momslilassassin | Room 424 [early afternoon]

It had been a week since Ben had sent back his initial report to Jacen and he hadn't heard any kind of response from his cousin.

That was not a good sign.

After class was over, Ben slipped into his room, made sure Wendy wasn't around, then closed the door, activated his comlink and waited for Jacen to pick up.

	Jacen's face appeared in tiny three dimensions above the comm. "Ben," he said. He didn't look entirely pleased to see him.
	Ben gave him a slightly nervous smile. "Hi, Jacen. I was just checking to make sure you'd received the report I sent you? I wasn't sure how communication would work between galaxies."
	"Between galaxies," Jacen repeated. "You allowed your parents to send you away, Ben. I thought you were a little more loyal than that."
	"They didn't exactly give me a choice," Ben protested. "They weren't happy I'd disappeared like that."
	"You're a soldier, Ben. Soldiers don't tell their moms and dads what they've been up to." Jacen pressed his lips together. His problems with Luke and Mara went beyond Ben, after all. "So, your report," he continued. "Anakin Skywalker teaches there?" Lumiya had been incredibly interested by that little fact.
	Ben nodded. "I haven't told Mom and Dad that," he said. "Mom sticking a lightsaber through the ethics teacher might cause some problems."
	"He teaches ethics?" Jacen let out a snort of laughter. "At least the man appreciates irony. Or has he not become a Sith Lord yet? You mentioned something about different timelines."
	"He's been a Sith, but he's not in the suit. I haven't asked how that works," Ben admitted. "He looks just like he did on that holo Artoo had of the killings in the Temple." And that was way Ben hadn't exactly sought out the company of his grandfather. Seeing that at nine years old had kind of scarred him.
	"Interesting," Jacen said, clearly not focusing on Ben. "And there's a Jaina as well? And a Tahiri?"
	Ben nodded. "And a really, really young Admiral Darklighter."
	That was less interesting to Jacen. He dismissed it with a wave on his hand. "And Jaina is younger, too?"
	Ben nodded again. "For her, it's only been a month since Myrkr. You and Anakin were killed." And wow, was that strange to say.
	"Was I?" Jacen let a small smile cross his face. If Jaina's reality was his--only further behind--he hadn't died at all, he had been captured, tortured, remade. The months he'd spent with the Jedi--Sith--did it really matter?--Vergere had changed his life. Gone was the indecisive boy who had worried about going too far with the Force. He had emerged from the Embrace of Pain stronger and more focused. He could offer this version of his sister the comfort of knowing he wasn't really gone. He chose not to. "I had been planning on contacting you anyway, Ben," he said instead. "I have a new mission for you."
	"Like the Amulet?" A bit of Ben’s anger seeped through. That mission had been a wild nerf chase, a waste of a man's life, and not nearly as important as Jacen had told him it was. Ben hated being humored. "I can handle the truth, Jacen. You'd be surprised."
	Jacen was all serene composure. "I've got a job that only you can do, and it's critical. You might not want to accept the mission." He paused and raised an eyebrow. "And you can't do it from school."
	"If it's an order, it's an order," Ben replied, standing a little straighter.
	"Better hear it first." Jacen looked down and punched a few buttons. "I'm transmitting you something. It's the original source of the intelligence I received, so you can judge for yourself. Delete it as soon as you're finished, please."
	Ben stopped watching Jacen to scan the information on the screen in front of him. There were transcripts of comlink conversations--not that Ben was terribly surprised to see that the GAG had been bugging comlinks--but the name of one of the players caught his attention immediately. "Dur Gejjen? The Corellian Prime Minister?!"
	"Intel gathered from our contacts inside the Corellian government offices," Jacen said. "Keep reading."
	There was discussion of "driving a wedge" between Hapes and the Galactic Alliance. Ben suppressed a small snort of disbelief. Tenel Ka had been a Jedi and one of Jacen's best friends since they were children. She'd never turn her back on them. The transcript sounded like the usual political maneuvering that bored Ben to tears until certain phrases began jumping out at him: "Queen Mother," "seeing the disadvantages" of siding with the Alliance. And then the payoff: "removing obstacles." "Appropriate bounty hunters" willing to work inside the Royal House. And pieces began to click together for Ben. "This is about Tenel Ka."
	"Correct," Jacen replied.
	There had been an assassination attempt on Tenel Ka a few months back, which wasn’t completely unusual for the life of the Queen Mother in the Hapes Cluster, but the hunch had been that the Corellians had been behind this attack. Now they had proof. "Gejjen really did plan the attack on her, then."
	"Correct. We finally have hard evidence, and now we can act."
	Ben probably should've been outraged at proof of a plot against an old family friend, but instead he was filled with despair that people found it so easy and so necessary to plot to kill each other. It was happening to his family, and to him, and now to heads of state. Was this how the adult world worked? Doing all the stupid, cruel, destructive, impulsive things they'd sworn they'd grown out of? "What do you want me to do?" he asked. He was pretty sure he knew.
	"Assassinate Gejjen." Jacen rubbed his forehead. "There's no negotiating with a man who resorts to state-sponsored assassination like that. The Corellians need to know we can reach out and take them, too. It'll sober them up a bit."
	Ben frowned. "How is our assassination different from theirs?" he asked. "Won't it lead to more killings?"
	"You want to do this by the book?" Jacen snorted. "Call Corellian Security and report Gejjen for conspiracy to murder. Oh, and for having Thracken Sal-Solo assassinated too. Let's see how fast they arrest him."
	"I know..." Ben said softly, let out a little sigh.
	"You don't have to do it." Jacen's tone clearly said otherwise. "But you proved you were competent at covert ops when we hit Centerpoint, and you can get closer to Gejjen a lot more easily that some big burly commando. You can look like a harmless teenager."
	I am a teenager, Ben thought to himself, and I'm normally pretty harmless. But if someone was going to do it--and Jacen even mentioning it meant someone would--then Ben had the best chance of getting close. And an officer shouldn't ask his troops to do anything he wouldn't do himself. I can't leave this to one of my men. He didn’t reply just yet, though.
	Jacen was watching him with a small half-smile on his face. "I can't exactly ask Boba Fett to do this, can I?" Not since he’d accidentally tortured Fett’s daughter to death, anyway.
	Ben blew out a breath. "Okay. I agree Gejjen's rotten to the core. Once we go public on this stuff, then the warrants on Uncle Han and Aunt Leia can be dropped, right?"
	"I can't, Ben," Jacen replied, shaking his head. "Everyone knows they had nothing to do with the attack, but they're still working for Corellia, and I can't suspend warrants just because they're family. Besides, what kind of example does that set for the troops?"
	Ben didn't answer, still reeling a bit from what he'd agreed to do. His father would've insisted on arresting Gejjen. It was abundantly clear to him in that moment that he wasn't his father. The GAG was dirty work, but he should've realized that by now. And he couldn't hand off the parts he didn't like to someone else if he wanted to think of himself as an officer--or as a decent man.
	If Jacen noticed Ben's silence, he didn't mention it. "I'll send you with good backup," he promised, "and they'll teach you what you need to know. The shuttle'll come for you in a couple of days--chatter is picking up some good leads on where Gejjen might be soon."
	Ben nodded and disconnected the call, then flopped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. How was he going to kill Gejjen? Using a lightsaber seemed like sacrilege. And it wasn't like he could exactly call his mother and ask for tips, even though she was an expert in this sort of thing. "Hey, Mom, is a head shot best?" he murmured to himself. "Double tap or triple?" He rolled over onto his side to stare at the wall. "Yeah. That'll happen."

[OOC: Contents of conversation with Jacen NFB, door closed, post is open!]

Room 424 [early afternoon]

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