Showdown at Centerpoint (26 page)

Han felt an angry jubilation, a moment’s brutal glee. He had won. He knew it. But he could not play the next card in this hand of sabacc. Only Dracmus could turn it over. This was the crucial moment. Dracmus could choose not to hear what she had heard, or else—

“You are wrong, eminent Kleyvits,” Dracmus hissed from behind clenched, fully exposed, needle-sharp teeth. “You are wrong down to the depths of your dishonored soul. You must, indeed, say more about it. You must say a great deal more.”

“I—I must say no more—”

“Who?”
Dracmus demanded. “Who controls the repulsor? We capitulated because you had shown your power. But the power was not yours! It is dishonor!
Who?”

“I must say no more—”

“I will be
ANSWERED!
” bellowed Dracmus, a Dracmus who suddenly seemed the size and spirit of an enraged Wookiee. Her eyes blazed, her fur bristled. Her claws were out, her teeth were bared, and her tail-stump lashed with anger. “WHO?”

“It is—they are—they are—the—the Cast-outs. The Sacorrians. The Selonians of the Triad.”

“Sweet burning stars,” Mara whispered. “The Sacorrians. The Triad. I don’t believe it.”

The room was silent again, but the silence seemed to echo from every corner, to shout at them all, to fill the room with its deadly emptiness. “If an outworlder, a human skilled in lies, had told me such a thing, I would join with the honored Jade and refuse to believe it,” Dracmus said, speaking at last, speaking in a voice as low, as quiet, as threatening and ominous as far-off thunder. “But you, a Selonian, speak the words, Kleyvits, and I am forced to believe. The words sicken me. The truth fills me with revulsion.”

Kleyvits dropped to all fours and cringed at Dracmus’s feet. Plainly, it was no empty ritual. It was Kleyvits submitting to Dracmus and begging for mercy. “Rise up,” snarled Dracmus. “Rise up and come with me. Others must be sickened by the truth. Others must hear. And then the days of the Overden will be over.”

Kleyvits got up on her hind legs and bowed deeply to Dracmus. Dracmus did not acknowledge the bow, but turned and left the room, her head held high, the humans forgotten. Kleyvits followed after her, head down, shoulders slumped, the roles of victor and vanquished utterly reversed.

And, suddenly, the humans were alone.

“I don’t understand,” said Han, drastically understating the case. “I had a hunch there had to be some ringers brought in. I figured it had to be outsiders who had researched its operation that were actually running the repulsor. I figured that would make Kleyvits look a little bad—but nothing like
that
. What happened?”

“I’ll explain later,” Mara said. “Right now, see to Leia.”

Han turned toward his wife, who had sat back down in one of the splendid, luxurious chairs that filled this splendid, luxurious prison of a villa. She was sobbing quietly to herself, the tears falling quietly. “Oh, Han. Our children. That man has our children.”

“I know,” said Han. “I know. But he is not going to keep them. I promise you that we will get them—”

But suddenly Leia was on her feet, looking up, an eager, faraway look in her eyes, the change in her demeanor bewilderingly fast. Han exchanged a glance with Mara, and it was plain they were both wondering, for a fleeting moment, if Leia had suddenly become unhinged. But Han should have known better. Leia was made of sterner stuff than that.

“It’s Luke!” she said. “Luke is coming this way. I can feel him, reaching out with the Force to me. He’s homing in on me.”

“How soon is he coming?” Han asked. “How fast will he—”

Han’s question was answered even as it was drowned out by the roaring thunder of a fast, low-flying aircraft. The tremendous noise filled the room, rattled the windows, and knocked several knickknacks off side tables. The sound receded as suddenly as it had arrived, as Luke’s X-wing buzzed the villa.

Han rushed out the open doors and saw the X-wing flying off into the distance before swinging around to make another pass.

The X-wing came in low and slow this time, circling the villa. Leia and Mara had joined Han outside, and all of them were frantically waving their arms, as if there was some mad chance that Luke would miss them, after flying in directly on top of them with pinpoint accuracy. The X-wing made one long, slow circuit around the perimeter of the villa, firing one or two bursts of turbolaser fire to encourage the guards to be on their way. The guards took very little convincing. By
the time the X-wing set down next to the
Jade’s Fire,
they were all headed straight for the nearest spot on the horizon.

The canopy of the X-wing swung open, and Luke climbed out as fast as he could and jumped to the ground. He threw his arms around his sister, and then around Han. Mara hung back from these more effusive greetings, but at least managed a sincere-looking smile for Luke.

“Oh, Luke, it’s been so long, and so much has happened!” said Leia, giving him yet another hug.

“That it has, Leia, that it has,” said Luke.

“I don’t know that it’s been all that much
time,
” said Han, “but I’ll go along with the part about a lot happening.” The last time they had seen Luke, he was bidding them all farewell on their way to a nice, quiet family vacation on Corellia. Han hadn’t expected to encounter anything more exciting than a walk down memory lane, or anything more deadly than an excessively dull diplomatic reception. Things had not turned out as expected. It did
seem
a lifetime ago since they had seen Luke, but how long had it really been? A few weeks? A month or two, at most? The constant changes from planet to planet, the differences in length of day and time zone, all made it hard to keep track. All he knew for sure was that it seemed as if everything had been happening at once for a long, long time.

Luke looked up from his embrace with Han and Leia, and nodded to the other party present. “Hello, Mara,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too, Luke,” she said, and it seemed to Han as if the hard edge of her voice was just a trifle softer than usual.

“I wish the occasion could be happier,” Luke replied. “I saw Thrackan’s broadcast. I don’t know what to say, except I’m sorry. We’ll get them back, Leia. I promise we will.”

“I know we will, Luke,” said Leia. “I know. But thank you.”

“Look,” said Mara, “no offense to anybody, but Luke’s chased off all the guards. I’ll bet we can crack open the force field around the
Jade’s Fire
pretty quick if we tried. Shouldn’t we be escaping along about now?”

Luke shook his head. “Let’s get your ship clear, by all means. But I think it might be smart if you stayed right here for now. If I’ve got this worked out right, we’re going to need a lot of help from the people who were holding you, and we’d better stay where they can find us.”

“Why? What?” asked Han. “What’s happened?”

“A lot,” said Luke. “Most of it bad. Though
maybe
there’s some good news, as well, buried underneath it all. And that’s where our Selonian friends come in.”

Han looked at Luke, and sighed wearily. “It never is simple, is it? Come on, kid. Let’s head inside. I think it’s just about time we all sat down and compared notes.”

*   *   *

“Q9! Q9! Come in! Q9! Are you there?”

“Of course I am here,” Q9 replied. “I’m here, right where you left me, upside down in a storage bin. Where else would I be?” The droid had grown quite tired of his hiding place, and become quite irritable as a result.

“An interesting rhetorical question,” said Ebrihim, his whispered voice coming in via the droid’s comlink system. “But never mind. Suffice to say that we would like you to come over here, now, if you would.”

“With pleasure,” replied Q9. “Or more accurately, I will take great pleasure in getting
out
of this smuggling compartment. However, I will come to you, assuming I can get to wherever it is you are being held.”

“We are quite nearby, within sight of the ship.”

“Very good. But let us discuss a point or two before I come. My built-in surveillance gear detected the cessation of jamming quite some time ago. It is two hours since I monitored Thrackan Sal-Solo’s broadcast. Parenthetically, I must add that none of you were looking your best in that. But in any event, why have you waited until now to call me?”

“We have been waiting for the Human League troopers to go to sleep. The last of them turned in about an hour ago. It would seem they are now all quite soundly asleep, on board the assault boat.”

“Why have they not posted a guard? Why are they so lax?”

Ebrihim laughed. “We are at the bottom of a sheer-sided, kilometers-deep pit; we are being held inside a force field; and of the two ships available, one is nonfunctional, and the other is full of enemy troops. I expect they simply felt rather secure in their situation.”

“It could be a trap,” said Q9. “They could be trying to lull you into a false sense of security.”

“They are the ones with a false sense of security. They do not know we have a comlink, and they are unaware of your existence.”

“Where did you get the comlink?” Q9 asked suspiciously. “I did not know that you had one. How do I know you are Ebrihim? How do I know you aren’t a Human League agent posing as Ebrihim? How do I know this is not a trap to lure me out of my hiding place?”

Q9 could hear the sound of Ebrihim sighing wearily. “Q9, I do believe that you have developed a paranoid streak.”

“You would develop one too, if your main circuits were shorted out by a maniac child, and you were barely given a chance to double-check your repairs before you were stuck in a dark hole for a day. I have been in an inverted position for all that time, wondering what could happen to me next. I have come up with quite a number of alarming possibilities.”

“I see,” said Ebrihim, a note of impatience creeping into his voice. “That is most unfortunate. Let me see if I can put your mind somewhat at ease. We did not tell you we had a comlink because we were somewhat pressed for time when we were captured. I myself did not learn that Chewbacca had concealed the comlink on his person until long after we were off the ship. As for the other matter, I am indeed Ebrihim. The receipt of sale shows that I paid twelve hundred and fifty Drallish crowns for you. However, in reality, at the last minute I managed to talk your owners into a discount for cash of a hundred crowns, a detail which I forgot. When I inadvertently reported the higher amount as a deduction on my taxes, you pointed out the discrepancy to me and threatened to turn me in if I did not correct it. At the time I seriously considered selling you for the eight extra crowns I was forced to pay in taxes as a result. There have been many times when I have regretted my decision to keep you instead. Does that satisfy you?”

“I suppose so,” Q9 said doubtfully.

“Very good then. Now stop acting like a mentally unbalanced victim of paranoid dementia and get the blazes over here as quickly and quietly as you can. Ebrihim out!”

“No need to be so irritable about it,” Q9 said to himself, knowing full well Ebrihim had shut down his comlink. “I see nothing demented in my effort to insure my own self-preservation.” He paused for a moment. “On the other hand, there
is
something distinctly peculiar about a droid that has started talking to itself. Master Ebrihim may well have a point concerning my mental state. Ah, well.”

Q9 gently activated his repulsors, so they pushed the camouflaged cover up off the smuggling compartment. He let the cover get about a third of a meter high, and then lowered power to the port side repulsor, causing the lid to slide down to that direction and fall to the deck with a loud clunk. It was more noise than Q9
would have preferred to have made, but he had little choice in the matter.

Q9 extruded a pair of manipulator arms and slowly pushed himself straight up out of the compartment, until his body was completely out of the hole. He rotated his body around on the ball-and-socket joints of the arms until his base was pointed straight down. Then he activated his repulsors again and drew the two arms back into his body. It was a distinct relief to be right side up again, and out of that hole.

Q9 floated around the
Falcon
’s circumferential corridor until he came to the access ramp. The ramp was open and down, which saved him the trouble of opening it himself, and saved that much more noise as well. However it did represent lax enough security that Q9 could not help but worry anew that it was all an elaborate trap.

But if it was, he had already revealed his position, and he was as good as caught, anyway. He might as well press on. He moved down the ramp and out onto the wide expanses of the repulsor chamber’s interior.

It was dark, the chamber lit only by the dimmest of starlight. Q9 switched over to infrared, and suddenly the chamber was ablaze with illumination. He moved forward about thirty meters from the
Falcon,
and then stopped. He spun his upper dome in a complete circle, scanning the interior. As Ebrihim had promised, the prisoners were indeed easy to spot. Six warm bodies inside a force field were a fairly obvious target. Obvious enough that Q9 was not exactly thrilled to be moving toward it. He consoled himself with the notion that he himself was probably a first-rate target in infrared anyway. He completed his scan, and got a good range and bearing on the assault boat as well. Just as well to keep a sensor pointed in that direction.

Q9 floated briskly toward the force field containment and came to a stop precisely one meter from its perimeter. “I’m here,” he said. “Now what do you want?”

It was not easy to judge Drallish expressions in infrared, but it would seem that Ebrihim was glaring at him. “Most beings would find that obvious,” he said. “I want you to get us out of here!”

“Of course,” said Q9. “To pose a rhetorical question, what else would you want?” Q9 rotated his view dome left and then right. “Any suggestions on how I might accomplish that?”

“Around the other side,” Ebrihim said. “The control panel for the containment is on the children’s side of the dome.”

“Ah. So it is,” Q9 said, realizing that he was suddenly feeling quite cheerful. He floated briskly around to the other side of the containment, and saw the control panel on the outside, and the children on the inside, watching him. “Good evening, children,” he said, in a most lighhearted tone of voice. “How are all of you this evening?” He bobbled up and down on his repulsor, in rough imitation of a little bow.