Showdown at Centerpoint (21 page)

“Thanta Zilbra,” Lando said. “The second star on the list. A population in the tens of thousands. My guess is most of them are dead. I know logistics, and I don’t see how they possibly could have gotten everyone out in time. And this,” he said, “is where we’re pointed now.” A line of violet fire flashed out, and hit another star, square and true. “That is the third star on the hit list we got in the initial warning message. Bovo Yagen.
I looked it up. One source says one planet with eight million. Another says two planets with a total estimated system population of twelve million on the planets, and who knows how many stations and habitats and mining camps and so on. Centerpoint is the starbuster, and it is getting set to blast that star and those planets and all those people down to cinders and dust.”

“When?” Kalenda asked.

Lando hit another control button and a countdown clock appeared. “Artoo ran the problem. We have to backtrack a little to account for how long the pulse will take to travel through hyperspace, and how long it will take for the chain reaction to take hold inside the star and build up to an explosion. Centerpoint is going to have to send a tractor-repulsor hyperspace burst in exactly one hundred twenty-three hours, ten minutes, and thirteen seconds from
now
in order to keep to the schedule in the original warning message. Twelve hours and twelve minutes after that, the chain reaction induced by the energy pulse will bloom out of the star’s core, and up it will go.”

“Burning stars. Centerpoint—my home—is a weapon,” Jenica said, her voice full of shock.

“And whoever controls it is going to have the power to control the Corellian Sector—and maybe the whole galaxy,” Gaeriel said. “Do what we say, or we blow up your star.”

“Wait a second,” Luke said. “There’s a piece that doesn’t fit. If Centerpoint is the starbuster, then it’s the prize, the most important place in the Corellian system. Why the fuss over the planetary repulsors? Why didn’t the plotters worry about Centerpoint?”

“Three reasons,” Lando replied. “The first is that they didn’t try to get it because they already had it—or at least had found a way to control it. I figure there is some well-shielded, well-hidden control room on this station. Someplace we wouldn’t find it if we looked for a hundred years. Probably there isn’t anyone in it, anyway.
All of it automated, set to work off timers and remote control. Second reason might be plain old misdirection. If you get everyone worried about the repulsors, no one’s going to have time to go looking for the starbuster. And the third reason—”

“Has been staring us right in the face,” Kalenda said. “I think I just figured it out. I haven’t really worked with repulsor field theory since school, but part of what makes repulsors work is that they can interfere and resonate with each other, right? And you can use that interference between two or more repulsor cells to provide steering and control. Power to a small side repulsor cell can deflect the beam from the main repulsor.”

Lando nodded. “Exactly. The planetary repulsors can jam Centerpoint’s hyperspace tractor-repulsor beam. They are the only repulsors strong enough to do it.

“But it goes deeper than that. The planetary repulsors can work as amplifiers, not just as jammers. In practice it would be the devil to manage, but, in theory, you could tune
all
the planetary repulsors into a single network slaved to Centerpoint. That would provide Centerpoint with even more power and range than it has now. Right now, Centerpoint gets its power by tapping a little bit of the gravitic potential of Talus and Tralus. Suppose it could tap into Selonia, and Corellia, and Drall? For that matter, I haven’t quite worked out the geometry of it yet, but with all five planets and Centerpoint in the network, you could probably tap into the star Corell’s gravitic potential. If I’d designed this system back whenever it was designed, I’d make sure that was possible. Just imagine Centerpoint with
that
much power. It would be able to strike at any point in the galaxy. The masters of Centerpoint could grab any planet they wanted and pull it into this system—or drop into a star, if they wanted. Centerpoint could blow up any star its masters chose. It could set up an interdiction field or communications jamming
over the whole galaxy—or any part of it its masters wanted to isolate. It could probably do a lot of other things we haven’t even
thought
of yet.”

“A lot of things that didn’t make sense are starting to make more sense than I’d like,” said Luke. “But using the repulsors for jamming. How would that work?”

“That’s a lot simpler,” Lando said. “If any of the planetary repulsors fired a properly tuned beam at Centerpoint, it would disrupt the aim and the tuning of the tractor-repulsor beam.”

“Could the planetary beams actually move Centerpoint itself?” Luke asked.

“Not enought to make any difference,” said Lando. “Centerpoint’s more powerful than any of the planetaries. If the planetaries pushed Centerpoint off its present position, Centerpoint could just push it back. But any one of the planetaries can shut Centerpoint down by sending out a jamming signal.”

“All right,” Kalenda said. “Now we know all this. What do we do about it?”

Lando turned his hands palms-up in a gesture of helplessness. “Not much. We don’t know it’s being controlled, or from where, or how. We’ve got a rough idea of what the system is, but we’re nowhere near understanding how to
operate
the system.”

“There must be some cable we can cut, some control system we can smash,” Jenica said.

“I bet there is—but I don’t know where it is. And we won’t find out unless we search every deck and shell and compartment on this station. And even if we found the control system, I’m not so sure we could smash it. Remember this system is robust enough that it’s been up and running since before the Old Republic.”

“Then we could blow up the whole station,” Gaeriel said.

“With what?” Kalenda asked. “We have one light cruiser and two destroyers. None of them are carrying
any bomb powerful enough to destroy something three hundred kilometers from end to end. Maybe, if you gave the Bakuran engineers enough time, they might be able to rig fixed-point detonators powerful enough to wreck the interior pretty thoroughly.
With enough time
. But not with only one hundred twenty-odd hours to do it.”

“Well, there’s one thing we can do,” Luke said. “Get the word out. Tell our people what we’ve found out. If we can find Han and Leia and Chewbacca, if we can find our allies on the worlds here, and let them know what we know, that’s a start. If they can get to a planetary repulsor in time, and if they can figure out how to run it, and if they can jam that hyperspace tractor-repulsor beam, then maybe we can save some lives.”

Lando shook his head. “That’s a lot of ifs, Luke,” he said, the doubt heavy in his voice.

“I know,” said Luke. He looked up at the countdown clock, the clock that showed how long Bovo Yagen had to live. The seconds were melting away. “And it’s going to take all the ifs we have to beat that
when
up there.”

*   *   *

The ship dove down into the repulsor chamber, moving fast and aggressively, but not so fast that Ebrihim wasn’t able to see the insignia painted on the underside of its fuselage as he looked up at it. A stylized human skull with a knife in its teeth. “Human League!” he cried out. “Can we get the shields up?”

“No!” Aunt Marcha shouted. “The children are still outside. We have to wait for them to get aboard.”

Ebrihim hopped up into the copilot’s chair and turned toward the weapons controls as the enemy ship dropped down to a fast, assault-style landing. Burly figures in combat gear were tumbling out of the attack boat’s hatches even before it had stopped bouncing on its landing legs.

Weapons. Ebrihim did not know much about such things, but he had to try. There had to be some sort of auto-system to let the turbolasers—

Suddenly huge hands were scooping him up out of the seat, tossing him out of the way. Chewbacca scrambled into the copilot’s chair and started powering up the defense systems. Power began to surge through the
Falcon
’s weapons.

“The children are aboard!” Marcha shouted. “Raise the access ramp. Activate the shields!”

Chewbacca hit the ramp close button and reached for the shield controls—but it was too late. A trooper with a very powerful-looking blaster was looking
up
at Chewbacca from below the cockpit. The
Falcon
was surrounded by troops standing
inside
the shield perimeter. Chewbacca tried the shields anyway. The lights in the cockpit surged for a moment as power went to the shield generators, but nothing else happened. Chewbacca roared in frustration. Shield jammers. They must have attached shield jammers to the hull, preventing the shields from forming.

A tall, heavyset, bearded figure stepped out of the assault boat and walked toward them, a most unpleasant smile on his face.

“Sal-Solo,” Ebrihim said. “It’s him.”

“That’s our dad’s cousin?” Anakin asked. Ebrihim turned around and realized for the first time that the children had crowded their way in. All of them, the entire party, were there, in the cockpit.

“That is his cousin and yours, child,” said Marcha. “But I doubt you will gain much joy from knowing him.”

Ebrihim tried not to listen. There was something that had just flitted across his mind, at the thought of their all being together. Wait a moment. That wasn’t true. They
weren’t
all together. But if he, Ebrihim, assumed they all were here, then surely their friends outside might make the same mistake. Ebrihim had an idea. Not even a plan, just an idea that would give
them options, advantages. Maybe enough so that there would still be a way out of this. It was a long shot, but still it was a chance that could turn this thing around. That was the good news.

The bad news was in two parts. First, they only had a few seconds to put it in motion. And two, his idea relied completely and entirely upon Q9-X2.

*   *   *

Thrackan Sal-Solo could not have been happier. It was a gift from the gods, an absolute gift from the gods. He strode about his new possession, admiring it, thinking of all it could do—and do for him. At last he had his hands on a planetary repulsor. He had gambled everything that he would get to one in time. He had thought it would be the one on Corellia. That he ended up grabbing the one here on Drall was but a slight irony. He had one. That was all that mattered. He had one in time to control the situation. He looked up, admiring the view straight to the surface, that sharp-edge circle of blue, kilometers above his head. He looked down a bit, at the massive, graceful cluster of cones that made up the repulsor array itself. All his. All his.

His eyes strayed lower, to the
Millennium Falcon
. What a bonus, what a magnificent and glittering extra prize it was. Grabbing the
Falcon
by itself would have been enough to humiliate Han Solo, to pay him back for the crime of escape. But to find Han’s Wookiee and his children aboard as well—what could be better? There were two absurd Drall as well, but they were no prize at all compared to the children. The children represented not just a chance for personal vengeance, but something else, something more—an opportunity. If he handled it right, a war winner. Now, suddenly, he could control, could manipulate, Leia Organa Solo herself. Now she would have to come to the bargaining table, because she had no choice.

And once she came to that table, Thrackan was certain
she would leave with nothing at all. He would force her into a bargain that would leave the New Republic with its heart torn out, so badly injured, so utterly discredited, that it could not survive.

Of course, the recent destruction of Thanta Zilbra and the coming destruction of Bovo Yagen might well accomplish that on their own. A galaxy that saw that the New Republic could not prevent such a disaster would be a galaxy that lost faith in the New Republic. It would be a galaxy that realized revolt against the New Republic was possible. That would be all to the good, of course. But better, far better, if the galaxy saw Thrackan Sal-Solo as a central figure in bringing the New Republic down. The man who dared to grab the Chief of State’s children and hold them hostage—that would be a man to fear, a man to reckon with. Now he would be that man.

But holding them would do no good unless Han Solo and Leia Organa Solo knew about it. The communications jamming would have to come down. That was easy to accomplish. An encoded radionics command to the hidden control station on Centerpoint would shut down the com jamming in short order. No doubt the people who had built the hidden control center took a dim view of Thrackan controlling it in their stead—but they should have thought of that before sending in operatives who could be bribed, operatives who would betray their masters.

But now, now, the last piece of the puzzle had dropped into place. He had a planetary disrupter, and alone of all the rebel leaders in the Corellian system, he knew what a planetary repulsor could do. Being able to smash a ship was trivial compared to the ability to hold the starbuster plot hostage.

Thrackan knew it would take time—perhaps a long time—before his technicians would be able to operate the repulsor, but even that did not matter. For now he was in a position to bluff things out, to
pretend
he controlled
the repulsor. That ought to be more than enough to get what he wanted.

More than enough.

*   *   *

Admiral Hortel Ossilege watched on the long-range scanners as the Human League assault boat dove down the mouth of the repulsor. The image was grainy and blurry; the scanners were working at maximum range, which meant the assault boat was far beyond the maximum range of the
Intruder
’s weaponry. It was galling to be beaten to the punch. Frustrating. Infuriating. But it would not do to show it. It would not do at all. And one had to admire the nerve, the
audacity,
of the assault boat’s commander, quite literally diving his whole ship down the barrel of a weapon that could have reduced his craft to dust and rubble in milliseconds. Even if the
Intruder
had been capable of atmospheric operation or planetary landing, he could not have risked it with a move like that. Not when the
Intruder
represented such a huge fraction of the firepower on the Republic’s side of the equation. Ossilege envied his opponent’s freedom to take chances.