Showdown At Centerpoint

by Roger MacBride Allen

  some gradual and indefinable moment, the tip of his finger was through and

  outside the field, on the other side. "Jacen, take my hand," said Anakin.

  "Jaina, take his." Jacen grabbed his brother's right hand in his left, and

  Jaina took Jacen's right in her own left hand. Anakin pressed onward, until

  his whole finger, his whole arm, his shoulder, his head, his chest, were

  through. He leaned forward, pushing slowly, steadily forward. He lifted his

  left leg up, forcing it gently up and through the field. The field sparked

  and shimmered for a moment as his leg slipped clear of it and he set it down

  on the outside. His right leg seemed to move through more easily. And then,

  but for his right arm, he was through, and on the outside. He kept moving

  forward, very slowly, leaning forward as he pulled, dragging his brother's

  arm out through the field. The field sparked and shimmered with greater

  violence when Jacen's hand touched it. Jacen winced, and almost flinched

  backward. There was the crackle and spark of static electricity as his hand

  moved forward through the field. It was as if the field was resisting him

  more than his brother, and it was plain to see from the expression on his

  face that it was far from a pleasant sensation. The field seemed reluctant

  to let his head come through, and sparks and fire flickered about his face.

  His head broke through quite abruptly, and he let out a little grunt of pain

  as it did. His hair sprang straight out from his head, alive with static

  electricity, something that had not happened to Anakin. The sparks flared

  and flickered about him as he forced one leg and then the other through the

  field. Jaccn gasped with relief as his body broke free of the field. Anakin

  still held his left hand, and the two boys moved slowly out from the field

  as Jacen pulled Jaina's hand through the field. Sparks shimmered again, but

  in a deeper, duller, angry color. "Ow!" Jaina said. "It's-it's like fire."

  "Just keep coming," Jacen said. "Your hand is free of the field. Keep your

  eyes shut. It's easier that way, believe me. Keep coming. Keep coming.

  There's your arm free. Here comes your head. Hang on! Hang on! Almost free.

  All right, your face is clear. That's the worst part. You should see your

  hair! No, don't open your eyes yet, but it's sticking straight up from your

  head. Good. Good. Now push your leg through. Steady. Easy does it. Good.

  Good. Now the other one. Up, over, through. Good. Just the foot to come-

  whoops!" Jaina tumbled down onto her brother as she broke free of the field,

  and Jacen went down, taking Anakin with him. The stretched-out part of the

  force field shimmered and sparked one last time, and then retracted, shrank,

  pulled back, merging smoothly back into the rest of the field, as if there

  had never been such a thing as a distortion in the field's surface. "Boy,

  that hurt," Jaina said. "Like getting a shock all over my body." "I think it

  was worse for you than me," Jacen said as the three children disentangled

  themselves from each other and helped each other up. "Did it hurt you at

  all, Anakin?" he asked his brother. Anakin shook his head. "Nope. It sort of

  tickled a little bit. Well, it didn't feel nice like tickling, but sort of

  like that."' "That was impossible, of course," said Q9. "What you just did

  was quite impossible. No one can walk through a force field that way." "We

  didn't go through it, really," Anakin said. "It was more like we went

  between it. Stretched it out until there was room between the field, sort

  of. Then I just pushed the parts apart, and went through. That's all." "Ah.

  That's all. Thank you. That makes it all quite clear, I assure you."

  "Anakin-what about Chewbacca and Ebrihim and Aunt Marcha?" asked Jaina.

  Anakin shook his head. "I don't think I can do it from this side," he said.

  "Not to pull people through. It's harder to do, the bigger and heavier you

  are." "Can you do anything with the control panel?" Jaina asked. Anakin went

  over and looked at the panel, put his hand over it, and shut his eyes. He

  concentrated, focusing his attention deep inside the device. At last he took

  hishand off and opened his eyes. "No," he said. "But you can make all sorts

  of machines do whatever you want," Jaina protested. "Yeah, but that's easy,"

  Anakin said. "Real little stuff I can move around. I can make stuff do what

  it's supposed to do. But the lock insides are too big. And the lock's doing

  what it's supposed to do. It's already working." "I couldn't ask for a

  clearer explanation," said Q9. "But I take it you can't get the others out?"

  "No," said Anakin. "Not without the key." "I see you had this all carefully

  planned out in advance," Q9 observed. "The plan was that you would be able

  to pick the lock," Ebrihim said, rather severely. "But that is all to one

  side. If we indeed cannot get out, obviously the children must attempt to

  escape on their own. With your help, of course, Q9." "What?" Q9 asked. "How?

  How are we supposed to get away?" "By flying away in the Millennium Falcon,

  of course." "Wait a second," said Jacen. "You want us to fly the Falconl"

  Chewbacca looked at Ebrihim, made a yawping sound, and then bared his teeth

  and shook his head. "I agree that it is foolhardy and dangerous," Ebrihim

  said to Chewbacca. He turned to the three children. "But it is nonetheless

  the best of many bad choices. Chewbacca, you yourself said the repairs to

  the Falcon were all but complete. I feel quite certain that you would have

  no trouble explaining to the children what still needs to be done. And I

  have no doubt at all they could perform the repairs. "As for the rest of it,

  we three in here have far, far less value as hostages, and Thrackan knows

  it. The three jewels are already outside this force field stockade. Anakin,

  Jacen, Jaina-the danger would be great if you tried to escape on your own.

  But I sincerely believe that the danger to you, and to ourselves, and to

  others, would be much less than if you stayed. Thrackan is a cruel and

  heartless man, and I do not wish you in his clutches. As I see it, there are

  only two possibilities. The first is that your mother goes along with what

  he tells her to do." "She'd never do that," Jacen said. "I quite agree. But

  if she did, I believe your uncle would decide you were too valuable to give

  up. He would keep you, in hopes of extracting further concessions. And every

  time she g ave in, he would have more reason to hold on to you. I believe

  you would be permanent prisoners." "And if Mom did give in to him because of

  us, a lot of other people would get hurt," said Jaina. "And killed," added

  Jacen. "Precisely. The second, more likely possibility is that your mother

  would refuse his demands. She would do so fully knowing the consequences,

  and it would break her heart. But she would refuse him, all the same. Sooner

  or later, your cousin Thrackan would either become so angry and frustrated

  that he would take it all out on you-or else he would threaten to torture

  you, or actually do so, in order to get what he wanted out of your mother."

  "Torture?" Jaina said. "I hadn't thought of that." "Would he really?" Jacen

  asked. "I think it quite possible. Even likely." Q9 looked
from his master

  to the children, and back again. There was something unstated here,

  something he nearly said himself, before thinking better of it. No one was

  saying that it would be better for the children to have a clean, quick death

  in a crash rather than be the unwilling pawns in a cruel game. A cruet game

  where many others would suffer, a game that could only end with the pawns

  being destroyed at the exact moment it suited their master. How noble, how

  brave of them all to say nothing at all about it. How odd that he, Q9, was

  having such peculiar and emotional reactions to everything. Just that moment

  a new and terri- fying thought crossed his mind. "Half a moment," he said.

  "What about me?" Ebrihim looked toward Q9 and chuckled to himself. "Oh,

  you'll go with them, of course. What else could you do? What, exactly, do

  you expect Thrackan Sal-Solo would do to you if he woke up in the morning to

  find the chidren gone and you here?" Q9 thought that one through, and did

  not care one little bit for the conclusions he reached. "I might have

  known," he said. "It's clear now that it's all been a plot against me." "It

  seems to me there are other beings worse off than you in all this," Ebrihim

  said. "But never mind that. Go, and go now. The longer you delay, the

  greater the dangers will be." "But we don't know what's wrong with the ship,

  and we don't know how to fix it," Jaina protested. Ebrihim held up his hand

  with the comlink in it. "We have this comlink in here, and you children can

  use Q9's built-in comlink to communicate with us until you re-establish the

  link to the Falcon's comm system. I'll have the comlink. Chewbacca can tell

  me what to do, and I'll tell you. We'll walk you through it. You can do it."

  Chewbacca nodded his agreement, and made an encouraging little burbling

  snarl. "It's nice for you to say," said Jaina to Ebrihim, "but that doesn't

  mean you're right." "I'm sure you can do it. Now you must go," said Ebrihim.

  "The guards could awaken at any moment. We have no choice in the matter.

  Go!" The three children looked at each other for a moment, and then, moving

  as one, they turned and headed for the ship, leaving so suddenly and quietly

  that Q9 was taken by surprise. He hovered, motionless for a moment, before

  he swiveled his view dome about and realized they were gone. He raised

  himself up on his repulsors and took off after them. Admiral Ossilege

  himself met the Lady Luck when she landed on the hangar deck of the

  Intruder. He waited, resplendent in his customary dress-white uniform, and

  watched as the Lady's hatch swung open. "Greetings to you all,'1 he said as

  Lando, Gaeriel, and Kalenda disembarked, Threepio following behind. "I trust

  your information is as interesting as you promise, I find it most ironic

  that the moment we are at long last able to speak over the comlinks, we must

  worry about being overheard." "I think you'll agree that it's all worth

  hearing-and that it's worth being sure we keep it to ourselves," Lando said.

  "Let's get to someplace where we ean talk." "Of course," said the admiral.

  "We shall go to my private quarters. He glared at Threepio. "That can stay

  aboard your ship, I think," he said to Lando." "Well, really, how

  inconsiderate-" Threepio began, but Ossilege frowned fiercely enough to

  silence him. "The rest of you, come this way." Lando glanced toward Kalenda,

  but she just shook her head. No doubt the same thought had crossed her mind.

  The admiral spent so much of his lime on the bridge, it had never occurred

  to either of them that he even had quarters. But he did have them, and he

  led the group to them in short order. Lando had always prided himself on a

  sense of design, a knack for knowing what looked right. It was instantly

  plain to his practiced eye that Ossilege's stateroom suite was a jarring

  display of op-posites-the opulent up against the spartan, the huge and

  magnificent against the small and thrifty. The room itself was

  spectacular-the cream-colored walls and deep blue carpets, the sheer size of

  it, twice the size of any other stateroom on the ship. A huge circular

  viewport, two meters across, took up most of one bulkhead, and out of it

  Lando could see a breathtaking view of Drall framed against the night sky.

  The indirect lighting was warm and even, coming from every side so that it

  was impossible to cast a shadow in the room. The personal appointments to

  the room, on the other hand, were barely there at all. A camp cot sat in one

  corner, with a fold-up night table by its side. The cot was made up with

  sharp-edged precision, the pillow plumped up and set precisely in the

  centerline of the bed, exactly over the point where the covers and sheet

  were perfectly folded back. Somehow, the perfection of it all told Lando

  that Hortel Ossilege made his own bed in the morning, despite any number of

  valet droids and human servants. He was not the sort of person who would

  trust anyone else to make his bed properly. There was an alarm clock, a

  portable comm unit, and a reading light on the night table, and a single,

  largish book as well. Whether the volume was a novel of some sort, a weighty

  historical tome, ugrave; a Bakuran religious text, or the Bakuran Navy

  regulation book, Lando could not tell. There were absolutely no other

  personal items at all in the room. Whatever else he did own was presumably

  hidden away behind the closet doors. In the far corner near the door was a

  spartan, utilitarian desk with a small, neat stack of work waiting for the

  admiral on one side, and a much larger, but equally neat stack of work

  already done on the other. There were a few writing instruments lined up

  neatly to one side of the desk, a desk lamp, a datapad, and another comm

  set. Nothing else. The desk was positioned so that when the admiral sat

  behind it, as he did now, the splendid viewport was behind him. That was the

  sum total of furnishings in the room. Indeed, there were no other chairs in

  the room beside the one behind the desk, but even as Lando was noticing

  this, a gunmetal-gray service droid trundled into the room, carrying three

  folding chairs on its back. It set the chairs in front of the desk with

  surprising speed and efficiency, and then was gone. The three visitors sat

  down facing the desk, and Ossilege stared at them expectantly. "Tell rne,"

  he said, "all about Centerpoint." Lieutenant Kalenda cleared her throat and

  spoke, a bit nervously. "The long and the short of it is that Centerpoint is

  the starbuster. It is the device used to make stars go nova." "I see," said

  Ossilege, in about the same tone of voice he would have taken if Kalenda had

  just told him the evening dinner menu. "And we also arc pretty sure that the

  planetary repulsors are the way to shut Centerpoint down." "Indeed?" he

  asked in the same calm tone. "Most interesting. Perhaps," he said, "you

  could provide me with a few details."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Incoming The alarm buzzer squawked wildly in the tiny sleeping cabin of the

  Gentleman Caller. Tendra Risant leapt up out of bed, her heart pounding. She

  scrambled to her feet, getting herself entangled in the sheets and nearly

  falling flat on her face bef
ore she got herself sorted out and headed for

  the control room. She didn't recognize the alarm. What in the burning suns

  had broken down this time? She reached the control room and checked all the

  displays, but saw nothing but a green board. Then she woke up the rest of

  the way and remembered. She had installed this alarm herself. The one that

  went off when the Gentleman Caller's navicom-puter detected the interdiction

  field going down. The interdiction field going down! Suddenly her mind was

  racing. One part of her was suddenly afraid. The field coming down could

  mean any number of things, many of them not good. But all that was beyond

  her control. Later she could let her imagination run wild, let herself

  speculate about what it all meant. Right now the field coming down meant

  exactly one thing. She could get moving at last. She scrambled into the

  pilot's seat and set to work. Tendra had had very little practice with

  navicom-puters before boarding the Gentleman Caller, but she certainly had

  plenty of time to practice with the one on the ship since then. Working as

  fast as she could, she set up the problem, getting a fix on her present

  location and a precise grid reference on her intended target point, letting

  the navicornputer massage the numbers and come up with the proper values for

  the jump in and out of hyperspace that would get her there. She knew where

  she was well enough-she had had plenty of time to practice finding that out

  too-but the question of where to go she had never quite decided. It had

  seemed simpler to keep the naviconiputer updated with all the potential

  destinations, so that she could decide at the last minute if there was a

  change in the situation. Except, now, it was time to make a decision, and

  she was far from decided. But she had to move fast. Whoever controlled the

  interdiction field might well be able to bring it back up again at any time.

  She dithered for a moment longer, and then made up her mind. Centerpoint.

  She would go to Centerpoint. The last she had heard from Lando, it had

  seemed he was heading that way. She suspected that meant very little when

  dealing with Lando, or in time of war, let alone both, but she had to choose

  someplace. She punched in the proper settings and flipped the navicornputer

  over to automatic operation. The display came on, showing a thirty-second