[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(94)

Kiara, who had been disinterestedly finishing her can of spiceloaf sausages, looked up. She hadn’t said much in the last few days and didn’t say anything now, but she hopped up as Ben reached her.

That was when the first streaks of laserfire scorched the ground. Green bolts strafed the stand of stones a few meters to Ben’s right. Kiara shrilled a scream. Ben caught her up and leapt leftward, toward the near line of trees, sixty or more meters away.

The TIE fighter screamed past and began to loop around for another strafing run. Ben saw it as a blur-it was black, with some details, such as the ribs separating the panels on the solar wing arrays, in gleaming bronze.

He stopped. If he continued toward the trees, he’d be caught out in the open for the next pass. He reversed direction and ran toward the mound of stones; it offered the only protection close enough to reach.

He leapt behind a partially intact stand of rocks and peeked over. The TIE fighter was low, barely fifty meters aboveground, and coming straight at them. Shaker, waddling back toward the flat roadway, was an easy target, but the starfighter pilot ignored the droid.

Ben ducked down again as the TIE fired. The stones immediately to his right rocked and fell backward, landing next to him, propelled by the tremendous energy of the lighter’s turbolasers. Black smoke, accompanied by a sharp smell, curled up from the points of impact.

He glanced down at Kiara. She was huddled against the ground-against the stone surface she lay on, rather-and her face was turned upward, her eyes full of fear.

For a moment Ben was somewhere else, in a hundred where places with shivering refugees as squadrons, fleets of Ti F fighters roaring past overhead. So that was the Empire, II(- thought distantly. Jacen had shown him that there were some things to admire about the old Empire, including the unwavering fashion with which it had imposed order, but now he could feel what that order was like from the other side.

He shook his head to clear the images away and looked up. He found the TIE fighter coming around for another pass. He reached for Faskus’s blaster pistol

It was still out there on the snow, where he’d dropped it when examining his possessions. He bit off a curse and reached for it. Though he’d never summoned his lightsaber or any other object to himself from that distance, the blaster flew to his hand and he took aim with it.

Then he shook his head. A blaster pistol against an armored starfighter? He had exactly no chance to harm his opponent. He needed bigger weapons

He needed the Force. He was a Jedi, after all, even if only an apprentice, and the Force was his great weapon, his great armor.

He looked around for a missile, then realized he was surrounded by them. He closed his eyes and concentrated as he had the other day, when freeing Shaker from the Y-wing.

He heard Kiara’s gasp as the stone that had just fallen over rose a few centimeters into the air.

The TIE fighter came on. Ben couldn’t so much sense it as he could sense the pilot at the heart of its ball-shaped cockpit. He felt the stone, he felt the pilot … and he tried to send one to the other.

Sluggishly, the stone rose into the path of the TIE fighter. Ben heard the scream of the lasers firing again and opened his eyes in time to see one green bolt hitting the wall far to his left, the other hitting the floating stone dead center, shattering it into a thousand shards.

The TIE fighter veered but could not get entirely clear of the cloud of debris. Ben heard the high-pitched klunks and pings as the left solar array wing hit the shards.

The TIE fighter suddenly gained a lot of altitude, circled once, and then climbed again until it was out of sight.

Ben looked down at Kiara again. “We’re fine for now,” he said. “The bad man went away.”

She nodded, half believing.

“No, really.” He paused, trying to think of what to say to convince her. Then he leaned down and embraced her, felt her shaking. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Her reply was muffled: “Will he come back?”

“Yes, he will. But next time I’ll be ready for him.”

“Why does he want to shoot me?”

“Shoot you?” Ben drew back to look at her. “He doesn’t want to shoot you. He wants to shoot me.”

She shook her head, solemn. “No. He shot the Black tooth while I was inside. That’s how Daddy got hurt. Daddy said they wanted to shoot him, but now they want to shoot me. They want me to be dead.”

“No, they don’t.”

“You wanted it.” Her tone wasn’t even accusing, just hurt. “No, I didn’t. I just…” Ben paused to try to sort his words out. “I’m on an important mission, and I thought that leaving you, even leaving you to die, would make things work out better.”