CENTERPOINT STATION,
CORELLIAN SYSTEM
Jacen brushed aside the cloth over his head and peered out—out, up, back.
The conveyance he lay upon was one open-topped car of a repulsor train. The cars, connected end-to-end, floated along a containment track laid years earlier along Centerpoint Station’s long axis. Jacen could tell from the way the ceiling was no longer kilometers away but only hundreds of meters above, and getting closer, that they were heading out of the vast open central area known as Hollowtown and into a narrowing choke point toward the station’s “top”—the region where the greatest number of significant control chambers had been found, the region where the majority of the investigating scientists’ new installations of equipment and computer gear had been made.
Far overhead, Jacen saw a cluster of buildings, blocky apartment residences in subdued brown and green tones that seemed very out of place in this ancient technological artifact. Despite the urgency of his mission, he grinned. He was staring up at the apartments’ roofs, which were upside down to him. It had to be disconcerting to emerge every morning from sleep and stare up at a distant floor, one across which turbolifts and repulsor trains were always moving.
He lay alone in the midst of a mound of supplies for the station residents—bolts of cloth, preserved foods, crates full of entertainment data cards, deactivated worker droids. Ben was also aboard the repulsor train, several cars back, maintaining his own hiding place. Jacen had settled on this method of operation as the mission planning entered its final stages. “You’ll trail me at a distance of not less than fifty meters,” he had said. “Practice stealth techniques and make no effort to contact me unless your life is in danger. If I’m disabled, defeated, sucked through a malfunctioning atmosphere containment shield, or otherwise distracted from my goal, you set out on your own to accomplish it.” And Ben had nodded solemnly, perhaps finally being convinced that things were serious by the prospect of performing a mission alone.
The ceiling continued to get closer, until it was a mere thirty meters overhead, and then Jacen lurched as the repulsor train took a sharp turn and a plunging descent into a tunnel. The tunnel was three times the width necessary for the repulsor train and lit by pastel green glow rods at intervals; protruding from the walls every hundred meters or so were box-like metal extrusions. Jacen decided that the tunnel had not been intended by the station’s creators for the purpose to which it was now put—the station’s new masters had simply discovered it and decided that it would be a convenient way to keep the homely repulsor train out of sight as it entered the station’s more sensitive areas.
Someone had marked the metal extrusions with huge painted numbers. Dr. Seyah had explained their meaning—they corresponded to hatches providing access to specific sets of chambers and accessways above and below. Often that access was suitable only for workers or athletes—it was common for it to be no more than a crudely installed, open-sided winch turbolift, the sort found on building construction sites all over Coruscant.
At the box extrusion marked 103, Jacen swung aside the cloth concealing him, took a careful look around to make sure there were no observers present, and leapt free of his car. He landed beside the box extrusion and moved toward the nearest wall hatch—an access helpfully, if inelegantly, emphasized by splashes of orange paint.
It was a depression in the wall, nearly oval but with more squared-off corners, about two-thirds the height of a human male. The hardened durasteel door plugging it was of modern manufacture, as was the computer control panel mounted on the wall beside it.
Jacen tugged at the bar that indicated the hatch was dogged closed. Only the handle portion of the bar was accessible through an arc-shaped slot in the doorway, and pulling it from the left to the right position should have opened the hatch.
The bar didn’t budge. The hatch was locked.
He gave the control panel a look. He knew the combination required to open the door—Dr. Seyah had given it to him. But if CorSec’s Intelligence Section mandated different access numbers for different personnel and then tracked their use, using that number would compromise Dr. Seyah.
He ignited his lightsaber and drove it into the hatch toward the base. This was slower going than many obstacles he cut through; the hatch metal was thick and treated against heat. Slowly he pushed it through, and even more slowly he pulled it laterally.
Half a minute later, the edges of the cut glowing gold from the lightsaber’s heat, there was an audible thunk and the metal bar swung free. Well above the area of overheated metal, Jacen gave the hatch a push and it swung open.
Beyond was a cylindrical metal shaft, almost featureless, lit by green glow rods affixed at intervals. Dangling at head height were four heavy metal cables ending in loops and four lighter cables ending in small two-button controls, standard for industrial lifting and lowering. Jacen nodded. In ordinary use, a worker would attach a personal safety hook to one of the loops and activate the corresponding LIFT button. Jacen merely put his lightsaber away, grabbed a loop with his left hand, and punched the LIFT button with his right. The winch controls at the top of the shaft activated and raised him with arm-jarring swiftness.
Moments later, forty meters up, the ride came to an end. A circular side tunnel led away from the shaft. Jacen gave himself the most fleeting push with the Force and swung over the floor of that tunnel, then dropped noiselessly. A few meters down, a ramp led up to another modern-era hatch.
The dogging bar on this hatch was already in the righthand position, and the control panel beside the hatch was not lit. Jacen stared at it for a moment. Dr. Seyah had given him the access code for this hatch, too, but apparently it wasn’t needed now.
Apparently.
Jacen took his lightsaber in hand again and pushed the hatch open.
It required a little more push than its mass would ordinarily have called for. The atmospheric pressure on the other side of the hatch was higher than on Jacen’s side, and once he got the hatch more than a hand span open cool air began to pour across him. He shoved the hatch open far enough to see through—there was only darkness beyond—and then wider yet. Once beyond, he slowly shut the hatch, not letting the air pressure differential slam it shut.
Here, the only sounds were his own breathing and echoes from the air-conditioning system. He could not see anything, but the chamber felt large, very large. He nodded. That matched what Dr. Seyah had told him; this was supposed to be a featureless oval chamber, big enough to host small-scale groundspeeder races, its purpose unknown. On the far side would be a set of ramps allowing access to a higher walkway level, which would, in turn, give him access to Centerpoint Station’s control room governing the station’s artificial gravity generators. Those generators had been installed over several years and only recently made completely operational.
The hatch by which he’d entered went thunk. The control panel next to it lit up, the red and yellow glows from the numbered buttons providing Jacen with just enough light to see himself and the floor.
Jacen cleared his throat. He raised his voice so that it would carry. “Am I about to endure a speech?”
Far overhead, banks of white light came on, dazzlingly bright. Jacen shaded his eyes, focused his attention on the Force—on incoming danger, on malevolent intent.
There was none.
But a voice came from those walkways high on the other side of the chamber. “Is this somebody’s sense of humor? Sending you?”
As Jacen’s vision cleared, he saw a man in deep blue civilian dress—boots, pants, ruffly tunic, and open overcoat—and a dozen armored CorSec agents up on the balcony that was Jacen’s route out of the chamber. Though Jacen knew the man, he still felt a momentary shock of a different sort of recognition.
For the man wore the face of Han Solo—but bearded, a little leaner, a little grayer, and possessed of a confidence that looked like political arrogance rather than Jacen’s father’s cockiness.
“Thrackan Sal-Solo,” Jacen said. “I thought you were spending all your time groundside on Corellia, telling the population what to think and pretending not to be a convicted felon.”
“Little Jacen.” His father’s near double gave him a condescending smile. “I’m also still in charge of restoring Centerpoint Station. And when word reached me that the GA intended to execute an offensive in Corellian space, an offensive that was premature by almost every political measurement—unless you factored in the possibility that they knew just how close I was to restoring the station to full operability—I decided I needed to be here. To prepare against strike teams. And commandos. And Jedi.”
Jacen gave his cousin an admonishing look. “You can never prepare against Jedi.”
“Yes, you can. And I must admit to being offended. For a target as important as Centerpoint Station, shouldn’t they have sent Luke Skywalker? Are you stronger than he?”
Jacen offered a humorless smile. “No, just educated in different directions. Besides, it’s been my experience that anyone who claims to be stronger than Luke Skywalker receives a lot of grief from his admirers.”
Thrackan gave Jacen an expression of sympathy. “I understand that. Just as they criticize one who claims to be more Corellian than Han Solo.”
“So.” Jacen held up his lightsaber but left it unlit. “Would you and your troops do me a favor and get out of my way? There will be fewer severed limbs that way. Or heads.”
Again, Thrackan offered him a pitying look. “Jacen, we can’t afford to let you damage or destroy this station. It’s not going to happen. Surrender now and you won’t be killed. You won’t even be hurt.”
“Uh-huh.” Jacen began walking toward the foot of the closest ramp below Thrackan.
Thrackan, nonchalant, held a hand out to his side. One of the CorSec officers there handed him what looked like a flight helmet. With slow, deliberate motions, watching Jacen all the time, Thrackan donned it. Then he snapped his fingers. Two droids, looking much like R5 astromechs but with their top halves removed and replaced by naked machinery, rolled up from behind the CorSec officers to the rail.
And the sound began.
Jacen didn’t even experience it as sound at first. It hit him like a windstorm, blasting him to his knees, bringing pain to every millimeter of his skin as though he were being scorched by a gigantic blowtorch. His lightsaber fell from his lifeless fingers and rolled away.
Even as the attack convulsed him with pain, Jacen, in some dim portion of his mind that still functioned, recognized it—a sonic assault, something that did not have to be aimed or tracked to bring a Jedi down.
Moving from shadow to shadow with the noiselessness of a ghost, Ben reached the hatch Jacen had entered just in time to hear it thunk to a locked position, to see its control board light up. He stared at it in momentary confusion. Why would Jacen have locked him out?
Then he heard voices approaching from the tunnel’s other end—voices and footsteps, some of them ringing heavily on the tunnel’s metal floor. Ben sprinted back the way he’d come, to the lip of the vertical shaft.
There he hesitated. If he leapt for one of the cables and rode it back down, his presence would be detected—the whir of the winch, the swinging of the cable would give him away.
Instead, he moved to the side of the tunnel and swung over the lip of the vertical shaft, holding on by one hand, his other hand on the lightsaber at his belt. Four motionless fingers would be much less likely to be detected than a swinging winch cable.
He held his breath while the footsteps, seemingly more and more numerous, approached. They halted meters away, though—at Jacen’s hatch, he assumed.
A woman said, “Set up here. Keep your eyes on the entire corridor. The Jedi have a nasty habit of cutting through walls where you don’t expect them. Nine-two-Z, position yourself here.” That command was followed by heavy, clanging footsteps.
Ben dared to pull himself up and peer over the lip.
A detachment of armored CorSec soldiers was set up outside the hatch. There were two unliving things with them—Ben recognized YVH combat droids, machines of war designed to fight the Yuuzhan Vong. Shaped roughly like humans but taller and thicker in the chest, they packed immense firepower and combat programming.
These two also carried backpacks huge enough to hold a full-grown human male. One of them, approaching, came to a stop before the CorSec woman at the door. She continued, “All right, troopers. At the first sign of intrusion, draw back to form a firing line and open up on the enemy. Nine-two-Z, at the first sighting of a Jedi, approach it. When you’ve gotten as close as you think you can get, trigger your load.”
The droid nodded. “Acknowledged,” it said, its voice artificial, emotionless.
The woman continued, speaking to the others: “You hear that? You see the droid go into motion, run. Once it’s detonated, return and mop up.”
Ben lowered himself below the lip again.
This was bad, bad, bad. That backpack had to be full of explosives or something worse. And the woman’s instructions meant that if the droid detected Jacen or Ben, it would attack. Ben didn’t think he could take out a YVH combat droid—certainly not before it detected him and blew up.
He let go of the lip of the tunnel.
With the Force, he pressed himself up against the wall of the vertical shaft, the friction of his cloak on the metal slowing his descent. He slid almost noiselessly back down the forty meters he’d so recently ascended. As he approached the last five meters, he let go completely and dropped naturally, going into a tuck-and-roll as he hit, rolling away from the shaft. Now he’d be out of sight if any CorSec soldiers heard something and came to investigate.
He was on his own now. He had to try to complete the mission by himself.
He’d just abandoned his teacher, his cousin. A sort of numbness tried to creep its way into his thoughts. He shook it off and ran back toward the hatch to the repulsor train tunnel.
CORONET, CORELLIA
Jaina stood over the injured and unconscious body of Zekk, her lightsaber lit and in a ready position. Four YVH combat droids, situated behind crashed CorSec airspeeders, poured near-continuous blasterfire at her. She’d been able to deflect it all, mostly into the permacrete or back toward the firers, but none of her return shots had done them any significant damage, and the high intensity of their blasters and rapid rate of fire were tiring her. She needed just a second of rest to compose herself, to sweep the droids away—but they weren’t giving her a second.
Then a line of concentrated blue light leapt into existence behind the most distant of the combat droids. Jaina saw it flash around in an arc, and the combat droid’s head leapt from its shoulders with a shower of sparks.
The other combat droids turned to look. Jaina took the opportunity to move forward, a little to the side, and could see Kolir. The Bothan Jedi, incongruous with her party-girl dress, her lightsaber combat stance, and the blood streaming from the right side of her mouth, kicked the droid’s remains off its feet and turned to face the other three.
Their blasters swung around—but Jaina had had her second of composure. She reached up and tugged at a large cargo drone, causing it to gain a few meters’ altitude, then to plummet—right onto two of the droids. It smashed down on them with the weight of tons of cargo. Jaina had a brief glimpse of plastic and metal crates leaping up from the drone’s cargo bed, spilling out in all directions. Not all the drone’s momentum was down—it continued bouncing forward, and then, its computer programs demonstrating considerable skill, became airborne again. It roared away from the scene at full speed, three-quarters of its cargo still skidding and rolling along the avenue.
Jaina launched herself forward. An impact like that would kill most living beings—might kill an armored bantha—but would only delay YVH droids. In midair, she twisted aside and missed being hit by a veering blue airspeeder; as she did, she saw Kolir advancing on the last upright YVH as it fired at her.
She landed beside a permacrete crater that had been the last location she’d seen one of the combat droids. As she came down, she saw that it wasn’t a crater; it was actually a hole punched through into sewers or storm drains beneath.
The YVH droid came leaping up through it, facing her. Jaina flashed her lightsaber across its midsection as it rose. She felt the considerable drag that the droid’s combat armor caused even to a lightsaber blade, but the blade emerged from the other side and the droid crashed to the pavement in two pieces.
One of those pieces was still dangerous. It rolled over and began to bring its blaster rifle up. Jaina stepped in and whipped her blade across the blaster, cutting it in two just forward of its power supply. Then she drove her blade into the crippled droid’s chest, dragging it around to wreak as much damage to the droid’s internal weapons systemry as possible.
Another YVH head landed a meter from her feet. She chalked that up as a second Kolir kill and spun toward the last known location of the fourth YVH droid.
It was rising, its back to Jaina, so much permacrete adhering to it that it appeared to have a new layer of badly installed armor. Jaina glanced over her shoulder, saw another high-mass drone speeder approaching—this one, she noted with satisfaction, a small tanker carrying a load of uncured duracrete. She yanked at it through the Force and brought it down atop the last droid, driving and grinding it forward along the avenue. She saw pieces of the droid severed by the high-mass attack—here an arm, there a leg. Once it was well past her, there was a muffled boom from beneath the nose of the airspeeder as something in the droid’s chest exploded.
Jaina spared a glance back at Zekk. He lay unmoving where she’d left him. A passerby, a man in green business dress, was kneeling over him, but his intent did not seem hostile; he was reaching for Zekk’s wrist as if to check his pulse.
Jaina turned to Kolir. “What’s your status?”
“My teef are looshe on the right shide.” With each word Kolir spoke, more blood dribbled from her mouth and down her side, but she seemed unconcerned. “There’sh Thann.” She pointed with her lightsaber.
The Falleen Jedi was indeed headed their way, bouncing from speeder to speeder in the oncoming traffic lane like a hyperkinetic insect.
And no wonder—blasterfire from two streaming sources was dogging him. Jaina saw him ducking under one stream, batting the other away, the second stream moving him laterally because he was in midleap when it reached him.
From her position, Jaina could distantly see the second YVH droid. The duracrete tanker she’d used to crush her last opponent was still moving forward, even picking up speed as it tried to get clear of the combat zone. Jaina reached out for the tanker again and diverted it from its intended flight path; it came down hard on top of the combat droid, grinding it to pieces as efficiently as it had the previous one.
Kolir’s tactic was similarly subtle. She picked up the blaster rifle of the first combat droid she’d destroyed. It took her a moment to swing the weapon, oversized and ungainly for her small frame, into line; then, bracing herself, she fired off a stream of blasterfire at the second distant combat droid. Jaina saw at least two of the blasts hit the droid and glance off.
But the assault was enough to get the droid’s attention. It swung around and focused on Kolir. Thann dropped from the sky to land beside it, severing its legs at the knees, then hacked at what remained until it was in too many pieces to do anyone any harm.
Moments later, running at Jedi sprint speed, the Falleen warrior rejoined them at Zekk’s side. The passerby who’d taken Zekk’s pulse took a look at the three lightsabers and stood up and away from Zekk, his hands half raised. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” Jaina said. “You’d better go.”
He turned and was gone. Jaina knelt beside Zekk, put her hand on an unburned portion of his neck. He still felt strong.
“This operation’s a bust,” she said, “and from the looks of things, the guards down by the gates are massing for a run at us. Let’s deprive them of the opportunity to get themselves killed. Thann, secure us some transportation.”
“Done.” The Falleen pulled something from a belt pouch. It was an identicard in the same basic gold tone as CorSec investigators carried, though it correctly identified him as a member of the Jedi order. He stood and walked toward oncoming traffic, one hand holding the identicard high and the other raised to encourage someone to stop.
And as he walked his skin rippled in color from its near orange to a deeper, huskier red.
Jaina’s pulse quickened, and not just from an intellectual recognition of what Thann was doing. The Falleen had tremendous control over emission of pheromones, chemical cues that dictated many types of emotional response, chiefly affecting members of the opposite sex. Thann was using both the Force and his pheromonal powers to attract, confuse, and overwhelm someone in the oncoming traffic lane, probably also using the Force to make his identicard look like something of local significance …
In her peripheral vision, Jaina saw Kolir sway. The Bothan Jedi reached out and Jaina caught her hand, steadying her. “He shouldn’t do that while I’m injured,” Kolir said.
A red groundspeeder, its driver a dark-haired human female wearing red-tinted racing goggles, pulled up beside Thann. Her features, angular and distinct, relaxed into a blank lack of expression. “Is there a problem, Officer?” she asked.
Thann’s voice was as smooth as that of an actor in a holodrama. “Two of my fellow officers are hurt,” he said. “We need to get them to medical care and to chase some bad guys. Can we borrow your speeder?”
“You can borrow my speeder,” she said.
Thann waved Jaina and Kolir forward. “You’d better hop out,” he told the driver. “This is going to be dangerous.”
“I’ll hop out.” The driver exited the speeder on the sidewalk side.
“And don’t tell anyone who you are or the details of your speeder. They’re all spies trying to catch us,” Thann said.
“I won’t tell anyone.”
Jaina exerted herself and Zekk floated up a meter into the air. In moments she had him laid out faceup in the backseat, his head in her lap, while Thann and Kolir took the front.
Thann blew a kiss to the dazed driver, then set the speeder into motion, fearlessly merging with traffic. “Control acknowledged my transmission,” he said. “But Team Tauntaun didn’t. I suspect they ran into a trap.”
“Right.” Jaina rapped her knuckles against the speeder’s side. Nothing had gone right, and now the three Jedi of Team Tauntaun—Tahiri Veila, Doran Tainer, and Tiu Zax—were incommunicado.
“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” Kolir said.
Thann spared her a glance. “Do what?”
“Use Jedi mind tricksh and pheromonesh at the shame time. Not fair.”
Thann shrugged. “I should perhaps use the mind tricks alone and maybe fail?”
“Well, no.”
Thann changed the subject. “How’s Zekk?”
Zekk said, “Ow.” His eyes opened.
“Better,” Jaina said.