“Okay with what?”
“Gejjen.”
“I’m not a spook,” Shevu said. “Never was. But if Gejjen has Omas killed, it’ll destabilize the whole GA. So I’m okay with it.”
“Do you think he will?”
“I’d want proof that he wouldn’t. Personally, I think we should blow our cover and stop Omas from going, but that just compromises our whole operation. So we’re riding along with you to make sure Omas gets home in one piece.”
Shevu never made any comments on whether he thought Omas was a traitor betraying the GA, or a visionary taking a massive risk for peace. He didn’t get involved with politics and opinions. He just stuck to the law as best he could. And that wasn’t easy in the GAG.
“What are you waiting for?” Shevu asked.
“I just wondered if you think I’m right to do this.”
“That’s not my call.” Shevu busied himself with holocharts of Vulpter, opening three-D images of the spaceports and public buildings. “You’ve got your orders.”
Lekauf gave Ben a nudge in the back. “Come on, I’ve got to turn you into a passable sniper by tomorrow morning.”
The indoor range had that ozonic discharged-blaster smell with a tinge of burned plastoid. Something in the air made Ben’s eyes sting. It was an expensive facility that Lekauf said had been cobbled together from equipment originally intended for Intelligence: hologram simulations, regular targets, and even something he called “dead meat.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to be much use with a rifle,” Ben said.
“Aw, come on.” Lekauf was unconvinced. “You’re a Jedi. You’re not like the rest of us. You’ve got this visuospatial ability we haven’tmy granddad used to tell my dad amazing things about Lord Vader. Really uncanny accuracy in three dimensions, whether he was flying a ship or using a weapon. I used to think Dad was making it up until I saw real Jedi doing that stuff.”
“Why not a blaster?”
“Loads of reasons. We need overkill. We need something that doesn’t light the place up like fireworks. And we want something that can be silenced. Believe it or not, that thing is quite discreet.”
Ben steadied the Karpaki against his shoulder, sighted up a few times, and took his firing position. He was quite pleased to get that far without making a fool of himself. “You seem to have a good opinion of Vader.”
“My granddad thought the world of him. When he got badly burned on a mission and had to be discharged from the Imperial Army, Lord Vader made sure he was taken care of for the rest of his life. Whatever some people say about Vader, monsters don’t look out for lieutenants.”
“That’s good to know,” said Ben. He liked the idea of his grandfather having his kind moments, and that some people still thought well of him. Not everyone had been sympathetic to the Rebellion. Ben imagined Vader doing the difficult things that Jacen was facing now.
And that I’m facing.
At the end of the range, a shadowy man walked quickly across Ben’s field of view and vanished. Ben’s instinctive reaction was that this person was real, and breaking safety regulations, so he lowered his weapon and called a warning. Lekauf burst out laughing.
“Ben, that’s your target.’”
“That wasn’t a hologram. It was solid.”
“Uh, yeah …” Lekauf put his hand on the control console and the “man” walked back into view again to sit on a chair in the target zone. “It’s a gel-form. It’s an adjustable droid made of gel and plastoid to mimic flesh and bone. So you … well, so you get used to a target moving like a real person. That one’s been adjusted to match Gejjen’s build and gait based on holonews footage, so you get used to what he’ll look like and how he’ll probably fall.”
Ben was transfixed. It was just a dummy, just a clever piece of training technology. He checked it in the Forceyes, it was just a machinebut he still felt awful about it.
“That’s pretty yucky.”
“You know how much those things cost?”
“What happens when I shoot … it?”
“It gets up and repairs itself.”
“Okay.” Ben found it disturbing to watch the figure walking around in the small bay at the end of the range. Through the rifle’s optics, it was clearly a featureless, translucent gel figure with the shadowy framework of artificial bone within. “You sure it doesn’t feel anything?”
“It just moves, Ben. It doesn’t think. It’s not even a proper droid. More like a puppet.” He looked at the chrono display on the wall. “You’ve got less than nineteen hours to get up to speed.”