“Senate District, please,” said Ben.
“Where, exactly?”
“Rotunda Zone.”
“Nah, I’m avoiding the center.” The pilot looked at Ben as if he’d just arrived from Tatooine. “There’s a riot going on over the water contamination. Should you be out on your own, lad?”
Ben was beginning to wonder the same thing himself. “How close can you take me to the zone, then?”
The pilot sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “The intersection of skylanes four-seven-two and twenty-three. Two blocks away. Will that do?”
“Okay.”
Ben sat in the backseat of the taxi with one hand on the hilt of his lightsaber, fidgeting. He hadn’t been worried when he’d infiltrated Centerpoint Station: that had been exciting in an unthinking, reflex kind of way, even though he stood a good chance of getting killed. It seemed impossible that anything could happen to him. But now he was among crowds that seemed ready to explode into violence, and although he was home in Galactic City, he was scared. There was something … animal about it all, something wild and unpredictable.
The taxi slowed and pulled in at a landing platform. Ben could see police speeders ahead at the intersection of the two skylanes, diverting traffic the hard way. A CSF assault ship swept overhead as he stepped out onto the walkway, and his instinct was to follow its path.
So what are you going to do when you get there?
It was a good question, but instead of answering it rationally, Ben just headed for where his Force-senses told him he was needed. Jacen always encouraged him to trust his feelings; and this was as good a time as any. He raced down the walkway in the opposite direction from the rest of the pedestrians, who were doing the sensible thing and moving away from the riot area.
When he rounded the corner, he found himself at the back of a mob facing the Corellian embassy. The building was under siege; there was no other way to describe the barrage of missiles smashing against the permaglass front of the building and piling up in its marble forecourt. The embassy was in a plaza, not on a broad skylane with a thousand-meter drop beneath, making it an easy, close target for anyone hurling missiles. The CSF assault ship hovered overhead. Ben could see officers taking aim with rifles and then lowering them again.
Nobody on the ground seemed to have drawn weapons yet. But the crowd was screaming abuse.
“You scum! You poisoned the water!”
Ben dodged a lump of masonry that cleared the heads of the mob in front of him and landed at his feet, sending fragments flying.
“They should’ve pulverized your whole planet, not just stinking Centerpoint!”
The crowd roared and surged forward before falling back again, nearly knocking Ben flat. He was responsible for what was happening. He’d started this with the raid on Centerpoint. The falling sensation in the pit of his stomach stopped him in his tracks. He’d never seen people behave like this, but it was all his fault. He had to do something.
Another volley of permacrete shattered on the marble forecourt of the embassy, and CSF officers piled into the crowd with riot batons. But the more they tried to break it up, the more people seemed to press forward. The riot had a life of its own. Ben tasted a communal reflex rage, and it scared him more than anything he had ever experienced. For a split second he almost pitched in, too, his body very nearly overriding his brain.
In front of the embassy, a dozen Corellians-Ben assumed that was who they were-braved the hail of permacrete and snatched the lumps up to hurl them back over the heads of the CSF line. One of the men had a blood-smeared gash across his forehead, but he seemed oblivious to it. A CSF captain moved forward with a squad of officers, and Ben heard the Corellian tell him that they were supposed to be protected here, they were supposed to be safe-and then there was a volley of shots from above like projectile weapons firing and the air filled with acrid smoke.
It burned Ben’s eyes and mouth. Dispersal gas: the CSF must have fired canisters from the assault ship hovering overhead. The crowd should have scattered, but instead people seemed to close in on one another and Ben was caught up in the panic. He fell. He was being trampled. Legs filled his field of vision and just as he curled instinctively to shield his head, a gloved blue arm reached out and grabbed him by the front of his tunic, pulling him free.
“Stupid kid-“
It was a CSF officer. The man had rescued him. Ben struggled to his knees, eyes streaming. “Come on, get out of here-“
Ben’s attention snapped suddenly from his own predicament to a point behind the officer. He focused on a face he knew, a boy with short blond hair, Barit Saiy, and Ben was staring at a blaster aimed not at him but at the officer’s back. He didn’t think; he just pulled out his lightsaber with his free hand and saw the bright blue blade collide with a stream of white energy, deflecting it. It took a second, and when he blinked again to clear his streaming eyes he saw Barit disappearing into the melee.