He closed his eyes and probed with senses that could not be so easily fooled.
And he found, almost instantly, what he was looking for-a slot shaped in the reverse image of the front end of his datachip. Eyes still closed, he stepped forward, extended the chip, and felt it being gripped by, then drawn into the machinery below the control board’s surface. He released it and opened his eyes.
The chamber’s thousands of indicator lights went dead and the sounds of shouts and onrushing feet from the corridor stilled. A female voice announced, “Simulation ended. Success ratio seventy-five percent, estimated only.”
Jacen grinned sourly. Anything over 51 percent was sufficient for the success of the mission-it meant that one of the several techniques intended to damage or destroy Centerpoint Station had been initiated. But even 75 percent wasn’t good enough: it meant that either he or Ben had fallen. Fifty-one percent and both would have died.
Ben moved into the doorway and carefully stepped over the bisected body of the droid wearing CorSec armor. He rubbed his chest and looked embarrassed. “Stun bolts sting,” he said.
Jacen nodded. “More motivation for you not to be hit by them.”
The wall behind the main control board slid upward, revealing a monitoring chamber beyond-several computer stations, one central chair with four viewing monitors mounted on spindly, adjustable bars around it. The man in the chair-stout, gray-bearded, a trifle overweight-offered the two Jedi a faint smile. “You’re getting there,” he said, his voice deep, rumbling.
“This one seemed pretty easy, Doctor Seyah.” Jacen gestured around. “One guard in the final chamber-“
“Easy?” Ben sounded outraged. “They shot about a thousand blaster bolts at us!”
“Jacen’s right,” Dr. Seyah said. “This one is easier. Easier than restarting the station’s centrifugal spin and sabotaging the artificial gravity counterspin to tear the station apart, easier than introducing the station’s own coordinates into its targeting computations and having it destroy itself, easier than hijacking a Star Destroyer and crashing it into the proper end of the station-“
Ben’s face brightened. “We haven’t done that one yet.”
“Nor are you going to. That’s not a mission for Jedi. It’s for crazy old naval officers.”
“Oh.” Ben’s expression fell. “I would have liked that one.”
Dr. Seyah pushed aside a couple of obtrusive monitors and rose from his chair. “The problem is, we don’t know what the main weapons control chamber looks like now. This is how it was three weeks ago, when everyone but a core crew of scientists-carefully vetted, very pro-Corellian scientists-was pulled out and reassigned elsewhere. They could have replaced all the equipment with string cheese or encased the room in duracrete-we don’t know. But we have no reason to think they did.” He shrugged. “So long as you have that datachip intact, and so long as that receptacle slot is still in existence on the control board-even if you have a wobber of a time finding it-then this approach could work.”
“Could work?” Jacen repeated.
“We think it will. The commands in that datachip should initiate a ten-minute countdown and then activate a complex repulsor pulse that will tear the station apart. Assuming that they haven’t reprogrammed their systems sufficiently to overcome the programming on that chip. Assuming that my team and I did our jobs right all these years. Assuming a lot of things.” Dr. Seyah sighed, then placed a hand on the shoulder of each Jedi. “This is the only thing I can guarantee you: come with me to the cafeteria, and I can treat you to lunch.”
“Sometimes the simple answers are best,” Jacen agreed, and allowed himself to be turned toward the door.
But inside, worry tried to gnaw at him. Ben had faltered or died in eight out of ten of the simulations they’d run, suggesting that he should not, after all, be along on this mission … but Jacen’s own sense of the future, day after day, told him that the boy would be crucial to its success, if success were to be found at all. Perhaps both outcomes were correct. Perhaps the mission would succeed, but only if Ben fell during its accomplishment.
If that were so, how would Jacen face Luke?
“So what’s it like to be a spy?” Ben asked.
Jacen murmured, “Doctor Seyah is not a spy, Ben. Be nice.”
“Oh, of course I’m a spy. Scientist and spy. And it’s very nice. I get to study ancient technology and learn how the universe works. And every so often, I get to go on vacation to learn how to plant the newest listening comlinks, to subvert or seduce enemy spies, to use the latest blasters and fly the latest airspeeders-“