[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(16)

“I can’t imagine Corellia resorting to planting bombs in civilian areas.”

“Corellia,” Mara said.

“See? We all do it. I thought of Corellia, too. We’ve got a thousand species on Coruscant and most of them have their dingbat element. It could be anybody.”

“Perception usually overrides facts.”

“You said it, sweetheart.”

The speeder had slowed to a crawl in the traffic as skylanes above and below them backed up, too. Luke considered Force-pushing his way between vessels, but there was simply no longer the maneuvering room to do that safely. He found the next public landing area and set the speeder down to continue the journey on foot.

In theory, a pedestrian could cross the whole planet via walkways and streets. In reality, it was slow going. But it was useful to be close enough to people to get a sense of what they were feeling: and the overwhelming taste in the Force was mostly anger. It wasn’t the political anger that emanated from Senate delegates-it was the personal, focused, fearful anger of people whose lives had been directly affected by a conflict on another planet.

Coruscanti had been used to feeling safe for millennia. They were just getting used to being safe again after the Yuuzhan Vong had been defeated, and now that fragile security had been shattered.

It felt like a volcanic fissure opening the dark side. The air seemed charged. The object of that anger-whom people hated, whom they blamed-would affect the course of the conflict with Corellia.

As Luke and Mara walked toward the Senate, the public holonews display screens were surrounded by people staring up at the unfolding news, grim-faced. The display showed which parts of Galactic City had now been sealed off, and harassed fire service officers explaining that they still hadn’t reached the seat of the blast or assessed the total number of casualties.

Luke paused behind them; Mara carried on and disappeared into the crowd. Nobody recognized them. That might have been a blessing.

“Has anyone claimed responsibility yet?” he asked.

A young man in a delivery pilot’s yellow coverall half-turned to him. “No, but they don’t need to, do they?”

“They?”

The man’s gaze darted back to the screen. “Corellia. Retaliation for Centerpoint, isn’t it? Obvious.”

Luke bit back a response and simply carried on walking. He caught up with Mara, who was waiting in a doorway and talking to someone on her comlink.

She looked up and shook her head at him. “One hundred and five dead so far, and rising; three hundred injured. I just called Omas’s office. They’ve declared an emergency.”

“Must have been a big device, judging by the damage.”

“You don’t need much to do a lot of damage in a crowded city made of towers.”

Transparisteel blown out like a million blades, speeders falling thousands of meters, shock waves concentrated on buildings by the canyons-Luke could guess at the details. The Force around him felt in turmoil, but most of it seemed to be coming from the people nearby.

He took Mara’s arm and pressed on through the crowds. It took them half an hour to reach the Senate, and Omas had already left the chamber to visit the emergency response command center deep below ground level.

Luke and Mara walked into a huge room that appeared to be one large holodisplay packed with uniformed officers. The sign above the doors simply said STRATEGIC CENTER. This was where joint Galactic City authorities managed the longer-term effects of an incident-planning for what was needed in the days that followed-while the minute-to-minute work went on at the tactical and operational command centers down the chain.

When Luke concentrated on what he had walked into, he realized that every branch of the city’s emergency services had personnel there: he recognized Coruscant Security Force, Fire and Rescue, Air Traffic Control, medcenter managers, and the city authority. Omas stood talking to a young CSF captain in front of a data display. When Luke walked up behind them, he saw they were looking at a changing list of casualties. The entire wall was a mass of status boards, from lists of skylanes that had been rerouted to which medcenters were receiving the injured.

Omas turned to Luke and Mara and shook his head.

“We can rule out an accidental explosion,” he said. “CSF picked up traces of commercial-grade detonite.”

Mara maintained her detachment. Her gaze tilted up and down the casualty list-mostly unnamed, just descriptions, and Luke wondered if she was looking for Jacen among them.

“Where was it placed?” Luke asked.

“In one of the hotels,” said the CSF officer. The ID tab on his tunic said SHEVU. “The Elite. There’s no obvious motive for the location, but it looks as if it detonated in a guest room. Might have been an own goal.”