Showdown at Centerpoint (31 page)

“Merely everything, that’s all,” said Dracmus. “The Triad Selonians on Sacorria descend from despised offshoot of a bloodline discredited long ago. I will not be going into the whole history, but suffice to be saying that the ancestors of the Triad Selonians disputed a just settlement in a matter of vitalness, centuries ago. Some of them tried to lie and cheat their way into a position of advantage over other members of their own Den. As a consequence, the Den was split up into two groups—the victims of the fraud and the nasty perpetrators. The perpetrators were kicked off Corellia by my ancestors, the ancestors of the Hunchuzuc, and also removed from Selonia by the Overden. So bad was the scandal that the victims formed a new Den under a new name, because the old name was utterly dishonored. Even now I must not speak it. It is obscenity, only to be used when time is right for splendidly rotten insult. This name-losing had never happened to any other Den ever before, and it has never happened again since.”

“It doesn’t seem quite fair to blame people for what their ancestors did,” said Luke.

“Is muchly more fair for Selonians than humans, I am believing. Remember that the Den is all. The Den lives on while the individuals die. Also recall that the new individuals are virtual clones of the old ones. You humans tend to think of a Den as collection of individuals. But we are not like humans. In many ways, we are more like highly intelligent social insects. We are individuals, but the individual is completely in service of the Den. Well, nearly complete. We are something
closer than your families, but not
quite
as close as the cells in the body.”

“That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?” asked Mara.

“And it still doesn’t seem fair to kick everyone out for the sins of the ancestors,” said Luke. “Leia and I would be in very big trouble if humans did that.”

Dracmus bowed very slightly to Mara, an almost imperceptible movement. “Maybe analogy is too far. Maybe yes and maybe no. But, Master Skywalker, when you bleed, do you worry how blood cells that go out of you feel about leaving? If some of your blood cells are diseased, do you think about what is fair to cells that are still healthy when you treat the illness—or do you get your blood changed completely, just to be on the safe side, just to make sure illness cannot come back?”

Han resisted the urge to start pacing again. “It’s the story of my life with you, Dracmus, but we’ve wandered off the point again.”

“Thought we were talking about how humans different from us,” Dracmus said.

Han paused a moment, resisting the temptation to lose his temper again. He collected himself and then spoke. “I’ve got a feeling we’re not going to get anywhere until we’re all agreed on this, so okay. I’ll tell you my reaction, and then maybe we can move on. I grew up with Selonians, and I never knew any of this. I admit it’s embarrassing, but—”

“Be not muchly embarrassed, Honored Solo,” Dracmus said in a soothing voice. “Don’t be forgetting the Selonians you met were trained—and bred—for sole purpose of dealing with humans. Is our
job
to make you feel comfy with us.”

“I know, I know. And they did a good job. I grew up thinking that Selonians were just funny-looking humans with a few quaint customs left over from the old days. But just to round this out, I should have found out how it worked, even if your people didn’t want me to know. Back in my smuggling days, I made a career
out of knowing what the other side’s worldview was like—and yet I grew up knowing nothing about the people next door. It makes me wonder about the rest of my life, growing up on Corellia. How much else did I not see?”

“Probably quite a bit,” said Leia. “None of us ever really sees our own culture all that well.”

Han rolled his eyes. “Gee, there’s an original thought. But even all this is off the point. What I was going to say was that it was embarrassing to find out how little I knew about you, but that right now I don’t care about being embarrassed. Treat me like a complete idiot, but make me understand what’s going on. If I’ve got this straight, now that Kleyvits has admitted to being in the pay of the Triad, and admitted to smuggling some of them back onto the planet, that changes everything, right?”

“Right,” said Dracmus. “Excellent!”

“Great. I’m glad. But how?”

“Begging pardon?”

“How.
How
does Kleyvits confessing change everything?”

“Because it means my Hunchuzuc were tricked. We gave in under false pretenses. The Overden made us be thinking that the Overden ran the repulsor, and had smashed the Bakuran destroyer all by themselves. All was fraud,” she said, her voice growing genuinely angry. “The Overden achieved a consensus favorable to themselves by trickery and deception, and by involving themselves with a dishonored and nameless Den. This is depth of crime. Even worse, the nameless Den was linked to Triad, and Triad linked to Sal-Solo, who kidnaps his own, steals children.”

“Guilt by association,” Han said. “How advanced and sophisticated.”

Mara looked up at Han. “Think it through. In a group society run by consensus, guilt by association makes some sense.”

“Anyway,” said Dracmus, “Overden in bad. No way
could it be worse for them. You
saw
how Kleyvits caved in once the truth came out. That will be happening every time Hunchuzuc demands the truth of Overden Selonian. Overden will be losing so much face you’ll be able to be seeing the back of their heads from the front. Hunchuzuc will take over. Take over consensus, take over much property—take over possession of the repulsor.”

“But the Sacorrian Selonians are still the ones
running
the repulsor,” Luke objected.

“Yes! And so we must wait. I know that human way—at least one human way—to deal with such problem would be to give the Sacorrian Selonians one chance to give up. If they didn’t, in you go with all guns blazing nicely. But maybe everyone gets killed. You seize the repulsor, but have no idea where
ON
switch is.” Dracmus shook her head. “This is not Selonian way. We will talk with Sacorrian scums, nasty though job will be. We are talking with them, right now. And we will talk to them. And talk to them. Finally, pressure—peer pressure on Sacorrians to give up—will be too much, and they will give up. And do more than giving up. They will cooperate with Hunchuzuc, tell us how to run machinery, as part of their penance for being on the losing side. This is how it will be. We just have to sit back and wait.”

“Sounds terrific,” said Han. “So what’s the catch?”

“The catch is all takes time. Everything I tell of will happen. Is inevitable. The trouble is like in old Selonian saying. ‘The agreed-to we do at once. The inevitable can take a little while.’ ”

“How
big
a little while?” asked Luke.

Dracmus shook her head. “An hour. A day. A month. A year.”

Luke frowned. “An hour we have. Maybe even a day. But not much longer. Centerpoint Station is going to fire at Bovo Yagen in just over eighty-four hours. Unless we fire a planetary repulsor beam at Center-point
at just the right moment, a whole solar system dies.”

“And a whole Sector starts to panic and wonder who’s next, and a whole galaxy starts to wonder what the point is of a New Republic that can’t protect them,” said Leia.

“And I hate to say it,” said Han, “but they’d be absolutely right to start wondering.”

*   *   *

“Should I reset the breaker now?” Jacen asked.

“Not yet. Just a sec,” said Anakin, a bit absently. “One more of them to stick in.” He was lying on his stomach, propped up on one elbow, leaning over the open underfloor access panel. He stared down into the morass of wires and cables and circuit boards for a minute or two, then reached in and pulled another of the fist-sized power-shunt transpacitors. It took a good solid yank to pull the thing out of its socket. He held it up and stared at it for a moment, almost as if he could see through it, into it. “Boy, did
this
get all melty inside.” He set it to one side. “Jaina, gimme the one from the hyperdrive.”

Jaina handed him the last of the transpacitors they had gotten by cannibalizing the
Falcon
’s faster-than-light drive. Anakin plugged it into the socket, then reconnected the power shunt board to the main sub-light engine circuit. “All right,” he said to Jacen. “Push the reset.”

Jacen was sitting by the next access panel over, where the circuit breaker board was. He held his breath and threw the switch back to the
ON
position. There was the slightest of pauses, and then the green status light came on. Jacen breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to Q9. “It worked, Chewbacca. We ought to have repulsors and sublight engines now.”

Chewbacca’s voice—an anxious yelp and a growl—answered, sounding as if it came from a little bit out of
the comlink mike’s normal range. There was something more than a bit incongruous about a Wookiee voice coming from Q9’s speaker. “Chewbacca says to hurry,” Ebrihim said, quite needlessly.

“Okay, okay, we’re hurrying,” Jacen said, getting to his feet. He closed the panel over the breaker box while Anakin closed up the one over the circuit board. “We’re on our way to the cockpit now.”

The muffled sound of a comlink being fumbled about came from Q9’s speaker, and then a hoot from Chewbacca and Ebrihim’s slightly exasperated voice. “Give it back,” he said, apparently to the Wookiee. “I’ll tell them.”

There was a slight pause, and then Ebrihim’s voice again, a bit louder and clearer. “Get moving as fast as you can,” he said. The sun will be rising soon, and I’m sure our friend will be getting up as well.”

“All right, all right,” muttered Jacen. “Nag, nag, nag, all the time. Come on, Q9, let’s go.”

“I still don’t see why you couldn’t have taken the time to go get another comlink out of stores,” said Q9, speaking in his own voice. “I don’t enjoy being used as an intercom.”

Jacen smiled as he headed for the cockpit. “It saved us the five minutes of finding one and getting it tuned and matched to the one Chewbacca’s using. Believe me, we needed the five minutes. Don’t worry. We’ll switch over to the ship’s main com system in a minute.”

Jacen paused at the entrance to the cockpit of the
Millennium Falcon
. He had been in the cockpit many times before, of course—but this was different, very different. No one was keeping an eye on him this time, or making sure he didn’t press any buttons, or shooing him away. No. This time, he was here to
fly
the ship.
Fly
her. The very idea terrified him.

“Want to have a contest to see which one of us is more scared?” Jaina asked.

Jacen turned around and smiled. His twin sister and
his little brother were behind him, all three of them standing right at the threshold of the cockpit. “I don’t know,” he said. “How close do you think it will be?”

“Not close at all. I bet I’m a zillion times more scared than you.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” said Jacen. “I bet it’s a tie.”

“
I’m
not scared,” said Anakin. “I’ll fly her, if you want.”

“I might take you up on that one if you weren’t too short to reach the controls properly,” said Jacen.

“Might I remind all of you of the need for haste at this point?” asked Q9. “I believe I have gotten over my recent bout with paranoia, but let us not forget that there really is someone out to get us.”

“He’s got a point,” Jacen said. He turned to Jaina. “Which seat do you want? Pilot or copilot?”

Jaina paused for a moment, and then smiled. “Like father, like son. You take Dad’s seat at pilot. He’d like it that way. I bet Mom would too.”

Jacen smiled back at her, then climbed in and took his place at the pilot’s station, adjusting the seat up as high and as far forward as it would go. Jaina did the same.

“All right, Chewie,” said Jacen, “we’re switching over to the ship’s main comm system—now.” He reached over to the com panel and threw the appropriate switch.

“That
’s a relief,” said Q9.

“Can you still read us?” Jacen asked.

An answering roar came from the overhead speaker, and Jacen hastily turned down the volume.

“Good,” said Jaina. “All right, Jacen. Seat restraint fastened?”

“Definitely,” said Jacen. He glanced behind him and made sure that Anakin, seated in the observer’s seat behind Jaina, also had his belt on. Q9 had clamped himself to a stanchion. “Everyone set?”

“Not quite,” said Jaina. “Those Human League guys
are going to come after us the moment we take off. Maybe we should sort of slow down good old cousin Thrackan a little bit before we leave.”

“Wait a second,” protested Jacen, but Jaina had already activated the fire controls for the
Falcon
’s ventral laser cannon. Jacen could hear the whir of the motors as the cannon came out of the hull.

“I figure one aimed shot at the force field generator, and then I re-aim as fast as I can and take a crack at the assault boat.”

“The force field generator? Suppose you miss and hit Chewie and the Drall?”

“I
can’t
hit them. They’re behind the force field, remember? You just be ready to get us moving straight up on the repulsors the split second I tell you to. I don’t think we should try anything with the sublight engines until we have a little room to maneuver.”

Jacen shook his head doubtfully. “All right,” he said. “But be sure you remember whose idea it was to start shooting. Hold on a second.” He studied his control boards for a moment, and then flicked a series of power switches on. The ship gave a sort of eager little shudder, and Jacen felt a low hum of power flow through the ship. “There we go,” he said. “Repulsors and sublight engines at standby.”

“Chewie—get as close to the center of the containment as you can and shield your eyes, and tell the others to do the same.”

A howl of protest came over the intercom.

“Will you relax?” Jaina said. “This will work, trust me. You guys just get ready to run and hide as soon as the force field goes down. Here we go.” Jaina stared down at the gunnery display, making minute adjustments to the ventral laser’s aim. “One aimed shot,” she said again. “Either it works or it doesn’t. Chewie—Ebrihim—Aunt Marcha—get ready!”