Luke had to smile to himself. Jenica Sonsen had a point. There was scarcely a human being alive who completely understood every bit of technology he or she used. The Centerpointers, it seemed, were just a bit more obvious about it.
“Anyway, we’re coming up on Hollowtown, if you want to get a look at it.” The other humans joined her at the viewport, leaving the two droids off by themselves in the back of the car. A spot of light began to gleam through the end of the tunnel up ahead. “That’s the Glowpoint,” Sonsen said. “It’s back to normal, at least for the moment. That’s what it used to be like all the time.”
The turbovator car moved closer and closer to the tunnel, giving the illusion that it was moving faster and faster as it got closer to the light. The humans in the group shielded their eyes against the sudden brightness.
In a moment that seemed to take forever to arrive and then to happen all at once, the turbovator car burst out of the end of the tunnel and, with a stomach-dropping lurch, began to move straight downward. But no one in the car paid much notice to the violent change of direction. They were too busy looking at Hollowtown.
Or what was left of it.
The Glowpoint was just that, a glowing point of light suspended in midair, in the precise center of the huge spherical chamber. It looked like a miniature sun, warm, bright, comfortable, inviting. But there was nothing comfortable about the landscape below.
Hollowtown had been burnt to a crisp, charred down to a blackened land of ashes. Hazy clouds of dust floated everywhere. Luke could see the skeletal remains of burned-out buildings, what had once been neatly planted orchards that were now nothing but rows of incinerated tree stumps. A lake had boiled dry, and the lake bottom was exposed, the remains of ruined pleasure boats lying there like children’s toys left behind when the water was drained from the tub.
It was a terrible place, a nightmare place, made all the worse because it had so plainly been lovely, well tended, not so very long before. “Normally I’d stop the car at one of the intermediate stops and let you get out and look around,” Sonsen said. “But there’s just about no free oxygen left in there. All of it got consumed in the fires. I don’t know how we’ll ever get breathable air in there again. For that matter, it took some doing to get breathable air in this turbovator car. It didn’t use to have its own air source, just a compressor that pulled air in from the outside. The air in the tunnel and near the spin axis was always too thin to breathe. After the first flare, the techs installed a full air system so I could still use the car. It’s the fastest, easiest way from the equator to the docking zone and the techsec, where I met you. The engineers yanked the compressor and hooked up some air tanks and a carbon dioxide scrubber.”
“What happened, exactly?” Lando asked.
“The first flare was about thirty or forty standard days ago,” Sonsen said, her voice suddenly sad and tired. “Up until then, everything you see here now was parkland, or farmland, or luxury estates. It was beautiful to see. The Glowpoint would shine down constantly. The farmers would use shadow-shields to block the light and simulate seasons. From the inside of the shields, it could be as light or as dark as you liked, just by twisting a dial. From the outside, the shield could look like shadows, or like silver bubbles, or squares of gold—however you wanted to set them. People decorated their shields all sorts of ways. There was a special feeling, knowing it was always day here—but that under every spot of gold was a secret little patch of night. All of it gone now. Gone. Gone when the flare hit.”
“That was before the jamming started. I came into the system about that time,” Kalenda objected. “I never heard anything about this. It should have been big news. The biggest.”
“We tried to keep it as quiet as we could,” Sonsen said. “The Fed-Dub government was weak enough as it was, and what terrorists want most is publicity. The Feds were afraid that if this got out, it could spark a panic or even a rebellion here. And I guess they were right. We could keep news of this”—she gestured toward the devastation out the window—“from getting to the other worlds, but the refugees all had to go to Talus and Tralus. The word spread, and we got our rebellions, all right. One on Talus, two on Tralus. One group or the other—I don’t even know which—landed a bunch of fighters somewhere on the South Pole a while back, claimed the station for themselves.” Sonsen shrugged. “What was I going to do? Fight them off by myself? I left them alone, and they did the same to me—until you chased them off.”
“What do you mean, by yourself?” Gaeriel asked. “Are you the only one still on the station?”
Sonsen shook her head. “Probably not. It’s a big place. We tried to evac everyone, but my guess is someone got left behind. I haven’t seen anybody, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“You keep talking about the first flare,” Lando asked. “How many more were there?”
“Just one more. Two in all. The second happened just about a day or so before the interdiction field and the communications jamming came on. And don’t ask me what the point of a terrorist attack is when there’s no one left to terrorize, and there’s nothing left to burn.”
“Uh-huh,” Lando said, a bit distractedly. This station is exactly at the centerpoint, the barycenter between Talus and Tralus, right?”
“Right,” Sonsen said, giving Lando another strange look. “Were you people briefed at all?”
“I knew that much,” Lando said. “I just wanted to confirm it. The Glowpoint. It’s at the exact center of Hollowtown? And Hollowtown is at the exact center of the station?”
“It might be off by a centimeter or two. Feel free to get a measuring stick and check if you want.”
Lando ignored Sonsen’s sarcasm. He pointed out across the huge spherical space, toward the far side of the rotation axis, and then tilted his head back to look through the overhead viewport. “Those conical structures coming up out of the North and South Poles, right on the rotation axis. What can you tell me about them?”
Luke looked through the overhead viewport, and then through the forward view. Up until just a moment ago, they had been too close to one cluster of cones to see it clearly, and the other had been lost in the glare of the Glowpoint. But Lando seemed to have spotted them in the moment they became visible. Almost as if he had expected to see them. The two clusters seemed to be identical: a larger central cone surrounded by what looked to be six smaller cones, all with similar proportions of height to width.
Sonsen shrugged, a bit theatrically. “I can tell you that one set is called the South Conical Mountains, and the other is called the North Conicals. I’ll let you figure out which is which. People try to climb them once in a while, but even in the near zero-gee zone at the spin axis, it isn’t easy. Anything else of vital interest you need to know? Like the names of the boats in the bottom of the lake bed?”
“No,” said Lando, his mind clearly somewhere else. “I think that’s all I need to know.”
“Great,” said Sonsen. “Sometime I’ll have to spend five minutes learning everything important about your homeworld.”
“Hmmm? What? No, no. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I think I know enough to understand what’s going on.”
“After five minutes? No offense, but our ITA people have been trying for just a bit longer, and we haven’t worked it out yet.”
“ITA?” Luke asked.
“I believe in this context, the reference is to Intelligence and Technical Assessment,” Threepio said in a helpful tone of voice.
“I’m sure you’ve got good people,” Lando said, “and I didn’t mean to sound rude or condescending. It’s just a question of viewpoint. You’ve been seeing this thing from the inside out your whole life. I happen to be in a position to see it from the outside and—”
Just at that moment, Artoo let off a low, unsettled-sounding whistle. His view lens swiveled up to take in an overhead view, and then he turned to Threepio and let off a series of beeps and whistles that were too fast for Luke to follow.
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“Very well, Artoo, I will inquire, though it is very rude of you to interrupt.” Threepio turned toward Jenica Sonsen. “Pardon the intrusion, Administrator Sonsen, but my counterpart wishes to know, rather urgently, if the two previous Glowpoint flare events started suddenly, or if there was a gradual increase in the light source’s brightness.”
It was plain that Sonsen was less and less sure of this crowd of visitors with every moment that passed. “Interesting droids you’ve got,” she said to no one in particular. “As best we’re able to tell, the brightness came up gradually, over the course of about half an hour. We don’t know for sure because no one who was in here to see it got out alive—and of course all the recording instruments were destroyed as well”
Artoo rocked back and forth on his roller legs and whistled urgently, his head whirling back and forth.
“Oh, dear!” Threepio said. “I quite agree. We must depart at once.”
“What?” Lando asked. “Why? What’s going on?”
Threepio turned stiffly toward Luke and stared at him in surprise. “You have not noticed? Oh! Of course. My apologies. Your eyes compensate so automatically that you are unaware of the change. An interesting demonstration of the difference in our perceptions.”
Lando glared at the protocol droid. “Threepio,” he said in an artificially, calm voice, “if the next words from you are not an explanation of the problem, I am going to power you down right now and permanently disable your speech center. What is the problem?”
Threepio seemed about to protest, then thought better of it. “It is, quite simply, Captain Calrissian, that the visible light output from the Glowpoint has increased six percent in the last five minutes.”
* * *
“Anakin!” Jacen could feel his little brother nearby, and he knew perfectly well that Anakin could sense Jacen’s presence. But all the knowing back and forth in the world, all the ability to zero in on each other’s location, did not do much good in the current situation. For Jacen could also sense that Anakin was scared and feeling guilty, feeling sorry for what he had done.
It was a wonderful paradox, in a sense. If there was ever a kid in the history of the galaxy who deserved to be in trouble, it was Anakin Solo, now, today. After all, they had been trying to keep this place hidden. Anakin couldn’t have made it more visible if he had tried.
But the sheer magnitude of what he had done made it all but impossible to hold him responsible. Anakin couldn’t possibly have understood what he was doing, or he never would have done it. He was just a little boy who liked to play with machines. Jacen thought back to a few incidents in his own life when his parents had let him off easier than they might have. Nothing this big, of course, but the point was the same. Jacen had always thought those had been times he had gotten off easy, gotten lucky. Now he was not so sure. Maybe it hadn’t been him being lucky, but his parents being understanding.
“Anakin! It’s all right! Nobody’s mad at you.” Well, Chewbacca wasn’t exactly thrilled with him, and Aunt Marcha wasn’t all that pleased with him for getting her hovercar vaporized or getting her head cut open. If and when they ever got Q9-X2 working again, he was not likely to express his gratitude for what Anakin had done. But no one was mad. Not exactly. “Come on out.” Jacen knew perfectly well it was no good chasing Anakin or going in after him. He would just run away, hide again. Jacen would have to get him to come out on his own.
“I wanna stay here!” Anakin called out.
That was, strangely enough, a good first step. Jacen knew his brother well enough to know he was asking to be talked out of what he had just said. “Come on, Anakin,” Jacen said. “You can’t stay there forever.”
“Can so!”
“But it’s getting dark.” For reasons best known to the beings who had built this place, the steady, perfect illumination the chamber had produced from out of nowhere when it was cone-shaped wasn’t there anymore now that it was open to the sky. And night was coming on. “What about food?” Jacen went on. “Aren’t you hungry?”
“Well, maybe a little.”
“Maybe a lot,” Jacen said. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come get something to eat, and then if you want to go back to hiding, you can.” The suggestion made no sense at all, of course, but that was all right. It gave Anakin a way to save face, a way to back down.
There was a long silence—and that was a good sign too. Anakin was thinking about it. Jacen waited for a minute, and then gave it another try. “Anakin? Come on back to the camp—to the ship—and have some food.” He couldn’t really invite him to the camp. There wasn’t much of a camp left. Everything that hadn’t been inside the Falcon had been burned to a crisp.
“Can I really come back and hide later if I want to?” Anakin asked.
“All you want,” Jacen promised, knowing how easy it would be to keep that promise. After all, Anakin hadn’t needed permission to run away and hide the first time. He wouldn’t need it the next time, either, assuming they didn’t put a round-the-clock guard on him or lock him up and weld the hatch shut. And Jacen wouldn’t put it past Anakin to manage an escape even with a guard and a locked door.
“Well, all right. Wait a second.” After a moment Anakin appeared at the entrance to the corridor. He paused there and looked toward his big brother.
“It’s all right, Anakin, really.” Of course, there was very little that was all right, but Anakin knew what Jacen meant. Anakin came forward, slowly at first, then suddenly he was running as fast as he could. He threw his arms around Jacen and Jacen hugged him back.
“I’m sorry, Jacen. I didn’t mean to do anything bad. Honest.”
“I know, I know. But what you mean to do really doesn’t count so much, sometimes. It’s what happens that matters.” Jacen could almost hear his father telling him the same thing. Suddenly he found himself thinking not of what his father or mother would do—but about them. They were probably in trouble too, out there, somewhere. The last any of them knew about their parents was that they had remained behind, trapped in Corona House, when Chewbacca had gotten the three children, Q9, and Ebrihim out. Were they still there? Or had Dad’s cousin Thrackan locked them up someplace else? Or had they gotten away, somehow? Jacen suddenly felt a wave of guilt pass over him. Why hadn’t he worried about them more, thought about them more?
“I miss Mom and Dad,” Anakin announced, with his face mashed up against Jacen’s shoulder, his voice a little muffled and a little snuffly.
Jacen was surprised to hear his brother say that just then. It would seem Anakin’s mind worked a bit more like Jacen’s than Jacen had thought. “So do I,” Jacen said. “So do I. Come on. Let’s go back to the others.”
* * *
The two boys walked hand in hand toward the center of the massive chamber. Anakin slowly settled down enough to take an interest in his surroundings. He looked up toward where the top of the conical chamber had been, toward where the sky was now.
“Boy,” he said. “Things have really changed.”
“Yeah,” agreed Jacen. “They sure have.” He looked up himself and was astonished all over again by the sight.
The sky was getting dark, and so was the interior of the chamber, but the silvery surface did a good job of reflecting what light there was. It was probably just about sunset, but there was no real way to know. All they could see was a perfectly circular patch of dark sky, exactly overhead, right at the zenith, with the gleaming shadows of the seven silver cones stabbing into the edge of that perfect circle of night. Jacen could see stars starting to peek through, here and there.
They walked on, toward the Falcon, moving a bit more carefully as they picked their way through the heaps of burnt-up belongings. Everything that had been outside the ship was reduced to melted puddles and to ashes. Jacen and Anakin paused again to get a look at the Falcon. “The ship’s broken again,” Anakin said. It was not a question.
“Uh-huh. It looks like all the propulsion systems blew out before Chewbacca could get
the shields up.”
Anakin nodded slowly. “That isn’t good,” he said.
Jacen looked straight up, at the top of the cylinder, something like a kilometer or two over their heads. Unless Chewbacca could get the ship running, or unless someone could figure a way to walk straight up the side of the smooth, slick, sheer, impenetrable walls, they were stuck down here. “It sure isn’t,” Jacen agreed. “Come on,” he said. He almost told Anakin they were all waiting for him, but then it occurred to him that would not exactly encourage his brother to step lively. “Let’s go in.”
* * *
The Duchess Marcha of Mastigophorous sat in the lounge of the Millennium Falcon, feeling downright gloomy. The company was not enlivening. Her nephew, Ebrihim, was playing a dispirited game of sabacc with Jaina. The fact that Jaina had lost several hands showed just how low her spirits were. Q9, or what was left of him, was propped up against the far bulkhead of the compartment. He reminded Marcha all too closely of a mummified corpse no one had gotten around to burying.
She herself had a pounding headache, though she knew that she could count herself lucky to have no more serious complaints than that. It was a miracle that none of them had been killed. Well, maybe Q9 had been killed. At least Chewbacca had not been able to revive him.
Of course, it might not matter that much who was alive and who was dead right now. They were trapped here, and most of their rations had been outside the Falcon, either stored on the hovercar or else in storage crates that had been stacked outside the spacecraft to make room. The Falcon’s emergency stores would last for a while, but not forever. Marcha’s best guess, which she had not shared with anyone, was that they had perhaps enough water for six days and enough food for ten.
And they might well be lucky if they were alive long enough to worry about such things. She agreed with Chewbacca that it was all but certain that the repulsor’s violent awakening had wiped out the Drallists, and good riddance, but there was bound to be someone who had been far enough away to survive the disturbance and had noticed it.
Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy III: Showdown at Centerpoint Page 11