Even with the roof buckled down into the passenger cabin, the Imperial limousine still had enough headroom for Jaina to sit upright. Jag was another story. Although he was not tall for a human male, he carried much of his height in his torso, an unfortunate trait that Jaina hoped would not be inflicted on any children who also happened to inherit her short legs … assuming, of course, they even wanted children. Like a lot of things regarding their coming marriage, starting a family wasn’t something they had found time to discuss yet, at least not in the way it needed be discussed.

At the moment, Jag’s long torso was forcing him to do one of the few things that Jagged Fel did not do well: slouch. He was hunched down next to Jaina, his head against the roof liner and his shoulders pressed to the back of the seat.

“Thanks for the getaway.” Jaina glanced out the back viewport at the still-confused GAS squad, several of whom were pounding their weapon butts against the closed gate and demanding that it be reopened.

“Probably better for me not to be around when that gnakhead Atar finally decides he’s been had.”

“Probably,” Jag said. “But I am surprised your mother manipulated him so easily. One would think Daala would have more sense than to send a weak-minded commander to keep watch over the Jedi Temple.”

“Jag, that wasn’t a Force suggestion.” As Jaina spoke, Atar turned to watch the departing limousine. “It was the Sligh Slipper.”

“The Sligh Slipper?”

“A little trick my parents picked up before I was born,” Jaina explained. She gave Atar a parting wave. The captain’s face reddened, and he began to snap orders into his headset microphone. “Didn’t you see how Dad noobed Atar?”

Jag fell silent for a moment, his brow slowly rising. Finally, he let out an incredulous snort.

“It’s a good thing your father isn’t a Jedi,” he said. “Han Solo with Force powers would be very frightening thing.”

Jaina smiled and opened her mouth to agree—until she was nearly thrown from her seat as the limousine came to sudden stop. She looked up to see a GAS assault speeder blocking the exit less than five meters ahead, its cannon turret pointing down the lane. Whether it was targeting Jag’s limousine or the gate behind it was impossible to say.

“Those GAS guys are starting to get pushy,” Baxton observed from the driver’s seat. The privacy screen between them could not be raised because of the crumpled roof, so he didn’t need the vehicle intercom. “I can just float over them, sir. Even if they open fire, our armor can take it.”

Jag shook his head. “No, that would give them room to claim we intended them harm,” he said. “Just step out and ask them to let us pass.”

“And if they don’t?” Baxton asked.

“Be insistent,” Jag said. “Captain Atar is trying very hard to make us blink, but he’s not going to cause an intergalactic incident by attempting to remove Jedi Solo from a diplomatic vehicle.”

Baxton acknowledged the order, then stepped out and approached the assault speeder blocking their path. A young Duros officer popped out of the blaster turret, pointing at the limousine and making angry demands. Baxton stood his ground, shaking his head and pointing his own finger, insisting the speeder be removed. After a minute of shouting back and forth, the Duros suddenly jumped down to stand lip-to-nose with Baxton.

“Looks like Atar’s orders were firm,” Jaina observed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have rubbed it in.”

Jag turned to peer at her beneath the crumpled roof. “Rubbed it in how?”

“It was no big deal,” Jaina said. “I just waved at him.”

Jag closed his eyes in exasperation. “You waved at him?” he repeated. “As we were leaving?”

“Of course as we were leaving,” Jaina retorted. “When do you think I’d wave at him?”

Jag let his chin drop. “You have got to stop antagonizing Daala’s people.” He looked away, and the dirty haze of a secret came to his Force aura. “This situation is getting out of hand.”

Jaina spun to face him. “What situation is that?”

“The whole situation.” Jag continued to look away. “Between the Jedi and Daala. It’s not doing the Order any good.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Jaina replied. “Like, whatever you’re holding back.”

Jag’s nostrils flared, and he turned to meet her gaze with obvious effort. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Jag …” Jaina opened her borrowed raincoat just enough to show the lightsaber hanging from the belt of her torn dress. “Jedi, remember? I know when you’re lying.”

Jag sighed. “I heard something that I shouldn’t have—and that I definitely shouldn’t be repeating to a Jedi.”

“Jag, I’m your fiancée,” Jaina said. “And I happen to be a Jedi. If that means you’re going to try to keep secrets from me, maybe we need to reevaluate—”

“All right, I surrender,” Jag said, raising his hands. “But if you get to play the fiancée chit, so do I. This has to stay between us.”

Jaina nodded. “That’s fair, I guess.”

“No guessing,” Jag replied. “This can’t be like Qoribu.”

Jaina winced. It was a low blow, but maybe one she deserved. During the Killik crisis, she had made a promise to Jag that she had later broken. Ultimately, her failure to honor her word had resulted in Jag’s exile from the Chiss Ascendency.

“Okay,” she said. “This is locker stuff. I won’t tell anyone.”

“No matter what,” Jag insisted.

Jaina’s only reply was a stony silence. She had given him her word, and it was really starting to scorch her that he continued to question it. She looked forward and noticed the rim of something metallic lodged behind the beverage locker in front of her, between the two rear-facing seats. Maybe a glow rod or something had been knocked out of its storage slot when Bazel hit the roof.

As Jaina shifted forward to retrieve the object, Jag let out a sharp breath. “Shall I accept your silence as a yes?”

More irritated than ever, Jaina forgot about the glow rod and turned to scowl. “Accept it however you like.”

“Fine.” Jag took a breath, then said, “I overheard something alarming when I was in Daala’s office yesterday. She’s thinking of hiring a company of Mandalorians.”

“Mandalorians?” Jaina repeated. “What the blazes for?”

Now it was Jag’s turn to be silent, and Jaina quickly realized how ridiculous her question was. She had spent a couple of very sad months training with Mandalorians when she was preparing to hunt down her brother, Darth Caedus, and she could think of half a dozen reasons Daala might hire a company of Mandalorian commandos. But only one of them would make Jag nervous about telling her.

“For us?” Jaina gasped.

Jag nodded. “She’s been inquiring as to how many supercommandos it might take to handle the Jedi,” he confirmed. “Exactly what she’s considering, I don’t know. But it can’t be good.”

Jaina didn’t know whether to be angrier at him or at Daala. “And you thought you were going to keep this from me?”

“Of course,” Jag said. “I didn’t want to put you in this position.”

Jaina frowned. “What position?”

“Of having to keep my secret,” Jag said. “It’s a burden you shouldn’t have to carry.”

Jaina fell back in her seat, her anger changing to shock as she began to understand. “You expect me to keep this news to myself?”

Jag remained silent, studying her with his steely eyes, searching for a hint as to which duty she would honor—the promise she had just made to him, or the oath she had sworn to the Order, swearing to always put the Jedi first.

“Stang … this isn’t fair, Jag.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jaina nodded. “Well, that’s something.”

“I’m trying to negotiate an autonomous membership in the Galactic Alliance,” Jag explained. “So far, Daala keeps saying all or nothing. She thinks divided loyalties are what sparked the last civil war.”

“She might have a point.” Even as Jaina said this, she began to see a glimmer of hope that it might not be necessary to make this impossible choice. “Jag, could this be some kind of—”

“Test?” Jag finished for her. “We’re not that lucky. I didn’t hear it from Daala herself, just someone talking on a comlink when he didn’t realize I was in the room.”

“It could still be a test,” Jaina said. “Chiefs of State do occasionally use proxies for that sort of thing, you know.”

Jag shook his head. “Wynn Dorvan doesn’t strike me as the kind who involves himself in those sort of games.”

Jaina’s stomach sank. Wynn Dorvan was Daala’s top aide, a rare Coruscanti bureaucrat known as much for his integrity as his competence.

“Bloah,” she said. “And you really need Daala to give in to you on this?”

“I’m afraid so,” Jag said. “If I try to subordinate our government to the Galactic Alliance—especially one led by Natasi Daala—the Moffs will go into open rebellion. I barely have the support to bring us in as equals.”

“And you’re doing good to get that,” Jaina said. “I doubt even Uncle Luke expected you to persuade the Moffs to consider unification at all.”

“I have motivation. For the first time in recent memory, the entire galaxy is at peace.” Jag took Jaina’s hand, and a hopeful note came to his voice. “And if I can convince Daala to let the Empire come into the fold on its own terms, we just might keep it that way.”

“But if the Jedi Order learns that she’s sent for a company of Mandalorians, she’ll take it as proof that divided loyalties can’t work.”

“Exactly.” Jag squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry, but this is bigger than the Jedi Order. I think even Master Skywalker would want you to keep quiet.”

“He’d want me to take it to the Council and trust the Masters to do the right thing,” Jaina replied drily.

Jag’s grasp started to slacken, but Jaina did not allow him to withdraw his hand. It hurt her to know he thought she might betray him a second time, but even she had to admit that his lack of faith was justified. He had risked everything when he trusted her word during the Killik crisis, and that had cost him everything. Who was to blame, really, if he found it difficult to trust her now?

Jaina turned to face him. “But Uncle Luke isn’t leading the Council anymore,” she said. “And the way Kenth Hamner has been caving in to Daala, a few Mandalorians just might be enough to make him turn us all over to be frozen in carbonite.”

“So you won’t tell the Masters?”

“Of course not,” Jaina said. “Even if telling them were the right thing to do, didn’t I just promise that I wouldn’t?”

Jag gave her one of his rare smiles. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”

“It better.” Jaina leaned toward him. “Because I wouldn’t do it for anyone else.”

Before she could kiss him, Jag’s head snapped around toward the front of the limousine, and he scowled out the windscreen.

“Blast it,” he said. “Look who’s coming.”

Jaina saw two humans slipping through the gap between the GAS assault speeder and the end of the safety wall. The first person was a stocky woman in headsets and a HoloNet news tunic, her attention focused on the joystick hand unit she was using to steer a heavy holocam floating ahead of her. The second human was a slender man in a yellow tabard, his tawny hair cut in a fashionable short-bang chop. Javis Tyrr.

“Why am I not surprised?” Jaina growled.

Tyrr’s cam operator instantly turned to capture the still-raging argument between Baxton and the GAS officer. Meanwhile, Tyrr drew a recording rod from inside his tabard and continued down the lane toward Jag’s limousine.

“Time to go,” Jag said, opening his door. “I’ll take the wheel. You grab Baxton on the way past.”

Before Jaina could acknowledge the order, Tyrr pointed the recording rod in their direction, and a barely audible click sounded behind the beverage locker across from her. Recalling the metallic rim she had noticed earlier, Jaina hurled herself out Jag’s still-open door.

“Down!”

She hit him square in the flank, driving him into the duracrete wall with enough force to draw a startled oomph! before they both dropped to the permacrete.

To Jaina’s surprise, that was not the last thing she ever heard. Instead, she heard Jag yelling condition codes at Baxton and asking her what was wrong. She heard a shocked silence from Baxton and the GAS lieutenant, who had stopped arguing and spun around to look at her and Jag stacked on the permacrete. And from the interior of the limousine, she heard the barely audible hum of a tiny repulsorlift engine.

Jaina looked toward the vehicle and saw a small, dome-topped cleaning droid gliding out the door through which she had just dived. Its photoreceptor lingered on her face, and suddenly she knew how Javis Tyrr had been acquiring his images from inside the Jedi Temple. She started to rise, and the cleaning droid quickly banked around the limousine’s open door and started up the lane.

“Oh no you don’t!”

As Jaina rose, she thrust a hand at the cleaning droid and used the Force to summon it back toward her. Tyrr cried out in astonishment and scurried down the lane, angrily thumbing his recording rod, as though that might give the droid’s repulsorlift engines enough power to break free of Jaina’s Force grasp.

By the time the droid floated into her hands, Tyrr was only a couple of paces away, his full lips twisted into a self-righteous sneer.

“You can’t do that,” he said, still pointing the recording rod at the droid. “Trying to hide the—”

“Jedi Solo can’t do what, exactly?” Jag interrupted, stepping to her side. “Recover a cleaning droid that’s obviously malfunctioning?”

“That’s no ordinary cleaning droid,” Tyrr shot back. “And you know it.”

“Are you’re saying that it belongs to you?” Jaina asked. The droid was still trying to pull free of her grasp, so she flipped it over and hit the primary circuit breaker. “Because if it is your droid, I’d be very interested to know how it found its way into the Jedi Temple.”

“As would a lot of people,” Jag said. He gave his head a quick tip toward the hangar gate, then gently pushed Jaina toward the limousine. “I’m quite certain that private espionage is as illegal in the Galactic Alliance as it is in the Galactic Empire.”

Taking Jag’s hint, Jaina extended her Force awareness toward the gate and sensed several GAS troopers rushing up the lane toward them. She slipped back into the limousine just an instant before Captain Atar’s voice called out from behind the vehicle.

“What’s the problem here?” he demanded. “I hope the Jedi aren’t trying to intimidate you, Tyrr.”

“Not at all,” Jag said, turning to face the captain and his men as they approached the limousine. “I believe the esteemed journalist Tyrr was just preparing to admit that he had placed a private surveillance device inside the Jedi Temple.”

Atar’s scowl deepened. “I’m sure a reporter of Javis Tyrr’s reputation would never resort to anything illegal.” The captain shifted his attention to Tyrr. “Isn’t that right, Tyrr?”

Tyrr’s face reddened, but he nodded. “Of course.”

Jag’s lips tightened into a grim smile. “My mistake, then.” He raised a hand and summoned Baxton, then slipped into the limousine next to Jaina. “I’d appreciate it if you ordered your men not to open fire as we pass over, Captain. I’m overdue for an important briefing.”

Atar’s eyes grew stormy, but he leaned down to peer inside. “Flying over won’t be necessary, sir. I’ll order the speeder to move aside as soon as Jedi Solo steps out of the vehicle.” His gaze dropped to the droid in her hands. “And she should bring the cleaning droid—we may be needing it as evidence.”

Jaina unsnapped her lightsaber and leaned across to glare at Atar. “Forget it, Captain.” There was no way she was surrendering the spy droid—not when it had a recording of Jag telling her what he had overheard in Daala’s office. “We’re in an Imperial diplomat’s vehicle, and that makes this droid Imperial property.”

Atar stared at the lightsaber hilt in Jaina’s hand for a moment, then finally nodded. “All right, Jedi Solo. You win this one.” He looked away and motioned the GAS speeder aside, then turned back to her. “But you won’t be able to hide behind your boyfriend forever. Sooner or later, the Remnant is going to come all the way into the Alliance. And when it does, GAS will still be here, waiting for the next time you screw up.”