Showdown at Centerpoint (19 page)

Dracmus looked positively frantic. “I will be seeing what I can do. Please! Do not go.”

“One hour,” Mara said. “Go. Move.”

Dracmus nodded, turned, dropped to all fours, and rushed away as fast as she could.

“If I didn’t believe in the power of a united front, I would have refused to go along with you,” Leia said, her voice testy. “You did some damage, but it would have been worse if I had refused to play along. I’m a diplomat, and you’re not. You should have let me do the talking.”

“I’ve
been
letting you do the talking, and all it’s gotten us so far is an enforced vacation at this villa. I’m a businesswoman, a trader. Negotiation is my stock in trade.”

“Do you call insulting our hosts negotiating?”

“Negotiating is the art of getting what you want,” Mara said. “It’s not the art of making the other side feel better.”

“They aren’t the ‘other side.’ They’re our partners in this negotiation.”

“If they were our partners, we wouldn’t need to negotiate,” Mara said smoothly.

Han noticed something. Mara’s sharp tone, her apparent anger, her impatience, had all vanished at the same time Dracmus did. They had all been performance, posturing, for Dracmus’s sake. Now she was calm, relaxed, as she spoke.

“Partners or opponents, I still don’t think we’ll get anywhere pushing them around like that,” Leia said.

“We’ll find out in about fifty-seven minutes,” Mara
said as she poured herself another cup of tea. “I’ve dealt with the Selonians before. Have you or Han?”

“I speak the language, and I’ve dealt with them socially. But I haven’t done any real negotiating,” said Leia.

“I haven’t really dealt with them at all,” said Han. “Not since I was a kid back on Corellia.”

“Then there is something you both have to understand,” Mara said.

Leia seemed about to protest, but Han held up his hand, asking her not to do so. “Go on, Mara,” he said.

“It’s a little hard to explain.” Mara paused for a moment. “Think—think about a sabacc game, where each player knows the other is bluffing, but they both keep shoving chips into the pot, just to save face. Neither of them can back down. Or two armies fighting each other, throwing endless troops into a vicious battle over a useless bit of land. There are cases when humans forget about the purpose of the competition, and the competition
itself
becomes absolutely vital. Sometimes it’s irrational. Sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it has survival value, or evolution wouldn’t have given us the tendency. Maybe, sometimes, you’re thinking about the next hand in the game, the next battle. Maybe if she knows you just won’t quit, your opponent will decide the fight isn’t worth the cost. She’ll give up—and you’ll win the next fight without even having to fight. Of course, most of the time, it’s not even a conscious decision. We do that sort of thing without even thinking about it. It’s a blind spot.”

“None of that sounds much like Selonians,” Han said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Mara agreed. “I was talking about
a human
blind spot. We’re much more competitive and individualistic than the Selonians are. All that stuff about consensus isn’t just talk. They really
are
that way. To oversimplify just a bit, they have a compulsion to reach agreement, whether or not it makes sense, just as we sometimes feel we have to win, whether or not it
makes sense. It’s something the Selonians can’t
help
doing in a situation like this. It’s a blind spot
they
have. If we just waited until they were ready for us, they could take weeks or months or years just to decide what they want to ask us for. I had to let them know they’d lose
everything
if they didn’t ask for
something
right now.”

“Are you sure that was wise?” Leia asked.

“No, I’m not. But sometimes the important thing is to make something happen. It almost doesn’t matter what.”

“That ‘almost’ can cover a lot of ground,” Han said.

“I suppose so. But maybe it means we have the chance to choose our ground. Maybe if we can figure out what’s going on around here, we can make some good decisions,” Mara said. “There’s something we need to consider. Dracmus told us that all these worlds have repulsors, and that someone from the outside was helping to organize the search for them. Fine and good. You can use one to shoot down a ship. Even better, from a military point of view. But you can shoot down a ship with a lot of things that are a lot easier to get at, easier to control, easier to aim and use. I don’t think we have the whole reason behind the scramble to grab the repulsor on Corellia. And don’t forget Dracmus said the rebels on the other worlds are searching for them—or else they’ve found them already, and they are putting them to use.”

“Using them for what?” Han asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Mara said. “But you don’t try that hard to grab something you don’t need urgently. Not in the middle of a war where you’re trying to save your strength for when you need it. We’ve seen all sorts of indications that the various rebellions regard the repulsors as being hugely valuable. I’m starting to think the repulsors are the whole reason there
are
rebels. In a sense, I don’t think there are any rebels at all. They’re a front, a smokescreen, for the real enemy.”

“What do you mean?” Leia asked.

“I have a hunch that the repulsor searches aren’t because of the revolts,” said Mara. “My guess is that the
revolts
are happening as a cover for the repulsor searches. We’re all fairly certain the revolts were organized from the outside. Dracmus said as much, for what that’s worth. Besides, what are the odds against rebellions on five planets simultaneously just by coincidence? There
had
to be some coordination. We’ve all agreed on that. I’m saying the organizing principle was the need to get at the repulsors.”

“That makes sense
if
it’s someone from outside doing the organizing, an external force,” said Leia. “I can’t quite see our Human League acquaintances making a first approach to their close personal friends in the Selonian Overden to put this together. If some outside force did the organizing, they could approach a dissident group on each planet, supply it with money and expertise and so on. And we know the rebels are coordinating with each other, at least to a certain extent. All of them participated in that coordinated attack against the Bakuran ships.”

“But
why
would the rebels cooperate with each other, and with this external force?” Han asked. “What’s in it for them?”

Leia shook her head. “I can’t say for sure, but if I were setting up the deal, I’d say something like, take our money and information, cooperate with us, use your local people to dig up the repulsor for us, hand it over to us, and when we kick the New Republic out, we’ll give you a free hand on your own planet. But in exchange we get your help—and ultimate control over your planet’s repulsor.”

“Except then you run the risk of the rebels deciding that the repulsors are worth something,” Han said.

“At a guess, something like that is what happened with the Human League,” Mara said. “If this external force idea is right, then the externals would be the ones running the starbuster—not the Human League.
When the Human League started tossing threats around, the external force couldn’t have been too happy about it.”

“If they even knew about it,” Mara said. “They may be completely external to this star system. They’d have some representatives, some observers, in-system, but once the jamming comes on, you can throw the observers in jail and say whatever you want without anyone outside hearing it. And once the interdiction field goes on, outsiders can’t get at you to do anything about it. Sooner or later, the interdiction field and the jamming are turned off—but by then, Thrackan Sal-Solo is running the planet, maybe the whole star system, and the external forces can do what they like. And if he’s managed to grab a few of the repulsors by then, maybe he’s got some serious bargaining chips. Or maybe not. We don’t even know what the repulsors can be used for, let alone why they are so important.”

Leia thought for a moment. “If all this is true, then the rebels themselves aren’t the problem. It’s the repulsors, and the people who got the rebels searching for them, the external forces. It’s obvious the externals don’t care about the rebel causes—the rebels are all
against
each other. The Human League is mostly anti-Selonian and anti-Drall, as much as it is
for
anything. So the externals are supporting them for some other reason—as a way to get at the repulsors. Cut the links between the rebels and the external forces, gain control of the repulsors, figure out how to use them against the externals, and the rebellions ought to dry up and blow away.”

“Fine,” Han said. “Very nice and neat. But you’ve just given yourself a huge list of jobs there. I don’t see how we could even start to accomplish any of them.”

“But at least they’re political jobs, intelligence jobs, not military jobs,” Leia said. “Considering we have no military assets at all in system, that’s good news. There’s a military aspect, of course, but we’re hoping to get some help on that angle from the Selonians.”
She glanced at Mara. “Unless the Selonians call your bluff in another forty-five minutes.”

“I wasn’t bluffing,” Mara said.

“Do you have any clear idea of how the Selonians fit into all this?” Han said. “Are the Overden and the Hunchuzuc even still fighting each other? I haven’t seen any signs of battle, or any mention of it from Dracmus—and she’s not so good at keeping secrets.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if they had stopped fighting,” Mara said, “but if they have, that’s probably bad news for us. My impression is that the Overden has indeed seized control of the repulsor—and the repulsor is a very powerful weapon. Selonians aren’t much for lost causes. A lot of times we humans fight on even when all hope is lost. Honor requires it, or we’re hoping for a miracle, or we’re praying that a million-to-one chance breaks our way. Not the Selonians. Typically, a fight between two groups ends when one side or the other demonstrates they have a massive advantage over the other. The Selonians on the losing side will then see there is no point in going on, and request a negotiated settlement. More than that. They will want to ally themselves with the winners.”

“And you think our noble Hunchuzuc allies have decided that they’ve lost,” Han said. “You think they’re dickering with the Overden, and we’re part of the deal?”

“Something like that. Maybe the Overden wants us as bargaining chips, maybe as hostages, maybe they want to negotiate directly with Leia. Of course we don’t even know for sure that it’s the Overden and not the Hunchuzuc who have the repulsor. Maybe our side won.”

“It is most regrettable,” said a new voice, “but I fear that is not the case. The inestimable Mara Jade has described the situation exactly.” Han looked behind himself in surprise. The newcomer had arrived in utter silence from inside the villa. She was an older-looking Selonian, tall, but a little stooped over, her fur shot
through with gray, but her eyes bright. “I am Kleyvits,” she said, “and I speak for the Overden. We have won our Hunchuzuc sisters over to our cause.” She paused, and then smiled, displaying an unpleasantly impressive collection of teeth. “And that means that we have also won all of
you.
”

*   *   *

Tendra Risant had had just about enough of
waiting
. It was time for a little
doing
.

The
Gentleman Caller
would be stuck in normal space, moving in toward the first-distant inner planets of the Corellian star system for months yet, assuming the interdiction field stayed up.

But suppose it didn’t stay up? The
Gentleman Caller
was not the fastest ship in the universe, but even a slow ship would need only a minute or two in hyperspace to cover the remaining distance to the inner system. Tendra knew better than anyone about that fleet waiting in orbit around Sacorria. It seemed quite likely they would be headed this way. They would need the field to come down for that to happen. They might or might not reactivate it once they were in. The field might be down for just a very brief period.

Therefore, it seemed likely there would be a moment, maybe only a few minutes, perhaps longer, when she could activate her hyperdrive and get to where she was going—if only she knew when that moment
was
.

The navicomputer had a gravitic field indicator, one that was very definitely showing the effects of the interdiction field. All she had to do was rig an alarm that would go off when the field went down. Then it would merely be a question of computing and making the jump before the field came on again.

There were dozens of things that could go wrong, any number of perhaps unwarranted assumptions. But if she did nothing for much longer, she would go mad. She knew she had to take charge of her own situation
if she was going to hang on to her sanity. But for the most part, she didn’t think of it in those terms.

She just wanted to do whatever would get her off the ship.

*   *   *

“Freen?! Zubbit! Norgch! Norgchal. Normal. Normal processing resumes. Resumes? Reset! Reset! Normal processing resumes! Wowser! Freen!” The stream of babble continued as Q9-X2’s head spun around three times, and a perfect forest of probes and sensors and manipulator arms popped in and out of their compartments.

“Not quite,” Anakin said, frowning a bit. He pushed the droid’s main power button off. All of the manipulators abruptly retracted into their compartments, and his status lights went off. Anakin reached into Q9’s interior and unplugged a cable. “This one was in backward,” he said. He plugged the cable back in and turned the power back on.

This time the droid powered up a bit more sedately. His head spun around exactly once, his status lights came on, none of his probes or arms came out, and he simply beeped twice and announced, “Normal processing resumes.”

“Well, I should hope so,” said Ebrihim, “after all the trouble we have been to in order to get you fixed.”

“Frixed? Flough wuz I broken?” Q9 asked. “Expuse me. Voder sybems not quite stablized. Once moment.” About half of his status lights went out for a few seconds and then came back on again. “Let’s try that again. Fixed? How was I broken?”