Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [83]
He drew back a few more centimeters to give her space. He was young, early thirties perhaps, decent-looking. “They haven’t admitted it, of course, the Jedi Masters, to the rank and file, but we know.”
She narrowed her eyes, looking him over. “What exactly do you know—hey, I recognize you, don’t I?”
“Yes.”
“You’re Valin Horn. Jedi Knight. Still being sought by the authorities after being broken out of prison. Along with your sister.”
Valin jerked his head casually to his right. The woman glanced that way. Standing beside Valin was Jysella Horn, her cloak hood also up, her expression dispassionate as she watched the Senate Building.
“I’m Kandra Nilitz, Landing Zone NewsNet.”
Valin bowed. “How do you do?”
“You can confirm that the Jedi have invaded the Senate? Hold on, let us get the holocam set up—”
Valin shook his head. “Not here. But if you can meet our terms, we’ll give you an exclusive. Facts nobody else knows.”
Kandra gave him a suspicious look. “What sort of terms?”
“Not wealth. Can you get hold of a hyperdrive-equipped transport or shuttle? And can you scan us for implanted transmitters? If you can, and if you can get the two of us up to where Fireborn blew up, we’ll give you a story no one else is getting.”
Kandra’s mind raced. “I … can. We have to get back to the studio.”
“We must go now, before the fa—before the Jedi finish their task inside.”
Kandra signaled her holocam operator, and the two of them led the Horns through the crowd. Kandra’s heart raced. This, perhaps, could propel her from location reporting of events picked up on comm scanners to anchor work with a real newsnet.
It was just that there was something odd in the manner of the Horn Jedi, something eerie.
Jaina’s lightsaber finished traversing a circle in the dark durasteel blast door. She withdrew the blade and held the weapon away from the cut. She gestured with her free hand. The durasteel plug flew away from her, shooting into the section of corridor the doors had been blocking.
Behind her, Saba and Corran stood side by side, lightsabers lit, casually deflecting blaster bolts fired by the security troopers thirty meters back along the corridor.
Jaina peered through the hole she’d made. “All clear this way.”
Saba glanced for a fraction of a second over her shoulder at Jaina, then returned her attention to the incoming bolts. “Get to the turboliftz. Give us accesz. We will hold here until that is done.”
Jaina dived through the hole, rolled to her feet, and ran an additional twenty meters to the nearest set of turbolift doors. There were no people in this curved section of corridor; if there had been any, the sight of her lightsaber blade cutting its way through the doors had convinced them to flee.
She experimentally tapped the turbolift’s access button, but the status display overhead gave no indication that it had accepted the command. Of course it hadn’t. Security would have closed down all turbolifts except to those with priority access. But it sometimes paid to try the simple approaches. And Bandy and Seha might be able to turn turbolift control over to the Jedi, but that wasn’t their top priority; it might happen too late to be useful here.
She popped the protective hatch free from the lift’s control panel and patched in a datapad. It was an ordinary ’pad, but the program running on this one sent queries to the Jedi command center at the false Kuati offices, requesting data from the hardware modules Octa, Kyp, and others had piggybacked into the building’s security systems. If this worked, it would be faster and less destructive than cutting another hole—
The turbolift door slid open. A split second later a lift car roared past, hurtling by on an upward course, the wind displaced by its passage nearly blowing Jaina over. Its inner doors were closed, so there was no split-second view of surprised lift occupants to see.
She yanked the datapad free. “Ready