Showdown at Centerpoint (38 page)

“Lando!” Luke called. “I’m tracking a slow-moving destroyer toward the rear of the formation. You have it?”

“I was just about to call it in to you, Luke,” said Lando. “Let’s go for it. Just what we’re looking for.” The plan was for the attacking craft to move through the Triad formation toward its rear, picking off targets of opportunity and trying to get the Triad ships to reverse course and pursue.

And never mind the obvious flaw in trying to encourage eighty major armed vessels and all their auxiliaries to chase you with all guns blazing. Sometimes you just had to take your chances. “Off we go,” Luke agreed.

*   *   *

Anakin sat in the control chair, listening intently to Technician Antone as he ran down the checklist. “All right,” said Antone, “that clears out the targeting sequence. We should be locked on to the South Pole of Centerpoint. Ready for the power initiation sequence?”

“Don’t
think
so,” Anakin said, a little doubtfully. “Something doesn’t
feel
right.”

Antone shoved his long black hair out of his eyes for about the zillionth time and looked nervously at Anakin.
“Feel
right?” he asked. “What do you mean it doesn’t
feel
right?”

“He does it all by feel,” Jacen said. “He knows by instinct and intuition. You’ve got an instruction manual.
You’re
the one who said you didn’t think he understood what it did.”

“Do so!” Anakin protested angrily, glaring at his brother.

“Do you, Anakin?” Jaina asked. She was plainly getting as fed up as Antone. “Do you
really
understand or are you just showing off?”

Anakin frowned deeply and crossed his arms. “Stop being mean to me, or I won’t help you anymore.” And with that, he hopped down off the chair and stalked away.

“Oh, boy,” said Jaina.

“I suspect that young Master Anakin is overtired,” Threepio said. “He was up too late last night. He is often rather cranky the next day on such occasions.”

Antone’s eyes bugged out, and his jaw dropped open. It was at least a full five seconds before he was able to speak. “He’s
cranky
? He’s the—he’s the only one who can—who can—” Antone gestured frantically at the control panel. “The starbuster is going to fire in an hour, and you tell me he’s
cranky
?”

“Take it easy,” Ebrihim said.

“But he’s gone!” Antone said. “He’s the only one who can run the machine!”

“You’ve been up all night,” Ebrihim said. “You’re overwrought. We’ll get him back.”

“Yeah. Up all night,” said Technician Antone, nodding manically as he paced. “Maybe
I’m
just cranky too.” He turned and stopped his pacing to face the twins. “Except that’s not quite it. Actually, I think I’m in full-blown panic! I’ve got
relatives
on Bovo Yagen,” Antone went on, half raving. “If I get her planet incinerated, my aunt is going to
kill
me.”

“Settle down,” Ebrihim said in a sterner tone of voice. “He can’t have gone far. We need both of you to make this work. Jacen, go and get your brother back. Calm him down. And try to remember that the lives of twelve million people are riding on one cranky seven-year-old saving them in an hour’s time. So
please
. When he comes back, let’s everyone be nice to him.”

“All right,” Jaina said, her own voice turning a bit sulky. “But only for an hour.”

*   *   *

“Concentrate volley fire on the forward airlock hatch!” Mara’s voice called out from the ship-to-ship link. “Those welds look nice and sloppy!” Fire poured from the
Jade’s Fire
into the lumbering, old, much-repaired Mon Calamari frigate that had ended up fighting for the other side.

“Copy that,” said Han. “Leia, hang on. I’m going to pitch over a bit to give you a clean shot.”

“I’m in the clear already,” Leia said. “Commencing fire.”

The quad laser turret started shooting. The outer door of the airlock had gotten jammed open somehow in the fighting. It began to glow red, then orange, then fire-white—and then the inner hatch blew off, the ship’s atmosphere streaming away into space. The airflow cut off suddenly as a hatch slammed shut somewhere on the ship.

The frigate fired back, heavy volley fire straight into the
Millennium Falcon
. The shield alarms went on almost at once, and then cut off just as quickly as the
Jade’s Fire
blew the frigate’s main laser turret clean off with a mini-torpedo.

Disarmed and damaged, the frigate seemed to decide she had had enough. She came about and boosted away for all she was worth.

“Let her go,” Han said to Mara. “She’s out of the fight, and that’s all that matters.”

“How long has it been?” Leia asked over the intercom.

“About forty minutes,” Han said. “Watch out, a pair of B-wing Uglies coming in from above.”

“I’m on them,” Leia said, the strain in her voice plain to hear. Fire lanced out of the quad laser turret.
An explosion broke up one B-wing, and the other decided that discretion was the better part of valor. If only the
Falcon
could have the luxury of reaching that conclusion. Sooner or later, one of those attacks was going to get through.

“Mara!” Han called out. “Let’s keep moving through them.” He reached over and cut out the ship-to-ship comm link. “Another twenty minutes,” Han said to Leia and Chewie, “another twenty minutes, and it’ll be over.”

And so it would. One way or the other.

*   *   *

“
Defender
reports damage to main armament, but secondary weapons fully functional,” said Kalenda. “Numerous minor hits, no major damage so far.”

But a hundred minor hits could serve to weaken the ship enough for the hundred and first to destroy it
. Ossilege shook his head. That was no way to think. Not for an admiral in the midst of running a battle. “What of
Sentinel
?” he asked.

“Sentinel
has partial loss of propulsion. Explosive decompression of unspecified aft section, reported as contained. All weapons functional, reports numerous successful engagements.”

“Very well,” Ossilege said as he studied his tactical display.
Intruder
had taken a similar amount of damage. It
was working
he thought. They were paying a high price indeed, but it was working. Ossilege had assigned a lane through the enemy formation to each big ship, and to each pair of smaller craft. The idea was to drive through the enemy ships toward the rear, keeping up a series of running engagements, intended to cause disruption as much as damage. And it was working. The tidy enemy formations were unraveling, and it seemed that half of them had reversed course to head off in pursuit of their tormentors.

“Sir! Captain Semmac reports four frigates closing on
Intruder
. It appears to be a coordinated attack.”

“Does it indeed? I was wondering how long it would take them to mount one. Very well. Now we will see Captain Semmac’s skills as a defender.”

Ossilege watched his tactical displays. Four identical bulbous-nosed frigates were closing in from four different directions, lasers blazing. The
Intruder
’s shields held, at least under the initial onslaught. Captain Semmac brought the nose of the
Intruder
up and accelerated, trying to get out of the crossfire. The
Intruder
’s main guns began to return fire, concentrating on the closest of the four frigates. The ship’s nose came down hard as Semmac attempted to break free, but the frigates adjusted course to stay with the
Intruder,
matching her move for move.

Ossilege frowned. Something was wrong. The frigates were pouring laser fire into the
Intruder,
but it was having no effect. There should have been local burn-throughs, the shields should have been weakened here and there. Ossilege checked the power levels from the frigate’s lasers. Why were they so low? Unless—unless the lasers were just there as a deception, a distraction. And come to think of it, how were the frigates able to absorb so much fire from the
Intruder
?

He brought up a close-up view of the nearest frigate on his tactical display and felt his blood run cold.

Its windows were painted on. Painted on over what looked like solid durasteel.

He slapped down his comlink. “Captain Semmac! Those frigates are camouflaged robot ramships! Their guns are harmless. They are merely trying to get in close enough to—”

But it was too late. The first of the ramships fired its high-boost engine and accelerated at terrifying speed, directly at the
Intruder,
a multimegaton battering ram headed straight in at them.

It struck just forward of the bridge.

*   *   *

“Okay!” Jacen said. “I have him back.”

“
Good,
” said Technician Antone. “Great. Let’s get back to it.”

Anakin came back into the compartment and looked long and hard at each of them before he took his seat again. “Okay,” he said. “Ready.”

“Good, good,” said Antone, forcing a smile onto his face. “Then let’s start the power initiation sequence.”

“No,” said Anakin.

The sweat was standing straight out on Antone’s forehead. “Anakin, please. Try to understand. This isn’t a game. Lots of people—lots and
lots
of people—are going to, to
die
unless we fire this repulsor at exactly the right time in exactly the right direction.”

“I
know
that,” said Anakin. “But it
isn’t
aimed just right. It’s too heavy. Too
heavy
somehow.”

“What do you mean, too heavy?” Antone asked.

“Gravity!” Jacen shouted. “He means gravity! Those instructions you got are for the repulsor on Selonia! The gravity is different there.”

“Right!” said Anakin. “
Too heavy.
”

Antone thought for a minute, muttering frantically. “Sweet stars in the sky. He’s right! He’s right!” He checked the countdown clock. “And we’ve got ten minutes to recalculate the aim from scratch.” Antone grabbed one of the other techs by the shoulder and shoved him at Anakin. “Run him through the power initiation sequence and the rest of it, and we’ll retarget just before we fire.”

And with that, Technician Antone raced frantically away to find a desk and a datapad.

*   *   *

The second and the third robot ramships slammed into the
Intruder,
sending the ruined hulk pinwheeling across the sky. The fourth ram missed, but that did not matter. The ship was dead already.

Ossilege picked himself up off the deck and staggered back over to his chair. Gaeriel had managed to stay in hers. Belindi Kalenda climbed to her feet and looked around in shock. They were the only ones left. Everyone else on the flag deck was dead. Ossilege didn’t even bother looking down to see if anyone had survived on the bridge. Most of it wasn’t there anymore.

“ABANDON SHIP!” the overhead speaker shouted. “ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP!”

“I can’t feel my legs,” Gaeriel announced. “I can see they’re bleeding, but I can’t feel them, and I can’t move them.”

Ossilege nodded, not really knowing why.
Spinal damage,
he thought.
She must have been slammed around hard by those impacts
. Admiral Hortel Ossilege realized that he was holding his left hand over his stomach. He lifted his hand away for a moment and saw the red, open wound. Astonishing that he wouldn’t feel something like that.

“ABANDON SHIP!” the automatic voice called again.

Ossilege looked from himself to Gaeriel Captison, to Kalenda. “Go!” he shouted at Kalenda. “We can’t make it. You can. Go!” Suddenly he felt very weak.

“But—” Kalenda began.

“But I have a gut wound and the Prime Minister cannot walk. We would not survive the trip to the escape capsule, and if we did we would not survive until pickup. Go. Now. That is an order. You—you have been a good officer, Lieutenant Kalenda. Do not waste yourself now over a pointless gesture. Go.”

Kalenda looked as if she were about to say something more, but then she stopped. She saluted Ossilege, bowed to Gaeriel, and then turned and ran.

“Good,” said Ossilege. “I hope she makes it.”

“We have to blow the ship,” Gaeriel said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Don’t let her be captured.”

Ossilege nodded to her. “Yes,” he said. “You are right. But we must wait. Give the survivors time to escape. Wait until we are in deep among the enemy ships. Take them with us. Wait—wait for Source A.”

“Source A?” Gaeriel asked, her voice vague and weak.

“Source A,” said Ossilege. “We have to wait for Admiral Ackbar.”

*   *   *

“One hour, Luke!” Lando shouted. “Let’s get out of here while we’re still in one piece each!”

“Copy that, Lando,” said Luke. “Back the way we came, and
fast
!”

“What’s going on?” Tendra asked. “Why are we retreating?”

“We’re not retreating,” said Lando as he heeled the
Lady Luck
around. “We’re following Ossilege’s plan. A plan so simple that even we could follow it. Get in, do as much damage as you can for one hour, and then get out of the way.”

“Get out of the way for what?”

“For Source A, my dear Source T.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lando laughed out loud. “It’s not much of a code name system, but there it is. Source T for Tendra, Source A for Admiral Ackbar. Ossilege started getting coded hyperwave messages from him the minute the jamming field went down. Ackbar had spent every waking moment since we left Coruscant trying to put some sort of task force together. It sounds like he wasn’t able to get that big a fleet together, but twenty-five modern ships with modern weapons—well, that ought to do some good out here. Especially if the opposing force is already pretty banged up and disoriented and out of formation and pointed in the wrong direction.” Lando dodged the
Lady Luck
around the shot-up wreck of a modified B-wing, and ran at top speed,
straight for Centerpoint Station. “I think we’ll head for the north end of Centerpoint, thank you very much. The end that doesn’t fire interstellar death rays.”

“But what about Admiral Ackbar? What’s the rest of the plan?”