Showdown At Centerpoint Read online

  woodlands that surrounded the splashed-out pond made the mud and the mire

  and the mess of the landing seem just that much more out of place, just that

  much more absurd. The coneship had buried itself at least a half meter into

  the soft mud of the pond bottom. What had been a meter and a half drop from

  the hatch to the ground was suddenly a lot shorter. Han sal down on the edge

  of the hatch and hopped down-only to sink in over his ankles in the thick

  mud. He lifted his left foot up out of the muck, nearly losing a boot in the

  process, and planted it as far away from the ship as possible before pulling

  his right foot out. He squelched out of the pond basin toward dry land and

  saw a Selonian, an older-looking female with graying dark brown fur and a

  moody look in her eyes. "That's a Hunchuzuc coneship, be it not?" the

  Selonian asked, watching Dracmus and Salculd stagger out of the craft.

  "That's right," Han said, a bit distractedly as he slogged through the mud.

  That was the Sclonians for you. A spaceship crash-lands in a pond in front

  of one, and what was the response? Not shock, or surprise, or fear. Not

  "hello," not "what an amazing escape," not "are you all right?" No. The

  first thing to worry about was what Den was involved. "Hmmph," said the

  Selonian. "This is Chanzari land. We be Republicists, Hunchuzuc allies."

  "Good," said Han, still struggling toward shore. "Glad to hear it." Han half

  climbed, half crawled out of the pond basin, and paused there a moment. The

  old Selonian looked at the ship and shook her head. "Coneships," she said,

  her torre derisive. "The Hunchuzuc are foolhardy. Selonians do not belong in

  space." Han looked at the Selonian for a long moment. "You know," he said,

  "I'd just about worked that out for myself." He turned his back on the

  coneship and staggered off toward the other side of the clearing, where the

  Jade's Fire was settling in for a nice, calm, sedate landing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  At the Source Tendra Risant sat in the pilot's station of the Gentleman

  Caller, and wondered if it was going to be all right, wondered how it could

  be all right. She had done her part, however little that might be. In purely

  objective terms, all was well. She had used the radionics transmitter to

  tell Lando of the fleet hidden in the Sacorrian-system. His friends had

  gotten the news, and it might well prove vital to them. She knew Lando was

  alive, and well, and that he was glad she was in-system. But none of that

  eould change the fact that she was stuck out here, and no one could get to

  her. She looked through the forward viewport at the bright star of Corell,

  dead ahead. Unless that interdiction field went down, it was going to take

  her months to cross the distance from here to there. It was worth it, she

  knew that. She had more than likely saved lives, many lives-perhaps even

  Lando's life. But the thought of more months alone on this ship was more

  than she could bear. But the people Lando was with, the Bakurans, had asked

  her to send them more information. There was not much she could tell them

  that she had not said already-but she would tell them what she could. She

  switched on the radionics transmitter and set to work. The Bakuran light

  cruiser Intruder fired her main forward turbolaser battery three times, and

  three times Pocket Patrol Boats exploded. "Very well," said Admiral Hortel

  Ossilege. "You may hold your fire. Bring the turbolasers to their stowed

  position and power them down. Make sure our friends can detect what you are

  doing. We have shown we can hurt them at will. Now we extend an invitation

  to leave. Let us see if our friends out there understand that we plan to

  play rough if they stay." A reasonable tactic, Luke Skywalker thought,

  feeling none too happy about it. A show of overwhelming force might convince

  the surviving defenders to withdraw. After all, the odds of a handful of

  fighters defeating the Inmider and her sister ships, Sentinel and Defender,

  and all their fighters were almost zero. On the other hand, the Rebels had

  faced such odds more than once in the war against the Empire, and had

  emerged victorious. Good training, strong motivation, good equipment, good

  intelligence--and plain good luck-could even up the odds quite a bit. There

  was no such thing as certainty in war. Luke Skywalker stood next to Admiral

  Ossilege on the bridge of the Intruder. As always when he agreed with the

  man, he did not feel comfortable doing so. Luke glanced at Lando Calrissian,

  standing on the other side of Ossilege, and the look on his face told Luke

  that Lando shared his concerns. The tactics were sound, even conservative.

  The enemy forces consisted of little more than twenty or so PPBs. There was

  nothing much to be gained in wiping out such a small force. If Ossilege

  could convince them to withdraw without exposing his own forces to needless

  casualties, that would be all to the good. Very sensible and cautious.

  Except that Ossilege was not a cautious commander. If it seemed he was

  trying something careful. Luke had a hunch that it was merely a cover for

  something madly audacious to fol- low. Ossilege had shown a tendency to dare

  too much rather than too little. When he played a conservative game, the

  odds were fair that what appeared to be caution was just an elaborate

  preparation for a very large gamble indeed. Or had losing the Watchkeeper to

  the Selonian planetary repulsor cost him his nerve? Ossilege was a small,

  wiry-looking man, who favored dress-white uniforms that set off his

  collection of medals and ribbons. He was a dried-up, self-important little

  man who seemed to have little patience for anyone or anything. He looked to

  be a comic-opera caricature of an admiral-but Luke had never met as

  hard-edged, as cold-blooded, a military commander. No one found it relaxing

  to spend time in the presence of Admiral Ossilege. Of course, with the

  massive, overwhelming bulk of Centerpoint Station dominating the sky outside

  the viewports, Luke would have felt a little edgy even if the Watchkeeper

  hadn't been destroyed. "There they go," Lando announced, pointing toward a

  cloud of tiny dots lifting away from one of the docking bays of Centerpoint.

  The defending fighters were withdrawing. "Decided they couldn't do any good

  against us, I guess." "Or perhaps they decided we wouid be unable to do

  Centerpoint any harm," said Ossilege. "A wise tactician retreats from an

  indefensible position in order to preserve his forces. But a wise tactician

  will likewise avoid expending his forces needlessly in the defense of the

  impregnable." "What are you saying?" asked Luke. Ossilege gestured toward

  Centerpoint. "We are dismissing the enemy fighters because they are so small

  in comparison to us. But, proportionately, we are far smaller in comparison

  to Centerpoint. It is, somehow, the source of power that can impose an

  interdiction field over an entire planetary system. What other powers might

  it have?" "No way to know," said Lando. "I figure the one thing we can count

  on is being surprised. And I doubt that many of the surprises arc going to

  be pleasant." Just at that moment, a service droid wheeled up from behind

 
; them and came around to stop in front of Lando. "And here's a surprise now,"

  Lando muttered. "Yes, what is it?" he asked the droid. "Begging your pardon,

  sir, but Lieutenant Kalenda wishes to see both you and Master Skywalker,

  sir. A new message from Source T has come in." Lando looked worriedly at

  Luke. "That ought to make me happy," he said. "But I have the feeling she's

  not calling in just to chat." He turned toward the service droid. "Lead the

  way." Source T was Tendra Risant. Lando and Luke had met Tendra on her home

  world of Sacorria, one of the so-called "Outlier" worlds of the Corellian

  Sector. The local authorities had kicked Lando and Luke off Sacorria almost

  immediately after meeting Tendra. As they followed the droid down to the

  cruiser's com section, it crossed Lando's mind, not for the first time, that

  Tendra would be vastly amused to learn that Bakuran military intelligence

  had given her a name as ridiculously pompous as Source T. Lando had met

  Tendra while searching the galaxy for a rich wife. Tendra was certainly well

  off enough to qualify as rich, and it was certainly within the realm of

  possibility that she would make a good wife for Lando-if they could get

  together in the same place at the same time long enough to get to know each

  other. But even if they had not had the time to fall madly, passionately in

  love with each other, the two of them had very definitely made a connection

  with each other, established a solid bond, something that they could build

  on, someday, if the universe gave them that chance. As best he could piece

  together, Tendra had some- how managed to spot some sort of military buildup

  in the Sacorrian system. Connecting the buildup to the interdiction field,

  she had decided she had to get word to Lando, Toward that end, it would seem

  she had gotten her hands on a spaceship, bribed her way off Sacorria, and

  crashed it into the Corellian interdiction field. None of that would have

  done anyone much good, but for one other fact-Lando had given her a

  radionics communications set. The radionics set did not use any of the

  standard comlink frequencies, but instead sent and received messages on a

  modulated carrier wave in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  The radionics signals were completely immune to the system-wide jamming, and

  were likewise completely undetectable to anyone using comlink equipment. The

  downside was that like all other forms of electomagnetic radiation-infrared,

  visual light, ultraviolet, gamma ray, X ray, and so on-radio band radiation

  traveled at the speed of light. Tendra's messages to Lando, and his replies,

  therefore likewise crawled along at the speed of light, and were highly

  susceptible to interferenee. She was still aboard her ship, the Gentleman

  Caller, at the outskirts of the Corellian system, ambling gradually in

  toward the inner system at speeds that were distinctly sublight. It took

  long hours for her messages to reach him-but it could well take long, weary

  months before her ship could cross the same distance. Unless, of course,

  they could bring down the interdiction field. And that was what they were

  here to do. They arrived at the com section. He and Luke waited as the

  service droid extended a data probe and plugged into the security port by

  the com section door. Lando's original radionics set was still aboard his

  ship, the Lady Luck, but the Intruder's tech staff had had no trouble at all

  putting together their own radionics set from the plans and spec sheets the

  Lady Luck also car- ried, and had actually managed to make their transmitter

  more powerful, and their receiver more sensitive. But it wasn't radionics

  Lando had on his mind. He was concerned with Tcndra. As if the situation

  with Tendra wasn't complieated enough, there was the small matter of the

  aetual information she was broadcasiing to Lando. It was enough to give the

  intelligence staff fits. The security system beeped its clearance code, and

  the hatch to the com section slid open. Lando looked inside before entering

  and let out a small sigh. There she was, as if the mere thought of anxious

  intelligence officers was enough to su mmon one. Lieutenant Be-lindi

  Kalenda, of New Republic Intelligence, was waiting for them, and she did not

  look happy. "Didn't anyone ever tell your lady friend how to count!" she

  demanded the moment the hatch slid shut. Kalenda had never been much for

  small talk, and she was just about at the end of her tether now. "What's the

  problem now, Lieutenant Kalenda?" Lando asked wearily. "The same as always.

  Numbers, that's the problem," Kalenda said. She was a somewhat odd-looking

  young woman. Her wide-spaced eyes were glassy, almost milky, and a bit

  off-kilter. She was almost, but not quite, cross-eyed. She was a bit

  darker-skinned than Lando, and her black hair was done up in a complicated

  sort of braid piled on top of her head. The scuttlebutt was that she had at

  least some small skill in the Force, or at least that her intuition was

  good, and her hunches tended to play out, that she seemed to see more than

  most people. In any event, she had an odd way of seeming to look past your

  shoulder at something behind you, even when she was glaring right at you-as

  she was right now. "Numbers. We still have no idea how many ships arc

  waiting out there at Sacorria." "We wouldn't know there were any ships at

  all there, if not for Lady Tendra," Lando said sharply. "Maybe your NRI

  operatives on Sacorria know more about ship spotting, but did any of them

  have the initiative to get into the Corellian system and let us know about

  them?" Kalenda looked woodenly at Lando. "1 never told you there were NRI

  agents on Sacorria," she said warily. "And I never told you I used to be a

  smuggler, but you know it just the same," Lando snapped. "Don't treat me

  like a fool. If you didn't have agents there, someone wasn't doing their

  job." "Let's try and get back on track here," Luke said, attempting to

  smooth things over a bit. "What's wrong with Lady Tendra's message?" "We

  have sent three follow-up queries asking her to give further details of the

  types, sizes, and numbers of ships she saw. Her latest message seems longer

  and more detailed, but once you weed out all the qualifiers and caveats, we

  still have nothing but the vaguest sorts of estimates." "She can't tell you

  what she doesn't know," Lando said, wondering how many times he would have

  to tell that to Kalenda before she would believe it. Or when he would stop

  being frustrated by the intelligence group reading messages intended for

  him-and reading them first. "But we have to know more than we do!" Kalenda

  said. "Whose ships are those? How many are there, and how well armed are

  they? Who commands them, and what are their intentions? You'll have to

  transmit again, and ask for more information." "I won't," Lando said

  sharply. "I don't care what your psych teams say about her responding best

  to me. She told you all she can, and I'm not going to help you harass her

  anymore." "But we need more-" "The trouble is, she doesn't have any more,"

  he snapped. "You have all the details you're going to get. Did you expect

  Tendra to be able to tell you the fleet co
mmander's middle name by looking

  at ships in orbit through macrobinoculars? She's given us a warning, and a

  very useful one. She's given you all the information she can, and there are

  limits on how far we can press her." "And there are also limits to how many

  messages you can ask her to send," Luke put in. "Every time she sends us

  one, the odds of her being detected go up." Kalenda looked at Luke sharply.

  "Detected? How? By whom?" "Think about it," Lando said. "You're the

  intelligence officer. The way she's broadcasting is secret, but it's not

  hidden in any way. She's broadcasting in clear, without any coding or

  encryption. Anyone who had the right sort of gear for scanning radio-band

  frequencies could lock in on her radionics transmission in a heartbeat. You

  did it easily enough. Then they'd not only know that we know about the ships

  tucked away in orbit of Sacorria, they'd be able to triangulate back and

  zero in on her location, the same way we did." "What difference would that

  make?" Kalenda asked. "Plenty, if we're talking about the people who control

  the interdiction field. They'd want to silence her. Say they switched the

  field off for thirty seconds. With good targeting and good planning, that

  would be enough time for a ship to drop into hyperspace, pop out next to the

  Gentleman Caller, blow Tendra out of the sky, and then return to base before

  the field went back up." "But she broadcasted constantly for days without

  anything happening to her," Kalenda objected. "She didn't have any choice.

  She had to transmit until I responded. Now she doesn't have to take that

  chance. Your radionics broadcasts are much more powerful than hers, and

  they're closer to anyone listening in the inner system. If the opposition

  spots your transmissions, they'll know to look for her." Kalenda's face was

  expressionless. Had she known all this, and elected to risk Tendra's life on

  the chance of getting more information? Or had it not occurred to her? That

  seemed unlikely enough in an officer as sharp as Kalenda seemed to be-though

  the last few days had been hard on all of them. Lando half expected her to

  offer excuses, to lie and say she hadn't thought it through. But even if

  Kalenda played a cagey game, she didn't play a dishonest one. "It's never

  easy," she said, "figuring the balance. I knew the risk was there, but I had