Showdown at Centerpoint (12 page)

Waiting, all of it, in vain. Waiting for things that had never happened, waiting for sweet victories that had melted away into bitter, humiliating defeat.

Thrackan grabbed the bottle by the neck, like an enemy he was trying to strangle. He stood up and walked around his desk, out of his office, and out into the corridor of the dig headquarters. The dig HQ was not as
large or as comfortable a place as the old headquarters, but at least it was secure. Thrackan would have preferred to keep his headquarters in the underground bunker in the countryside on the far side of the city—but the Human League had been forced to abandon that supposedly secret location. The blasted Selonians had yanked their compatriot, Dracmus, out of there, along with Thrackan’s traitor cousin, Han Solo.

It hadn’t taken much imagination to realize that a group that could take two prisoners out of an underground bunker could just as easily put one bomb in. So Thrackan had been forced to withdraw from there, and they were minus one headquarters. Call it another debt on the account Thrackan was drawing up against Han Solo. Sooner or later, Han Solo would pay for all of it.

Thrackan walked out of the building and out into the fading light of twilight. He watched the second-shift men coming on duty, headed for their work underground. A number of them saw him and cheered. Thrackan forced a smile onto his face, put his hand to his forehead, and gave the boys a small, informal sort of salute. He made no effort to hide his bottle. That was one nice thing about his boys. He didn’t have to pretend he wasn’t human, that he didn’t like a drink now and again. Or even a drink more often than that.

Now if only his boys were good at finding things. They were still searching for the Corellian planetary repulsor. It had to be hidden in the tunnels somewhere beneath them. It
had
to be. Or things were going to get very sticky indeed.

Except things were already sticky. Solo had escaped. Leia Organa Solo had escaped. The Bakurans had busted through the interdiction field, somehow. They were loose in the system, and might have already seized control of Centerpoint. Things were not going according to plan. At least he had managed to accomplish a little bit of revenge, already. Leia Organa Solo might have escaped, but others never would. With any luck at all, history would record that Governor-General
Micamberlecto had died of injuries he suffered during the initial attack. But even if the true story of the Frozian’s demise came out, Thrackan wouldn’t much mind. Terror could be a very useful tool.

But killing the Governor-General was incidental. The stakes were much higher than that—and Thrackan knew just how dangerous a game he was playing. He knew more of the real story than anyone else in this star system.
He
knew how much of a bluff it all was.
He
knew how many dangers surrounded him from all sides. He had claimed to control the starbuster plot. For the moment, at least, it suited the purposes of the starbuster’s real masters to let him go on claiming it. It provided them with additional cover, an extra level of protective deception. Not that they could do anything about it at the moment, but more than likely they believed Thrackan would keep to his side of the bargain, and back off his claim when the proper moment came for them to reveal themselves.

They could believe what they wanted. Thrackan had no intention of doing any such thing. The starbuster’s masters also believed that Thrackan would turn over the planetary repulsor on this world as soon as he found it, in return for granting Thrackan a free hand on the planet Corellia. They could go on believing that, too, if they wished. Thrackan had other plans. The masters of the starbuster had told all the rebel leaders that the planetary repulsors were superb defensive weapons, nothing more. Thrackan knew better. Thrackan knew it would suit the starbuster’s controllers just fine if no one ever got the things working, so long as the controllers sat on top of them and kept anyone else from getting near them. But Thrackan knew the repulsors were weapons of denial, blackmail weapons, weapons of threat that worked best if they were aimed, but never fired.

Let the other rebel leaders, the dirt-grubbing Selonian Overden or those bumbling fools, the Drallists, think what they might. Let the scramble-brains on Talus
and Tralus believe what they were told about the repulsors. Thrackan knew better. He knew the masters of the starbuster plot had double-crossed them all. And Thrackan also knew that a double cross was nothing more than the necessary first step toward a successful triple cross.

But none of it would do any good unless his people could find the repulsor and get it operational. If the dirt-digging Selonians could do it, surely humans could do at least as well.

“Diktat Sal-Solo! Diktat!”

Thrackan turned around to see General Brimon Yarar, the man in charge of the dig, jogging toward him. “What is it, General?”

“News, sir. Maybe big news. The Drall planetary repulsor just came alive.”

“What?!”

“Just now, sir. The jamming is still in place, of course, so we can’t get any more information. But our sensors just picked up a huge jolt of repulsor activity coming from Drall. Unfocused, uncontrolled, but it’s there. The Drallists have got the thing working.”

“I don’t believe it,” Thrackan said. “I
can’t
believe it. The Selonians, maybe. They’re good at underground work. The Overden has some good technicians. But the Drallists? They were never anything.” In moments of honesty, Thrackan knew his own Human League forces were not exactly the cream of society. Thugs, most of them. Even with all the help he got from the starbuster’s masters, he had not been able to recruit many high-quality people. He had learned to accept that, and view his troops as the best tools he could lay hands on, if not the best tools for the job.

But, thugs or not, compared to the Drallists, they were perfect gentlemen and leading scientists, every one of them. Thrackan had at least been able to buy himself a few disgruntled technicians, some ex-Imperial soldiers and administrators. Not the Drallists. Whatever else you could say against the Drallish species,
the pompous little fools were relentlessly honest, upright, cautious people. There had actually been some sort of discontent on Corellia, and probably on Selonia and Talus and Tralus, around which to build a revolt. On Drall, the rebellion had been, out of necessity, completely artificial. Even the Human League wouldn’t have taken on humans as low-down as the Drallists—and Drallist technical capability was no better than Drallist behavior.

The idea that they had been able to get a planetary repulsor up and running was simply incredible—

Wait a moment. Wait just a moment. Maybe the Drallists hadn’t gotten it running. Maybe someone
else
had managed that little trick. Suddenly Thrackan had a shrewd idea who that might be—and if he was right, he might. just pick up a nice little bonus from all this.

Because no matter who had gotten the repulsor running, Thrackan Sal-Solo was willing to bet they would
not
keep it long. He turned toward Yarar. “Get the best of the repulsor tech crews together, along with a strike platoon.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a big swallow. A warm glow started to flow through his insides. “We’re going to pay a little call on the Drallists.”

*   *   *

Luke watched the blinking light over the huge airlock chamber, and wondered who was on the other side, asking them in. Or more accurately, wondered if it would be wise to head on in. He and Lando had been debating the point for five minutes now. Luke decided to turn the debate on its head. “Okay, just for the sake of argument,” he said, “suppose we
don’t
go in that airlock. What’s the alternative?”

“I don’t know,” Lando replied. “If we landed on the other -ide of the sphere, or went in on the end of the farther cylinder, we -ight be able to explore f— weeks
before anyone caught up with us. And that might -e a goo-idea.”

“How so?” Luke asked.

“You know me, Luke. I think big.”

“That’s for sure.” Lando had made something like a career out of building huge projects of one sort or another. Of course, the projects had a bad habit of going bust for reasons that were no fault of Lando’s, but that was neither here nor there. “So this place is big. What do you think about it?”

“I think something is wrong. I thought so the first time I saw this place, and the closer -e get, the surer I am. I think big, but I also —ink in function. Big makes sense for some jobs, but this is too -uch. That station has a hundred, a —ousand times the volume it should for any job I can think of that it might do, and the underlying design is all wrong. The -ocals don’t see—at something’s wrong because the station has been here so -ong. They take it for granted, think of it as a natural object. But trust me. Something about that station feels wrong.”

Feels wrong
. Lando had no talent in the Force. Luke was sure of that. But that didn’t mean his intuitions couldn’t be right. Luke shut his eyes and reached out, probing with his Force ability, searching for the feel of the station, of the beings aboard it. He could detect exactly one sentient mind, a human. Only one? Perhaps there were others, their minds shielded from him in some manner. He reached out and touched the one mind he could sense, touched as gently as he could. He discovered no sense of evil or bad intent. What he did find was a powerful sense of fear and uncertainty.

He probed toward the blinking light, and the airlock door that was still opening and shutting. There was one mind there, a human one, a young woman. And that mind still seemed worried and afraid—but friendly enough, for all of that.

“I say we accept the invitation,” Luke said. “You’re right—we could spend weeks exploring on our own.
But I don’t think we
have
weeks to spare. And I think the natives are friendly. At least, there’s one friendly one.”

There was a dead silence on the line that lasted long enough for Luke to start wondering if the laser com system had given out altogether. But then Lando finally spoke. “When you’re right, you’re right,” he said. “We have to take the chance.”

“All right,” said Luke. He brought his throttle forward just a fraction and flew toward the airlock, the
Lady Luck
right behind him.

As they drew closer, the light stopped flashing and the airlock door swung open wide and stopped there. Luke had to do some tricky flying to line his fighter up with the airlock and match lateral velocity as it rotated. Doing so while flying inverted made it only slightly more difficult. Luke was used to flying in all sorts of attitudes relative to his target, and with the station spinning to simulate gravity, he had to make sure the X-wing’s landing pads were pointed straight out at the sky as he made his way into the airlock.

The closer Luke got to the airlock entrance, the bigger he realized it was. From a distance, it had appeared of ordinary proportion, but in reality, the thing could have handled the
Intruder,
the
Defender,
and the
Sentinel
flying side by side. Luke’s X-wing flew in with as much room to spare as an insect flying into Jabba the Hutt’s wide-gaping mouth. Lando followed right behind in the
Lady Luck
.

*   *   *

Admiral Hortel Ossilege was less than happy when the
Intruder
’s detectors picked up the massive, off-the-scale repulsor burst from Drall. Surprises were rarely welcome in a military operation, but doubly so when one was this far behind enemy lines and dealing with forces of such
power
. Lando Calrissian had warned him that his tactics of audacious advance might get him in
over his head. Well, so be it. There was no real going back. Caution would gain him nothing. He would have to investigate that repulsor burst. It was almost certainly another planetary repulsor. But the burst seemed to have fired at nothing at all—almost like a flare shot straight up in the air for no better purpose than to attract attention.

Ossilege frowned to himself as he stared at the detector screen. Perhaps—perhaps—that was exactly what it was. With all conventional communications shut down, how else to announce one had captured a repulsor? A signal flare. But the enemy, the opposition, had kept
their
repulsor at Selonia secret. That suggested the people holding this repulsor were on the other side. Perhaps warning the other side that they were not the only ones with such a mighty weapon. Not just a signal flare, but a warning shot, perhaps.

Clearly, Ossilege had no choice but to investigate. But the timing could not have been worse. His ships had just taken up their positions around Centerpoint Station. Gaeriel Captison and her party were now inside the station, completely cut off from any communication with the Bakuran forces.

He could not abandon his position at Centerpoint or leave his people behind. He would have no choice but to divide his forces. For the briefest of moments, he considered sending nothing more than a flight of fighters or an assault boat loaded with troops. But no. The opposition was likely to move on the Drall repulsor as well. The Bakuran forces would have to go in ready to fight, not just investigate.

Ossilege smiled, his lips forming into a thin line. Calrissian had, indeed, warned him against audacious action. But Ossilege had been extremely cautious as he moved in toward Centerpoint Station, and he had discovered something about caution: he did not like it. Ossilege turned toward the ensign standing next to him.

“My compliments to Captain Semmac,” he said to
her, “and relay my order to set course for Drall. The
Intruder
is going to investigate that repulsion burst.
Sentinel
and
Defender
will remain at Centerpoint.” Ossilege looked back toward the detector screen. “
Someone
has sent us an invitation. I think it is only common politeness that we accept.”

*   *   *

Luke’s X-wing and the
Lady Luck
floated fifteen meters off the deck, moving slowly forward into the airlock, their shields up and in formation so as to give each other cover. What good such precautions might be up against a space station the size of a small planet, neither of them asked.