by James Luceno
The mounting panic made it easy for him to slip out of the room unnoticed. The corridor was as quiet and brightly lit as it had been moments earlier, betraying nothing of the chaos ensuing in the control room. Adjusting the fit of his fine jacket, Han sauntered toward the turbolift, nodding with genteel suffrage to everyone he passed. As he neared the lift, Droma appeared from behind a plasteel pillar that had obviously served as his hiding place, the pale-green suit draped over one arm.
"Try not to look so guilty," he whispered.
Han's tight-lipped smile held. "Just get in the lift and put on the stun cuffs," he said without moving his lips.
Once inside, though, his calm and well-mannered facade collapsed. Quickly, he slipped back into the inspector's suit, then took the blaster from Droma and made certain it was armed.
"I won't even venture a guess as to how you managed this," Droma said as he donned the stun cuffs.
"Yeah, but it'd be fun to hear you try." Han slid the blaster into his jacket pocket. "As soon as we hit the lobby, we make straight for the nearest exit, got it? Pretend you're in my custody."
Han stood facing the lift doors. When they parted, he couldn't see across the lobby for the hundreds of droids that were rushing about and chattering incessantly, many of them hastening for the exits.
"I can't help thinking you had something to do with this," Droma said.
"Indirectly." Han gestured to the closest exit that wasn't completely blocked by droids. "That way."
They stepped into the throng and were just short of the transparisreei exit doors when a gruff voice shouted, "There they are!"
Han failed to keep himself from turning around. Zeroing in on the voice, he saw Bow, now in the company of several security guards, pointing at him.
"I thought I told you to lock him away!" Han said.
"I did," Droma argued. "I stuck him inside a room filled with deactivated droids."
Han muttered a curse and drew the blaster. "No time for subtlety."
Scarcely aiming, he placed a quartet of beams close enough to the guards to send them scurrying for cover. Crouching, he and Droma weaved their way through a tight press of droids and stumbled outside. Han spied Bow's landspeeder and steered Droma toward it, as a mob of prattling droids spilled from the east wing and began to fan out across the surrounding lawns and parking lots. Throwing himself into the driver's seat, Han grinned broadly.
"One thing you can always count on with farmboys," he said to Droma, who had removed the cuffs and was settling into the passenger seat. "They never lock their vehicles."
Han started the speeder's repulsorlift engine. With both hands clamped on the steering wheel and his feet on the pedals, he maneuvered the speeder through a quick turn and shot for the frontage road.
"No use trying for the main gate," he shouted above the whine of the triple turbines. "It's sure to be shut tight by now! We'll have to use the service roads. Some of them have to lead to the fields we passed on the way to Facility 17!"
"Better choose quickly," Droma said, studying the small scanner display affixed to the passenger-side console. "We've got seven, make that eight vehicles converging on us from north, east, and west."
Gritting his teeth, Han glanced at the towering stalks of grain that lined both sides of the frontage road. "Ah, who needs a road," he said at last, veering due south, straight into the field.
The satellite feed to the district headquarters security section provided an unobstructed aerial view of the land-speeder pursuit. It was as if the cams were positioned one hundred meters above the ground rather than in stationary orbit, halfway to Ruan's closest moon.
"They're sure making a mess of those burrmillet fields," the security chief remarked to Bow.
The fat man leaned closer to the flatscreen display. The stolen landspeeder had cut unswerving lines, precise parabolas, and sweeping spirals in the umber sea of grain. In pursuit flew eight speeders, carving out their own streaks and crop circles, if not as conscientiously.
"Talented driver, that one," the chief said as the lead speeder slalomed through a row of outmoded windmills, then powered through a series of figure eights before racing off on a new vector. "Must have been a swoop pilot. Has he been identified?"
"No," Bow fumed. "But it's confirmed he's the one who crashed the droid-deactivation system on level five."
The chief, potbellied and mustachioed, smiled lightly. "I heard you were with some of the droids when they came back to life."
Bow grimaced. "You heard right. But I'll tell you what none of those droids unsealed the doors. Somebody with access to the system unlocked them as soon as the droids woke up."
The chief snorted. "So what kind of guy goes through the trouble of masquerading as both a CCA inspector and a corporate vice president to rescue a Ryn and free a couple of thousand droids?"
"The well-connected kind. The Ryn was arrested at Facility 17 when he and the human showed up looking for the Ryn's clanmates. But it turns out they'd already gotten themselves offworld on forged letters of transit."
"Maybe it was deliberate-the Ryn showing up there- just to get himself arrested."
"Doesn't calculate. The Ryn couldn't have known he'd be brought here. And besides, he couldn't have added anything to what his partner obviously knew before he even showed up at the front gate. We've got people checking with spaceport control to determine how and when the two of them arrived onworld, but something's interfering with our accessing the immigration data banks."
"Something or someone?" the chief said. "Cocon-spirators is my guess."
Bow compressed his lips but said nothing.
The chief retrieved holograms of the human lifted from the front gate and product enhancement security scanners, along with the level-five control room identifier. "The beard and facial features look real enough," he said after appraising the holos for a moment.
Bow rubbed his chin. "Remove the beard and the cap."
Both men studied the revised holos for a moment more. "He looks familiar," the chief said, "but I can't place the face."
"Well, he's an agent for someone."
"A Salliche rival? Nebula Consumables maybe?"
Bow shrugged.
"Course change," the chief said suddenly, swinging back to the satellite-feed display. "They're angling east."
The two men watched the stolen landspeeder tear into another grain field; then, without warning, it revectored, leaving the field for what Bow initially took to be a service road. But not one member of the pursuit team followed.
"What's going on?" he barked.
"Son of a blaster," the chief said. "That's no road. They've dropped into one of the irrigation channels- right off the speeders' surface-scan displays. Our guys have no idea where they went."
"Patch into the sluice system and shut all the gates along that stretch!"
"I'm on it," the chief said.
Bow turned to the satellite-feed screen in time to see the saboteurs' landspeeder whiz through the closing sluice gate, hop the next in line, then power through a reckless turn into a much broader channel.
"It's a runoff channel," the chief explained. "Ends at the river that runs past Facility 17. If they make it that far, we could lose them." He was reaching for the sluicegate control buttons when Bow restrained him.
"No, don't shut them down just yet. Make him think he's got time." He glanced at the satellite-feed display. "Bring us close in on him." When the chief had complied, they could see that the stolen speeder had lost its retractable windscreen. Broken stalks of burrmillet poked from creases in the rounded nose and from between the seats, and the cab was half filled with threshed grain.
"What would you estimate his speed?"
The chief considered it. "The channel's not only broader but twice as deep, so I'd say he's running those turbines close to flat out. Say, two hundred."
"How far to the nearest gate?"
"Maybe one kilometer away."
"How quickly do they shut?"
Bow grinned. "Keep your finger on the switch. I'll tell you when."
The chief grinned back at him. "It's like playing a game of Death Hurdles."
Bow watched the screen for a moment, then shouted, "Now!"
Swerving as it tried desperately to shed velocity, the landspeeder careened straight into the gate. The force of the impact hurled the human and the Ryn clear out of the cab, over the top of the gate, and into the ditch beyond. "Got 'em," the chief said excitedly. "Patch me through to the pursuit team." Even as he was raising the pursuit team, the chief said, "I've got a better way of flushing them out." He activated his comlink. "Give me weather control." Bow frowned, then smiled in revelation. "Nice touch." The chief shrugged. "We need the rain anyway."
It was the mud that saved them-only a foot deep, but soft as pudding. Han, after ten meters of end-over-end flight, landed facefirst, plowing a deep furrow down the center of the ditch. Better equipped for acrobatics, Droma executed a flawless triple front flip and came down on his feet, skidding across the slick surface like a competitive aquaplaner.
Han surfaced spewing brown water, but it was Droma who was piqued.
"We'll be safer in the runoff channel, you said. I don't think so, I said, we should stick to the irrigation ditches. Trust me, you said. Keep above the gates, I said. Where's the fun in that, you said-"
"Quit your complaining," Han said. "Or have you gotten so used to manure you can't handle a little mud?"
Droma helped Han to his feet and took a look around. As if the mud wasn't enough, the ditch's smooth, perma-crete retaining walls were over four meters tall. "Now what? We can't even climb out."
"We're better off down here. Moving through those grain fields would be slow going." Han stripped off the pale-green and business jackets and threw them aside. He used his fingers to sluice mud from his forehead and beard. "What did the map show?"
"You mean just before you crashed?"
Han glowered. "That wasn't a crash. Somebody knew just when to shut that gate." He glanced at the sky, which seemed darker than it had been a moment earlier. "They're watching us. Sky or satellite cam."
Droma cut his eyes from the sky to Han, then pointed in the direction they had been heading before the collision. "The river is a couple of kilometers straight ahead. We should be able to follow it all the way to Facility 17."
"Perfect. We float down the river and haul ourselves out short of the refugee camp. Then we make our way to the spaceport."
"Where Salliche will have an army of guards posted and every scanner set to shriek the moment one of us presents an identity card."
"Don't worry about that. We've got friends who will get us right to the Falcon."
Droma stopped squeezing water from his mustachios. "Without passing through Ruan control?"
Han smirked. "By passing under it." His foot made a sucking sound as he lifted it from the mud. "Let's get a move on."
They hadn't gone three hundred meters when a deep bass sound rumbled overhead.
Han stopped. "What the heck was that?"
Droma waved in dismissal. "That's just the weather control station. Salliche resets it a couple of times a day."
Han watched gray clouds stream overhead. He pivoted through a circle, gauging the height of the walls. Even with Droma atop his shoulders, Droma wouldn't be able to reach the top.
"We have to go back to the sluice gate," he said suddenly.
Droma looked at Han as if he were mad. "What?"
"The gate's our only chance at climbing out."
"I thought you said we're better off down here."
Fat drops of rain started to fall. "Salliche is cooking up a storm. They're planning on drowning us."
Droma gulped. "But those speeders that were chasing us-they're probably already headed for the gate!"
Han tightened his lips and nodded. "You're right. But there has to be at least one more gate between here and the river."
They began to run, helping each other along when one of them slipped or became bogged down. The rain became a downpour, and the muddy water rose quickly from ankle- to knee-deep. Behind them they heard the steady whine of approaching landspeeders. Then the sound was replaced by a roaring turbulence.
Han came to an abrupt halt. "Listen," he shouted to Droma above the steady pounding of the rain.
Droma stopped a few meters farther on. "I don't think I'm going to like this."
Both of them turned to see a three-meter-high wall of water raging toward them. They barely had time to swing back toward the river when the torrent caught up, sweeping them away.
TWENTY-THREE
Larger than the Death Star, Centerpoint Station hung gray-white and ominous between Talus and Tralus, drawing its power from the gravitic output of the so-called Double Worlds. Rotating slowly around an axis defined by two thick polar cylinders, the station had been designed to act as a gravity lens capable of directing amplified bursts of repulsor energy through hyperspace, sufficient for the capturing of distant worlds or the destruction of far-flung stars. Its surface was a mishmash of boxy superstructures as tall as skyscrapers and force-bubble pressurization access ports the size of impact craters. A bewildering tangle of piping, cables, and conduits coursed in all directions, winding through multi-storied forests of parabolic antennae, conical arrays, and setose projections. A prominent feature was the remains of a crashed spacecraft that had been macrofused to the hull and converted into living quarters.
"I was the first person to greet your uncle Luke, Lando Calrissian, Belindi Kalenda, and Gaeriel Captison when they came aboard," Jenica Sonsen told Anakin, Jacen, and Ebrihim while a turbovator smelling of fresh paint conveyed them along a dark-pink tunnel toward the station's core.
"I think we met you on Corellia afterwards," Jacen said.
"You did. I'm delighted that you remember."
"The simulated gravity is increasing," Q9 interrupted in Basic, speaking through a vocoder the droid had adapted to form words like a mouth. "The increase is obviously a consequence of our traveling away from the axis of rotation."
"Thank you, Queue-nine," Ebrihim said, in deference to the droid's oft-stated opinion that machines should be useful at all times and in all places.
Sonsen smiled at the exchange. "It has long been our hope to provide Centerpoint with artificial gravity, but for the time being, we're relying on centrifugal gravity. Perhaps if we're successful in assisting in the war effort, the New Republic will finally allocate the funds necessary to despin the station. But even without artificial gravity, the Mrlssi have done wonders to make Hollow-town and many other areas perfectly livable."
She was an upbeat, handsome woman, with black curly hair, a long, thin face, and expressive eyebrows. Eight years earlier, following Centerpoint's unexpected flare-ups-which had not only destroyed two distant stars with precise hyperspace shots but had also incinerated thousands of colonists who had been living in Hollowtown-Sonsen had been left in charge of the station, while survivors fled for the safety of Talus and Tralus. Since then she had headed up the cartography team that was slowly mapping the complex interior of the immense orb, a task Sonsen herself doubted would be completed in her lifetime.
"Did your team get along with the archaeologists who were deported?" Jacen asked.
Sonsen frowned. "They weren't deported, so much as removed for their own safety. But, yes, of course we got along. All of us are interested in learning whatever we can about the species who built Centerpoint and assembled the Corellian system. I'm afraid, however, that the archaeologists may have erred by making a political issue of their removal. If, as the Centerpoint Party advocates, each of Corell's five worlds should be treated as a separate entity, then it stands to reason that this station-which is certainly not indigenous to the system-should also be considered independent. As a result, I believe that Centerpoint may remain in New Republic hands for some time to come."
Ebrihim opened his mouth to say something, but th
ought better of it and fell silent for the remainder of the ride through the station's two thousand levels of decks.
Originally a power-containment battery, Hollowtown was an open sphere, measuring sixty kilometers in diameter. The curving walls had once seen homes, parks, lakes, orchards, and farmland, basking in the overhead radiance of Glowpoint-a kind of pilot light for the entire station. But except for a few that housed scientists and the archaeological team before them, the houses had been dismantled. The only concession to what had once existed were the adjustable shadow-shields, installed to simulate night.
Positioned along the spin axis on both sides of Hollow-town were large cones ringed by six smaller cones, given the names North and South Conical Mountains. The arrangement of the cones was the geometry needed for a particular type of old-style repulsor.
Sonsen pointed out the sights as she ushered everyone to a small, well-shielded control room that had remained concealed during the station's occupation, and had been discovered only by accident when a group of Mrlssi had been searching for a place to install a life-support monitor.
Consistent with the plumed avians from which they were descended, the limpid-eyed, diminutive Mrlssi had a talent for rendering extremely large spaces habitable, as they had proved to Dr. Ohran Keldor, who had employed some one hundred of them at the Imperial Maw Installation near Kessel. In Hollowtown, the fine-boned Mrlssi were more in evidence than any other species, though there were none in the control room itself when Sonsen and her charges entered.
The instrument-filled chamber did hold several humans, a Selonian, two Verpine, and a Duros, but in spite of the diversity, the curious mix of robed Jedi, Drall, and bullet-headed droid brought activity to an abrupt halt and caused all heads to turn. Since arriving onstation, Anakin had grown accustomed to being the focus of intense scrutiny, but the gray-haired man who muscled his way through the control room crowd set him back on his heels. With the beard that Han had been growing the last time Anakin saw him, the man looked more like Han than Han himself-if a few centimeters taller and more thickly built.