(Technically, this gapfiller series began in our story about Malinza Thanas, In the Shadow of His Wings, and we'll be bouncing back and forth between here and there.)
Rules of Engagement: Suspended from duty by her own brother just as the Second Galactic Civil War heats up, Colonel Jaina Solo finds herself momentarily unemployed. She has a chance to reexamine many of her life choices, continue making peace with her past, and consider how to forge a better way forward. She also rediscovers an old friend, and a rather fabulous pastry shop.
A rewritten and extended scene from "Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines," by Karen Traviss, shifted to Jaina's point of view.
40 ABY, Coruscant
Jaina sat on a crate in a neglected corner of the hangar bay, staring at the grease-stained duracrete between her boots. She hadn't bothered to change out of her orange flight suit, still not quite able to swallow the reality of what was happening. She was Colonel Solo, a distinction she had sacrificed years of her life and significant aspects of her physical and mental health to earn, and she was supposed to be out flying with Rogue Squadron, enforcing the Alliance's blockade over Corellia.
But she wasn't. Not anymore.
Suspended from duty. The words burned in her mind, undeniable, indigestible, intolerable, pronounced by her own twin brother when she had refused to join him in his bizarre new bloodlust. With a stroke, Jacen had taken her military career, plucked her off the line, and shipped her back to Third Fleet's shore base pending a court-martial. Colonel Jacen Solo suddenly outranked her, elevated overnight through no merit of his own besides his willingness to get his hands dirty commanding the GA's new secret police. Now he was flitting all over the battlefield, trying to be seen and admired on the frontlines to augment his growing popularity, and it seemed Jaina would be just another bit of smoldering collateral damage left in his wake.
She could easily let it make her angry. It could make her furious, but that would just be another kind of defeat. She was in this mess because she had refused to follow Jacen's dark and brutal example, trying to remember in the heat of the moment—for once—the principles they had been taught since they had been old enough to walk.
She had dabbled in the darkness before, like Zekk, like Kyp, and had found it within herself to come back from the brink. Anger came too easily to her, clouded her judgment when it mattered most. If she gave in to it now, Jacen would have just dragged her down by other means. Regardless, all that repressed emotion had to go somewhere, and in the absence of any other outlet the whole situation made her deeply, desperately sad.
After what seemed like an eternity, a young ensign approached her. He still seemed sympathetic and deferential, or maybe he was just marveling at how the mighty had fallen. "Colonel Solo," he said, "he's here. I've shown him into the wardroom. Command says you're free to go until recalled."
"Thanks." Jaina couldn't force any congeniality into her voice, but there was no need to be rude. She stood and shouldered her pack. "I know the way."
She kept her eyes trained forward as she walked the corridors, making a conscious effort to not look defeated. It was a relief to drop the pretense as she entered the empty wardroom, empty except for the one person she most wanted to see. She didn't care if he saw how much it hurt, and as she quietly slipped into the chair beside him, Jaina thought he looked almost as miserable as she was.
"Thanks for coming, Uncle Luke."
Grand Master Skywalker of the Jedi Order still had a vested interest in her behavior and its ramifications, but that wasn't why he was there. He was there because she had called him, because her parents were far away, and Jaina suspected he would be the only one who would really understand her. Uncle Luke had also been unfortunate enough to feel the aft burn of Jacen's ambition.
"I wanted to hear your side of it," Luke said. He avoided confrontational eye-contact, but she could feel he was completely present to her. Despite the apparent formality, the conversation felt very intimate, with the heavy and gentle solemnity of a spiritual confession. It was exactly what Jaina needed, something she hadn't had the words to ask for, just another reason she had instinctively gone back to him. "I don't believe Jaina Solo would ever turn tail and run during an engagement."
"I'm suspended from duty." She didn't know why she felt she had to tell him that. He obviously already knew that. Everybody knew that. It was the kind of salacious military scandal that wouldn't be contained for five minutes.
"What happened?"
Nothing but the unvarnished truth, she told herself. Uncle Luke knew the rules of engagement as well as any general, but he also understood the moral complications of warfare. "I didn't think it was . . . appropriate to continue attacking a civilian vessel when it was retreating."
Luke drew a slow breath, counteracting his own inclination to tense. "Who ordered you to do that?" he asked.
He knew already. Jaina could hear it in his voice. "Jacen."
"Had the ship fired on Alliance vessels?"
"No, but it breached the exclusion zone and it had targeted Jacen. I took out its aft laser cannons, but it was still capable of firing. Then it withdrew from the exclusion zone and Jacen ordered me to open fire on it."
Those were the factual details, the dry military circumstances of the incident. There was so much more to the reality as Jaina had lived it, the shifting spectrum of emotions and motivations that wouldn't merit inclusion in the official account. But they had been real, they mattered, and she had felt them. Only another Jedi would understand.
"It was just wrong, Uncle Luke," she said, her professional facade finally slipping off. "He wanted destruction. He wanted to teach them a lesson. I felt it."
Luke said nothing, just stared vacantly through the pleekwood wall as he considered that. Jaina could feel him thinking, a quiet, thunderous rumble in the Force, as he weighed the technicalities against a higher ethical standard. More than that, she could feel him mourning Jacen even as she was. They were losing him, and Uncle Luke knew it. Worse, Jacen seemed intent on taking the whole Galactic Alliance, the reputation of the Jedi Order, and Luke's only son Ben with him. He would have to be dealt with, and that didn't bear thinking about.
Jaina remembered what Luke had told them four years earlier when she and Jacen had both wandered from the Jedi ideal, as the fallout from the Killik war had settled, after he had permanently "dealt with" the dark Jedi Welk and Lomi Plo. He had said it so calmly, so gently, but those words had haunted her dreams ever since, a curb and a warning.
If you fall, who do you think will be obliged to come for you?
The possibility in all its grotesque tragedy still made her nauseous. It had been enough to scare some discipline into her, and when he had come back from that trip to Naboo, Luke had agreed that liasoning with the military and keeping her qualifications current might be exactly the structure Jaina needed in her life at the time. She didn't do well without that structure, conditioned from a very early age to need purpose and direction, a job she could sink her teeth into.
Jacen, however, had taken no corrective measures as far as Jaina could tell. She doubted he had taken the lecture seriously, and had just become a more subtle manipulator. He was going to force a confrontation, a violent confrontation Jaina wouldn't want to see for all the worlds in the galaxy.
All of it had fallen into Luke's lap. He would have to act soon, not only as a concerned father, but as the Grand Master. It was further complicated now by the fact that Luke had no official standing within the Alliance government, and Jacen did. What would have previously constituted a simple enforcement of discipline within the Jedi Order would now entail treason against the present administration, a government the Grand Master was sworn to uphold. It was no wonder he was going gray.
As a very young child, Jaina had often wondered about the dark and depressive moods that had come over Uncle Luke from time to time. As she had matured and begun her formal training, when she had been made to grapple with the moral right and wrong of the universe, she thought she had understood them. Looking back, realizing now that macerated anger manifested as sadness, she wondered just how often Luke had overcome the temptation to be terrifyingly angry.
Jaina was finally learning to overcome those temptations herself, temptations that seemed to be hardwired into her nature, and as a reward she would be drummed out of the military in disgrace.
Thanks, Jacen.
"Mom and Dad are going to be so ashamed of me," she whimpered. "Please don't tell them. I'll do it myself when I'm ready."
Luke returned out of his own thoughts, more uncle now than Master or confessor. "They know the kind of person you are," he insisted, taking her hands in his. "But why haven't you defended yourself?"
"Because if I told everyone what happened, they'd think I was whining, You know: everyone else has to do as they're told, but Jaina Solo thinks she's above orders."
Luke sighed, but the tilt of his brows suggested that her explanation resonated with him more than she had expected. Jaina had heard some rumor of how Master Skywalker's persistent objections to the current course of the war had been received in the capital, which was to say that Jacen's inclination to respond with decisive action and damn the consequences was much more popular. "I know you're right, Jaina."
"You wouldn't have fired, would you?" she asked. She almost needed to hear him say it. Jaina didn't think he would have. She had felt it in her bones. It would have been that stone that starts an avalanche, that step too far, the slippery slope.
"I meant that I know Jacen is turning to the dark side," Luke clarified, "and that it's beyond anything that you or I did when we ventured there."
It was nice to be believed, but a nightmare didn't improve just because someone was trapped in it with you. "I don't want to be right," she said.
"Neither do I."
"You're arguing with Mara about it, aren't you?"
"Sometimes."
That was a complication they didn't need. For twenty years Mara had been Luke's strongest support, resolute, grounded, and tough as nails, but she apparently had a real soft spot where Ben was concerned. She was letting her compulsion to safeguard her son's immediate happiness turn her into a serious liability. "She can't see what he's like these days?"
"She sees, but she has another explanation," Luke said. It was a weak excuse, but it was all he had left to defend her with. And he would defend his wife to the last breath, even if behind closed doors he was telling her she was off her nut by a parsec and a half. "And we live in difficult times."
Jaina scoffed. "We always do. That's no excuse."
Luke didn't argue the point. Instead, he changed the subject. "So what are you going to do now that you're grounded?"
"Until I face a court-martial—no idea," Jaina confessed. Best stay busy. She always seemed to wander off the rails if she was left to herself too long. "Can I be of use to you? I'd go find Mom and Dad, but I don't think that would help them right now."
"I'll think of something," Luke promised. Of course he would. He knew it was important to keep her occupied, but he wouldn't say so again unless it became a problem. He was just looking out for her, as always. "How's Zekk taking this?"
"Trying to be understanding," Jaina said. Zekk was one of the closest friends she still had, Jedi or otherwise, sometimes a little too close. She didn't think she would ever see him as more than that, despite his aspirations. Just another ticking time bomb of hurt and disappointment in her life. "I don't want to be understood. I just want this insanity to stop."
Luke's grim aspect melted into a sympathetic smile, and the cloud lifted for just a moment. "Me, too," he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. Jaina would never admit it to her wingmates, but she was glad to lean in and rest her head on his chest. "Come on. Come have lunch with me and Mara. We don't see enough of you these days."
That sounded wonderful, but Jaina wasn't ready to leave just yet. As soon as they left that room, she had to be an adult again. "Do you stay in touch with Mom and Dad?" she asked.
"If you mean do we talk . . . not much," Luke admitted. Jaina could tell that bothered him. "But I'm always in contact with Leia. I'm afraid it's your dad I've lost touch with. I miss him."
Uncle Luke had never been shy about his personal affections and loyalties, but to hear him say it drove another little spike into Jaina's heart. What was happening to them? It wasn't supposed to be this way. "I'd bet he misses you, too," she said, desperate to say anything to fill that emptiness they could all feel.
Luke appreciated the effort, but Jaina had to agree that imagining them all being separately miserable for the same reason didn't help. "Maybe he does," he allowed. Then he seemed to deliberately pack up all that doubt, regret, and dread as best he could, pulled her close and planted a quick kiss on her brow, making her feel six years old again in the best possible way. "Come on, Colonel," he said. "Let's go home and forget about all this for a few hours."
Jaina followed as Luke led the way back through the base toward the speeder lot on the roof. She knew her way around the place at least twice as well as he did, but she swallowed her pride and allowed herself to be led. It was a deliberate exercise she had been practicing with varying success, trying to mortify that need to be manifestly independent, to be the most accomplished, the most important, the most talented. It was that drive that had impelled her into her military commission and career, but she couldn't let her accomplishments and talents define her anymore. Accomplishments could be revoked, talents negated. She couldn't lose herself again, and that meant cultivating a bit of humility. Uncle Luke had become her touchstone, the central anchor of her eccentric orbit that always pulled her back when she strayed. All things considered, it was easier to subordinate herself to him than it was to anyone else.
They loaded up, took off, and joined the flow of air traffic in pensive silence. Neither of them wanted to talk about what was happening anymore, but Jaina couldn't think of anything else to say. She felt numb now, the victim of some kind of strange spiritual amputation. Jacen wasn't dead, but every day she was more convinced that she had lost her twin forever.
"Oh," Luke said, suddenly remembering something as they slowed in the thickening traffic over the city center. "Malinza's here now. She's been asking about you."
That wasn't bad news by any means, but it still cut Jaina. She had meant to be a better friend to Malinza, but she had lost touch almost immediately after the Vong war and had barely given the Bakuran girl another thought. It had been selfish on her part, but she'd been distracted by the breakdown of her relationship with Jag, and her own ongoing identity crisis. Malinza might have had the decency to return the indifference, but apparently not. "Great," Jaina said, too tired to hide her insecurities. "Someone else who thinks I'm a failure."
"Don't be so dramatic," Luke admonished her. "I'm sure she thinks no such thing. You should go see her while you're here. Looks like you could use someone to talk to."
"Do you think we could talk?" Jaina asked, skeptical. "We don't really have a lot in common."
Her uncle gave her a knowing look. "You'd be surprised."
He didn't elaborate. Jaina couldn't help but be intrigued, but maintaining the interest required effort, and she didn't have much to spare. It had always been lonely growing up as the heirs to a famous Jedi dynasty at the epicenter of galactic politics. It often seemed the best friends the Solo kids would ever have were each other, never having much in common with anyone else who could even remotely be considered normal. That had changed while they attended the Jedi Academy, but now even those friends were scattered. Jaina wasn't sure she knew how to maintain a healthy friendship outside of a professional or military context. She hoped Malinza was a patient sort.
"Why am I always more comfortable with a war on?" she asked. "I don't like it, but I understand it. I know how to be. When it's over, I'm lost. What does that say about me?"
Luke sighed, but didn't take his eyes off the skylanes. "One performs according to one's gifts," he said, smuggling a torrent of emotional commentary beneath the truism. The universe had certainly saddled him with one doozy of a destiny, probably several orders of magnitude more momentous than he'd ever wanted.
Jaina couldn't stop half a cheerless smile breaking across her face, an artifact of her Solo blood. "So, you're saying the Sword of the Jedi would have to be an antisocial malcontent. Fair." She wasn't entirely joking. Fragments of stray thoughts were flitting through her mind like a meteor shower. "Hey, Uncle Luke," she said, throwing one out there, "if Grandfather was the Chosen One, what does that make you?"
"The Contingency Plan," he said without skipping a beat.
Jaina snorted. "Come on, that's not much of a title. We can do better."
"Disaster Mitigator," Luke suggested. "Damage Control. The Sucker Left Standing When the Music Stopped."
He was just having fun with her now.
"You and Mara aren't going to split up over this, are you?"
"Over Jacen?" Luke made a face. "Not a chance. If it comes to it, I'll just have to serve my time in the doghouse until she sees Ben sort himself out at the Academy, or wherever else I decide to put him."
Jaina gave him a pointed look. "That's pretty big talk, Grand Master."
Luke frowned, brutally honest again. "Don't I know it. Mara can really dig in when she wants something. Every time I try to put my foot down, she somehow talks me out of it. My own fault, I'm sure."
"She's going to kick herself once she puts her head on straight," Jaina grumbled. "It really is disgusting how easily humans are influenced by our kriffing hormones. Myself included!" she hurried to add before he could mention the Killik business.
"A word to the wise," Luke suggested, "don't say that in front of her."
"I'm just frustrated, Uncle Luke," Jaina sniffed. "I'm not stupid."
Traffic had slowed to a crawl that would have embarrassed a granite slug. It was trying even Luke's patience, and he flipped on the holonews for an explanation.
". . . significant delays due to the closure of many high-traffic lanes through City Center as CSF clears the damage left by the recent riots."
"We'd better get used to this," Jaina said, trying once again to resign herself to the new reality. "The Alliance just upset a whole new bunch of people, as well as Corellia."
Luke frowned, and Jaina felt the act of will that stopped him from rolling his eyes as he shifted his grip on the conn and settled in for a long and tedious flight.
Then he sat bolt upright as if someone had stuck a pin in his back.
Jaina shut her mouth, aware of the sudden tension as Luke whipped out his comlink. "Honey," he said when Mara answered, "is Ben with you?"
Oh, poodoo, what was it now? She couldn't hear the answer.
"Can you feel him?" Luke persisted. Ben must not be there. "Is he okay?"
Jaina's mind was racing with possibilities and premature conclusions. Something had obviously happened to make Luke suspect Ben might not be okay. More immediately, Luke had obviously lost contact with his son, not only in daily discourse, but in the Force, and that chilled her. Jacen had learned to shut off their twin bond years ago, and now was often disappearing entirely at will. The idea that he was teaching Ben to do the same, happily making himself a wedge between the boy and his father, was monstrous. Jaina didn't like to think of her brother as a predator, but that was what it looked like, cutting their young cousin from the safety of the herd.
"Okay, honey," Luke said, resigned again. "Just checking. I'm on my way home with Jaina."
He stowed his comlink and powered up the navigational display, searching for an alternative route. The tension lingered. Jaina was once again painfully aware of the passage of time, seconds ticking away, each one an opportunity for her brother to do more damage, perhaps the irreparable sort. At the end of the day, their family was all they had, and they couldn't let him destroy any more of it.
"You have to get Ben away from Jacen," she said, her voice bleak and thin. The fact that they were even saying it aloud would have been unthinkable five years ago.
"I know," Luke agreed, as sickened as she was. "I'm trying to get him to make that choice for himself. If I force it, I'll make Jacen a martyr in his eyes."
It still felt so wrong. Even knowing what she knew, after everything Jacen had done, talking about him as though he were an enemy filled her with guilt. "Am I wrong to think this about my own brother?" she asked.
"What do your senses tell you?" Luke deflected.
"That he's going to somehow break my heart one day."
"Yes." Luke sighed, angling the speeder out of formation and heading toward a different skylane. "We need to make sure that never happens."
But it already has, Uncle Luke. Jaina closed her eyes and sank into herself, almost positive Luke was silently thinking the same thing. It already has.
Almost an hour later, they managed to make it to Luke and Mara's apartment building. The apparent normality of life within those walls was a temptation Jaina was happy to immerse herself in while she could. Wearing her flight suit with a bag on her shoulder, she looked like any other fighter pilot enjoying a few days of leave, and she would welcome the chance to disappear from the madness, even if just for a few hours.
As they approached their door, Luke tilted his head thoughtfully, and Jaina by reflex reached into the Force to feel what he felt. There were a few extra presences inside, one of them obviously a child. "Malinza's here," he observed, keying the code into the door. "There's a happy coincidence for you."
They stepped inside, and the conversation in the kitchen quieted. "We're home," Luke called unnecessarily, depositing his lightsaber and a handful of other impedimenta in the hall table's lockdrawer.
"About time," Mara called back. "We'd almost decided to eat without you."
"Blame CSF for this one," Luke insisted. "Hey, sweetheart. I didn't know you'd be here."
"Last-minute plans," Malinza explained, wrapping Luke in a hug he was happy to return. "We made salad rolls and talked smack all morning. Just what we needed.
Jaina hung back, feeling a bit awkward. The girl had become a woman, beautiful, elegant, and taller than she was, although most people were. It was the first time she had seen Malinza's relationship with Luke in person, and Jaina felt strangely left out of what was obviously a very important part of his life. Maybe she could be better about keeping in touch now that they were all local.
"You remember Jaina," Luke was saying, directing them to one another.
"Of course." Malinza smiled pleasantly, as though it hadn't been twelve years since they last communicated. "It's been a while."
"It has," Jaina agreed, accepting her hand. "You really picked a bad time to visit."
Malinza grinned, recognizing some of the first words she had said to Jaina when they had met in her Bakuran prison cell during the Vong war. "Just thought I'd finally return the favor," she said.
"Mommy, Mommy!" gushed a very little girl as she ran out of the kitchen and grabbed Malinza by the hand. "I need another snack!"
"No more snacks, baby," Malinza explained. "We're about to have lunch."
The child scowled as if she were considering throwing a tantrum. Luke mirrored her disappointed expression, but then reversed it into a broad smile. Tricked into doing the same, the girl shot him a narrow look and a grudging giggle.
"Jaina, this is my daughter, Petra," Malinza explained. "Petra, this is Jaina Solo, Uncle Luke's niece."
Petra locked eyes with Jaina, twin brown wells of judgment and strong opinion. "Good morning," she said, very properly, as she had presumably been taught.
"Good morning," Jaina replied, amused by her precocity. She probably shouldn't have been surprised. At her age, she was beginning to appreciate in retrospect just what a handful she and her brothers had been.
"Come on," Luke said, offering Petra his hand and leading her back toward the kitchen. "Lunch is awesome. I love lunch."
"Especially if you don't eat breakfast," Mara interjected from the next room. "Get in here."
"Cute kid," Jaina said to Malinza, meaning it as a sincere compliment. She hoped she was hiding the surprising undercurrent of regret and insecurity the comparison brought out of her. "It's hard to believe she's that big already. I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your wedding, but my life was a mess back then."
Malinza shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Well, it's a moot point now, so don't worry about it. Nothing puts your life in perspective quite like cropping your ex-husband out of all your wedding holos."
Jaina didn't even try to suppress her dry snort of a laugh. Uncle Luke was right; there was something about Malinza that made her easy to talk to. "Great," she said, brutally candid. "Four years younger than me, already married and divorced."
Malinza owned it with another shrug and a cold smile. "That's life. The pitfalls always look clearer in hindsight. Should have listened to Uncle Luke."
"Seems we all say that at least once a month," Jaina agreed. "I expect it'll be lasered onto my grave."
"Jaina," Mara interrupted, "I'm not going to make you eat in that flight suit, so go get changed. We'll wait exactly ten more minutes, and then you're on your own."
"Yes, ma'am." Jaina shouldered her bag again and headed for the 'fresher. "Back in five."
Once she had washed her face and pulled on a nondescript tunic and pants, Jaina joined everyone at the table. The platter of homemade salad rolls looked quite appetizing after enduring the fluctuating quality of starfighter rations. A surreptitious glance through the translucent wrappings confirmed that they were fortified with protein, little boiled crustaceans that had been introduced into the ecosystem by the Vongforming. Not all the relics of that war were bad.
"Where's Ben?" Petra demanded between bites.
"Petra," Malinza cautioned her, "don't talk with your mouth full."
"Ben's at work, sweetheart," Mara said, a very careful and deliberate answer.
That pall of tension had fallen again, and Jaina caught the significant look that passed between her aunt and uncle. It made her wonder again what had piqued Luke's momentary panic on the ride home. Mara obviously hadn't known anything about it. Jaina hadn't felt anything, but she hadn't been paying attention. It was dangerous work kicking down doors, busting riots, and rounding up terrorists with Jacen's new breed of black-clad stormtroopers, and anything might have happened. Privately, Jaina thought it too dangerous for any thirteen-year-old, but she wasn't one to talk. She and her brothers had already survived several near-death adventures by the time they were thirteen.
"It's been wild out there lately," Malinza observed, helping herself to the dipping sauce. "Does he still enjoy working with GAG?"
Luke's mouth formed a hard line, but he didn't say anything.
"He's matured a lot," Mara said. "I think the responsibility has been good for him, a chance to get out of the house and see how the world works."
"Sometimes the way the world works can be pretty nasty," Jaina dared to point out. She had to say something. "I can't speak to Ben's state of mind, because I haven't seen him lately. But I've seen Jacen, and I don't think any of the experience he intends to give him is going to be positive."
Silence, broken only by the clink and scrape of flatware.
"I've been keeping an eye on both of them," Mara assured her icily. "Nothing untoward has happened yet."
"What happened this morning, then?" Jaina asked, stubborn enough to go there.
"Jaina." Luke reproved her before Mara could open her mouth. "This might not be the time or the place."
Jaina drew a deep breath and moderated her tone, but she wasn't ready to capitulate just yet. "Then someone, please, name the time and place. I just hope it's sometime before the inquest, because Jacen will ask Ben to kill for him."
Again, the silence that descended on the table didn't begin to express the upheavals in the Force. A stern pulse came out of Luke, demanding that Jaina drop it for the moment. Mara bristled like a cornered animal, and a firestorm raged between the two of them because Luke was convinced that Jaina was right.
Malinza wasn't privy to any of that, but she seemed to have a diplomat's ability to read a room. She sipped her water, then gently set her glass down and turned to Jaina. "Is that what he did to you?"
Jaina hadn't realized how grateful she would be to be asked. "Yes," she said, taking up her fork again. "Essentially. That's why I'm grounded."
The tension eased as they temporarily set aside the argument. Nobody really wanted a fight. Jaina even felt some sympathy from her aunt, which was a welcome shift.
"So, it's a cut-and-dried case?" Mara asked.
"Not quite," Luke explained. "Jaina made a morally correct judgment call in the moment, but Jacen wasn't strictly in violation of the ROE. Court-martial could go either way."
Mara frowned, unhappy with the ambiguity. "Jacen's way, likely as not, considering his new popularity. What do you see yourself doing in the meantime?"
"Don't know yet," Jaina confessed, eyes on her food. "There aren't a lot of places hiring disgraced celebrity pilots right now."
"You aren't disgraced in this house," Luke maintained. "You're still a Jedi in good standing, and I have some ideas. Take a few days for yourself, and then I'll send you back out to the blockade in a StealthX. I'll need a few skifters up my sleeve if I'm going to have a clear idea of what's really going on out there."
It was a bold move, and they all seemed to appreciate that. Returning Jaina to active service in the same theater of war before her court-martial ever convened would be a very public statement of the Grand Master's trust in her, and a quiet condemnation of Jacen. StealthXs meant Jedi-specific subterfuge, and the fact that Luke was deploying them at all, especially independent of the GA's mission command, also spoke volumes. The fractures at the top were beginning to show.
"What about you?" Jaina asked Malinza, ready to change the subject again. "What brings you into the middle of this mess all of a sudden?"
"It was definitely a leap," Malinza allowed, "considering that I'd never been offworld before. But nestlings know when it's time to fledge, and there wasn't anything left for me on Bakura. After the divorce, I had nothing but free time and the financial means to go anywhere I wanted, so here I am. I must admit, it's a very interesting time to enter the business end of the diplomatic service, but sink or swim."
Jaina snorted. "Isn't that a traditional curse in some culture or other? Wishing interesting times on someone?"
Luke snorted, too. "Is there any other kind?"
He was right. There were many words that could describe their lives, but "boring" wasn't one of them.
"I'm glad we're here, though," Malinza said. "I could do without all the violence, but you all are the last family I have, and I'd rather see this through together. I'm still hoping to meet Jacen, believe it or not."
"Part of me wants to say you've missed your chance," Jaina grumbled, stabbing her last bite and swirling it in the red sauce. "Practically speaking, you'll probably have a hard time avoiding him now that he's got his fingers into everything."
"Sounds messy," Petra commented. It raised eyebrows all around the table, not only because it was amusing, but because it was actually true.
"What are you going to do about him, Uncle Luke?" Jaina asked, taking care not to sound impertinent or demanding. "I mean, as a Jedi. What does the Council say?"
Luke sighed quietly without meeting her gaze, pushing the last of his food around with his fork. He wasn't ignoring her, but just considering his answer.
"The Council is divided on the subject, honestly," Mara said.
That made him look up. "They're divided on how to handle him," Luke insisted, a gentle but firm correction, "not whether he needs to be handled."
Mara arched a brow, objecting to his tone. "Kyp thinks Luke should make Jacen a Master."
"Then Kyp's an idiot," Jaina said, not caring a flying flip about her tone. The idea was horrifying. "You can't be serious. Uncle Luke—!"
"I said I had to think about it," Luke cut her off. "No more."
"He may have a point," Mara persisted. "Whatever Jacen's doing these days, he's clearly very capable and very accomplished as a Jedi. Bringing him deeper into the fold might give us a chance to correct him."
"I said I'd think about it," Luke repeated, a little sharper that time. "And when I said I'd think about it, I meant no. And no means no, means not a chance in all nine Corellian hells. Jacen's too independent, too prideful, and too unstable to even be a candidate. This is exactly why the Council didn't elevate my father in spite of his obvious talents, and I'm not convinced they were wrong."
Mara opened her mouth, but Luke countered with a look that promised even stiffer resistance if she kept pushing. Again, not the time or the place. Jaina suspected they would have words that evening, and she resolved to be elsewhere.
"I feel like the proverbial flitnat on the wall," Malinza said, expertly diffusing the tension once again, "watching how the sausage is made."
Luke smiled. "Even at the highest ranks, the Jedi are just people like everyone else," he assured her, "dealing with management and personnel problems."
"It's just that our problems always make more of a mess on the galactic stage," Jaina offered as a caveat.
They all helped tidy up after lunch. Malinza's flitnat comment had struck Jaina in an odd way, shifting her perspective just enough to see her world in a new light. Most of the population would find it a little surreal, she realized, to see the vaunted Skywalkers loading dishes into the washer and debating which variety of vegetable to steam with dinner. They were a family like any other, with their share of normal problems. On the other hand, Jaina knew there was nothing normal about them, that there never would be, and any misstep of theirs seemed to shake the galaxy from end to end. It was, again, a very lonely feeling.
"You promised Ben would let me play his podracer game," Petra complained.
"Well, Ben's not here," Luke said, "but I'll play a few rounds with you, show you how it works."
"I thought you were supposed to meet Corran and Kyle at 1300," Mara interjected.
"I guess it'll just have to be 1330," Luke insisted as Petra seized his hand and started to lead him from the room. "This is important."
"Oh, they'll love that," Mara said, clearly implying the opposite. "Do you want me to call and explain that the Grand Master had to reschedule because he was held up playing Phoebos Racer 2000?"
"Do it. I dare you."
"Hey," Malinza said, startling Jaina out of her weary stupor, "do you have anywhere to be? Petra's in good hands, and I wouldn't mind a walk. Maybe we could be wildly irresponsible for an hour, grab dessert somewhere."
"Oh. Sure." The invitation caught Jaina off guard. There was no reason not to go, and she might even be glad she did. Company other than Jedi or pilots would be a novelty. "What kind of dessert?"
"I don't know. Mara, what's good around here?"
"Head north on the pedwalk two floors up," Mara suggested. "There's a little pastry shop called Figrin's in the next building, level seventy-three. Best in the district."
"Sounds great." Malinza went to grab her blazer, a black designer piece made of some kind of animal wool. Jaina retrieved her utility jacket, and they were on their way.
"Bring back something for me," Mara shouted after them, "or I'm holding the kid for ransom."
"Don't tempt me," Malinza shouted back.
A short lift ride took them up to the pedwalk. It was a clear day outside, brisk and breezy, and it felt good to stretch their legs.
"It's good to see you again," Malinza began, kickstarting the conversation.
"Generous of you," Jaina said, sweeping her hair out of her face. "You must think I'm a lousy friend."
"A busy one," Malinza clarified. "I expect you've been dealing with challenges I'll never know anything about."
"Thanks. It's still a very generous take. It was thoughtless of me to forget you like that, and you don't have to pretend it wasn't."
Malinza shrugged. "Maybe I don't mind being forgiving. Just something else I picked up from Uncle Luke."
Even after watching them together, it was still jarring to hear her claim him that way. Jaina shot her an involuntary glance, and Malinza broke into a grin. "Don't look at me like that," she protested. "Sorry, I've been calling him that since I was four. The first time you heard it, I thought you were going to punch me."
"I thought I was, too." Jaina chose to let herself appreciate the humor. "Sorry, I'm just a jealous type. I'm learning to share, I promise."
"Perfect. That's half the reason I'm here. Seems high time we all got better acquainted and started making memories together."
A grim laugh came out of Jaina before she could think better of it. "Oh, we make memories, all right. A lot of the time they're the sort that haunt your dreams, so strap in."
"Sounds about right," Malinza agreed. "We did meet during a planetary invasion and a false flag coup attempt, remember?"
"And still you're back for more." Jaina was being flippant, but she couldn't help but respect Malinza's nerve. "You might just have what it takes after all, girlie."
"I'll accept that as high praise. So far, so good."
It was no trouble at all to find Figrin's. All they had to do was follow the fabulous smells. The variety of sophisticated sweets on display was staggering, so Malinza cut to the chase and ordered an oversized sampler box from the Bith behind the counter, flashing an iridescent credcard at the payport.
"My treat," she insisted before Jaina could object. "Let me spend some of my ex-husband's money."
Pastries in hand, along with two cups of caf, they claimed one of the patio tables on the balcony to pass the time and pick over the spoils before heading back. The soft, jazzy music piped in over the whole observation deck gave the bizarre impression that reality there was impervious to troublesome goings-on like bombings, riots, and water main poisonings.
The longer they spent together, the more Jaina couldn't help but notice Malinza's perfectly styled hair, the bold but classic cosmetics around her eyes, her meticulously manicured nails. She had that apparently effortless poise about her that people had once expected of Jaina, at least before she had proven herself to be more her father's daughter than her mother's. For a moment, it made her acutely conscious of her plain and uncultivated look, but then she deliberately set that aside.
Humility, Uncle Luke had explained during one of their structured counseling sessions, meant simply accepting the truth of who she was, no more and no less, strengths, virtues, failings, and flaws. It was essential to practice that, he said, if she was ever to really know herself. Jaina had spent a lot of time with that thought in recent years, and the truth was that she would never be Princess Leia's brand of cultured femininity. She was a fighter pilot, a Jedi Knight, the durasteel tip of the spear, and her principal talents weren't the sort of thing one discussed in polite society. That was just the way it was, and she could accept that. There were still plenty who would assure her she was beautiful, and the people who already thought well of her wouldn't be any more impressed if she suddenly curled her hair or polished her nails.
The pastries lived up to their reputation, and Jaina let herself enjoy the cheap sugar-induced surge of dopamine. Free time and sympathetic companionship weren't luxuries to be wasted. "So," she said, making an effort to lift herself out of her own problems, "would it be impolitic to ask what happened to the husband?"
Malinza seemed unperturbed by the question, or indeed the whole subject. "He turned out to be a disappointment," she said simply, popping a morsel of fried dough into her mouth.
Jaina wrinkled her nose. "That sounds like a loaded statement."
"Oh, you want the whole sordid story," Malinza clarified. "Appearances, I'm afraid, didn't match reality. We were young, and I thought he was bright, successful, funny, sincere, and of course very romantic. He was that guy you dream about, just waiting to sweep you off your feet and carry you away. Then life got real, I had a baby, the fun dried up, and he turned out to be just a garden-variety man-child with repressed mother issues."
"Sounds like a disappointment," Jaina agreed. "My brother's turning out to be quite a disappointment himself. Seems we have that in common, at least."
"What, disappointing men?" Malinza laughed. "Which is worse, wandering husbands or draconian twin brothers?"
"If I ever get a husband, ask me again."
Malinza shrugged. "Let Uncle Luke sniff him first," she suggested.
Jaina smirked. "Is that really your most important takeaway?"
"A rule I intend to live by," Malinza confirmed. "Luke spent two hours with Lio, and then told me everything I needed five years to figure out for myself. No more husbands, boyfriends, or idle love interests Uncle Luke doesn't approve of. Non-negotiable."
"Should narrow the field considerably," Jaina agreed. It was an amusing thought, but it inevitably brought her back to some of her keenest regrets, the dead ends that were her interactions with Zekk and Jag, disappointments of another kind that still weighed on her conscience. It seemed only yesterday that she was young and had nothing but time, too busy staying alive to waste excessive attention on any love interest. Suddenly she was thirty-one, still busy, and with no actionable prospects. She was getting older, but somehow her life was still stuck in first gear.
"Sometimes I envy people like you," Jaina admitted, licking a stray bit of cream filling off her finger. "The average people. And please take that in the best possible way. Being born into the hero class isn't all it's cracked up to be. I've been so caught up bouncing from one galactic crisis to another that my life has stalled out, while you've been able to just get on with it."
Malinza sniffed imperiously, tearing the corner off a puffcake. "And how's that working out for me?"
"Well, at least you tried," Jaina said. "I manage to tick off or destroy all the best men I know." She hesitated, but then decided to let it all out. It was just part of being honest with herself. "Everyone's been making unflattering comparisons between Jacen and our grandfather," she said, "but I guess my brother isn't the only one manifesting the Skywalker dysfunction."
A sympathetic shadow passed Malinza's face. "Luke doesn't seem dysfunctional to me," she said.
"That's because he takes after his mother," Jaina explained. "I think the Amidala genes skipped me. I'm just a confused, pint-sized mash-up of Han Solo and Anakin Skywalker, little better than a delinquent on the right side of history, really."
"That seems harsh."
Jaina shrugged. "Just honest. I've got a harsh reality to live up to. Have you ever heard of the Sword of the Jedi prophecy?"
Malinza shook her head. "The particulars of Jedi spirituality haven't been my study."
"Okay," Jaina explained, "twelve years ago, during the war, a bunch of us were finally granted the title of Jedi Knight. Chief Omas made it a big overblown political event, but that wasn't what it was about. Poor Uncle Luke, try as he might to deny it, has been the obvious heir to the Chosen One ever since Master Kenobi put a lightsaber in his hand. So, imagine if you will, in the middle of this ceremony, he comes to me to finally grant me the rank and a last bit of advice, but instead out of his mouth comes this fully-formed prophecy none of us saw coming. It was the uncanniest thing I'd ever seen, the Force itself speaking with his voice. I think it rattled him as much as it did me."
Eyes narrowed, Malinza looked like she would have dismissed the story if she didn't personally know and trust the principals involved. "Dare I ask what he said?"
Jaina sighed. She had memorized it a long time ago. "I name you the Sword of the Jedi," she recited. "You are like tempered steel, purposeful and razor-keen. Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends. Yours is a restless life, and never shall you know peace, though you shall be blessed for the peace that you bring to others. Take comfort in the fact that, though you stand tall and alone, others take shelter in the shadow that you cast."
Malinza's frown deepened. "That's . . . unsettling," she decided. "What does it mean?"
"None of us is exactly sure," Jaina admitted. "I've been trying to figure it out ever since. But, sure enough, here I am, restless and alone."
"Doesn't sound like something Luke would have wished on you if he had any say in the matter."
"But he doesn't," Jaina said, not a complaint, just a statement of fact. "Uncle Luke is just as caught up in all this as the rest of us, trying to do the best he can and keep his head above water. It's rough out there right now."
Those words had been smoldering in the back of her mind ever since that day, and it seemed to Jaina that a lot of her spastic floundering through life could be blamed on her efforts to make peace with the ambiguous purpose she had been so publicly given, always convinced that she was bound by obligations she didn't fully understand. Or were the unpleasant aspects of the prophecy less a purpose than a prediction, a simple summation of the consequences of her poor choices? "Honestly, I'm not sure whether this shavit show is the Force shaping my destiny, or just my own stupidity," she said, surprised she was admitting as much aloud.
"Hm." Malinza nodded, sipping her caf. "Never underestimate the history-shaking capacity of stupidity," she agreed.
After a beat of awkward silence, Jaina laughed. "I guess you would know," she said. "You have to rub elbows on the political side. I've been out of that loop ever since Mom retired."
"It's a shavit show all its own," Malinza said with a serene expression, although Jaina had never doubted it. "Look, I don't know how long or how often you'll find yourself on shore leave, voluntarily or otherwise, but I'm pretty sure I'll be here for the duration. I could use a friend, and I'd hazard to guess you could, too. Come see us when you can. We'll look forward to it."
It warmed Jaina's heart to see how sincerely Malinza wanted to be one of them, despite everything she knew about the hardship and heartbreak of their lives. It was an unexpected comfort as she felt other members of their family tearing themselves away. There was plenty of heartbreak to come, she was sure, and they could all use another friend.
"I'll do that," Jaina promised. "Hold me to it this time. I don't have a great record of follow-up, but I'm working on it."
A sassy half-smile worthy of any Solo crept across Malinza's face. "I make my living as a personal assistant," she said. "I can call in nagging reminders with the best of them. Consider yourself on notice."
Continues in the next chapter, Damages.