Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [73]
Luke knew his face, but couldn’t place it, couldn’t call up that memory. In fact, it was easier not to think right now.
When Luke’s eyes met his, the man smiled. It was the smile of a child suddenly captivated with the wonders of pulling legs off insects.
Luke found he could sense the man in the Force—could do so without even reaching out for him. The man was a glowing light in the Force, a beacon in the midst of darkness. A beacon of darkness … but that suddenly didn’t matter much.
Luke felt his breath go out of him. It was as though the roof had slowly collapsed and deposited two tons of duracrete on his torso while he was distracted.
He glanced over at Face and Bhindi. They had the terminal running; the glow from its screen colored their faces blue. Bhindi removed a datacard from its slot in the terminal and made a noise of satisfaction. They were both utterly unaware of what Luke was seeing, feeling.
Luke knew that, when he turned his attention back to the distant viewport, the pale man would be gone; it was among the oldest tools in the bag of tricks of the makers of supernatural holodramas. But when he looked through the macrobinoculars again, the man was still there, motionless.
Luke unlatched the viewport’s locks. All he had to do was step out on the walkway that now stretched between this building and the other. He could walk right up to this man and begin asking questions. But some faint stirring of alarm—his pilot’s ability to glimpse and memorize topographical details—shook him out of the fog that had overcome his thinking.
There was no walkway before him. One step through this viewport and he’d plummet to his death.
The man’s grin grew wider. Then he sidestepped and disappeared from sight.
Luke felt the great weight lift from him. He could breathe again. “Are you two done here?” he asked.
Face looked up, frowning. “Luke, are you all right?”
“No. Trouble’s coming. Let’s go.”
Bhindi rose. “If trouble’s coming, we’re done here.”
Luke, Face, and Bhindi crouched in a crater that had been one corner of a skyscraper—the same skyscraper in which, minutes before, the pale man had stood. They were about twenty stories above the window the figure had occupied, and all three had macrobinoculars trained on the viewport Luke had, minutes before, tried to open.
The room beyond the viewport was filled with people. They wore tatters. Some wore nothing but dried mud and blood. There was a light in their eyes that suggested they were on stimulants and had been for days or weeks. They rampaged through the Starfighter Command office, destroying every piece of furniture, smashing every wall, a riot whose violence was directed at everything and nothing.
“What are they?” Bhindi asked. “They’re not your run-of-the-mill survivors.”
“Some of Yassat’s cannibals, I expect,” Face said. “You felt them coming, Luke?”
“Something like that,” Luke said. “C’mon, let’s go down.”
They found the chamber in which Luke had seen the pale man. It had once been the main chamber of a hotel suite, and possibly not occupied since Coruscant fell. The beds were still made. Floor-to-ceiling viewports offered a good view of Coruscant’s sky—if one looked high enough, anyway.
Luke could feel it here, a twinge in the Force, the same one he’d been pursuing ever since he came to Coruscant. But that was not what held his attention.
It was the viewports. He was sure from their dimensions that one of these was the viewport in front of which the pale man had been standing.
He’d filled it, from floor to the top of the viewport frame. And these viewports were three meters tall.
“You’re tired,” Mara said. “And this makes you more susceptible to Force powers. He meddled with you, certainly … but once you get some sleep you’ll be more fit to face