Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 04_ Exile - Aaron Allston [62]
Ben knew what he could do. He drifted closer.
When the driver was finished and three pieces of luggage rested on the walkway, the passenger handed him one of the institutional cards. At that moment, Ben flicked a finger and exerted himself through the Force. One of the other cards, the lesser ones, leapt free of the portfolio and fluttered to the street.
Ben edged closer and pinned the card to the ground with his mental exertion. A moment later, the driver handed the other card back to the passenger, entered the driver’s compartment, and accelerated away. The passenger pocketed his portfolio, clumsily picked up the luggage, and moved on into the Crossroutes building.
Ben moved over beside the street, knelt as if to fiddle with his boot, and picked up the card.
And that was it. He was a thief, but he’d only taken a little bit of what the man possessed and had hurt no one. He’d made the wrong as small as he possibly could.
Half an hour later, well fed on caf and kruffy potpie, which turned out to be savory fowl meat, vegetables, and gravy in a thick pastry shell, he felt ready to put his troubles behind him and get the mission under way.
A few minutes with his datapad communicating with a public data terminal gave him some of the information he needed.
Tendrando Arms leased the 212th through 215th floors. That suggested to Ben that the floor he wanted, 215, was where the most important employees had their offices. His mother had told him on numerous occasions that one way people liked to feel important was by sitting on top of their subordinates, and the practical way to do this was to have their offices on upper floors.
Since the building had its decorative planetary rings every five stories, starting with the sixth story, then 215 had to be just beneath one of those rings. Ben searched the building directory and found that Lyster Innovations leased the next three floors, 216 through 218. Lyster Innovations’ public records indicated that the firm employed quality specialists and “idea generators” who would visit other companies and tell them how to do their jobs better. Ben frowned over that, dubious, but decided that descending from 216 might be the easiest way to get onto 215 unobserved.
He occupied himself for another hour researching Tendrando Arms’ local office and Lyster Innovations, then spent the rest of the morning and some of the afternoon buying things: food and bottled liquids that would not rapidly deteriorate, twenty meters of thin, pliant, strong cable, basic mechanical tools, a box of sweets, a length of red ribbon, and a large backpack. The last of the credits on the card he’d stolen went to buying himself a hot midday meal.
As the workday grew late and workers began streaming out of the Crossroutes building in anticipation of shift change, Ben entered the building, backpack on his shoulders and ribbon-wrapped box of sweets in his hands, and took the turbolift up to 216.
The doors opened into a jungle. Ben stared at healthy trees growing up out of dark, moist-looking soil, smelled the warm, heavy air of a tropical rain forest, saw a distant solar light through the trees that was a whiter hue than Almania’s sun. Somewhere in the distance, water splashed. There was no sound of industry, of harassed workers, of overtaxed terminals.
He stepped out onto the jungle floor, and the turbolift doors closed behind him. He turned to look at them and saw only a sheer rock face. It was a perfect illusion.
When he tried to examine it through the Force, he could