Jacen glanced ahead. The pilotless fighter was rising. In another few seconds, it would hit the cable layer again, this time at an angle that would keep it within that layer for long seconds or even minutes. “Let’s go,” he said.
Ben nodded, deactivated his lightsaber, and dropped clear. Jacen followed suit.
He saw Ben drop into the back of a groundspeeder, bounce out of it as though it were a trampoline, angle over to bounce onto one end of a dinner table on a streetside second-story balcony-the spray of food dishes catapulting off the table was quite impressive-and then drop down to street level. Jacen contented himself with one bounce from a heavy transport speeder and a tuck-and-roll as he reached the sidewalk beside Ben. Adumari pedestrians gave the two Jedi curious looks but seemed unalarmed. Most of them were watching the fighter plow through the cables overhead.
Ben had a well-cooked leg of some avian in one hand. He’d already taken a bite out of it and was chewing furiously.
“What, don’t you get enough Jedi Temple food to eat?” Jacen commented.
Ben shook his head. “What’s next?”
“Transmit.”
“Don’t you want to do that? You’re the Jedi Knight.”
“I’m not the one who needs to learn how to do it.” Jacen turned and led the way through the sidewalk traffic. If his bearings were correct, this direction would lead them to the hangars where his shuttle waited.
With a long-suffering sigh, Ben discarded his improvised meal and pulled the little holocam, a datapad, and a comlink from pouches on his belt. Awkwardly, handling three items with two not-fully-grown hands, he began manipulating controls and keyboards, entering commands. “All right. The data package is being compressed and encrypted.”
“While it’s doing that, check to see if the shuttle’s holocomm is still live. Remotely activate it and bounce a comm echo off the old lunar New Republic station.”
“Yes, sir.” This time, Ben didn’t sound as put-upon. This was more of a challenge, something he’d never done before on his own authority. He typed commands into his datapad, relayed them through the comlink. “Holocomm is .
. . live.”
Kilometers away, the communications system aboard Jacen’s shuttle-a full-fledged holocomm unit, capable of transmitting through hyperspace and thus communicating faster than light-would have just awakened from its power-down status.
“Querying automated comm systems on Relay Station ADU-One-One-Zero-Four through to Coruscant,” the boy said. His voice, though no deeper, sounded more confident, more mature when he was engrossed in a task like this. “Successful echo.” Another message popped up on his datapad. “Package encrypted.”
“Transmit it,” Jacen said. He kept a close eye on the pedestrian traffic, but he didn’t anticipate any problems at this point. It would be some time before the operators of the Dammant Killers firm figured out where the Jedi were. “Await confirmation of reception. Request confirmation of decryption.”
“Yes, sir.” Ben typed in another set of commands, then tucked his holocam back in its pouch; it would no longer be needed. “So how do we get offworld?”
“We go back to the shuttle and take off.”
“But the planet’s full of starfighters! One shuttle, even an armed shuttle, isn’t going to be able to fight its way through all of them.”
“Correct. But why would they attack us?”
“To keep-to keep-” Understanding dawned in the boy’s eyes. “To keep us from getting offworld with what we found out.”
“Correct.”
“But we just holocast it, so it’s too late.” Ben checked the screen on his datapad. “They got the package. They’re decrypting.” His expression turned suspicious. “But what if the Adumari attack us for revenge?”
“Think it through, Ben. Take your time.” They reached a broad plaza, and Jacen knew his bearings were correct; they were headed back toward the proper hangars, which should only be a couple of kilometers distant.
“If the package decrypts, and the spies see what we saw, they’ll start talking to the government here.”
“Military Intelligence. Not spies.”
“Oh, they’re spies.” Ben sounded scornful of Jacen’s correction. “Mom’s a spy. What we just did makes us spies.”
“Your mother’s a Jedi. We’re Jedi.”
“Jedi spies.” The datapad beeped, and Ben looked at it again. He snapped it shut. “The message decrypted. Our spy bosses say ‘Well done.’ So … they’ll talk to the Adumari government, who know that if anything happens to us, things will be worse for them.”