Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (58 page)

Testan stroked his lustrous black beard, the gesture a failed attempt to conceal the
man’s nervousness. Jacen felt, rather than saw, Ben move up on the other side of Testan.

“You can see,” Testan said, “ar workars enjoy very fan conditions.”

Ben cleared his throat. “He says their workers enjoy very fine conditions.”

Jacen nodded absently. He understood Testan’s words, and it had taken him little time
to learn and understand the Adumari accent, but this was another act, a ploy to keep
the Adumari off-balance. He leaned forward to give the manufacturing floor below his
full attention.

The room was large enough to act as a hangar and maintenance bay for four full squadrons
of X-wing snubfighters. Tall duracrete partitions divided the space into eight lanes,
each of which enclosed an assembly line; materials entered through small portals in
the wall to the left, rolled along on luminous white conveyor belts, and eventually
exited through portals on the far right. Laborers in gray jumpsuits flanked the belts
and worked on the materials as they passed.

On the nearest belt, immediately below Jacen, the materials being worked on appeared
to be compact visual sensor assemblies. The conveyor belt brought in eight such units
and stopped. Moving quickly, the laborers plugged small cables into the units and
turned to look into monitors, which showed black-and-white images of jumpsuited waists
and worker hands. The workers turned the units this way and that, confirming that
the sensors were properly calibrated.

One monitor never lit up with a view from the sensor. The worker on that unit unplugged
it and set it on a table running parallel to the conveyor belt. A moment later, the
other workers on this section unplugged their sensor units and the conveyor belt jerked
into motion again, carrying the remaining seven units to the next station.

One lane over, the conveyor belt remained in constant motion, carrying sensor unit
housings along. The workers on that belt, fewer in number than the sensor testers,
reached out occasionally to turn a housing, to look inside, to examine the exterior
for cracks or warping. Some workers, distributed at intervals along the line, rapped
each housing with a small rubber-headed hammer. Jacen assumed they were listening
for a musical tone he could not possibly hear at this distance over the roar of noise
from the floor.

Another lane away from him, the workers were clad not in jumpsuits but in full-coverage
hazardous materials suits of a lighter and more reflective gray than the usual worker
outfit. Their conveyor belt carried white plates bearing irregular balls the size
of a human head but a nearly luminous
green. The belt stopped as each set of eight such balls entered the lane, giving the
workers time to plunge needlelike sensors into each ball. They, too, checked monitors
for a few seconds before withdrawing the needles to allow the balls to continue on.
Jacen knew that poisonous green—it was the color of the high explosive Adumari manufacturers
used to fabricate the concussion missiles they exported.

While Jacen made his initial survey, Ben kept their guide occupied. “Do you wax your
beard?” he asked.

“I do not.”

“It just seems very shiny. Do you oil it?”

Testan’s voice was a little more irritated in tone. “I do not oil it. I condition
it. And I brush it.”

“Do you brush it with butter?”

Jacen finally looked to the right, past Testan and at his cousin. Ben was thirteen
standard years of age, not tall but well muscled, with a fine-featured freckled face
under a mass of flame-red hair. Ben turned, his face impassive, to look at Jacen,
then said, “The Jedi Knight acknowledges that this factory seems to meet the minimum,
the absolute minimum, required safety and comfort standards of a Galactic Alliance
military contractor.”

Jacen nodded. The nod meant
Good improvisation
. He was exerting no Force skill to communicate words to Ben; Ben’s role was to pretend
to act as his mentor’s translator, when his actual function was to convince the locals
that adult Jedi were even more aloof and mysterious than they had thought.

“No, no, no.” Testan drew a sleeve over his brow, dabbing away a little perspiration.
“We are wall above mini-mam standards. Those duracrete barriars? They will vent any
explosive farce upward, saving the majority of workars in case of calamity. Workar
shifts are only two-fifths the day in length, unlike the old days.”

Ben repeated Testan’s words, and Jacen shrugged.

Ben imitated his motion. The gesture caused his own Jedi robe to gape open, revealing
the lightsaber hanging from his belt.

Testan glanced at it, then looked back at Jacen, clearly worried. “Your apprentice—”
Unsure, he looked to Ben again. “You are very young, are you not, to be wearing such
a weapon?”

Ben gave him a blank look. “It’s a practice lightsaber.”

“Ah.” Testan nodded as though he understood.

And there it was. Perhaps it was just the thought of a thirteen-year-old with a deadly
cutting implement at hand, but Testan’s defenses slipped enough that the worry began
to pour through.

It was like the game in which children are told, “For the next hour,
do not think about banthas
.” Try as they might, they would, within minutes or even seconds, think about a bantha.

Testan’s control finally gave way and he thought about the banthas—or, rather, a place
he wasn’t supposed to go, even to think about. Jacen could feel Testan try to clamp
down on the thought. Something in the increased potency of that worry told Jacen that
they must be nearer to the source of his concern than during previous parts of their
factory tour.

When Testan turned back, Jacen looked directly at him and said, “There is something
here. Something wrong.” They were the first words he’d spoken in Testan’s presence.

Testan shook his head. “No. Evrything is fan.”

Jacen looked past him, toward the wall to the far right of the chamber. It was gray
and regular, a series of metal panels each the height of a man and twice as wide stacked
like bricks. He began a slow, deliberate scrutiny, traversing right to left. His gaze
swept the walls, the assembly lines, the elevated observation chamber directly opposite
the turbolifts by which they had entered, and continued along the wall to the left.

As his attention reached the middle of the left wall, along the observation balcony,
he felt another pulse of worry from Testan. Ben cleared his throat, a signal; the
boy, though nowhere near as sensitive in the Force as Jacen, had gotten the same feeling.

Jacen set off along the balcony in that direction. This time the ringing of his boots
and billowing of his cloak were a side effect of his speed rather than an act.

“You wish to see the observation chambar?” Testan hurried to keep up. His anxiety
was growing, and there was something within it, like a shiny stone at the bottom of
a murky pond.

Jacen reached into that pond to draw out the prize within.

It was a memory of a door. It was broad and gray, closing from above as men and women—in
dark blue jumpsuits, the outfits of supervisors in this facility—scurried out ahead
of its closing. When it settled in place, it was identical to the wall panels Jacen
saw ahead of him in the here and now.

Jacen glanced over his shoulder at Testan. “Your thoughts betray you.”

Testan paled. “No, there is nothing to betray.”

Jacen rounded the observation balcony corner, took a few more steps, and skidded to
a halt in front of one of the wall sections.

It was here. He knew because he could feel something beyond.

Conflict. He himself was there, fighting. So was Ben. It was a faint glimpse of the
future, and he and his apprentice would be in peril beyond.

He jerked his head toward the wall.

Ben brought out his lightsaber and switched it on. With a
snap-hiss
sound, its blue blade of coherent energy extended to full length.

Ben plunged the blade into the wall panel and began to drag it around in a large circle.

Testan, his voice pained, said, “He told us it was a practice weapon.”

Jacen gave him an innocent look. “It’s true from a certain point of view. He does
practice with it.” In his nervousness, Testan didn’t seem to notice that Jacen was
understanding him clearly now.

Ben completed his circle and gave the meter-and-a-half-high section he’d outlined
a little kick. It fell away into a well-lit chamber, clanging on the floor beyond;
the edges still glowed with the heat the lightsaber had poured into them.

Ben stepped through. Jacen ducked to follow. He heard Testan muttering—doubtless an
alert into a comlink. Jacen didn’t bother to interfere. They’d just been within clear
sight of hundreds of workers and the observation chamber. Dealing with Testan wouldn’t
keep the alarm from being broadcast.

The room beyond Ben’s improvised doorway was actually a corridor, four meters wide
and eight high, every surface made up of the same dull gray metal rectangles found
in the outer chamber, greenish white light pouring from the luminous ceiling. To the
left, the corridor ended after a few meters, and that end was heavily packed with
tall plasteel transport containers. They were marked
DANGER, DO NOT DROP
, and
DAMMANT KILLER MODEL 16, QUANTITY 24
.

To the right, the corridor extended another forty meters and then opened up; the rail
and drop-off at the end suggested that it opened onto another observation balcony
above another fabrication chamber.

Now making the turn from the balcony into the corridor and running toward them were
half a dozen troops armed with blaster rifles. Their orange jumpsuits were reminiscent
of X-wing pilot uniforms, but the green carapace armor over their lower legs, torsos,
lower arms, and heads was more like stormtrooper speeder bike armor painted the wrong
color.

And then behind the first six troops came another six, and then another eight …

Jacen brought his lightsaber out and snapped it into life; the incandescent green
of his blade was reflected as highlights against the walls and the armor of the oncoming
troops. “Stay behind me,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Ben’s sigh was audible, and Jacen grinned.

The foremost trooper, who bore gold bars on his helmet and wrists, shouted, his voice
mechanically amplified: “Stop whar you are! This saction is restricted!”

Jacen moved forward at a walk. He rotated his wrist, moving his lightsaber blade around
in front of him in a pattern vaguely reminiscent of butterfly wings. He shouted back,
“Could you speak up? I’m a little deaf.”

Ben snickered. “Good one.”

“You may not entar this saction!”

They were now twenty meters from the ranks of troopers ahead.

Jacen continued twirling his blade in a practice form. “Fewer people will be hurt
if you just get out of my way.” It was a sort of ritual thing to say. Massed enemy
forces almost never backed down, despite the reputation of the Jedi—a reputation that
became more widespread, more supernatural, with each year the Jedi prospered under
Luke Skywalker’s leadership.

The phrase was ritual in another way, too. Once upon a time, Jacen would have felt
tragedy surround him when his actions resulted in the deaths of common soldiers, common
guards. But over time he’d lost that sense. There was a wearying inevitability to
leaders sending their troops to die against more powerful enemies. It had been happening
as long as there were violent leaders and obedient followers. In death, these people
became one with the Force, and when Jacen had accepted that fact, his sense of tragedy
had largely evaporated.

He took another two steps and the trooper commander called, “Fire!”

The troopers began firing. Jacen gave himself over to the Force, to his awareness
of his surroundings, to his sudden oneness with the men and women trying to kill him.

He simply ignored most of the blaster bolts. When he felt them angling in toward him,
he twirled his lightsaber blade in line and batted them away, usually back toward
the crowd of troopers. In the first few seconds of their assault,
four troopers fell to blasts launched by their friends. The smell of burned flesh
began to fill the corridor.

Jacen felt danger from behind; felt Ben react to it. Jacen didn’t shift his attention;
he continued his march forward. He’d prefer to be able to protect the inexperienced
youth, but the boy was good at blaster defense practice. Hard as it was to trust a
Jedi whose skills were just developing, he had to. To teach, to learn, he had to trust.

Jacen intercepted the next blaster shot that came his way and batted it toward the
trooper commander. It struck the man in the helmet and caromed off, burning out against
the ceiling; a portion four meters square of the ceiling’s illumination winked out,
darkening the corridor. The commander fell. The shot was probably not fatal—protected
by his helmet, the man would have forehead and scalp burns, probably a concussion,
but he was unlikely to die.

The strategy had its desired effect. The troopers saw their commander fall. They continued
firing but also exchanged looks. Jacen never broke pace, and a trooper with silver
stripes on his helmet called “Back, back.” In good order, the troopers began a withdrawal.

Behind him, Jacen heard more blasterfire and the distinctive
zap
of a lightsaber blade intercepting it, deflecting it. Within the flow of the Force,
Jacen felt a shot coming in toward his back, felt it being slapped aside, saw and
felt it as it hit the wall to his right. The heat from the shot warmed his right shoulder.

But the defenders continued their retreat, and soon the last of them was around the
corner. Jacen’s path to the railing was clear. He strode up to it.

Over the rail, a dozen meters down, was another assembly-line pit, where line after
line of munitions components was being assembled—though at the moment all the lines
were stopped, their anonymous jumpsuited workers staring up at Jacen.