[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(53)
She’d never been aware of his reputation as a thing of legend rather than historical fact. Yet now, meeting him under the most unlikely of circumstances, in a place and time where history was being made, unable to do him harm though she’d tried with all her skill and will to do so, she felt it.
She had fired on her father. She had killed fellow Corellians … her duty, laid down on her the moment she’d sworn an officer’s oath and not suddenly removed because her homeworld was now the enemy.
In just a few minutes, the universe had become an insane place.
She forced herself out of her reverie. She had enemies ahead, and daydreaming as she approached them would get her killed. “Focus,” her father said, out of her memory, not out of the comet board. “Focus, and your odds of survival are improved.”
She’d focus. She had promised him she would not be hurt.
Syal Antilles spotted enemy blips ahead, and her sensor board identified them as a pair of A-9 Vigilances. One was apparently shepherding the other, whose thrusters were spitting sparks. They swelled to occupy her whole mind, all other considerations forgotten, and she roared toward them.
Chapter Thirteen
CENTERPOINT STATION
JACEN SLICED THROUGH THE MIDSECTION OF HIS LAST OPPONENT’S blaster rifle and followed through with a spinning kick that catapulted the man over the walkway rail. With a wail of fright, the man dropped two stories’ distance to the metal floor-an impact that, Jacen calculated, would injure but probably not kill him.
Jacen turned to look back the few meters he’d just come. Eight of the CorSec agents lay on the walkway, unconscious, some bleeding, two of them missing their right forearms. Two sonic projectors installed on the lower bodies of R5 astromechs sat smoking and motionless.
The other four CorSec agents and Thrackan Sal-Solo had retreated through a heavy metal door-about four meters high, it looked like original Centerpoint Station equipment, though the security pad next to it was of more recent manufacture. Jacen could sense danger-and malice-on the other side of that door.
He reached for the OPEN button, not expecting it to work; doubtless Thrackan had locked it down. But a vision of the future, of one possible future, crossed Jacen’s thoughts and he jerked his hand back. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself depressing the button, an electronic signal passing along the security device’s pathways to an odd device on the other side of the door, an explosion powerful enough to blow the door and a large section of wall around it to nothingness…
Jacen trotted down the walkway, putting a good distance between him and the door, then turned back to focus on the security pad. Barely visible at this distance was the tiny green glow of the OPEN button.
He put his hands over his ears and exerted himself against that button, the merest push with the Force
With a brilliant flash and a punishing wave of sound, the door blew in, bending and crumpling as it flew through the space Jacen would have occupied. Smoke and shrapnel that had once been surrounding wall sections accompanied it. The walkway beneath Jacen’s feet rocked, then quickly steadied itself. He ran back the way he’d come, putting on a Force-based burst of running speed, and leapt through the new opening in the wall.
Corridor, broad, dark. Left, away from the areas of the station he wanted to reach, open. Right, in the distance, a line of CorSec agents, twenty or more in a well-dressed pair of lines, the front line kneeling, curved transparisteel crowd control shields at the ready, while the rear line stood with blasters aimed. Behind the two lines stood Thrackan Sal-Solo.
Closer, ten meters away but floating toward him, scarred and still smoking from where explosion debris had hit them, were two probots.
No, not quite. These droids looked a lot like Rebellion-era probots-misshapen and bulbous, slightly less than two meters tall, they floated on repulsorlifts well above the floor, four mechanical arms dangling beneath, just like the old stealth droids. But these were bronze in color rather than black, and their arms seemed bulkier, sturdier, than old-time probots’.
And they ended in what looked like weapons pods.
As Jacen emerged into the hallway, they activated deflector shields, not a feature of the original probots, and flew straight at him.
They raised weapon pods and began firing-one, a blaster; the other, small oval canisters that had to be explosives.
Ben heard and felt the boom, distant and muffled, originating somewhere well beneath his feet, and was diverted enough to use the Force to seek out Jacen. Dimly, he could feel his Master, could sense movement and vitality from him.
But the distraction was long enough for Ben to run clean into someone. He banged into rigid body armor, bounced off, and hit the metal floor butt-first.