[Legacy Of The Force] - 02(58)

People, devices, bad attitudes. They were all threats.

Jacen and Ben ran along the main walkway, lightsabers drawn, looking for where they might be needed. Around them, residents were already being led out of their homes, some silent and shocked, some swearing and struggling. Jacen glanced back at Ben: his face was set in fixed concentration, wide-eyed and made more shockingly white by the intense light. When he looked around, he could also see activity on the other side of the skylane where residents from the next block were starting to gather to watch the drama.

This will be on HNE in minutes. Everyone’s got a holorecorder these days.

Never mind. I have nothing to hide.

“Galactic Guard! Outside! Now!”

Ahead of them, a squad of four 967 troops confronted a set of locked doors. They leapt back from the doorway, flattening themselves at either side of the entrance. Jacen went to their aid.

“Ordnance, sir,” said one of them. The voice was female. She held up the sensor readout-the Nose, as they called it-attached to the back of her left gauntlet. It winked red and orange. “The Nose sniffed something and the occupants aren’t cooperating. Stand clear.”

“Three inside.” On the other side of the doorway, a commando with sergeant’s insignia and the name WIRUT stenciled on his breastplate held a thermal imaging scanner against the wall. His comrade stood back a few paces and snapped a gas grenade onto the muzzle of his rifle. “If anything in there blows, sir, this isn’t going to look pretty on HNE. You stand clear.”

“Sergeant, I won’t ask anyone to do what I won’t do myself,” said Jacen. “Show me the image.”

The sergeant-Wirut-turned the imager to face Jacen. It had a pistol grip like a loudhailer, one end of the body a lens and the other side a display that showed red on black-three human shapes, moving around in an area that was probably set one room back from the frontage judging by the range shown on the display’s grid.

“Ben, do you sense anything?” Jacen asked. “What does it feel like to you?”

Ben’s sense of danger was becoming very acute. This was a good time to hone it to perfection. He half-closed his eyes in concentration. “Dangerous, but not right now. Soon.”

“Explosives, but not assembled?”

“Is that what you feel?”

“Yes,” said Jacen. He motioned Wirut back. “Hold the gas, trooper. You want them immobilized?”

“That’s the general idea, sir, so they don’t detonate anything.”

“Fine.” Jacen took a breath, visualized the interior of the ground floor and the door, and focused himself on the three people inside.

“Sir-“

Jacen didn’t hear the rest. He sent a Force jolt through all three targets simultaneously, paralyzing them, and a second later the doors blew open not with the punishing shock wave of a conventional blast but the contained violence of the Force. The squad of commandos threw themselves flat. It was the smart thing to do in an explosion, clearly ingrained by hard training.

They froze, waiting for a shock wave that never came. Wirut got to his knees, and even if Jacen couldn’t see his face, he knew the man was grinning.

“Nice trick, sir,” he said, and stood up, rifle ready, to ease through the torn gap that had been the front doors. Jacen slipped in after him, followed by Ben and the rest of the squad. The three occupants of the house-a man in his thirties and two younger women-were crumpled on the floor of a back room, unconscious.

Wirut crouched down and checked them for a pulse. “Are they going to be okay?”

“It’s harmless and temporary,” said Jacen. “Just a shock to the spinal cord.”

“You’re going to put us out of business, sir,” said the female trooper. “REBJ.”

“I wish that were true, but I suspect you’re going to be busier than ever.” Jacen watched as one of the squad held out his left gauntlet, following some trace. He was searching for the explosives. “REBJ?”

“Rapid Entry By Jedi, sir. Very handy. You’ll be in demand.”

The three detainees were brought out on makeshift stretchers. Around them on the walkway, half-dressed civilians and black-armored troopers milled about trying to load onto more assault ships that were setting down or hovering level with the pedestrian access.

“Just turned back an HNE speeder, sir,” one of the troopers called to him. “Consider this operation prime time.”

The night was lit well enough for news cams, too; Jacen knew there was no such thing as a covert operation on this scale in a heavily populated city. Ben leaned close to him. There was a loud whump and the tinkling rain of shattering permaglass as the 967 used frame charges on an apartment block nearby to gain entry.