[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(42)

Thrackan gave Jacen an expression of sympathy. “I understand that. Just as they criticize one who claims to be more Corellian than Han Solo.”

“So.” Jacen held up his lightsaber but left it unlit. “Would you and your troops do me a favor and get out of my way? There will be fewer severed limbs that way. Or heads.”

Again, Thrackan offered him a pitying look. “Jacen, we can’t afford to let you damage or destroy this station. It’s not going to happen. Surrender now and you won’t be killed. You won’t even be hurt.”

“Uh-huh.” Jacen began walking toward the foot of the closest ramp below Thrackan.

Thrackan, nonchalant, held a hand out to his side. One of the CorSec officers there handed him what looked like a flight helmet. With slow, deliberate motions, watching Jacen all the time, Thrackan donned it. Then he snapped his fingers. Two droids, looking much like R5 astromechs but with their top halves removed and replaced by naked machinery, rolled up from behind the CorSec officers to the rail.

And the sound began.

Jacen didn’t even experience it as sound at first. It hit him like a windstorm, blasting him to his knees, bringing pain to every millimeter of his skin as though he were being scorched by a gigantic blowtorch. His lightsaber fell from his lifeless fingers and rolled away.

Even as the attack convulsed him with pain, Jacen, in some dim portion of his mind that still functioned, recognized it-a sonic assault, something that did not have to be aimed or tracked to bring a Jedi down.

Moving from shadow to shadow with the noiselessness of a ghost, Ben reached the hatch Jacen had entered just in time to hear it thunk to a locked position, to see its control board light up. He stared at it in momentary confusion. Why would Jacen have locked him out?

Then he heard voices approaching from the tunnel’s other end-voices and footsteps, some of them ringing heavily on the tunnel’s metal floor. Ben sprinted back the way he’d come, to the lip of the vertical shaft.

There he hesitated. If he leapt for one of the cables and rode it back down, his presence would be detected-the whir of the winch, the swinging of the cable would give him away.

Instead, he moved to the side of the tunnel and swung over the lip of the vertical shaft, holding on by one hand, his other hand on the lightsaber at his belt. Four motionless fingers would be much less likely to be detected than a swinging winch cable.

He held his breath while the footsteps, seemingly more and more numerous, approached. They halted meters away, though-at Jacen’s hatch, he assumed.

A woman said, “Set up here. Keep your eyes on the entire corridor. The Jedi have a nasty habit of cutting through walls where you don’t expect them. Nine-two-Z, position yourself here.” That command was followed by heavy, clanging footsteps.

Ben dared to pull himself up and peer over the lip.

A detachment of armored CorSec soldiers was set up outside the hatch. There were two unliving things with them-Ben recognized YVH combat droids, machines of war designed to fight the Yuuzhan Vong. Shaped roughly like humans but taller and thicker in the chest, they packed immense firepower and combat programming.

These two also carried backpacks huge enough to hold a full-grown human male. One of them, approaching, came to a stop before the CorSec woman at the door. She continued, “All right, troopers. At the first sign of intrusion, draw back to form a firing line and open up on the enemy. Nine-two-Z, at the first sighting of a Jedi, approach it. When you’ve gotten as close as you think you can get, trigger your load.”

The droid nodded. “Acknowledged,” it said, its voice artificial, emotionless.

The woman continued, speaking to the others: “You hear that? You see the droid go into motion, run. Once it’s detonated, return and mop up.”

Ben lowered himself below the lip again.

This was bad, bad, bad. ‘That backpack had to be full of explosives or something worse. And the woman’s instructions meant that if the droid detected Jacen or Ben, it would attack. Ben didn’t think he could take out a YVH combat droid-certainly not before it detected him and blew up.

He let go of the lip of the tunnel.

With the Force, he pressed himself up against the wall of the vertical shaft, the friction of his cloak on the metal slowing his descent. He slid almost noiselessly back down the forty meters he’d so recently ascended. As he approached the last five meters, he let go completely and dropped naturally, going into a tuck-and-roll as he hit, rolling away from the shaft. Now he’d be out of sight if any CorSec soldiers heard something and came to investigate.

He was on his own now. He had to try to complete the mission by himself.

He’d just abandoned his teacher, his cousin. A sort of numbness tried to creep its way into his thoughts. He shook it off and ran back toward the hatch to the repulsor train tunnel.