“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 mattegray 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.
“Are you okay, Ben?”
Ben stepped forward. He hadn’t said a word. He clutched his lightsaber hilt in one hand, and Jacen sensed he was agitated rather than excited. He had changed irrevocably from a boy who found missions an adventure to a young man who had a healthy degree of fear in him.
“I’m fine, Jacen.”
“Comlink working?”
Ben fumbled with his right ear. “Do I really have to wear it?”
“You need to be able to hear what’s going on between squads. You can’t do that using the Force.” Sometimes the non-Jedi solution to a problem was actually the easiest. “I’m not even sure I can handle that much voice traffic yet.”
Jacen turned to the five squads of soldiers of 967 Commando in the troop bay, elite shock troopers whose specialty was siege busting and personnel retrieval, all of them handpicked because they were Coruscant-born and -bred, and human, with no possibility of secret sympathies with other worlds. Among them were volunteers from the CSF’s Anti-Terrorist Unit, selected and vouched for by Shevu. They would be loyal. Jacen had come to value loyalty very highly lately.
He couldn’t see their faces behind their riot visors and sealed black helmets. But they exuded no more than a sense of concentration and a little apprehension of the level that was normal for troops going into battle. They didn’t know exactly what lay behind the doors of the Corellian quarter, but they knew they ran the risk of armed resistance and even explosives.
On the other side of the Corellian district, Shevu stood by with more squads, ready to storm buildings to search, subdue, and arrest. At the ends of the walkways, more soldiers of 967 Commando slipped into position and trained rifles on doors, ready to stop anyone escaping. The sniper troops had moved into positions on the rooftops around the block.
Jacen opened the comlink looped over his ear. “Squad commanders … no discharge of weapons unless you’re fired upon first.”
Shevu’s voice cut in. “Can I suggest we update that to ‘unless we perceive a real and immediate threat,’ sir? Takes account of grenades and other weapons.”
I’m thinking like a pilot, like a Jedi, not like an infantry officer. “Good idea, Captain. Revise that.”
There was a faint murmur on the net as if troops had silenced their links for a moment and then opened them again. They’d exchanged comments. They might have said that their commander was an idiot for not establishing better rules of engagement from the start of the mission planning, but it felt more like approval that he could listen to advice. The Force might not have been useful for communicating routine detail, but it was perfect for discerning mood.
Jacen felt it was time to roll. Most would be asleep: 0400 was a good time to disorient humans and minimize resistance. Shevu had shown him medical data to confirm this but pointed out that it never, ever worked on Wookiees.
“Stand by,” said Jacen.
Ben’s lightsaber sprang into life, the blue light illuminating the troop bay. The 967’s sergeant crackled audibly as his armor systems created feedback in the assault vessel’s public address system. He adjusted something on the side of his helmet; silence descended.
Around two thousand people lived in this block of buildings, and Jacen had five hundred troops deployed: not a good ratio, but it was enough to get the job done. The assault ship hovered level with the walkway, and he leapt down from the bay, followed by the 967, who spread immediately to stack either side of doorways. Above them, Jacen could feel the adrenaline-fueled presence of roof teams and snipers.
There was a second of profound stillness like the pause of a pendulum before it swung back again.
“Go go go!” said Jacen.
The assault
ships swung into the skylanes on either side of the block, and their arrays of two-hundred-million-lumen spotlamps turned the area into instant, blinding daylight. The 967 sergeant behind him relayed his voice via the assault ship.
“This is Coruscant national security. Stay where you are. I repeat, stay where you are.” Jacen felt the vibration in his teeth and sinuses. The canyon of walls on either side concentrated the sound. “Officers will be entering buildings. Please cooperate. Be ready to show your identity passes.”
One or two doors had already opened and some people stood on balconies in bathrobes, hands shielding their eyes against the ferocious white spotlamps. All along the walkways, there was a chaos of yelled commands and hammering on doors. There was no open area to assemble detainees to sort the Corellians from other passport holders who happened to be on the block, so commandos were going into the buildings and assessing the occupants where they stood, or taking them outside to stand against walls while their homes were swept for what had now simply become loosely termed as “threats.”
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 holo-recorder 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.
“Does that mean Dad will see what’s happening?”
“I believe so,” said Jacen.
“Oh.”
“The only approval you need in your life is your own, Ben. Are you ashamed of anything you’ve done?”
Ben paused, lips parted, eyes slightly defocused. He was thinking about something very hard. “Only of things I haven’t done.”
“Such as?”
“Not telling you about someone who tried to shoot a CSF officer.”
Jacen could tell from Ben’s voice that there was a lot more to it than that. He noted it mentally. “We can talk about that later. Now go find a squad that needs assistance.”
Ben raced off still clutching his lightsaber, the blue blade leaving a ghost image as he moved. Across the chasm of the skylane, Jacen could see the telltale flash of light from holo-recorders as the neighbors opposite recorded the raid for posterity, and—he had no doubt—for HNE.
He considered sending every holocam plummeting hundreds of meters to the ground with a multiple Force grab, but then decided he had to accept scrutiny. If you’re not prepared to do something in public, don’t do it at all.
And the raid was as much a statement of intent to others as it was to root out terrorists. It had to be seen to be done.
Jacen made a point of not shutting down his lightsaber. Even under the savage glare of the spotlamps, it was another green beacon, another symbol of Jedi involvement in something most Coruscanti hadn’t seen in two generations. This is what Jedi do, citizens. We act on your behalf. We don’t just sit around and debate in our lovely new Temple that you paid for.
Ben had an earnest and brief conversation with a squad sergeant and then stood back to wrench apart another set of doors using the Force. The light within streamed out dramatically, a hemorrhage of yellow light in a dark space between two pools of blue-white spotlight. Force-breaching caused a lot less damage than a detonite charge. Ben stood back to let the troops enter.
Jacen activated his secure comlink channel. “Shevu, how are we doing?”
“No fatalities so far, sir.” Bangs and crashes of something heavy being handled interrupted the captain. “Still more than fifteen hundred individuals to process, but the resistant targe
ts have been neutralized and the rest appear to be compliant.”
Jacen translated mentally: We kicked down a few doors and the rest have given up. “Well done, Captain.”
The sight of lightsabers being wielded in a roundup of Corellians would not play well to the Jedi council, Jacen suspected.
It was just the beginning. For a tempting moment he wondered how his grandfather had felt in the transition to becoming loathed, but to Force-walk into time to find out would have meant first finding where that had taken place, and he didn’t know.
Jacen also didn’t know if he could face more revelations like the last one yet. But pain always had to be embraced—sooner or later.
FLEET SURPLUS DISPOSAL LOT, GALACTIC CITY, CORUSCANT.
“Captain Solo, are you sure we can’t accompany you back to Corellia?”
C-3PO seemed reluctant to surrender the case of clothes to Han, as if hanging on to the handle would ensure that Han took him, too.
“Yeah, nobody would ever notice a golden droid. You’d be invisible.” Han didn’t like the smell of the small shuttle he’d bought from the government disposal lot. It was alien: he hadn’t realized how much of that small detail of the Falcon was embedded in his sense of comfort. He flicked through the controls on the console and despaired at the maximum velocity shown on the readout. “Stay here. Besides, you and Artoo can keep an eye on Jaina for us.”
“Han …” Leia’s voice drifted from the small cargo bay.
“Honey, nobody has protocol droids like him any longer. He’d be a—”
“Han, you need to see this.”
Han thought she’d found some mechanical fault he hadn’t spotted when he handed over the credits. He made his way back aft to see her staring transfixed at the holoscreen in one of the coffin-sized cabins.
“Another bomb?” he asked. It was a cramped space; he could hardly see the screen without squeezing past her and pressing his back against the aft bulkhead.