Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [77]
The shaft the two tubes occupied was sometimes tight-packed with machinery or engineering supports, sometimes open. The first time it opened, Jacen looked up and could see Thrackan, a hundred meters or more above him, in his own tube.
Thrackan’s tube twisted, a right-angled turn, and suddenly he was headed away. The turn would have pulped a human under ordinary circumstances. Gravitics, Jacen told himself. Only gravity manipulation could have allowed Thrackan to survive.
Jacen reached the same altitude. His tube turned the opposite direction. He felt his stomach lurch, and suddenly he was hurtling away from his enemy—away from the man he desperately needed to kill.
He howled, a noise of anger and distress he could barely hear over the wind noise whipping along the tube’s interior. Then he deactivated his lightsaber, clipped it to his belt, and tucked Thrackan’s blaster into a pouch.
It was time to be calm, time to get off this station, time to find out Ben’s status.
Thrackan was right. Jacen had failed. Not in his intended mission—but in his greater responsibility.
chapter sixteen
CORONET, CORELLIA
“On the datapad, it’s See See See Thirty-nine,” Doran shouted forward from the passenger compartment.
In the copilot’s seat, Zekk twisted uncomfortably and shouted back, “I’m telling you, the signs read WEDGE ANTILLES BOULEVARD.”
“Be quiet,” Jaina snapped from the pilot’s seat. “It’s got to be the same route. Cities rename their streets all the time.”
Their vehicle—a standard Lambda-class shuttle, its wings locked in the down position for flight—cruised down the center of the Coronet boulevard. Its presence was incongruous. Though no more massive than some cargo-carrying groundspeeders moving along the same avenue, it protruded in ways no groundspeeder did, its flight wings sticking out of the lane on both sides, its upper stabilizer rising well above the containment zone indicated for the traffic lane. Nor was it inconspicuous in any other way—colored the bright tan of desert sands, with a Corellian sand panther, twisting and lashing out, painted along each side, it was even more highly decorated than most Corellian personal vehicles.
Zekk twisted to face forward again. “This seat is too small for me—”
“It’s too small for anyone,” Jaina said. “I think it’s built for a child.”
“And it smells like fur.”
Jaina glanced over. “Yes, there’s fur coming off it and sticking to your clothes. Maybe a Bothan?”
Zekk leaned back to sniff at the seat top. “Doesn’t smell like a Bothan.”
“We don’t all shmell alike!” Kolir’s outraged shout floated up from the passenger compartment. “How do these rumorsh get shtarted?”
“Rest your mouth, you’re injured,” Jaina called back.
A groundspeeder rose from a lower lane and settled into place in front of the shuttle’s bow, close enough that its proximity alarm sounded—precisely what the irritated Corellian pilot ahead intended. Jaina growled. All around, normal groundspeeder traffic was reacting negatively to the inappropriate presence of the shuttle in their traffic lane. They crowded the shuttle from behind, decelerated ahead to force Jaina to slow down, settled into place immediately above the shuttle’s wings to aggravate her. “Rudest pilots in the universe,” she said. “Where’s Uncle Luke?”
“Soon, soon,” Thann soothed from the main compartment.
A new sound cut through the shuttle’s hull—the warbling alarm of a CorSec groundspeeder. Sighing, Jaina checked her sensor board and found the view showing the vehicle. It was right behind the shuttle, its flashers going, its pilot waving her to descend. Doubtless the pilot was also broadcasting a warning, but the shuttle’s communications gear was set to Hardpoint Squadron and operation frequencies.
“Are we on Corellia yet?” Zekk asked.
“First chance, I’m going to space you,” Jaina said.
They reached a point where Wedge Antilles Boulevard crossed under an even broader avenue, listed