The Corellian neighborhood was quieter today, as if people were waiting for something to happen. Some of the shops were closed. Ben stopped at a grocery store to pick up a bottle of fizzade and ask for directions to the Saiy workshops. He drank as he walked the kilometer or so to Barit’s family business.
Ben found two men who looked about his father’s age leaning over a large repulsor drive with hydrospanners in their hands. They glanced up sharply but relaxed when they saw him. Just a kid.
“Where’s Barit?” he asked casually
One of the men stood up. “Barit? Barit! Someone here to see you.”
Barit emerged from a storeroom wiping his hands on a rag. He stared at Ben for a few moments as if he didn’t recognize him and then didn’t look pleased to see him. He walked out into the open air, and Ben followed him a little way from the workshops. There was an appetizing smell of frying and spices coming from an open doorway.
“Did you find your missing diamonds?” Ben asked. He meant the gems made out of Corellians’ ashes in the Sanctuary. “Did anyone give them back?”
“No,” said Barit. “The sort of people who smash memorials don’t have consciences.”
It wasn’t a good start. Ben plunged in. “I saw you outside the embassy the other day.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Getting a faceful of gas.”
“Yeah. So was I.”
Ben wondered what Barit had done with his blaster. He knew he could draw his lightsaber instantly from his pocket if he had to find out the hard way. “When I say I saw you, I mean I saw you with a weapon.”
“Everyone carries a piece. Even you.”
I have to know. “But why shoot at a cop?”
“You going to turn me in?” So he hadn’t seen Ben deflect the blast. He had shot and run. “I didn’t think I hit anyone. They never said-“
“I just want to know why you did it.” You aimed to kill, or you didn’t care who you hit. “The officer never did anything to you. He was just trying to stop a fight.”
“Coruscant’s against us. The Alliance is trying to kill us. We’ve got to defend ourselves.”
“But that’s not people. The CSF wasn’t trying to do anything to you. How can you shoot at someone who wasn’t aiming at you?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I want to.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“If you’re that scared of us all, why are you still living here?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Kick us out, send us back.”
Ben didn’t know how to respond. “You think you’re at war with us?”
“We are. Maybe not properly, but we are.”
“How can you think that when you live here? If you really believe that, how can you even want to live here?”
Ben stood staring at Barit in complete incomprehension. He had no idea what was going on in the Corellian’s mind to make him feel that he was suddenly an alien on the planet where his family had been born. But he knew that it made him feel suspicious and wary of Barit in a way that had nothing to do with the fact that he was prepared to draw a blaster.
“Come on, Barit,” one of the men yelled. “You going to be yakking there all day? Got jobs to do. Get on with it.”
Barit looked at Ben as if he was memorizing his face. “Got to go. Thanks for not turning me in.”
He walked back toward the workshop. Ben wandered away, the half-full bottle of fizzade still clutched in his hand, and wondered if he should have reported Barit to CSF.
It had never crossed his mind.
JABI TOWN, CORELLIAN QUARTER, CORUSCANT: 0400 HOURS.
This neighborhood hated the planet on which it found itself. And that was not a political or military assessment of the risk, but Jacen Solo’s certainty of what he detected in the Force.
That alone was enough for a Jedi to act upon-if a Jedi was what he still was, he reminded himself.
Jacen could sense the resentment, anger, and danger that was simmering in this Corellian district of Galactic City, and that was why he had decided to begin his operations as the new commander of the Galactic Alliance Guard by raiding Jabi Town.
It was hard to seal off a neighborhood in a place like Coruscant. The intersections were three-dimensional and required six CSF traffic division repulsorlift ships for each skylane junction that Jacen needed to have blocked off. He stood on the platform of a military assault vessel, a matte-gray gunship not unlike its CSF counterpart, watching two of the CSF ships hover into position. It was still dark; the CSF vessels had no navigation lights showing. Jacen could only see them because the light pollution on Coruscant meant that Galactic City was never truly pitch black, and he could pick out the shape of the hull when it moved.