Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy III: Showdown at Centerpoint

by Allen, Roger Macbride

  Now Luke understood. “Lando,” he said, “bring her down. They’re using a force bubble pressurization system in here. I don’t think they want to activate the force field until you’ve landed.” By using a force field system, they could avoid constantly pressurizing and depressurizing the chamber—no small issue in a chamber this size.

  “But then we’d both be trapped insi—the force field,” Lando objected.

  “What’s the difference? We’re already trapped inside the airlock.”

  “There’s a difference between being in a cage with a bantha and climbing into the bantha’s gullet,” Lando muttered. “But all right, here we come.”

  The Lady Luck eased down on her repulsors and set down ten meters in front of Luke’s X-wing.

  The moment she landed, there was a shimmering in the space over their heads. After a moment it settled down into a thin blue hazy blur that surrounded the two ships, forming a hemisphere over them. A tunnel formed of the same blue haze came into being just behind the Lady Luck. Peering down it, Luke could see that it led to a more conventional-sized inner airlock hatch.

  “Leading us there every step of the way,” Luke muttered to himself. He heard a far-off, high-pitched hissing noise, and the body of the X-wing creaked and groaned once or twice as it adjusted to the change in pressure. The hissing dropped in pitch down to a low roar of noise, and the incoming air was whipping up some of the smaller bits of debris and throwing them around, until the inside of the force field bubble was swirling with bits of paper and dust and torn-up packing material. The X-wing rocked back on its shock absorbers as the rush of air pushed at it.

  Luke watched his exterior gauges as the roaring subsided. At least as far as his instruments were concerned, it was perfectly normal air at perfectly normal pressure. Of course, it could contain some deadly nerve gas the X-wing’s detectors couldn’t sense, but if whoever was running the show here had wanted to kill them, they could have done the job about a dozen times already.

  Never mind. Time to get on with it. Luke popped the canopy of the X-wing and let it swing up out of the way. He pulled his flight helmet off and stashed it, then climbed up out of the pilot’s compartment. He slid down the side of the fuselage and dropped lightly to the ground. Relatively light gravity here, he noticed. Of course, they were fairly close to the spin axis here. The apparent force of gravity would be a lot stronger close to the equator line of the sphere.

  The hatches of the Lady Luck swung open, the egress ramp came down, and Lando, Gaeriel, and Kalenda walked down it, closely followed by a rather agitated-looking Threepio.

  “I don’t like this place,” the protocol droid announced. “Not one little bit. I’m sure we are all in the most terrible danger here.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Lando muttered. “Besides, what was the last place you did like?”

  Threepio hesitated a moment and cocked his head to one side. “A most interesting question,” he said. “I can’t recall one, offhand. I shall have to consult my onboard archives.”

  “Do it later, Threepio,” said Luke. “We might need you for other things.”

  “Certainly, Master Luke.”

  Gaeriel and Kalenda looked around the airlock chamber, and it was easy to tell the diplomat from the intelligence officer. Kalenda knelt down to examine some of the broken-up debris and snatched at a few of the bits of paper that were fluttering, no doubt in hopes of reading some important clue. Gaeriel made sure Threepio, the protocol and translation droid, was close, and directed her attention to the force field tunnel and the hatch that would lead them to their host.

  Luke heard a beeping and a blooping from the topside of his X-wing. “Don’t worry, Artoo, I haven’t forgotten you.” Back at a base, the normal thing was to use a winch to get Artoo in and out of his socket in the stern of the X-wing. In the field, it was possible for Artoo to get himself out, but the process was not very graceful, and had ended with Artoo toppling over and landing with a crash on more than one occasion.

  But when the pilot of the X-wing was a Jedi Master, such awkwardness was not necessary. Luke reached out with his ability in the Force and lifted Artoo gently into the air.

  “Do be careful, Master Luke,” said Threepio. “It makes me nervous just to see you do that.”

  Artoo let out a long, low moan that echoed his agreement with Threepio. “Relax, both of you,” said Luke. “I could do this standing on my head.” Artoo moaned again. “Sorry,” said Luke. “It’s not nice to tease.” Luke moved Artoo clear of the X-wing and was just about to start bringing him down to the deck when the hatch at the end of the force field tunnel began to lumber open. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look.

  Luke felt his hand move toward his lightsaber, but then he pulled it away. No. All he knew for sure was that he had touched the mind of a human who seemed to bear them no ill will. Whoever was about to come through that door had not summoned them all here to engage in single combat. They would be dead many times over by now, if that was her intent. He saw Lando and Kalenda make the same reflex reach for their own sidearms, and then pull their hands back.

  The doors rumbled open, and a tall, thin, nervous-looking, pale-skinned woman came in. She hesitated at the entrance for a moment, and then shrugged and walked toward them at a brisk clip that seemed to say less about her eagerness to get to the end of the tunnel and more about her rather agitated state.

  Luke watched her as she came closer. She was an attractive-looking woman with a long, thin face, thick black curly hair that reached to her shoulders, and prominent, expressive eyebrows. She looked worried as she came toward them, her eyes moving from one member of the party to the next. But then the worried look faded away to be replaced by one of pure bafflement as she looked upward.

  “How are you doing that?” she asked. “And why?”

  “Huh?” Luke asked, and looked up himself. “Oh!” He had nearly forgotten that Artoo was still hanging in midair. If he had lost any more concentration, Artoo would have crashed to the deck. Distracted by the sight of their hostess’s arrival, it would seem that Artoo had forgotten it himself. Luke willed Artoo to move down and landed him gently on the deck. “It’s sort of a long story,” he said.

  “I’ll bet,” the young woman said, giving Luke a long, hard, quizzical look. “Well, anyway. I’m Jenica Sonsen, C-point COO Ad-Op.”

  “What?” Luke asked.

  Sonsen sighed. “Sorry. Force of habit. Centerpoint Chief Operations Officer, Administration and Operations. Basically, I run the place, these days. The C-point CE declared a bug-out right after the first major flare incident, and the whole Exec Sec evaced along with practically all the C-point civpop. I wish I could get out of here, but I was OOD when the bug was called, so regs said I was stay-behind.”

  Luke was about to ask her what that meant when Threepio stepped forward. “Perhaps I might be of help, Master Skywalker,” said the droid. “She is using many terms that are similar to the bureaucratic argot of Coruscant. I believe that what Administrative Officer Sonsen means is that Centerpoint’s Chief Executive ordered a full evacuation after the first flare disaster, and the entire Executive Secretariat left along with most of the civilian populace. Although she wished to leave with everyone else, Administrative Officer Sonsen happened to be the Officer On Duty at the moment when the evacuation was declared, and under those circumstances, she was automatically designated the officer to stay behind and serve as a caretaker.”

  “She didn’t say anything about a disaster,” Lando said suspiciously.

  “I beg your pardon,” Threepio said, “but she did refer to a ‘major incident.’ That is a common bureaucratic euphemism for a major catastrophe.”

  “Hold it,” Sonsen said, “the tin box got it all correct, but I am right here. You could ask me what I meant.”

  “Only if you promise to speak Basic like everyone else,” Lando said. Luke had to smile. Lando never had had much use for bureaucratic double-talk.

  For a mom
ent it looked as if Sonsen were about to bite Lando’s head off, but then backed down. “Maybe you’ve got a point. But I have to know what you’re doing here. Your ships blew out of nowhere and then those fighters bugged out too.”

  “Were they your fighters?” Kalenda asked. “And what government do you represent?”

  “The fighters you were shooting at? They weren’t Fed-Dub.”

  “Fed-Dub?”

  “Sorry. The Federation of the Double Worlds.’

  Kalenda nodded and looked to Luke, her gaze seemingly somewhere over his left shoulder. “The Federation is the duly elected government of Talus and Tralus.”

  “You people still haven’t told me who you are and what you’re doing here,” Sonsen said.

  “Our apologies,” Gaeriel said, speaking for the first time, “I am Gaeriel Captison, plenipotentiary of the planet Bakura. This is Captain Lando Calrissian, Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, and Lieutenant Belindi Kalenda, all of the planet Coruscant. We represent the New Republic and the planet Bakura.” She went on in a tone of voice that suggested she was expecting argument, but wasn’t going to put up with it. “We are,” she said, “taking possession of Centerpoint Station in the name of the New Republic.”

  “Well, good,” said Sonsen. “It’s about time somebody did. Come this way and I’ll show you where everything is.” She turned around abruptly and starting walking down the tunnel toward the inner hatch.

  Gaeriel looked at Luke, clearly taken aback. “She’s not what we expected,” she said.

  “Most things aren’t, around Luke,” Lando said. “But if she’s going to hand over the keys to us, I think we’d better not let her get too far ahead.”

  * * *

  The four humans and two droids found Sonsen waiting for them on the other side of the inner hatch. “There you all are,” she said. “Shall we start the tour?” Her tone was utterly matter-of-fact, as if handing over space stations to more or less allied forces was all part of the daily routine. “I can’t show you all of the station, of course, unless you all want to die of old age before we’re half done, but I can show you the basics. This way.” She ushered them all into a waiting turbovator car on the opposite side of the lock chamber. They followed her in. Luke entered the car after everyone else, feeling quite bewildered. The turbovator car was huge and scruffy-looking. All the walls were covered with dings and scratches, as if the car had seen a lot of heavy use moving cargo. There was a meter-wide porthole in the back wall of the car, likewise a bit dinged-up, and another like it in the ceiling. However, there seemed to be nothing but blackness to see.

  “Hang on just a second,” she said. “We have to move the car through an airlock. Fressure difference. And, ah—well, something happened to the air where we’re going.” She worked the controls, and the car lurched forward a few meters. They heard a hatch seal behind them. There was the whir of air pumps and then, through the viewport, they saw another hatch open before them.

  Sonsen pushed another button and the car started to move, not up or down, but sideways. Lights on the exterior of the car came on, showing the way forward. The tunnel they were in was circular in cross-section, and dark pink in color. The tunnel ahead trailed off into what seemed an infinity of darkness. Luke felt as if they had been swallowed by some huge creature and were rushing down its gullet, toward an appointment with the digestive system.

  “We might as well start out with Hollowtown,” Sonsen said. “It’s what everyone always wants to see first.”

  “Hollowtown?” Lando asked.

  There was a second’s awkward pause before Sonsen spoke. “You’re not all that well briefed, are you?” she asked.

  “Things have happened kind of fast,” Luke said. “There hasn’t been a lot of time.”

  “I guess not. Well, let me start from scratch. Hollowtown is the open space in the exact center of the central sphere. It’s a spherical hollow about sixty kilometers across. Where you docked was just about at the join between the North Pole—that’s what the locals call the cylinders, the North and South Poles—and the central sphere. We’re now moving parallel to the axis of rotation, sideways, in toward Hollowtown. We have to pass through about twenty kilometers of decks and shells first. A shell is what we call real high-ceilinged deck, anything over about twenty meters or so. There are about two thousand levels all told. We’re accelerating pretty fast right now, faster than you think. We’ll come up in Hollowtown in about five minutes, and then start moving downslope, toward the heavy-gravity areas. Farther out from the axis you go, the more of a spin, and the higher effective gravity, of course.”

  “The spin must get to be an awful nuisance,” Kalenda said. “Why haven’t you shifted over to standard artificial gravity?”

  “We’ve thought about it. Cap Con Ops—sorry—the capital construction operations office—has done about a dozen studies on de-spinning the station and using standard artigrav.”

  Luke managed to translate that last as “artificial gravity” and tried to nod encouragingly. “So what do the studies come up with?”

  “Too expensive, too complicated, too disruptive, and too many unknowns. The station’s structure might or might not respond well to the shifted stresses. But it’s your problem now. You can de-spin it all you want as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I take it you want out,” Luke said.

  “Do I ever. I was into real short-time when the first flare went whump. I was almost down to counting the days on one hand—and then, well, you know the rest.”

  “Lousy briefing, remember?” Lando said.

  “Wait a second. You people don’t know about the flares?”

  “First we’ve heard of them,” Luke said. “We just broke through the interdiction field into the system a few days ago.”

  Sonsen let out a low whistle. “Broke through the interdiction field? That’s something, all right. I’ll bet whoever is creating that field isn’t real happy with you just now.”

  Kalenda frowned. “Hold it. You’re generating the field.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “The field. The interdiction field is centered on this station. Centerpoint Station is generating the interdiction field. And the communications jamming, for that matter.”

  “Burning stars. It is?”

  “You didn’t know that,” Lando said. It was not a question.

  “Nope. None of us here did. Looks like my briefing wasn’t so good either.”

  Luke was getting more confused by the minute. How could the people running the station not know the station was creating the field? And what were these flares Sonsen was talking about?

  It was becoming plainer and plainer that things were not as they appeared. But it was also becoming progressively less clear how they appeared in the first place.

  “I think we have a few things to talk about,” said Luke.

  The turbovator moved smoothly toward Hollowtown.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The View From Inside

  What you’ve got to understand about this place is that no one understands it,” Sonsen said. “We just live here. It’s here, so are we, and that’s about it. No one thought much about why things were the way they were. We didn’t know why Centerpoint did most of the things it did, but we knew what most of them were. At least we thought we knew, up until a while ago. Up until the terrorists started showing us a few tricks.”

  “We just got here,” Lando said. “What terrorists?”

  Sonsen shook her head. “I’d love to know the answer to that one. There have been attacks—nasty ones. But no one has claimed responsibility or made demands. Not so much as an anonymous tip. We have suspects—the TraTaLibbers, the Two Worlders, and so on, but they all denied having anything to do with it. Besides, if they could pull off the stuff that’s happened here, they wouldn’t waste time making threats. They’d just move in and take over. Of course, the station’s been cut off from everybody since the jamming started up. The investigators on the groun
d could have wrapped up the case, solved it completely, and we wouldn’t know about it.”

  Luke made a guess that TraTaLibbers meant the Tralis and Talus Liberation Party, or some such. Two Worlders probably meant some crowd that wanted separate governments for each planet. Guesses were good enough. He had an idea what Sonsen meant, and he had a hunch the groups in question were not worth worrying about. “Tell us about the attacks themselves.”

  Sonsen went to the turbovator car’s viewport. “You’ll be able to see for yourself in a minute or two. Hollowtown used to be quite a place. It grew enough food for the whole station, with a surplus. It had parks, and nice homes, and lakes and streams. Green and blue, cool and lovely. Then someone started messing with the Glowpoint.”

  “The Glowpoint being a sort of artificial sun?” Luke asked.

  “That’s right,” said Sonsen. “And someone made it go crazy.”

  “Who normally controls the Glowpoint?” Lando asked.

  “No one, of course,” Sonsen replied, as if Lando had just asked where she kept the on-off switch for the galaxy’s spin. “As I said, it’s just there, the way the whole station is. We didn’t build it. I guess it was here when we got here—whenever that was.”

  “The Glowpoint is just there” Lando repeated. “Anyone know how it works? How it gives off light?”

  “There are theories of one sort or another. One idea is that the Glowpoint draws its power directly from the gravitational interflux between Talus and Tralus. But no one has been able to come up with an instrument to test the idea. There’s nothing conclusive.”

  “You don’t know how the power source for half your food production works?” Gaeriel asked.

  “No,” said Sonsen. “Do you know how the hyperdrive motors that got you here work?”