He looked up into the face of a CorSec officer glowering down at him.
“Back the way you came, son,” the officer said. “This area is under lockdown.”
“I’ve got to see my father,” Ben said, swiftly improvising. “He’s guarding the repulsor control room. I have to be sure he’s all right.”
“No, kid, it’s off-limits.”
“I have to know he’s all right.” Ben made the words a child’s frightened wail. He darted around the CorSec officer, eluding the man’s grab, and continued running down the corridor.
He couldn’t keep his shoulders from riding up, tensing. He reached out with the Force, searching out the guard’s response to his action.
Ben felt no intimation of danger-the guard didn’t aim his blaster. The man’s emotions were a mix of irritation and sympathy. Ben felt the man weigh a decision, and it took the boy a few moments to figure out what it was: whether or not to communicate with his fellows, warn them that the boy was headed their way. Then Ben felt the man choose against that course of action. The guard turned away.
Ben grinned to himself. That was easy. But then he sobered. If his mission was a success, that nice, sympathetic guard might die in the destruction of Centerpoint Station.
But if Ben hadn’t tricked the man, even more people might die.
It was a small wrongdoing to prevent a bigger one. It was all in the interest of the greater good, the needs of the many. Ben had heard these words hundreds of times, mostly from Jacen, and finally he began to have a sense of what they meant.
Still, deep down, he remembered his father once saying, There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you’ve constructed an entire philosophy of evil.
Troubled, Ben ran on.
With his lightsaber, Jacen batted away the blasterfire coming from the right-hand probot. He couldn’t aim his deflections; that would require too much concentration. Instead, with his left hand, he reached out through the Force and found the projectiles being fired by the left-hand probot. He seized them and redirected them in two streams, one stream toward each droid.
They flew only as far as the droids’ deflector shields, out about a meter from their bodies, and adhered there. Then, one after another, they detonated.
Jacen saw the deflector shields weaken with each explosion. He charged forward, relying on his speed and sudden motion to throw off the aim of the probot with the blaster. When the last of the projectiles had detonated, before the probot shields had time to strengthen, he lashed out, first right and then left.
Two probots, sliced in half at the narrowest portions of their bulbous bodies, crashed to the metal floor.
In the silence that followed, Jacen heard Thrackan say, “Open fire.”
The rear rank of CorSec agents opened up with their blaster rifles. Each was set to full automatic fire and they filled the air with blaster shots.
Jacen went into a fully evasive mode-running, leaping, dodging, spinning his lightsaber in a defensive shield that intercepted shot after shot.
It wasn’t enough. He felt a burn against his left calf as a blaster shot grazed it. Another shot, almost as close, tugged at his right sleeve and left a char-lined hole in it.
He leapt up and back, cartwheeling, and as he cleared the zone of heaviest fire, before the security agents could adjust their aim, he reached against the ceiling with the Force. He yanked against that simple, immobile metal surface for all he was worth.
It came free, yielding to his pull. As he landed, a huge sheet of metal ceiling tore free from its housing almost directly overhead and crashed to the floor a mere two meters ahead of him. The far end of the same sheet remained adhered to the housing above, so what Jacen faced was a crude ramp leading upward-and acting as an angled shield between him and the blaster line.
He looked up and frowned. His ramp led nowhere. Above the area where it had rested was heavier metal, a full bulkhead. But at least the metal sheet would give him a few moments’ rest.
Even now, though, it was shuddering under the blaster impacts, turning bright in one spot where some of the security agents were concentrating their fire.
Jacen peered out from around his impromptu shield, drawing fire, but gathering valuable information about his enemies’ tactics.
He saw three of the blaster wielders changing out power packs simultaneously-obviously part of a scheduled rotation. So they were carrying enough power packs to maintain constant fire for a long time, to keep him pinned down.
Jacen moved across to the other side of his shield and paused a moment before peeking out again. His enemies’ strength was also their weakness, and he’d use it against them