[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(79)

It would have been better to get Gejjen as the man disembarked, while he was exposed on the landing field for a few moments without bystanders milling around. But Jacen wanted the meeting recorded. It was a case of following Gejjen—or Omas—to the room they’d hired by the hour, then slipping a strip-cam through a gap under the doors. The building blueprints showed plenty of places to insert the flimsi-thin device. Each room’s doors were set in a recess, so—for once—it was a simple matter of squatting down as if picking up a piece of litter and shoving the strip-cam into the gap.

“Should have put a hidden bug in Omas’s coat or folio or something,” Lekauf muttered. “Then we sit here, pinpoint Gejjen’s ship, and slot him on the ramp as he leaves.”

Ben fidgeted with the vibroblade, wondering how his mother would have tackled a job like this. “You can’t stick bugs on people without them finding out sooner or later.”

“Yeah, with our luck he’d have changed his jacket. They used to have this stuff called tracking dust, you know. Just like powder. If the target inhaled it, you could pick up signals from it for ages afterward.”

“Makes you wonder how much all this stuff costs,” said Ben. “I mean, we’re dirt-cheap, but we have to abandon this ship.”

“It’s an old crate. Saves the Defense Department the cost of disposal.”

And leaving it behind would add weight to the setup that Corellian dissidents had killed their own Prime Minister for giving in to the GA. That was the plan, anyway.

Ben switched seats in the cramped interior to look out from the starboard side. Gejjen’s ship should have landed by now, according to its flight plan: one pilot, three passengers, maximum five-hour stopover. That was what it said on the CPA information database that his datapad—scrubbed of all identity, in case of capture—showed him.

Ben avoided looking at the chrono on the bulkhead. He just waited for the word from Lekauf.

“So how do you feel being an officer now?” Ben asked.

“Weird. But my granddad would have been so proud. I wish he’d been alive to see it.”

Lekauf never mentioned his parents. It was always his grandfather. It struck Ben that almost everyone he’d grown up with or worked with either had no family or had key members missing or totally absent. It wasn’t normal. He thought about how routine killing was for his whole family, and knew that most of the beings in the galaxy got through their entire lives without ever killing anyone, deliberately or accidentally.

It was strange that families like his got to make the really big decisions for worlds of normal, ordinary, nonlethal people.

Ben concentrated on centering himself, edging a little toward that state where he vanished from the Force. He pulled himself back just as he felt a drifting sensation that could have been disappearance, or nodding off.

“Plug yourself in,” Lekauf whispered. “It’s a go.”

Ben activated his comlink and earpiece, and shut down the environmental controls to leave the tourer.

When Lekauf opened the hatch, the air and noise hit Ben like a solid wall. It smelled of factories and sulfur. They ambled down the ramp, working hard at looking ordinary, and made their way toward the terminal buildings as if they were killing time, not politicians.

Lekauf scratched his ear, repositioning the earpiece. “Got you, sir. Position?”

Ben picked up Shevu’s voice clearly. “He’ll pass thirty meters to the left of you unless he deviates. Heading for Building G. You pick him up and I’ll follow you in.”

“No visual on the target yet.”

“He must be inside already.”

Oh, this is real. This is happening.

It was a throwback of a thought, back to the time when Ben first started taking crazy risks, but this mission had an extra dose of risk: Omas knew him by sight, and had even met Shevu, too. They couldn’t afford to be spotted. Ben slouched and meandered as fourteen-year-old boys were prone to do, turning around from time to time to chat to Lekauf about safe and meaningless trivia—baka rock, speeders, anything—while he took a cautious look across the permacrete in Omas’s direction. And there he was: flanked by two men in working clothes, a carefully scruffy figure himself. His confident bearing gave him away as a man used to being obeyed, but only to someone who knew what he was looking for. And Ben did.

“Going okay,” Lekauf whispered, not looking toward the three men.

One of the GA Intelligence agents walked through the doors of Building G in front of Omas. The other followed close enough to tread on his heels. They almost vanished in the crowds inside the terminal building, but Ben kept them in sight even though he lost Lekauf for a few moments. One of them appeared to be checking the numbers on various doors and exits as he walked, and eventually he stopped at one marked 53-L and inserted a credit chip in the slot to one side. The doors parted and Ben got a glimpse of a small, brightly lit room almost filled by a white duraplast table ringed by chairs. There was already someone in there.