[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(19)

Leia considered. As a Jedi Knight her primary responsibilities were to the Jedi order and the Galactic Alliance. If the Galactic Alliance was indeed planning some sort of action against Corellia, her duty was to support it.

But that was only one of her loyalties. She couldn’t just ignore her loyalty to Han, even if he was supporting a foolish cause. Suddenly she grinned. Had he ever supported a cause that, from some perspective, wasn’t foolish, including the Rebel Alliance?

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about … other ways to figure out what’s going on.”

“Such as?”

She began counting off on her fingers. “One. If the GA is planning some sort of action against Corellia, then a number of people in the GA government know it. Particularly self-serving ones with economic interests on Corellia are going to be doing whatever they can to protect those interests. If they’re sloppy, it would be possible to spot their activities, their transactions.

“Two. If the action against Corellia is going to involve the military, determining which military forces arc called up would be very informative. Different forces would be used for an assault or for a blockade, for instance. Now, it’s tricky to find out that sort of information-without being spotted as a spy, especially-but it’s possible, and we have a slight advantage in that it’s been a good while since we’ve been at war. Security won’t be as tight as it was at the height of the Yuuzhan Vong war or the war against the Empire, for instance.”

Han nodded. “Good, good.”

“Three. We could formulate some likely plans for action against Corellia, determine the resources needed for those plans … and then attempt to determine whether those resources are actually being moved into place. That would give you some sense of what’s actually going to happen . .

. assuming that your plans are accurate ones.”

“Right.” Han smiled. “I don’t care much for data work or number crunching, but it looks like I’ve just assigned myself a lot of it.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Thanks.”

“After breakfast.”

Han’s smile grew broader. “You’re just not the same tireless, selfless woman I married, are you?”

“I guess not.”

“I’ve corrupted you.”

She sighed dramatically. “Well, you’re the same tireless egotist I married.”

The CorSec officer, trim in her brown and burnt orange uniform, her face hidden behind the blast shield of a combat helmet, leapt into the doorway and raised her blaster rifle. Before it could line up against Jacen, he lashed out with his lightsaber, slicing through the weapon, through the woman. She fell in two smoking pieces, making a resounding bang against the metal floor.

Jacen cast a quick look back the way he’d come, down endless halls packed with twisting cables and mechanical extrusions whose functions no one had been able to discern or divine even after decades of study. Somewhere back there, Ben lay, victim of a blaster shot to the chest, part of a barrage that had been too fast, too heavy for Jacen to compensate for…

He shook his head. He couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by irrelevancies, not with the success of his mission so close. He reached out with the Force, a casual sweep that would reveal to him the presence of living beings beyond the portal, and, feeling none, he stepped through.

Here it was, the control chamber for the Centerpoint Station weapon. The room was surprisingly small, considering the incredible power it harnessed-it was large enough for a medium-sized crew of scientists to operate in, but something this grand should have been enormous, with monumental statuary commemorating the times in the past it was used. Instead there were seats, and banks of lights, switches, and levers, an upright joystick control at the main seat-all of it exactly as he’d last seen it, years before.

Shortly before Ben’s birth, in fact. He’d last seen it before the boy was born; now he was seeing it just after the boy had been cut down.

Irrelevancies. From a pocket within his Jedi robes, he plucked a peculiar datachip. Unlike a standard data card, which would fit within the slot readers of the billions of datapads, computers, high-end comlinks, or vehicular control panels that were equipped to scan and utilize the memory devices, it had rounded ends and spiky protrusions of gold, allowing it to conform to exactly one known port in all the galaxy.

But where was that port? Jacen scanned the banks of switches and other controls. Nothing seemed suited to the datachip, not even on the exact section of control board he’d been told to look for. He was aware that there were distant shouts out in the corridor, signs that Corellian Security forces were rushing his way, that he had only seconds left to complete his mission.