Showdown at Centerpoint (5 page)

“Salculd!” Han called out. “This is no time for the playing of games!”

“I am not doing so, Honored Solo. Failure in lateral attitude control system. I cannot shut it off!”

“Oh, for—” Han scrambled up out of his seat and dove for the main circuit breaker box. He yanked it open and tripped the lateral attitude control breaker by hand. That killed the thrusters that were producing the spin—but also killed the ones that fired in the opposite direction, and could bring it to a halt. He slapped the access door shut and returned to his seat.

“Hope everyone is liking to spin,” Han announced in Selonian. “We are to do it for a while. Salculd! Restart to main sublight engines—and nice, slow throttle-up, please!”

“At once, Honored Solo,” Salculd replied. She reached for the throttle controls and began adjusting them.

Nothing seemed to happen. “Not that slow, Salculd. We need to do some braking!”

Salculd looked at Han, and the panicked look that had seemed on the verge of fading away was there in
full force, and no doubt. “No activation!” she announced. “Engine initiator not responding!”

“Horror!” cried Dracmus. “We incinerate for certain.”

“Quiet, Dracmus, or I send you out the airlock. Salculd, try again!” Han said. “Firstly confirm you have power to all engine systems.”

“Board shows all power systems fine and lovely,” Salculd said. “Board says is working, but it not.”

“Not helpful,” Han said, jumping up. “Off I go again. Keep trying, and listen to the comm!”

Han rushed for the ladder to the lower decks and clambered down as fast as he could. As soon as he reached the lower deck, he smelled smoke. There was trouble, big trouble. That one hit from the LAF must have hit something in the transverse power coupling. Han jogged around the circumferential corridor until he reached the proper access hatch. It was sealed, praise be. The bad news was the smoke was coming off the painted metal on the hatch. Han checked the readouts. They showed there was still pressure in there, if the numbers were to be believed. The temperature gauge was pegged at the high end. He worked the hatch controls to pop the compartment’s spill valves. They should have operated automatically once fire broke out. Obviously they hadn’t.

But even if the automatics were out, at least the manual controls were still working. There was a sort of clank and a thud from behind the hatch, and then a roaring hiss that faded off into nothing as the air in the compartment vented into space. The ship lurched slightly to one side before the inertial dampers corrected for the off-center thrust.

Han resealed the spill valves. The hatch had a manual spill valve of its own that allowed pressure between the two sides of the hatch to equalize without opening it up. Han burned his fingers getting the safeties off, and then popped the hatch valve. The corridor was
suddenly filled with a roaring, thundering rush of air that almost knocked Han over.

Han looked around, and, for a miracle, spotted a fire extinguisher within reach right where it was supposed to be. He peeled off his shirt and wrapped it around his left hand, then took the extinguisher in his right. He grabbed the manual hatch control with his left hand, and the shirt instantly began to smolder. He pulled the lever and swung the hatch open.

A blast of heat struck him in the face; he checked his grip on the extinguisher. If the renewed supply of oxygen started something burning, he wanted to be ready for it. But he did not want to try doing emergency repairs on equipment that was covered with spray foam if he could possibly avoid it.

Not that spray foam could have made things much worse. Han stood in the hatchway, stared at the compartment, and felt sick. The initiator was just not there anymore. There was no need for the extinguisher. Anything that could have burned already had. Han looked down at the blackened deck plates. The compartment was just under the outer hull. It looked as if the LAF’s turbolaser hadn’t quite burned through the hull, but it had clearly come close. The entire compartment was still hot, but was cooling rapidly now, the metal pinging and clinging as it gave up its heat to space.

But Han wasn’t here to see what happened after an equipment bay fire.
Think,
Han told himself.
Think as fast as you ever have
. The coneship had a very awkward engine-start system, and one that had caused plenty of trouble already on this trip. More modern systems worked differently, but on this bucket, the initiators served as massive capacitors, storing up huge amounts of energy and slamming it all out at once to get the sublight engines over the power threshold where their energy reaction was self-sustaining.

With the initiators out, the sublight engines could not restart. And without those engines the coneship was going to drop like a stone, a shooting star aimed
straight for the planet. They had to restart those engines. They
had
to. But there was no other system in the ship with anything like enough power to let the sublights reach their minimum start-up energy. Even if they overloaded every single—

Wait a second. That was it. It was unlikely it would work. But it definitely wouldn’t work if he didn’t give it a try.

And give it a try
fast
. They were in free fall, heading straight for a spot that was going to have a new crater in a few minutes. Han stepped back out of the initiator compartment and resealed the hatch. Where would the repulsor feedback dispersal system be on this tub? Useless to ask Salculd. She was so close to the edge she probably wouldn’t remember where the pilot’s station was. She had given him a tour of the ship when he had first come aboard—that was it! Just on the other side of the main power room. Perfect. Han rushed back down the circumferential corridor the way he had come and found the right access panel on the wall. He pulled it open and traced the connections. Good. Good. For a wonder, they were all standard hookups. He tripped the breaker by hand. Cable. He needed power cable. Stores room. They had all but cleaned it out to fill the airlocks with junk, but there had to be
something
left. He charged down the corridor and threw open the hatch to the stores room.

Nothing. Down to the bare walls. Utterly empty. Han started to swear to himself and at himself with impressive fluency, but there was no time for such indulgences. Think.
Think
. Life support. Main power to life support. No sense keeping it on. They were all going to be dead in about five minutes anyway if he didn’t get some power cable.

Life support. Where could he kill power to life support? Right! Cut it right at main power and yank the cable from there. Han rushed back to the main power room, threw the hatch open, and went inside. Not everything was labeled, and what was labeled was in
Selonian, of course. He struggled to sort out what was what. There! If he was reading the labels right, that junction was
MAIN DEVICE FOR THE BLOWING OF AIR MEANT FOR BREATHING
, and that one was
CLEANSING OF AIR FROM POLLUTANTS FOR PLEASANT BREATHING
. A little verbose, perhaps, but clear enough. He found the circuit breakers on the junctions and slammed them off. Han could hear the fans and blowers dying all over the ship. He yanked the power cables out of their sockets and pulled them down off their cable guides. He pulled the other ends of the cables, and then found a label reading
POWER INPUT HERE FROM THE POWERFUL INITIATORS WHICH ARE IN ANOTHER COMPARTMENT
. He pulled the cables running from the destroyed initiators and plugged in his borrowed life-support cables. He snaked the cables out into the corridor, praying they would reach, and gave thanks when they did. He made sure the repulsors were off-line, then yanked the lines running to the repulsor feedback dispersal unit and plugged in his borrowed cables.

He stepped back and double-checked his work. “Okay,” he said to no one at all. “That ought to work. I think.” He turned and ran for the ladder up to the command deck.

*   *   *

“Something’s wrong,” Leia said, watching her detector screens. “The spin has reversed instead of stopping, and they haven’t restarted their main engines.”

“Maybe they took some bad damage from that hit,” Mara said.

“Can we dock with the ship and get them off?” Leia asked.

“Not before they hit atmosphere,” Mara said. “There’s nowhere near enough time. Besides, that cloud of debris they threw out is still traveling with them. We’d get hit the same way the LAFs were.”

“A tractor beam, then,” Leia said. “We could set that up and—”

“And what? That ship isn’t all that much smaller than this one. The tractor on this ship doesn’t have a tenth the power to hold that ship. If we tried it, more than likely they’d pull us down instead. I’m sorry, Leia. There’s nothing at all we can do.”

Deep in her heart, Leia knew Mara was right. But it felt
wrong
to give up without a fight. They had to do
something
. “Stay close,” Leia said. “Get as close as you can without getting into the debris cloud and take up station keeping.”

“Leia, there is nothing we can—”

“Suppose they get temporary control, or slow just enough that they can abandon ship?” Leia asked. “We need to be close enough to get in and help.”

Mara hesitated a moment. “All right. But we won’t be able to hold station keeping long. We’re about five minutes from atmosphere right now, and once we hit it—well that will be the end of things.” Leia knew that. Without shielding, without braking from the engines, the coneship would turn into a meteorite, a streak of fire that burned across the sky before crashing in the planet. “I’ll stay close as long as I can,” Mara said. “But it won’t be long.”

“Do it,” Leia said. But even as she urged Mara onward, she wondered why. What good would it do to watch from closer in as her husband was incinerated?

*   *   *

“Out!” Han shouted at Salculd as he came up out the hatch to the command deck. “Out of pilot chair now! I take over.”

“But what are you—”

“No time!” he snapped. He sealed the hatch, just in case they lived long enough to worry about air leaks. “I must take over. No time to explain what to do. Out! Move!”

Salculd moved, undoing her seat restraints and bailing out of the pilot’s station.

Han dove into the vacated seat and checked the status board. Good. Good. Repulsors showing full power in reserve. “Switching on repulsors!” he announced. He adjusted them for their tightest beam and maximum range.

“Honored Solo! The repulsors cannot work at this range!” Dracmus said in Basic. “They are only effective within two kilometers of surface!”

“I know that,” Han said. “They need something to work against before they can set up a repulsion effect. But at these speeds, they’ll encounter a fair amount of resistance from the top of the atmosphere. I know, I know, not enough to slow us down—but enough to start large power transfers through the feedback dispersal loop.”

“But what good does that do?”

“I’ve taken the disperser
out
of the loop and run the cables through the initiator power intake on the engine power system. The feedback energy is just accumulating in the repulsor system. When the power level is high enough, I’ll reset the feedback power breaker and dump the energy right into the initiator intake on the engine power systems.”

“What?!”

“Jump-start it,” Han said. “I’m going to jump-start it.”

There was a moment of dead silence in the control cabin before Dracmus let out a strangled moan and covered her face with her hands.

“What is going on?” Salculd demanded in Selonian.

“I go to start engines by accumulating repulsor feedback power and dumping through initiator manifold,” Han replied.

“But feedback buildup will destroy repulsors!”

“Get even more destroyed by crashing into Selonia,” Han said in his awkward Selonian. “This not work and
you
have idea,
you
try yours. Hang on.”

The idea was crazy. Han knew that. But not doing anything at all would be crazier still. Even a million-to-one shot was better than no chance at all.

He watched the feedback charge accumulator display as the excess energy built up in the repulsor system. The more power, the better the chance of restarting the engines—unless he accumulated so much power the repulsors simply blew out. The closer they got to the planet, the more resistance the repulsors encountered, and the faster the feedback accumulated. But of course, the farther they fell, the less time they would have to put on the brakes, if and when the engines did light.

Han knew that even the maximum power output he could hope for would be borderline minimum to get the sublight engines going—and he was going to get exactly one chance. Whether or not this stunt worked, it was going to blow out the repulsors and the feedback accumulator and half the other systems on the ship.

Han checked his estimated flight path meters. Twenty seconds from the average top of the sensible atmosphere—though the tops of atmospheres had a nasty habit of not being where they were supposed to be, raising and lowering depending on storms and tides and solar heating. But twenty seconds was the outside, the longest he could possibly wait. The repulsors were not likely to provide much more charging of the accumulator if they were being melted off.

It was going to be a tough call, a threading of the needle between competing disasters.

Han checked the altitude and acceleration displays. The coneship was gathering speed, terrifying speed, with every second. Even if he got the engines lit, there might not be time to slow the ship before piling it in.

“Honored Solo! Hull temperature suddenly increasing!” Salculd cried.

“Atmosphere’s here a little early!” Han said. “Hang on! We’re going to jump this thing and see what happens.”

One chance,
Han told himself.
Exactly one chance
. For a fleeting moment he thought of Leia, watching from the
Jade’s Fire
and unable to do anything. He thought of his three children, off somewhere in the care of Chewbacca and Ebrihim the Drall. No. No. He could not die. Not when they all needed him.
One chance
. The ship bucked and shuddered as the atmospheric buffering shook it hard enough to get past the inertial dampers.
One chance
.