Shaken, he yanked himself back from the vision and stood there, breathing heavily.
“What is it, boy?” Thrackan asked, his tone almost kindly. “You’ve gone pale.”
Jacen blinked at him. He felt as though he were hung on a hook. His mind told him that he couldn’t do what his gut said he must. He couldn’t cut down an enemy who had surrendered.
Trust the Force, Luke had told him, so often. Trust your feelings in the Force.
He couldn’t not cut down this enemy, even if the man had surrendered.
Jacen slowed his breathing, his heartbeat. He got his voice under control. “I apologize,” he said. “I actually do have to kill you now.”
“You’re insane. I’ve surrendered.”
“That’s not enough. You ruin the future, Thrackan.” No, that wasn’t quite right. But the future was ruined if he lived. “For the greater good, our Jail traditions notwithstanding, I have to kill you.”
“But my droids are here.”
A blaster opened up from behind Jacen. He turned to intercept the bolt-and, partway into his maneuver, cursed himself for being tricked twice.
No one stood in the hallway. The sound of blasterfire emerged from a small circular device adhering to the ceiling near a glow rod light fixture.
Jacen continued his maneuver into a full spin. His lightsaber, ending its 360-degree sweep, would cut Thrackan in half.
Instead, it hit a gleaming metal column.
Jacen glanced up. The column was rising out of the floor, propelling the metal disc Thrackan stood on up to the ceiling. The disc hit the edges of the transparent tube, and there was a tremendous thoom noise. Thrackan’s feet launched up from the disc and disappeared from sight.
Jacen stepped onto the second disc and hit all four buttons on the control panel. The disc he stood on raised him rapidly into position, to the bottom of the second tube, and an instant later, a second ear-hammering thoom catapulted him upward.
Propelled by an energy he couldn’t yet define-repulsors? pneumatic air currents? tractor beams?-he flew up through his tube, flashing past corridors, sometimes seeing open channels out to space, sometimes seeing lit passageways through which people were running.
The shaft the two tubes occupied was sometimes tight-packed with machinery or engineering supports, sometimes open. The first time it opened, Jacen looked up and could see Thrackan, a hundred meters or more above him, in his own tube.
Thrackan’s tube twisted, a right-angled turn, and suddenly he was headed away. The turn would have pulped a human under ordinary circumstances. Gravitics, Jacen told himself. Only gravity manipulation could have allowed Thrackan to survive.
Jacen reached the same altitude. His tube turned the opposite direction. He felt his stomach lurch, and suddenly he was hurtling away from his enemy-away from the man he desperately needed to kill.
He howled, a noise of anger and distress he could barely hear over the wind noise whipping along the tube’s interior. Then he deactivated his lightsaber, clipped it to his belt, and tucked Thrackan’s blaster into a pouch.
It was time to be calm, time to get off this station, time to find out Ben’s status.
Thrackan was right. Jacen had failed. Not in his intended mission-but in his greater responsibility.
Chapter Sixteen
CORONET, CORELLIA
ON THE DATAPAD, IT’S SEE SEE SEE THIRTY-NINE,” DORAN shouted forward from the passenger compartment.
In the copilot’s seat, Zekk twisted uncomfortably and shouted back, “I’m telling you, the signs read WEDGE ANTILLES BOULEVARD.”
“Be quiet,” Jaina snapped from the pilot’s scat. “It’s got to be the same route. Cities rename their streets all the time.”
Their vehicle-a standard Lambda-class shuttle, its wings locked in the down position for flight-cruised down the center of the Coronet boulevard. Its presence was incongruous. Though no more massive than some cargo-carrying groundspeeders moving along the same avenue, it protruded in ways no groundspeeder did, its flight wings sticking out of the lane on both sides, its upper stabilizer rising well above the containment zone indicated for the traffic lane. Nor was it inconspicuous in any other way-colored the bright tan of desert sands, with a Corellian sand panther, twisting and lashing out, painted along each side, it was even more highly decorated than most Corellian personal vehicles.
Zekk misted to face forward again. “This seat is too small for me-“
“It’s too small for anyone,” Jaina said. “I think it’s built for a child.”
“And it smells like fur.”
Jaina glanced over. “Yes, there’s fur coming off it and sticking to your clothes. Maybe a Bothan?”