Star Wars - Correlian trilogy 3 - Showdown at Centerpoint

  Star Wars

  Corellian Trilogy

  book 3

  Shutdown at Centerpoint

  by Roger McBride Allen

  Chapter1 Approach Honored Solo, we are running out of time!" the voice squawked from the comm unit. "We will be entering atmosphere soonest if our approach is not controlled!" The intercom gave out a strangled squeal. Either the comm circuit up to the ship's control cabin was on the verge of giving out again, or else Han had just gotten lucky, and Dracmus was about to lose her voice. That would be a blessing. Han slapped the answer switch and tried to stay focused on his work. "Keep your shirt on, Dracmus," he said, shouting just a bit. "The comm unit send-circuits needed work as well. Tell honored Pilot Salculd that I'm nearly done." Why did the universe require all shipboard repairs to be on the rush? What I wouldn't give to have Chewbacca here, Han thought. "What shirt?" the voice asked worriedly, "Should shirts be worn? Is this for safety?" Han sighed and pushed the answer button again. "It's an expression. It means 'be patient,'" he said, struggling to keep his own patience. Dracmus was a Selonian, and most Selonians did not like being in space. Understandable for a species that mostly lived underground, but having an agoraphobic being in command was enough to drive anyone crazy. Han Solo made the last hookup, closed down the last of the inspection hatches, and crossed his fingers for luck. That ought to do the trick, he told himself. It had better, it was about time that something worked properly. If the coneship he was aboard was a fair example of the breed, Selonian spacecraft weren't much for reliability. Han engaged the power switch and waited for the inverter system to energize. Han was starting to question his own sanity in volunteering to help fly this particular coneship down out of free space to the surface of Selonia. He could have said so long and good luck and ridden down with Leia on the Jade's Fire. But when a job needed doing, and no one else could do it, volunteering was not really all that voluntary. He hadn't had much choice in the matter. He couldn't have left Dracmus high and dry. He had obligations to her, and to her people. And Dracmus had made it clear they had to get this ship down. Her people couldn't afford to abandon any spacecraft, no matter what shape the craft was in. The nameless coneship might be a piece of space-going junk, but Dracmus had assured Han that it was better than anything else the Selonians had at the moment. Or, more accurately, it was better than anything that the Hunchuzuc Den and their Republicists had. "Hurry, Honored Solo!" Dracmus called again. Why couldn't that intercom break down the way everything else did on this ship? Han hit the answer button again. "Stand by, Dracmus. Pilot Salculd-watch your power settings!" Knowing he was with the Hunchuzuc would have been a bit more useful if Han had had some clear idea about who or what the Hunchuzuc Den was. All he knew for sure about them was that the Den was part of an amorphous faction of Selonians who lived on Corel-lia, and that, so far as Dracmus knew, they were still allied to a pro-New Republic alliance of Selonian Dens called the Republicists, and that he was mixed up with them. Dracmus was a member of the Hunchuzuc, and she had either kidnapped Han or rescued him from Thrackan Sal-Solo-or both. Han was still not sure. The Hunchuzuc seemed to be having a fight with the Overden, the leadership on Selonia proper, a fight that was going on in parallel with the Republic's battle against the rebellions in the Corellia system, though the two fights did not seem to be directly related to each other. The Overden was on the Absolutist side, which wanted absolute independence For Selonia. But even if the Ilunchuzuc were Repubiicist and the Overden were Absolutist, Han was coming to the conclusion that neither side much cared about principles, either way. Each was primarily against the other. But Han did know a few things for sure. He knew that Dracmus had saved his life, and that she had taken risks to treat him well. He knew that a member of his own family-Thrackan Sal-Solo-had treated Dracmus's people with the utmost cruelty. By Selonian standards, that alone was enough to brand Han himself as a villain, a killer, a monster. Yet Dracmus had given Han every benefit of the doubt. She had treated him with decency and respect. If that was all Han knew, it was also all he had to know. "When will it be working?" Dracmus called, her voice growing more strident. "The planet is getting closer!" "That is the idea when you're trying to reenter," Han muttered to himself. Decency and respect to one side, there was no denying that Dracmus could be one major pain in the neck. Han pressed the answer stud again and spoke. "It's working now. Tell Salculd the inverter is back on-line. Have her power up the control circuits and let's see how it goes." "We shall do so, Honored Solo,'" said the faint, worried-sounding voice from the comm unit. "Saieuld says she is initiating control circuit power-up." Han was kneeling down in front of the inspection hatch, and a low-powered hum made him think he might be just a bit too close to the inverter array. He stood up and backed away. The hum faded out after a moment, and the array's indicator lights came on, showing normal operation. Han pressed down the answer button again. "Don't hold me to this," he shouted, "hut I think it's working. The spare parts off Mara's ship did the trick. We ought to be able to get underway anytime you like." "Good to hear, most Honorable Solo," Dracmus said, the relief in her voice almost painfully obvious. "Very good to hear indeed. We shall proceed at once." The indicators flickered a bit to show the inverters were drawing more power. "Take it easy up there," Han said. "Throttle up nice and slow, all right?" "We are doing so, Honored Solo. And we shall hold at one-third power. We have no desire to overload our systems again." "That's very reassuring," Han said. "But 1 think I'd better head up there and keep an eye on you just the same." Han crossed to the access ladder and climbed up to the nose cabin of the coneship. The coneship was just that-a fat cone, with the engines at the base and the control cabin in the point. The nose itself was nearly all transparent transplex, affording a spectacular overhead view. The pilot, Salculd, lay flat on her back, looking up and out at the sky ahead. For a human pilot, it would not be the most comfortable way to work. Of course, Selonians were most decidedly not human. Salculd looked over to the lower deck access hatch as Han climbed out of it. She gave him a toothy smile and then returned her attention to her work. She looked comfortable enough. Dracmus was pacing at the rear of the cabin, looking anything but cairn or relaxed. Though they were fairly standard bipeds, Selonians were taller but thinner than humans. Their arms and legs were shorter, and their bodies rather longer. They could manage equally well walking on two feet or four. Retractable claws in both their hand-paws and foot- paws made them impressive climbers and diggers. Their tails were only about half a meter long, but they packed a major wallop when used as a club-as Han had reason to know. They had long, pointed faces, and their entire bodies were covered in sleek, short-haired fur. Dracmus was dark brown. Salculd was mostly black, but her belly fur was light brown. They both had bristly whiskers that were as expressive as human eyebrows, once you got a little practice in interpreting them. They also had mouths full of very sharp teeth. Han had been able to interpret the teeth with no practice at all. In short, they were elegant and impressive-looking creatures. "How does all go?" Han asked Salculd the pilot, speaking in his rather labored Selonian. Salculd did not speak Basic. "All is well. Honored Solo," Salculd replied. "At least until the next subsystem flips out." "Wonderful," Han said to himself. "Everything be well, Honored Dracmus?" he asked in Selonian. "Fine, line, all is fine, until we crash and die," Dracmus replied. "Glad we have a consensus," Han muttered to himself. "It is good to plan ahead like that," Salculd said. "Here 1 was just going to land the ship the regular way. Now 1 arn knowing that I will fail and we will crash. It is most comforting." "That is enough, Pilot Salculd," Dracmus snapped. "Concentrate all attention on your d
uties." "Yes, Honored Dracmus," Salculd said at once, her tone of voice most apologetic. Salculd was a fairly experienced pitol, and knew her ship at least reasonably well, if not as well as Han would have preferred. Dracmus, on the other hand, was trained to deal with humans, and incompletely trained at that. When it came to ship handling, she had ' no experience, no knowledge, and no skill. Even so, she commanded the ship-not just in deciding where it would go, but down to the last detail of every maneuver. Salculd could not, or would not, overrule her. Dracmus was of higher status, or seniority, or something, relative to Salculd, and that was that, insofar as either of the Selonians was concerned. Neither seemed much concerned by the fact that Dracmus had only the slightest understanding of space operations, or by the fact that during the raid on Selonia she had repeatedly ordered the ship to do things it could not, and come alarmingly close to getting them all killed. Saiculd might have a smart mouth, and an irreverent attitude, but she followed all of Dracmus's orders-no matter how boneheaded-with alarming dispatch. It took some getting used to. Han took his own place in the control seat next to Salculd. He had done his best to adjust the padding to fit a human frame, but the seat would never be comfortable. Han lay back and looked up. The view out the transparent nose of the coneship was nothing less than spectacular. The planet Selonia hung big and bright in the sky, filling the middle third of the field of view. Selonia had smaller oceans than Corellia, and the land mass was broken up into thousands of medium-sized islands, more or less evenly spaced across the face of the planet. Instead of two or three large oceans and four or five continental landmasses, Selonia's surface was a maze of water and land. Hundreds of seas and bays and inlets and straits and shoals separated the islands. Han remembered reading somewhere that no point on land anywhere on Selonia was more than one hundred fifty kilometers from open water, and no point on the water was more than two hundred kilometers from the nearest shoreline. But there was more to the view than the spectacular planet. Mara Jade's personal ship, the Jade's Fire, hung in space a kilometer or two away, her bow hiding a bit of the planet's equatorial region. She was a long, low, streamlined ship, painted in a flame pattern of red and gold. The ship looked fast, sleek, strong, maneuver-able-and Han knew she was all of those things. He wished, not for the first time, that he was aboard her, and not just because the Fire was a better ship. Leia was aboard the Fire, along with Mara Jade. After Dracmus had managed to blow out nearly every system on board the coneship, the Fire had rescued them and provided Han with the spare parts he needed to repair the craft. Now the Fire was preparing to see the coneship to a safe landing. Han did not like Leia being on one ship while he was on the other, but the arrangement made too much sense. Mara, not yet completely recovered from her leg injury, still needed some looking after, and she needed a copilot, at least until she recovered. Space knew the Selonians, Dracmus and Salculd, needed all the help they could get. Besides which, Leia spoke Selonian- spoke it better than Han, for that matter-and given recent events it made more than a little sense to have at least one speaker of the Selonian language aboard each ship, in case of difficulties at the landing field. The plan was for the two ships to fly toward Selonia in formation and land side by side. But even if it all seemed perfectly reasonable and harmless for Leia to stay on Mara's ship while he flew in the coneship, Han didn't have to like it. He didn't need to ask what could go wrong. So many things had gone wrong already. A bright light flashed on and off from the forward port of the Fire. Leia was using the landing lights on the Jade's fire to send Mon Calamari blink code--combinations of long and short flashes to form the letters of the Basic alphabet. The technique was slow and clumsy, but the normal com channels were jammed and it beat not being able to talk at all. READY TO BEGIN ENTRY, Han read. SIGNAL WHEN YOU arE ready. "They say they are ready." He turned to Salculd. "Are we prepared?" "Yes," said Salculd. "Very well," Han said, "Honored Dracmus," he said in Basic, so that Salculd could not understand. "You will now do what I say. Stop pacing, take your seat, and instruct Salculd to accept orders from me. I would then ask you most kindly to shut up until we are on the ground. I want you to give no orders and say nothing. I just want you to sit quietly. Or else I tell the Jade's Fire that escorting us is a suicide run. I will instruct them to leave us here." It was all bluff, of course, hut Dracmus was panicky enough that she wasn't likely to think it through. "But-" she protested. "But nothing. I know blink code and you don't. I can talk to the Fire and you can't. You nearly got us killed ordering this ship around before, and I'm not going to put up with that again." "I must protest! This is robbery of the worst kind!' Han grinned. "Actually, it's more like piracy. Or you could call it a pretty miid form of hijacking. And I might add that if you don't know robbery from piracy, you have no business running a ship." Dracmus glared at Han, about to protest-but then she shook tier head. "So be it. I must accede. Even to my eye, my ship orders were none too good, and I wish to live some more." She shifted to Selonian. "Pilot Salculd! You will obey the orders of Honored Han Solo as you would rny own, and do so until such time as we reach the ground." Salculd sat up in her seat and looked from one to the other before grinning even more widely than before. "Yes, Honored Dracmus!" she said. "I obey with pleasure!" "See that you don't find too much pleasure in obeying, Salculd," Dracmus growled. "Honored Solo, if you would proceed." "Take your seat," Han said to Dracmus in Selonian. "We all must strap in and prepare for acceleration. Salculd, you will fly a standard approach to the in- tended field of landing, starting on my command. Is that understood?" "Yes, indeed," Salculd said. "Absolutely." Han picked up the handlight placed next to his seat for the purpose, and signaled back to the Fire. BEADY FO COMMENCE EMNTRY MANEUVERZ, he signaled, managing to spot every mistake just after he made it. "Someday I gotta take the time to brush up on this stuff," he muttered to himself. we are jus'i about beady ourselves, Leia signaled back. TAKING POSITION TO YOUR STERN. WILL FOLLOW

  YOU IN.

  "Ha, ha, ha." Han said. "Glad 1 married such a humorist." He shifted back to Selonian. "Very well, Salculd, take us in. With much care." As he watched, the Jade's Fire came about on her long axis, putting her stern toward the coneship. Salculd edged the throttle upward, transferring minimum power to the engines. As the coneship began to accelerate toward the planet, the Fire drifted back, falling astern off the port side. As the faster, more maneu-verable ship, and the one that was easier to control, it made sense for the Fire to go in second, where she could keep watch on the coneship. But even the spares on board the Fire had not been enough to patch up the coneship's stern detector grid. The coneship was, and would continue to be, all but completely blind astern. All she had was one wide-angle holocam set in the base of the cone, between two of the sublight engines. It would be useful during the final approach and landing, but even with the main engines off, its resolution was so poor that the Jade's Fire would be lost to view if she drifted only a few kilometers away. Once the engines came on, the stern holocam view could only get worse. In other words, Han might-or might not-be able to see the Fire's blink code signals if she signaled again. In theory, he could use the coneship's running lights to send blink code of his own, but he would not be able to see the lights himself, rendering it just that much harder to send accurate code. Han was hoping the question of signaling wouldn't come up. The poor visibility to the stern made for another good reason to have the Fire go in second. Better to have a ship you trusted at your back. At least a ship you more or less trusted. Han had managed to put to rest most-but not all-of his reservations regarding Mara. He could think of no reason, no motive, for her acting against Han and Leia and the Republic, and there was no hard evidence that she had done so. But she had never explained her actions to his satisfaction, either. She had been in the right piaces at the right times-and ihe wrong places at the wrong times-a bit too often in recent days. On the other hand, if she had wanted to do real damage, Mara was too much of a pro to let things be bungled. And the opposition had certainly done some bungling, thank the stars. Not
everything had gone their way. Say whatever else you might about the woman, but Mara was competent. And that was a compelling argument. No, Han told himself as the Jade's Fire was lost completely to forward view. Leave ii be. They really had no choice but to trust Jade. He watched as the Fire came into somewhat fuzzy view on the stern viewscreen. It was time to forget everything else and remember that the main thing was to get this crate down onto the surface. "Now, Salculd, it is your task," he said. "Do well." "I will," Salculd said. "Don't worry about that." The ship chose that moment to lurch to one side, and Salculd grabbed frantically at the controls. "Sorry, sorry," Salculd said. "Stabilizer overcompensating. All right now." "I can't tell you what a comfort that is," Han said. For a moment he considered the idea of shoving Salculd out of the pilot's station and taking over, but he knew better than that. The controls were set up for a Selonian, and the coneship had so many idiosyncra- sies it made the Millennium Falcon look like a standard production ship. It might be an alarming thought, but unless things got really hairy, it was probably safest to trust Salculd. Saiculd edged the throttle up just a trifle more and the coneship moved just a bit faster in toward the planet. At least the coneship was not such a relic that it relied on ballistic reentry, using friction with the atmosphere to slow itself down. It could make a nice, civilized powered reentry. At least Han hoped so. Most spacecraft were designed to survive at least one ballistic reentry, but not this thing. The planet moved closer. In another few minutes Salculd would have to turn the ship over and point its engines forward to slow the craft. That was the part that worried Han. Once they were decelerating, they would be at their most vulnerable. The coneship's fragility was far from the only source of danger. Someone on Selonia had sent a whole fleet of Light Attack Fighters up to meet the Bakuran ships. The Bakurans had done a fair amount of damage to the LAFs, but Han had to assume that whoever commanded them would have the sense to hold some of them in reserve. And as Dracmus assured him that the Hunchuzuc had no such ships, it only made sense to assume that whoever it was who did have Light Attack Fighters might take a dim view of the coneship's arrival. Thingb could get sticky. Han had worked on the assumption that there would be trouble, and done his best to plan accordingly. The Jade's Fire could provide a certain amount of covering fire, if push came to shove, but the other ship would be an uncertain protection at best. The coneship was completely unarmed, and had no shields at all. It didn't even have enough reserve power to hook up any weaponry-a moot point in any event, as there was no practical way to dismount any of the Jade's weapons or attach them to the coneship. Han had looked into it. Short of standing in the airlock and taking potshots at any attackers with his hand-blaster, there was not much he could do. But Han was used to working with nothing. Even a ship as decrepit as this one could play a few tricks if need be. He had found a way to rig up a defense that might provide some measure of protection if things got hot. Of course, sometimes, when you worked with nothing, nothing was exactly what you got. And sometimes, if you got into a fight with people who had better hardware, those other people won. Not a happy line of thought when you were on board a flying practice target headed into a war zone. And his thoughts didn't get any happier a few minutes later when Leia sent that attack warning.