His comlink bleeped, three quick musical notes. The signal jolted Jacen. It was Ben, and it meant Target in sight.
Jacen nodded. He wouldn’t just march forward in an effort to reach his objective. He’d continue drawing the station’s defensive resources toward him, giving Ben some time.
He closed his eyes and looked with other senses for sources of power, of heat.
There they were, several of them, so close together that they seemed to form a single line of energy: the blasters of his enemies. Rugged weapons doubtless kept in tip-top condition, they were doing a decent job of handling the tremendous heat demands of the constant fire.
Well, he needed to change decent to poor. He reached out to those glowing energy sources, finding one at the end of the line. He poured his own power into it, pushed around to find weak spots, cracks, exits…
He found one and exerted himself against it. It held against him for long moments. Then he heard a cry of alarm from one of the security agents .
. . and the crack as the power pack of her blaster rifle exploded.
Jacen dared a look. The agent was down, injured, her body smoking, and two other CorSec agents, a shield bearer before her and a rifleman next to her, were down, too. Now there was a small gap at the right side of the blaster line. Before the CorSec agents became aware of him, Jacen drew back … and went searching for the next power pack in line.
The second one was even hotter and weaker. It took less of an exertion to make it detonate. He looked again and saw four more CorSec agents down, the rest slowing their rates of fire or switching to single-shot firing mode.
Behind the lines, Thrackan turned and began trotting in the other direction, a comlink held to his lips.
Jacen grinned humorlessly. Another few moments and this firing line would be a thing of the past … and he’d see what surprises his cousin had in store for him next.
At a distance of fifty meters, Ben began to make out what guarded the door into the repulsor control chamber: two CorSec agents, one male and one female, and a floating ball-shaped droid with four arms dangling from it. Even as Ben saw them, the floating droid drifted out from the doorway, its repulsorlift humming, into the middle of the corridor as if to bar his passage.
Two of its arms, ending in bulbous pods with barrels, rose to aim at him. Ben raised his own arms and shouted, “Don’t shoot! I’m only a kid!”
Embarrassing words. He wanted to grow up so that he’d never be able to use an excuse like that again. But for now, it was useful.
He heard the female guard say, “Hold your fire,” and then she stepped out to beckon Ben forward. He moved toward her at a quick walk. “I’m lost,” he wailed.
“How did you get this deep into restricted areas?” she asked. Ben moved nearly ten meters closer to her as she spoke.
“I was exploring in the tubes, and I got tired and hungry, and I fell asleep, and then there were explosions and alarms and sounds of people running, and I finally found a real corridor, but I don’t know where I am.” He made it most of the way to the guards in the course of that speech; now only five meters separated them. He tried to summon tears, but they didn’t come. He decided he needed more practice.
“Do you have a datapad?” the woman asked. “I can transmit you a map out of here.”
“No,” Ben said. Now he stood in front of her and the hovering droid.
It looked pretty sturdy, and he could see nodules on the top surface that probably indicated deflector shield generators. But he didn’t think its shields were up. Even without them, its bronze-colored metal hide suggested that it could withstand a blaster shot or two.
“You stay right here,” the woman said. “I’ll get a printout of the map.”
Her companion, who hadn’t budged from in front of the door, finally spoke. “No,” he said. “Protocol is we call it in and they send someone to escort him out of the area.”
“There’s no one available to escort him,” she said. There was a slight edge of condescension to her voice. “Everyone’s been pulled off for Target Alpha. So we can babysit here until they send someone, maybe hours from now, or we can send him off with a map.”
Her partner sighed, exasperated, but didn’t reply.
Ben felt his pulse quicken. If the woman agent got her way, she’d be opening the door for him-one less task for him to undertake.
Still, he’d have to take her out, and her partner, and the big floating ball in order to get into the room.
Prioritize your steps, Jacen always told him.
Priority One was the floating droid. It had to be some sort of combat model, so it was going to be tough, and maybe alert to attack, even from as unlikely a source as a redheaded urchin. Ben let his pouch gape open so he could look down at his lightsaber. If he reached for it, the droid might correctly interpret the motion as the herald of an attack. But he didn’t have to reach. After the droid, he’d take out whichever of the human agents was more alert to him, then the one less alert, but he’d wait for the moment to decide which was which.