Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [9]
The pilot looked at the Jedi, obviously expecting to see limbless torsos or mere gouts of blood remaining. She had just enough time to register alarm before Ben plunged his lightsaber blade into the side of the canopy. As he dug around, trying to find the release catch or hinges, the blade almost grazed the woman’s thigh.
She panicked. That was the only explanation Jacen could come up with. She wrenched her control yoke off to the side, at an unnatural angle, and the canopy suddenly blew clear, shooting up into the sea of comm cables above, nearly knocking Ben clear as it went.
An instant later, the pilot’s seat ignited and shot her straight up. Into the cables. Half blinded by the ejection seat’s propulsion, Jacen still saw her hit the first set of cables.
They held. She didn’t. She and her ejection seat separated into two pieces, each headed a different direction. Jacen saw the upper half of her body hit yet another cable, and then her remains were out of sight behind them.
Jacen glanced ahead. The pilotless fighter was rising. In another few seconds, it would hit the cable layer again, this time at an angle that would keep it within that layer for long seconds or even minutes. “Let’s go,” he said.
Ben nodded, deactivated his lightsaber, and dropped clear. Jacen followed suit.
He saw Ben drop into the back of a groundspeeder, bounce out of it as though it were a trampoline, angle over to bounce onto one end of a dinner table on a streetside second-story balcony—the spray of food dishes catapulting off the table was quite impressive—and then drop down to street level. Jacen contented himself with one bounce from a heavy transport speeder and a tuck-and-roll as he reached the sidewalk beside Ben. Adumari pedestrians gave the two Jedi curious looks but seemed unalarmed. Most of them were watching the fighter plow through the cables overhead.
Ben had a well-cooked leg of some avian in one hand. He’d already taken a bite out of it and was chewing furiously.
“What, don’t you get enough Jedi Temple food to eat?” Jacen commented.
Ben shook his head. “What’s next?”
“Transmit.”
“Don’t you want to do that? You’re the Jedi Knight.”
“I’m not the one who needs to learn how to do it.” Jacen turned and led the way through the sidewalk traffic. If his bearings were correct, this direction would lead them to the hangars where his shuttle waited.
With a long-suffering sigh, Ben discarded his improvised meal and pulled the little holocam, a datapad, and a comlink from pouches on his belt. Awkwardly, handling three items with two not-fully-grown hands, he began manipulating controls and keyboards, entering commands. “All right. The data package is being compressed and encrypted.”
“While it’s doing that, check to see if the shuttle’s holocomm is still live. Remotely activate it and bounce a comm echo off the old lunar New Republic station.”
“Yes, sir.” This time, Ben didn’t sound as put-upon. This was more of a challenge, something he’d never done before on his own authority. He typed commands into his datapad, relayed them through the comlink. “Holocomm is…live.”
Kilometers away, the communications system aboard Jacen’s shuttle—a full-fledged holocomm unit, capable of transmitting through hyperspace and thus communicating faster than light—would have just awakened from its power-down status.
“Querying automated comm systems on Relay Station ADU-One-One-Zero-Four through to Coruscant,” the boy said. His voice, though no deeper, sounded more confident, more mature when he was engrossed in a task like this. “Successful echo.” Another message popped up on his datapad. “Package encrypted.”
“Transmit it,” Jacen said. He kept a close eye on the pedestrian traffic, but he didn’t anticipate any problems at this point. It would be some time before the operators of the Dammant Killers firm figured out where the Jedi were. “Await confirmation of reception. Request confirmation of decryption.”
“Yes, sir.