[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(52)

There was no way his lightsaber would remain undetected if he carried it through the tube.

The tube allowed access through a security wall that was seven or eight meters tall, and there was a three-meter gap between the top of the wall and the drafty-looking shell of the ceiling. There were lots of glow rod pods up there on either side of the wall.

Ben could bound to the top of the metal awning above the tube entrance and might be able, with a prodigious leap, to make the top of the wall. He could then run along the top of the tube, clear the wall on the far side, and run out into the non-secure portion of the customs building to vanish into the night.

Assuming it was night out there. And the holocams all over the facility would record his face, and his image would be on every guard’s datapad in an hour. That would be inconvenient.

Then he thought about the Jedi Temple practice droid and its foamsteel balls, and he knew what to do.

He looked up and found a glow rod pod well behind him.

He reached out through the Force to grab it, yank it … It rocked a bit.

Ben frowned. It was firmly rooted. He focused harder, putting all his intensity into his concentration.

The pod snapped free of its mooring and crashed to the permacrete floor, its cluster of dozens of glow rods shattering and sending glass pieces skidding along the floor in every direction.

As everyone looked, and one armed guard trotted over to see what had happened, Ben used the Force to send his lightsaber up to the ceiling. There, above the glow rods, it was barely visible. He caused it to slide across the ceiling until it came to rest above a pod on the far side of the wall … and then, with meticulous care, he lowered it until it nestled into the cluster of rods.

“You’re holding up the line, stupid.” The speaker was an elderly woman, as lean as though she were made up just of bone and rawhide, a disapproving look on her face.

“Sorry,” Ben said. He trotted forward into the tube.

“Sorry doesn’t mean anything. If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“Sorry.”

“Now you’re being insolent.”

“Sorry.” Ben thought about using his powers to cause her to trip. A face full of permacrete might scrub the disapproval off her face.

No, she was old, and she might really be hurt.

On the other hand, it would teach her a lesson, and she could stand -to be taught a lesson.

At the far end of the tube, he handed over his bag and pouch to the gray-uniformed inspection officer and waited, frowning over the question of the old woman. What would Jacen do in this situation? Ben shook his head. The question didn’t apply. No one would have spoken to Colonel Jacen Solo that way, even before he was famous.

Why not? Because he was tall and handsome? No, Luke wasn’t tall and was only as handsome as his scarred face let him be, and yet everyone treated him with respect.

Luke and Jacen commanded respect because everyone knew it was a bad idea to mess with them, from either their appearance or their history. Which meant that Ben was out of luck, because he had neither fame nor formidable looks.

The old woman fussed her way up behind Ben. “You’re a very nasty little boy,” she said.

Ben glared up at her. “I take it back.”

“You take what back?”

“My apology. I apologized, but you didn’t accept it. You just used it as an excuse to keep being rude. You have the manners of a bantha with digestion problems. If you had children, I hope they were raised by piranha-beetles so they’d be nicer than you.”

The woman loomed up over him, her face distorting with anger, and Ben saw in her mind her intent to slap some of what she considered courtesy into him.

But he intensified his glare, and added to it a little push with the Force. Try it, he all but said. See what I become.

A bit of grayness crept into her complexion, and she took an involuntary step back. She turned stiffly away from Ben, handing her bag to her inspections officer, and looked at everything but Ben, muttering to herself.

Ben’s inspections officer handed his bag back to him. He also offered a silent smile and a thumbs-up.

Surprised, Ben offered a shy smile in return. He turned and trotted toward the door out of the customs facility.

There, he told himself. That’s how Jacen would have done it if he were my age.

As he reached the door, he let his lightsaber drop into his hands, then moved out into the night air.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


DREWWA, MOON OF ALMANIA


In the silvery light of dawn, Ben stood under a sidewalk cafe awning beside a nearly deserted city street and stared up at the soaring Crossroutes Business Habitat. It was unlovely in the extreme, a greenish column extending eight hundred meters up into the sky, with decorative yellow-white structures like planetary rings situated every five floors. At least Ben hoped they were decorative-what their function might be otherwise was beyond him. Could they slide up and down the building exterior like massive open-air turbolifts?