Showdown at Centerpoint (42 page)

“You realize there’s one other possibility,” Luke said quietly as they set off across the docking bay. “They may be trying to split us up for some kind of attack.”

Han shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“I’d still like to keep an eye on your meetings,” Luke persisted. “I should be able to follow your presence from wherever they put us. That way, I can get there right away if you need me.”

“Just my presence, though, right?”

Luke frowned at him. “Of course. I wouldn’t try to read your mind without permission. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Han said. “Sure.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary for Luke to use the Force in order to keep track of the proceedings. Their Iphigini hosts had somehow learned about the restrictions the Diamala had put on his attendance, and by the time Han and Chewbacca began the negotiations they had a monitor line set up between Luke’s suite and the conference room, allowing him to directly watch the meeting.

It took him two hours to realize that the talks were getting nowhere. It was another hour before Han came to the same conclusion. Or at least was willing to admit it out loud.

“They’re crazy,” Han growled, tossing a handful of datacards onto a low center table as he and Chewbacca joined Luke in the suite. “The whole bunch of them. Completely crazy.”

“I wouldn’t say crazy,” Luke told him. “Stiff-faced stubborn, maybe, but not crazy.”

“Thanks,” Han growled. “That’s real helpful.”

Chewbacca rumbled a warning. “I am
not
losing my temper,” Han informed him stiffly. “I am under perfect control.”

Luke looked at his friend, carefully hiding a smile. It was like the old Han again, the brashly confident smuggler he and Obi-Wan had first met back in the Mos Eisley cantina. Charging cheerfully into unknown situations, and more often than not finding himself up to his neck in trouble. It was nice to know that even as a respectable family man and responsible official of the New Republic, Han hadn’t lost all of the recklessness that had once driven his friends almost as crazy as it had the Imperials. Up to his neck in trouble was where Han functioned best. Perhaps, through sheer habit, it was where he was most comfortable.

“All right,” Han said, dropping into a chair across the table from Luke. “Let’s think this through. There’s got to be a way out.”

“How about trying a third-party approach?” Luke suggested. “Maybe the New Republic could run security for Diamalan freighters when they’re in Ishori systems.”

Chewbacca rumbled the obvious problem. “Yes, I know we don’t have a lot of ships to spare,” Luke said. “But the High Council ought to be able to scrounge up something.”

“Not enough to do any good,” Han said, shaking his head. “The Diamala do an awful lot of shipping, and I don’t think you realize how thin our hardware is spread out there.”

“It would still be cheaper in the long run than whatever it would cost to pull the Diamala and Ishori apart if they start shooting at each other again,” Luke argued.

“Probably,” Han conceded, toying with one of the datacards. “Problem is, I don’t think the Diamala would accept the offer even if we had the ships to spare. I don’t think they’re ready to trust anyone else with their security.”

“Not even the New Republic?” Luke asked.

Han shook his head, his eyes darting surreptitiously to Luke’s face for a moment, then just as quickly shifting away. “No.”

Luke frowned. In that moment he’d caught another flicker of the same troubled mood he’d felt back by the
Falcon
. “I see.”

“Yeah,” Han said, all brisk business again. “Anybody got any other ideas?”

Luke glanced at Chewbacca, searching for a diplomatic way to say this. But there really wasn’t one. “You know, Han, it’s not too late to bring Leia in on this. We could call Wayland and ask the Noghri to bring her here.”

“No,” Han said firmly.

Chewbacca growled agreement with Luke. “I said no,” Han repeated, glaring at the Wookiee. “We can handle this ourselves.”

There was a trill from the console built into the table. Luke looked at Han, but he was still engaged in a glaring contest with Chewbacca. Reaching out with the Force, he keyed the switch. “Skywalker,” he said.

On the hologram pad in the middle of the table the quarter-sized image of a young Iphigini appeared, his braided lip-beard not quite covering up the throat insignia of the Iphigin Spaceport Directorate. “I apologize for disturbing your deliberations, Jedi Skywalker,” he said, his voice far more melodious than the craggy face and physique would have suggested. “But we’ve received notification from New Republic Commerce that a Sarkan freighter is on its way here under a Customs Red alert.”

Luke looked at Han.
Customs Red:
a warning that there was illegal and highly dangerous cargo aboard. “Did Commerce identify the captain and crew?”

“No,” the Iphigini said. “A follow-up transmission was promised, but it has not yet arrived. The suspect freighter is already approaching Iphigin, and we have dispatched the bulk of our inner-system customs frigates and patrol craft to intercept. It was thought that as New Republic representatives, you and Captain Solo might wish to observe the procedure.”

There was a sudden change in Han’s emotions. Luke looked over, to see his friend gazing thoughtfully off into space. “We appreciate the invitation,” he said, looking back at the hologram. “At the moment, though—”

“Where’s this Sarkan coming in from?” Han interrupted.

“Sector Three-Besh.” The Iphigini’s image was replaced by a schematic of Iphigin and the space around it. A red dot blinked a few degrees off a line connecting Iphigin to its sun; nearly twenty blinking green dots were converging on it from the planet and nearby space. “As you can see, we have attempted to send a force adequate to overcome any resistance.”

“Yeah,” Han said slowly. “And you’re sure it’s a Sarkan?”

“Its transponder ID has been checked,” the Iphigini told him. “The ship itself is a Corellian Action-Keynne XII, rarely seen in this part of the Core except under Sarkan authority.”

Luke whistled soundlessly. He’d been given a tour of an Action-Keynne XII once, and had come away thoroughly impressed by both the touches of inner luxury and the multiple tiers of outer weaponry. Designed to transport the most valuable of cargoes, it very nearly qualified as a capital warship.

Which was probably why the Iphiginis were sending so many ships to intercept it. If its captain decided not to cooperate, the Iphiginis were in for a fight.

“Sounds like a Sarkan, all right,” Han agreed, his voice a little bit too casual. “You go ahead and do your intercept. Maybe we’ll come up later and have a look.”

“Thank you, Captain Solo,” the Iphigini said. “I will alert the officials that you will be joining them. Farewell.”

The hologram vanished. “Don’t count on it,” Han muttered, gathering up the datacards from where he’d tossed them on the table and thumbing rapidly through them. “Chewie, get over to that console—see if you can pull up a full listing of the traffic pattern out there.”

“What’s going on?” Luke asked, frowning at Han and trying to read his mood. Suddenly all the earlier frustration was gone, leaving a sort of sly excitement in its place. “You know who the smuggler is?”

“He’s not a smuggler,” Han said. He found the card he was looking for and slid it into his datapad. “You got it, Chewie? Great. Punch it into the hologram pod over here.”

Chewbacca growled acknowledgment, and a more complete Iphigin schematic appeared over the table. Han peered at it, then looked down at the datapad in his hand. “Great. Okay, come here and give me a hand with this.”

“What is it?” Luke asked.

“This is the ground station list and the orbit data for their Golan I Defense Platform,” Han told him, waving the datapad as Chewbacca lumbered to his side again. “Let’s see …”

For a minute the two huddled close together, peering alternately at the hologram and Han’s datapad and conversing in low tones. Luke studied the schematic, watching the color-coded freighters and other ships moving in and out and wondering what this was all about.

“Okay,” Han said at last. “That’s where they’ll come in. So all we need to do is sit somewhere in the middle of that cone and wait. Great. Get down to the
Falcon
and get ’er ready. I’ll be right there.”

Chewbacca rumbled an acknowledgment and headed out the door at a fast Wookiee trot. “Do I get to know what’s going on?” Luke asked.

“Sure,” Han said, gathering up the datacards and packing them away again. “We’ve got pirates on the way.”

“Pirates?” Luke blinked. “Here?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I didn’t think pirate gangs operated this far into the Core, that’s all,” Luke said. “So the Sarkan is just a feint?”

“Yeah,” Han said, getting to his feet. “Only he doesn’t know it. It’s an old trick: you call an alert on some ship coming in sunside, then hit a nightside target while Customs is busy half a planet away. The only tricky part is making sure the ground and orbit defenses can’t get to you. Plus figuring out how to fake the alert in the first place. Come on, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we alert the Iphigini first?” Luke asked, reaching for the comm.

“What for?” Han said. “You and Chewie and me ought to be able to handle it.”

“What, a whole pirate gang?”

“Sure, why not? The only gangs working this sector are small ones—two or three ships, tops.” Han’s lip twitched. “Actually, you probably won’t even need us.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” Luke said icily. “But I’d just as soon not take them all on myself, thank you.”

Han held up his hands. “Hey. No offense.”

“None taken.” Luke gestured to the hologram and the patrol ships weaving their net around the incoming Sarkan freighter. “And I still think we ought to call in the Iphigini.”

“We can’t,” Han said. “The pirates probably have a spotter already here. Any sign of an alert, and they’ll just call off the raid. We’d end up looking stupid, and Diamalan opinion of the New Republic would sink a little deeper. The High Council will have my hide if that happens.”

Luke sighed. “Things were a lot easier when Alliance military activity wasn’t always getting tangled up in politics.”

“Tell me about it,” Han growled. “Look, we’ve got to get going. You in or out?”

Luke shrugged. “I’m in,” he said, pulling out his comlink. “Artoo?”

• • •

Long—
long
—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in
Star Wars: A New Hope
… a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

Then, a thousand years before
A New Hope
and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …

If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points: