Then he nodded and said, "It's a good plan, as long as it ends with me taking my father's place."

"Yes, you've made it very clear that that's what you want," Hatus replied irritably, "so that's what you'll have. Once we've taken over the galaxy, your father will be removed from office and, with some careful political maneuvering, we will make sure you are the one to take his place."

"And I will have actual power, right? I won't just be one of your puppets?"

"You will serve me, but, for the most part, you will be allowed to make autonomous decisions. It is still more power than your father ever had."

Mek failed to suppress a devious smile. "Thank you, my lord."

By the time the footage had ended, the uproar of the crowd had grown to become a deafening riot. "They're both traitors!" someone shouted.

"I bet the chancellor was in on it, too!"

"Execute them both!"

"Death to Dains! Death to Dains!"

Within moments, the entire throng had taken up the chant, "Death to Dains! Death to Dains!"

"DEATH TO DAINS!"

It was a lie. It had to be. Don knew there was no way his son would ever help the Sith. Mek had been raised to believe in the power of democracy and justice, which were the core pillars of both the New Republic and the Galactic Alliance. He would never betray those principles to throw in his lot with a monster like Hatus.

Unfortunately, the evidence to the contrary was damning. The holorecording, though obviously staged, appeared very convincing. And, as the commander of the defense force, Mek would have had the knowledge and clearance to exploit even the smallest vulnerabilities in Coruscant's defenses, making him the perfect scapegoat. Even if the Sith had gotten the codes from him, Don knew his son well enough to know that he would never put the lives of Alliance citizens in danger… unless he had no choice.

That's how they did it, he realized angrily. They forced Mek to help them and say those horrible things. Hatus must have used his Sith powers to control his mind and make him do their bidding without even realizing it! By that logic, Hatus could also have warped the minds of other Alliance officials. But he had specifically gone after the chancellor's son in an effort to smear his good name. It's bad enough that he would attack innocent civilians and destroy their confidence in me. But to use my son against me—against the entire galaxy…

Now he's made it personal.

The more Ahsoka thought about it, the more obvious it seemed. Mek had always been vocally disdainful of the Jedi. While that in and of itself did not make him a turncoat, there had been other signs that, when taken separately, meant very little. But collectively, they painted the perfect picture of a traitor. In hindsight, Ahsoka was baffled that the Jedi had not suspected him sooner.

Maybe it was too obvious, she thought. We were probably expecting a traitor to be more subtle. The warning signs were all there, in plain sight, and we were too quick to dismiss them out of hand. If we had paid closer attention, maybe all of this could have been prevented.

"I always knew there was something fishy about him," said Han. "From the very beginning, I could tell he was trouble."

"So did I," Jaina agreed. "I never understood how he became the commander of the defense force."

"Because the chancellor made it happen. Dain put his son ahead of everyone else. I wouldn't be surprised if he meant for this to happen, what with him being a Separatist."

"Stop it, Han," Leia snapped. "This is serious. Hatus just undermined the Jedi, the government, and the military all at once. The people are going to demand accountability for this."

"Good," Han replied. "Dain deserves to be punished for everything he's done."

"Not when we're in the middle of a crisis. The Alliance won't survive the war if it's busy prosecuting the chancellor. And with someone as powerful as Don Dain, that could take years, especially if he's got equally powerful people defending him."

"Why would anyone want to defend him?" Jaina asked. "Now that we know he's a Separatist war criminal, no one could possibly want to keep him in office."

"Not unless they stand to lose something if he's impeached," Leia pointed out. "Be it power, or money, or allies. They'll defend him to the bitter end to protect their own self interests."

The hologram switched back to show Darth Hatus in the present. Almost as though he had been listening to Leia, he said, "Now you see that the Alliance is rotten to the core! Your leaders are liars and traitors! The Jedi are too weak to protect you! They could not protect Coruscant, just as Master Skywalker here could not protect Latru."

At the mention of Luke, Leia shifted her attention to the hologram of her brother. He was still kneeling behind Hatus, but his eyes were no longer closed in meditation. Instead, they were narrowed and unfocused, as though he were deep in thought. Then his eyes widened, and his jaw hung open, like he had just experienced a revelation.

But what kind of revelation?

"And now," Hatus continued, "I will answer the question everyone is asking: Why attack civilians? Because I want the galaxy to know fear. I want it to know betrayal. I want it to know pain. I want it to know everything I have been put through! The people of Latru have already paid for their betrayal. They are now under my power. Soon, the entire galaxy will follow."

Hatus slowly walked backward until he was standing next to Luke. "Let me make myself clear," he said. "I'm not interested in ruling the galaxy. I don't care if the Alliance lives or dies. All I want is revenge against everyone who ever wronged me, and for everyone in the galaxy to know my suffering." He reached behind his black cape and produced a long, golden cylinder that branched into two short cylinders at both ends. It was just the right size to be a lightsaber hilt.

Leia's eyes widened in horror. She knew what was about to happen. It was what the Force had been warning her about all day.

Allana's breathing quickened as she came to the same realization. Han reached over and squeezed the girl's shoulders, his eyes still glued to the hologram. "It's going to be okay. Uncle Luke has a plan. He'll get out of this." The quiver in his voice told Leia that he knew he was wrong.

Unwilling to watch what she knew was coming, she reached out with the Force and switched off the holoprojector. It was not until a second later that she realized that she had just seen her brother for the last time.

Every Jedi watched with bated breath as Darth Hatus stood over their grand master, lightsaber in hand. The room had fallen deathly silent, allowing Ahsoka to hear the pounding of her heart. She stared at Luke, waiting to see what he did next, hoping beyond hope that her closest friend would survive. When he finally moved, that hope swiftly drained away.

Luke closed his eyes, modulated his breathing, and bowed his head.

The crowd muttered apprehensively as, one by one, people began to guess what was about to happen. Nysilla tugged on Ben's hand and whispered to him in a trembling voice. "Turn around. You don't need to see this."

But Ben stood rooted to the spot like a statue, resisting Nysilla's efforts to turn him away from the hologram. He had to see this. He had to see what Darth Hatus was about to do. He wanted to remember every detail, to draw strength from them when he finally faced Hatus. He wanted to remember this moment when he exacted his vengeance.

"The Jedi are no longer the controlling power in the galaxy," Hatus concluded. "Their time has come to an end. And everyone will feel the wrath of the Sith." With those words, two parallel plasma blades sprang from the twin emitters at one end of Hatus' lightsaber hilt.

At that instant, a strange sensation overcame Ben. Instead of anger or fear, he suddenly felt reassurance, strength, and love. But where did those feelings come from? As he stared at his father, he understood the answer. Luke's final act was to use the Force to reach out to his son, to let him know that everything would be okay.

To tell his son that he loved him.

Tears came unbidden to Ben's eyes as he understood this. He realized then that he was not ready to lose his father. There was so much they had not yet done together, so many important moments that Luke was supposed to be present for. As he struggled to maintain his composure, Ben reached into the Force and tried to send love back to his father, but he had no idea if he was successful. He could only hope.

Hatus raised his lightsaber, and Ben tensed for the killing blow. He resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut as the lightsaber came down on Luke's neck. He fully expected to see his father's head separate from his body and fall to the ground. To his surprise, however, the instant the saber blades made contact, Luke vanished, leaving behind nothing but an empty coat—and a void in his son's heart.

It was just like how he had described the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi as the old Jedi Master was struck down by Darth Vader. Like his master before him, Luke Skywalker had become one with the Force.

Ben staggered under the weight of the emptiness within him, and he would have collapsed had Nysilla not been holding him up. He had felt the same way when his mother had died. At least then, he had had his father there to lend and receive support through the difficult days ahead.

Now, Ben had no one. His mother and father had both been taken by the Sith. And he could not go back to his remaining family and friends without risking arrest. He was alone.

Then he felt himself smothered in a warm embrace. Nysilla had stepped in front of him and wrapped her arms comfortingly around him. She was letting him know that he was not alone, after all. He still had her. He buried his face in her shoulder and allowed himself to cry freely.

As Luke's body vanished, a frown crossed Hatus' face. Clearly, he had not been expecting that to happen. For the first time since his broadcast began, his grasp on the situation had slipped. As hard as he tried to hide it, Don could see the uncertainty in his expression.

Good, he thought. He realizes that he's not as infallible as he thinks he is. He can be defeated. He will be defeated. He will pay for what he did to me and my son.

With a subtle flick of his fingers, Hatus shut down the broadcast, and his hologram disappeared.

The Solos cried in each other's arms. They had not seen the fatal blow, but the Force-sensitive members of the family had felt Luke's death.

Off to the side, R2-D2 emitted a low, mournful whine. C-3PO murmured, "Oh, Artoo," as he gently placed a gold-plated hand on his friend's silver dome.

Leia could not stop thinking about the expression she had seen on Luke's face before he appeared to submit to Hatus. She was certain that he had seen something through the Force, something that had made him decide to accept his fate. The question was, had he seen a path to victory for those who survived? Or had he seen only defeat?

At that moment, Leia could only imagine the latter.

Ahsoka sank to one knee and bowed her head, squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to hold back tears. She heard a series of shuffling noises as the other Jedi followed her example, kneeling in respect and remembrance for the Grand Master of the New Jedi Order.

But for Ahsoka, the pain ran deeper than any of them could understand. To her, Luke had been more than just a leader or a comrade; he had been one of her oldest surviving friends and one of her closest advisors. He had been instrumental in helping her navigate innumerable crises in the past. Now he was gone, right when the Jedi were facing their greatest crisis yet.

Coruscant had been attacked. A million innocent people were dead. Millions more had lost everything. The Jedi had failed to fulfill their duty to the Alliance. The chancellor had been exposed as a war criminal. His son had been exposed as a traitor. And Luke Skywalker was dead.

And Ahsoka had lost his son.

Not since the end of the Clone Wars had she felt so hopeless.

The end... of Book Three, again!

These first eleven chapters were originally meant for the end of the previous book, but I decided to move them to the beginning of this book. I explain this decision in the January 2023 update on my profile page.

Thank you for reading this chapter! If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in your reviews or private messages.