Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy III: Showdown at Centerpoint

by Allen, Roger Macbride

  “The Human League,” Kalenda answered. “The Human League hijacked their whole operation—or at least tried to.”

  “Exactly,” said Ossilege. “The Sacorrians, or at least the Triad who rule that world, they were the ones behind it all.”

  “The Triad?” Gaeriel asked.

  “That is the name given to the oligarchy, or joint dictatorship, that rules Sacorria, so-called because there are three of them. One human, one Drall, one Selonian. No one knows anything about the three dictators—not even their names.

  “In any event, they discovered the secret of Centerpoint, and the existence of the repulsors. I expect it was the Drall who found it, buried in records in some ancient archive. The Drall keep excellent records. But that is not important. They recruited malcontents on the various worlds to front revolutions for them, with the intent of creating chaos and confusion—something they could hide behind while digging up the repulsors. They timed the revolts to coincide with the trade summit on Corellia, with the hopes of catching as many big fish as possible in-system. That part of the plan certainly worked. I expect the other revolts were set to go off at the first report of trouble on Corellia.”

  “How do you know all this?” Kalenda asked.

  “I know almost none of it,” Ossilege said, “if you require a person to have proof, evidence, witnesses, documents before they know a thing. I am guessing. But if my guesses are wrong, I, frankly, would be astonished.”

  “But you’re saying that something went wrong with the plan,” said Lando.

  “Has there ever been a plan more complicated than crossing the street where something didn’t go wrong?” Ossilege asked. “But yes, something did go wrong. And the something was named Thrackan Sal-Solo. Somehow or another, he inveigled his way into the inner reaches of the starbuster plot, and he betrayed it. I expect the Triad sent him technicians, and he either bribed or tortured them, or perhaps both, until they agreed to work for him. Those technicians were able to put him in control of Centerpoint’s jamming capabilities, and the interdiction system, but not its starbuster mode.”

  Lando thought for a moment and nodded. “That makes sense. The starbuster seems to be running on automatic pilot right now, anyway. Somebody—this Triad, I guess—worked out a whole detailed program for it, with stars to shoot at and the times to do it, and so on. Then they just set it running, and it hasn’t stopped yet. There must be some way to transmit a stop code, once they got what they wanted. I don’t suppose you’ve figured out how that is transmitted, have you?”

  Ossilege smiled coldly. “Not as yet,” he said. “But, in any event, getting back to Sal-Solo. In the first public message regarding the starbuster, he declared that he, not the Triad, controlled the device. He laid claim to the Corellian system—indeed, the Corellian Sector—in his own name, not in the name of the Triad, and made impossible demands for no better reason than to throw everyone into confusion. Then he activated the interdiction field and the communication jamming.”

  “But what was the point of it all?” Lando asked. “He had to know that sooner or later all those ships out there would show up, one way or the other.”

  “I’m starting to pile guesses on guesses here, but my hunch is that he understood the real power of the planetary repulsors, something none of the other rebel leaders did. Controlling one gives him tremendous bargaining power with the Triad. He can shut down their whole starbuster operation any time he wants to. I think he was planning to be in control of one before he let in the Sacorrian ships. And, in point of fact, he is in control of one.”

  “But where did all those ships come from?” Kalenda demanded. “Sacorria’s a pretty small planet to be able to throw that big a fleet around.”

  “Quite right,” said Ossilege, “but I expect you’d be able to answer your own question, if you gave it a bit more thought.”

  Kalenda frowned, and then her eyes widened. “From here,” she said. “They come from here. That’s why none of the Corellian rebels were able to throw anything but LAFs and PPBs at us. The Sacorrians had the rest of their ships.”

  “But how did the Sacorrians get hold of them?” Lando asked. “And how were they able to find crews for that many ships?”

  “My guess is that the plain old-fashioned answer is that this is the Corellian Sector,” said Ossilege. “Practically everything is for sale—or for rent—in these parts. Probably the Sacorrians bought or leased ships, and hired crews, from the rebel groups they created, the rebel groups having stolen them from wherever they could. Easy for them to arrange, when you recall that the Sacorrian Triad owns the rebellions.”

  “But probably the majority of the ships and crews out there are ex-Corellian Defense Forces sold out to the highest bidder,” Kalenda said. “The spaceside CDF betrayed Governor-General Micamberlecto wholesale, the first chance they got—after they shot up my ship and threw a scare into Han Solo. And most of the CDF ships used to be Imperial ships. Probably a fair fraction of the crew too. They’re older ships, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good.”

  “And what are you going to do about them?” Gaeriel asked Ossilege. “They’ve been continuing to arrive while we’ve been talking here. There must be seventy-five of them out there. Shouldn’t we be getting back to Centerpoint to help out Defender and Sentinel?”

  “No,” said Ossilege. “We will do no such thing.”

  “What?” Gaeriel said. “What do you mean?”

  “The Intruder must complete her mission here before rejoining the other ships. The assault on the repulsor is still our top priority.”

  “But Defender and Sentinel are outnumbered seventy-five to two!”

  “And no one is shooting. Yet. Moving this ship toward the fleet could be seen as an aggressive act. And if it comes down to a shooting war, I doubt that seventy-five to three gives us much better odds. Frankly, seventy-five ships is a lower number than I expected. Either our friend Tendra Risant miscounted, or the Sacorrians have left a substantial reserve of ships back home.”

  “But if those ships move on Centerpoint—”

  “Two ships, or three, it will be impossible to stop them. Please try to understand. If we lose all our ships, and control a repulsor, we win. But if we completely wipe out the enemy fleet, and Thrackan Sal-Solo still controls this repulsor, we have lost. And then the eight million people, or twelve million people, of Bovo Yagen, on their one planet or two, depending on what report you believe, will all die.”

  Gaeriel seemed about to protest further, but she said nothing. Lando understood how she felt. It seemed as if there should have been some way to answer Ossilege.

  Unfortunately, of course, there wasn’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Evasive Maneuvers

  Han Solo paced the ground, back and forth, back and forth, the gravel crunching underfoot. He almost tripped over Artoo once or twice, until he managed to shoo the droid out of the way. “Go over this one more time,” he said, turning to Dracmus.

  The Selonian had joined Han, Leia, Luke, and Mara for dinner on the grounds of the villa. By all rights, they should have been lounging about the table, relaxing in the gentle breezes of perfect twilight, after a first-rate dinner.

  But Han just couldn’t do it. It seemed utterly criminal just to be hanging around, lolling in the lap of luxury, while the whole star system was falling to pieces.

  Everyone kept telling him that there was nothing they could do but wait, but Han had had enough of waiting about five minutes after Luke had told them about Centerpoint.

  “I know I need to understand the situation,” said Han, “but I also know I’m completely lost. So please. Explain to me why it’s in our best interest to just sit here and wait. Explain to me what it accomplishes.”

  “Yes,” said Luke. “Please do. I’d like to hear this.”

  “Very wellness,” said Dracmus, “let me be trying it again. You have to start with knowing the idea that the three things that matter most to Selonians are honor, consensus, a
nd the Den. All else comes behind those three. Everything, and far behind.”

  “All right, that much I get,” said Han. “But what’s that got to do with why having the Triad Selonians on repulsor duty was such a big deal?”

  “Merely everything, that’s all,” said Dracmus. “The Triad Selonians on Sacorria descend from despised offshoot of a bloodline discredited long ago. I will not be going into the whole history, but suffice to be saying that the ancestors of the Triad Selonians disputed a just settlement in a matter of vitalness, centuries ago. Some of them tried to lie and cheat their way into a position of advantage over other members of their own Den. As a consequence, the Den was split up into two groups—the victims of the fraud and the nasty perpetrators. The perpetrators were kicked off Corellia by my ancestors, the ancestors of the Hunchuzuc, and also removed from Selonia by the Overden. So bad was the scandal that the victims formed a new Den under a new name, because the old name was utterly dishonored. Even now I must not speak it. It is obscenity, only to be used when time is right for splendidly rotten insult. This name-losing had never happened to any other Den ever before, and it has never happened again since.”

  “It doesn’t seem quite fair to blame people for what their ancestors did,” said Luke.

  “Is muchly more fair for Selonians than humans, I am believing. Remember that the Den is all. The Den lives on while the individuals die. Also recall that the new individuals are virtual clones of the old ones. You humans tend to think of a Den as collection of individuals. But we are not like humans. In many ways, we are more like highly intelligent social insects. We are individuals, but the individual is completely in service of the Den. Well, nearly complete. We are something closer than your families, but not quite as close as the cells in the body.”

  “That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?” asked Mara.

  “And it still doesn’t seem fair to kick everyone out for the sins of the ancestors,” said Luke. “Leia and I would be in very big trouble if humans did that.”

  Dracmus bowed very slightly to Mara, an almost imperceptible movement. “Maybe analogy is too far. Maybe yes and maybe no. But, Master Skywalker, when you bleed, do you worry how blood cells that go out of you feel about leaving? If some of your blood cells are diseased, do you think about what is fair to cells that are still healthy when you treat the illness—or do you get your blood changed completely, just to be on the safe side, just to make sure illness cannot come back?”

  Han resisted the urge to start pacing again. “It’s the story of my life with you, Dracmus, but we’ve wandered off the point again.”

  “Thought we were talking about how humans different from us,” Dracmus said.

  Han paused a moment, resisting the temptation to lose his temper again. He collected himself and then spoke. “I’ve got a feeling we’re not going to get anywhere until we’re all agreed on this, so okay. I’ll tell you my reaction, and then maybe we can move on. I grew up with Selonians, and I never knew any of this. I admit it’s embarrassing, but—”

  “Be not muchly embarrassed, Honored Solo,” Dracmus said in a soothing voice. “Don’t be forgetting the Selonians you met were trained—and bred—for sole purpose of dealing with humans. Is our job to make you feel comfy with us.”

  “I know, I know. And they did a good job. I grew up thinking that Selonians were just funny-looking humans with a few quaint customs left over from the old days. But just to round this out, I should have found out how it worked, even if your people didn’t want me to know. Back in my smuggling days, I made a career out of knowing what the other side’s worldview was like—and yet I grew up knowing nothing about the people next door. It makes me wonder about the rest of my life, growing up on Corellia. How much else did I not see?”

  “Probably quite a bit,” said Leia. “None of us ever really sees our own culture all that well.”

  Han rolled his eyes. “Gee, there’s an original thought. But even all this is off the point. What I was going to say was that it was embarrassing to find out how little I knew about you, but that right now I don’t care about being embarrassed. Treat me like a complete idiot, but make me understand what’s going on. If I’ve got this straight, now that Kleyvits has admitted to being in the pay of the Triad, and admitted to smuggling some of them back onto the planet, that changes everything, right?”

  “Right,” said Dracmus. “Excellent!”

  “Great. I’m glad. But how?”

  “Begging pardon?”

  “How. How does Kleyvits confessing change everything?”

  “Because it means my Hunchuzuc were tricked. We gave in under false pretenses. The Overden made us be thinking that the Overden ran the repulsor, and had smashed the Bakuran destroyer all by themselves. All was fraud,” she said, her voice growing genuinely angry. “The Overden achieved a consensus favorable to themselves by trickery and deception, and by involving themselves with a dishonored and nameless Den. This is depth of crime. Even worse, the nameless Den was linked to Triad, and Triad linked to Sal-Solo, who kidnaps his own, steals children.”

  “Guilt by association,” Han said. “How advanced and sophisticated.”

  Mara looked up at Han. “Think it through. In a group society run by consensus, guilt by association makes some sense.”

  “Anyway,” said Dracmus, “Overden in bad. No way could it be worse for them. You saw how Kleyvits caved in once the truth came out. That will be happening every time Hunchuzuc demands the truth of Overden Selonian. Overden will be losing so much face you’ll be able to be seeing the back of their heads from the front. Hunchuzuc will take over. Take over consensus, take over much property—take over possession of the repulsor.”

  “But the Sacorrian Selonians are still the ones running the repulsor,” Luke objected.

  “Yes! And so we must wait. I know that human way—at least one human way—to deal with such problem would be to give the Sacorrian Selonians one chance to give up. If they didn’t, in you go with all guns blazing nicely. But maybe everyone gets killed. You seize the repulsor, but have no idea where ON switch is.” Dracmus shook her head. “This is not Selonian way. We will talk with Sacorrian scums, nasty though job will be. We are talking with them, right now. And we will talk to them. And talk to them. Finally, pressure—peer pressure on Sacorrians to give up—will be too much, and they will give up. And do more than giving up. They will cooperate with Hunchuzuc, tell us how to run machinery, as part of their penance for being on the losing side. This is how it will be. We just have to sit back and wait.”

  “Sounds terrific,” said Han. “So what’s the catch?”

  “The catch is all takes time. Everything I tell of will happen. Is inevitable. The trouble is like in old Selonian saying. ‘The agreed-to we do at once. The inevitable can take a little while.’ ”

  “How big a little while?” asked Luke.

  Dracmus shook her head. “An hour. A day. A month. A year.”

  Luke frowned. “An hour we have. Maybe even a day. But not much longer. Centerpoint Station is going to fire at Bovo Yagen in just over eighty-four hours. Unless we fire a planetary repulsor beam at Center-point at just the right moment, a whole solar system dies.”

  “And a whole Sector starts to panic and wonder who’s next, and a whole galaxy starts to wonder what the point is of a New Republic that can’t protect them,” said Leia.

  “And I hate to say it,” said Han, “but they’d be absolutely right to start wondering.”

  * * *

  “Should I reset the breaker now?” Jacen asked.

  “Not yet. Just a sec,” said Anakin, a bit absently. “One more of them to stick in.” He was lying on his stomach, propped up on one elbow, leaning over the open underfloor access panel. He stared down into the morass of wires and cables and circuit boards for a minute or two, then reached in and pulled another of the fist-sized power-shunt transpacitors. It took a good solid yank to pull the thing out of its socket. He held it up and stared at it for a moment, almost as
if he could see through it, into it. “Boy, did this get all melty inside.” He set it to one side. “Jaina, gimme the one from the hyperdrive.”

  Jaina handed him the last of the transpacitors they had gotten by cannibalizing the Falcon’s faster-than-light drive. Anakin plugged it into the socket, then reconnected the power shunt board to the main sub-light engine circuit. “All right,” he said to Jacen. “Push the reset.”

  Jacen was sitting by the next access panel over, where the circuit breaker board was. He held his breath and threw the switch back to the ON position. There was the slightest of pauses, and then the green status light came on. Jacen breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to Q9. “It worked, Chewbacca. We ought to have repulsors and sublight engines now.”

  Chewbacca’s voice—an anxious yelp and a growl—answered, sounding as if it came from a little bit out of the comlink mike’s normal range. There was something more than a bit incongruous about a Wookiee voice coming from Q9’s speaker. “Chewbacca says to hurry,” Ebrihim said, quite needlessly.

  “Okay, okay, we’re hurrying,” Jacen said, getting to his feet. He closed the panel over the breaker box while Anakin closed up the one over the circuit board. “We’re on our way to the cockpit now.”

  The muffled sound of a comlink being fumbled about came from Q9’s speaker, and then a hoot from Chewbacca and Ebrihim’s slightly exasperated voice. “Give it back,” he said, apparently to the Wookiee. “I’ll tell them.”

  There was a slight pause, and then Ebrihim’s voice again, a bit louder and clearer. “Get moving as fast as you can,” he said. The sun will be rising soon, and I’m sure our friend will be getting up as well.”

  “All right, all right,” muttered Jacen. “Nag, nag, nag, all the time. Come on, Q9, let’s go.”

  “I still don’t see why you couldn’t have taken the time to go get another comlink out of stores,” said Q9, speaking in his own voice. “I don’t enjoy being used as an intercom.”