#lon shevu

[forcesung]

“Ben, that’s it, come on—” Shevu jerked on his collar, pulling him bodily toward the doors at the south end of the terminal. A little bit of Ben was calculating where they would be placing troops and what their tactics would be for stopping Lekauf from taking off. If Lekauf got a move on, he could be out of orbit and jumping to lightspeed before whatever excuse Vulpter had for a fleet could get airborne.

But the tourer sat on the permacrete, silent, no haze of heat exhaust venting from its jets. He could see it through the transparisteel walls as he moved toward escape, and couldn’t feel relief.

It dawned on Ben that Lekauf wasn’t going anywhere.

Maybe the thing had failed to start.

Oh no, no, no…

The drive hadn’t stalled on him. Ben could feel Lekauf now—terrified, oddly triumphant, and with a strange sense of peace despite the dread. It was the strangest combination Ben had ever sensed in the Force.

“What’s he doing, sir? How’s he getting out?”

Shevu kept swallowing. Ben saw the lump in his throat bob up and down. “Has to be done.”

“What has to be done?”

“A good cover story.”

“I don’t—”

“Ben, move it. Now.” Shevu grabbed his arm so hard that it hurt, and hauled him across the permacrete to the shuttle. The tourer was now surrounded by police and armed guards; lines of security droids were clearing an outer cordon and moving back vessels that were parked too close. “Don’t blow this mission. The job’s done.”

“But Jori’s going to be arrested. He can’t sit there forever. We can’t leave him, and what happens when they interrogate him, ’cos they’re going to find—”

“Ben, shut up. And that’s an order. There’s nothing we can do.”

Ben couldn’t believe it of Shevu. He could have struggled free and gone to help Lekauf, and…and what? He couldn’t use his Force powers in public. He couldn’t take on a small army of police. He couldn’t risk arrest and discovery.

He still wanted to go to Lekauf’s aid. No comrade left behind, that was the rule, same for troopers as it was for Jedi, same for every tight-knit group who faced danger together.

“We can’t leave him,” Ben sobbed, and was about to change his mind, and let the GA and the Jedi Council sort out their own troubles if he was arrested and found to be Luke Skywalker’s son, carrying out political assassinations. “We just can’t abandon him.”

As he stared brokenhearted at the battered tourer, a massive explosion sent it flying into a thousand fragments, shooting a column of flame and roiling smoke high into the air, almost knocking Ben off his feet. Police scattered, those who could ran. Some were blown meters. It all seemed to take place in slow motion and silence, and then the sound rushed back in and time resumed normally.

The captain still had a grip on Ben’s arm like a vise. Ben’s lips moved but he couldn’t hear himself.

“Yes,” Shevu said softly, and dragged Ben as he craned his neck to stare back at the wreckage and flames, numb, shocked, and lost. “Now we can.”

—Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice, Karen Traviss

[my-last-brain-cell-is-socrates]

Found the problem with the Star Wars EU.

Too many cops

[forcesung]

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling guilty about this,” Ben said, relieved that he had so far managed not to burst into tears.

“Me neither,” said Shevu. “Because it was supposed to be me who blew the ship if things went wrong.”

“We never planned that—”

“You didn’t. We did. Need to know, and all that.” Shevu stopped a passing ground crew speeder and told the driver to get Ben back to HQ. “Wash that stuff out of your hair and go home.”

An hour later, Ben found himself staring at his familiar reflection in the HQ refreshers, toweling his hair and wondering if Jacen had set him up.

I didn’t have to do the job. Any one of us could have passed unnoticed at a spaceport.

But it was hindsight. Jacen had tasked him to do it before anyone knew where the meeting would take place. Ben still felt something was wrong, but couldn’t pin it down.

He’d just lost his buddy. Maybe that made you think crazy things. When he left the HQ building and walked out into the late-afternoon sun, completely disoriented by the shifts in planetary time over the last forty-eight hours, he lowered his head and just walked aimlessly, hands in pockets.

—Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice, Karen Traviss

[forcesung]

Ben looked at his hands as if they weren’t his. He was holding the lightsaber two-handed as usual and his grip was shaking. He’d killed both of the men. They both looked about Jacen’s age and he didn’t like what he saw.

“You okay?”

“Were they both armed?”

“Bit late to worry about that.” Shevu squatted down, laid his blaster beside him, and began searching the bodies. Ben heard pounding boots, and two GAG troops entered behind them. “Well, one definitely was. Can’t find a weapon on the other.”

Force forgive me. I killed them. I killed a man who wasn’t armed. I didn’t even think.

Ben leaned against the wall and slid down it a little, bracing his legs. Around him, more GAG troops were running down passages, checking rooms. He heard cupboards being wrenched apart and shouts of, “In here! Clear!”

His head sank into his hands. He wanted to look, but he couldn’t. Someone took his arm.

“Ben, get up.” It was Jacen.

“I’m sorry—”

“Ben, get a grip. You’ve got work to do.” Jacen pulled him upright gently but firmly. “Go on. Look. You should have searched the bodies instead of leaving it to Shevu.”

“He wasn’t armed.”

“Stop it. His buddy was, and the place is stuffed with rocket launchers and hardware.”

Jacen steered Ben toward the two men on the floor and held him by both shoulders from behind to make him face them. Ben switched off. He felt a numbness spread through his mind and all he saw was shapes. He didn’t see people. He knew he would later, but right now something had cut in to cushion him from what he was seeing.

“You made the call, Ben.” Jacen’s voice was low. From the corner of his eye, Ben could see Shevu watching, or at least he was facing in their direction, head turned as if he was focused on them. “Mostly we get it right, but sometimes we don’t. You got most of it right today. Maybe you got all of it right, but it might take us days to find out if that man was a threat or not. Either way—you can’t afford to let it get to you.”

He turned Ben toward the door, and one of the GAG troops took his arm and led him out into the passage. The noise outside was leaking into his awareness; he felt the Force torn and twisted by a riot in progress. He’d started it. It was all his doing.

He caught a snatch of conversation.

“He’s a kid.” Shevu’s voice. “He’s a boy.”

“He’s a Jedi and he has to learn, ” Jacen said. “He was already handling weapons at the same age you were learning to add.”

—Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines, Karen Traviss

[forcesung]

“Victimization,” Shevu suggested quietly, still watching the status boards. “That’ll make life in the city very awkward. Latest tally from Immigration Control says we have nearly twenty million Corellians living here.”

“Most of whom are harmless,” said Luke.

“And not easy to identify except by ID docs,” said Jacen. “They look just like us.”

“They are just like us.”

—Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines, Karen Traviss

[farmboy1]

Traviss… ugh Jedi do fight using hand to hand combat. Have you actually read anything in the EU? Like your own coauthor Denning writes fights like that.

[farmboy1]

This is why I prefer how Allston writes Ben. With Allston Ben is someone who yes struggles to do the right thing as he is a teenager but in the end always does it.

Traviss has Ben be a fascist.

[solitaire-06]

Two characters who were utterly wasted in LOTF: Nelani Dinn and Lon Shevu.