“How can you be under duress when you will be free to go as soon as we are agreeing?”
“We are under duress now,” Leia said, her voice and manner calm, imperious. “And we will not agree in any event. Therefore, the point is moot.”
“I ask you again to be reconsidering,” Kleyvits said. “All we ask is that you are acknowledging reality. We are free. We are no longer of the New Republic. We have thrown you off. We are our own place, our own planet. We ask merely that you are recognizing this fact.”
“You are no freer now than you were under the New Republic,” Mara said, her voice cold. “There was no dictator over you, no one telling you how to think and feel and act. You have thrown off no tyranny. It is not freedom for Selonia you ask her to recognize. It is the dominance of the Overden.”
“Hey, I’ll tell you what,” Han said. “Let’s give them what they want. Complete freedom. Complete freedom from trade, from interstellar commerce, from imports. Complete freedom from travel off-planet. Total embargo. How does that sound?”
“It sounds quite pleasant to us of the Overden, who wish to be free of anti-Selonian influence. Is that not so, my dear friend? Speak for the Hunchuzuc. Do you not agree that complete isolation would be the greatest of blessings?”
“Oh yes, eminent Kleyvits,” Dracmus said in a mournful tone, clearly feeling miserable and humiliated. “There could be no doubt that all the people of Selonia long to be isolated from the outside universe.”
“What about all your friends and relations on Corellia, where you lived all your life?” Han asked.
“They will rejoice with me in knowing we are free of all outside influence,” Dracmus said, staring down at the table.
“I’m afraid you’re no good at lying, Honored Dracmus,” Han said. “I’ve seen dead people who were more convincing.”
Dracmus looked up worriedly, and risked a quick look over at Kleyvits. “Please be in no doubt at all about my sincerity, Honored Solo.”
“Don’t worry on that score,” said Han. “I have no doubts at all.”
“I insist that we return to the main point,” Kleyvits said, clearly a bit put off by Dracmus’s performance. “Recognize the freedom of Selonia under the guidance of the Overden or never leave this planet alive.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Leia said.
Kleyvits looked toward her eagerly. “Then we have persuaded you?”
“Absolutely,” said Leia. “We pick the second choice, the one about not leaving alive. Go ahead and kill us all right now.”
Kleyvits sighed wearily, and extended her claws to drum them on the tabletop, making a rather unsettling clicking noise. It was hard to miss just how sharp those claws were. “I can see,” said Kleyvits, “that we are going to be here for a while.”
* * *
Thrackan Sal-Solo sat in the copilot’s seat and watched intently as the pilot brought the assault boat up to the rim of the huge cylinder that was the planetary repulsor. Slowly, slowly, slowly up and over. The assault boat hung motionless in the air for a moment, then spun slowly about, until its nose was pointed directly at the two bright spots of light on the evening horizon. Talus and Tralus. Thrackan could not spot it with the naked eye from this distance, but he knew that, with just the slightest of magnification, he would be able to see Centerpoint there as well.
All was in readiness. All he had to do was press the button, command the radionics system to send its signal, and then order the pilot to bring them back down into the repulsor. Then it would simply be a matter of waiting for the radionics signal to cross the distance between here and Centerpoint to reach the control center. The automatic control center would shut off the jamming, and that would be that. He would not even have to come up here again to transmit the broadcast over com channels. The com signal wouldn’t be blocked by the repulsor or require line of sight. Most convenient.
Simple, really. Thrackan was not generally of a poetic turn of mind, but it occurred to him that what he was about to do was to cast a stone into a pond, square into the middle. The ripples would move out from where the stone struck, out in all directions. Some of the consequences he could predict, but he knew, if anyone did, just how risky a game he was playing. The ripples might well spread out in directions he had not considered, touch on shores he did not expect. He wanted to turn off the communications jamming because it served his own purposes, but being able to communicate would serve many other purposes beyond his own.
Some consequences he could predict. Once the jamming was down, the original controllers of the starbuster plot would immediately use the primary com system to send the command shutting down the interdiction field. They would move into the Corellian system and run right up against the Bakuran ships. That suited Thrackan fine. Let the two sides battle it out. Let one side defeat the other. The winner, whoever it was, would be weakened by the fight, and Thrackan’s own forces would have an easier time of it in the final confrontation.
He was also just about certain that the system’s original controllers would lock out the subsystem Thrackan had been using, preventing him from manipulating the system any further. They would not want the jamming back on. So be it. That meant Thrackan’s enemies here in the Corellian system would suddenly be able to communicate with each other, exchange information. They would learn things about each other, and about Thrackan—but they would learn them too late. He was not worried about that.
But what of the consequences he had not imagined? What unknown risks was he about to take? There was, clearly, no way to know.
But there was one thing he did know. Shutting off the communications jamming would allow Thrackan Sal-Solo to tell the whole Corellian system that he had Han Solo’s children. Han Solo would hear it, and know it, and be helpless to do anything about it.
What sweeter revenge could there be?
Thrackan pushed the button. The command signal went out.
* * *
Ossilege watched on the Intruder’s long-range scanners as the assault boat hovered just barely into view over the top of the repulsor, turned itself slightly, and then floated back down out of sight. He looked toward the Intruder’s chief gunner and saw the man shake his head. “I’m sorry, sir. There just wasn’t time to set up a shot. Not at this range. Especially with atmosphere in the way. If he had stayed there another thirty seconds—”
The chief gunner left the thought unfinished, but Ossilege understood. He sighed. If that assault boat had stayed there long enough for the Intruder to set up the shot, then this war might be over right now.
* * *
“Boy, you get out of touch for five minutes and everything changes,” said Lando as the Lady Luck flew clear of the mammoth Centerpoint airlock. “Where’s the Intruder?”
“What’s the Intruder?” Jenica asked.
“Biggish sort of thing. A ship. A Bakuran light cruiser. It should not be hard to miss, but I can’t spot it.”
“Have you looked in the last place you had it?” she asked.
Lando smiled. “I did, just now, and it wasn’t there. But I bet I find it in the last place I look.”
“So where is it?”
“At a guess, something has happened, and Admiral Ossilege has charged off as bravely as possible to do something about it, whether it needs doing or not.”
“I’m not sure I appreciate your tone, Lando,” said Gaeriel.
“I’m not sure I appreciate the way Ossilege takes chances,” said Lando. “But the question is, what do we do now?”
“I’m not sure,” Gaeriel said. “Life is going to be a lot easier if and when we get communications back.” She thought a moment. “Can we get a laser comlink with either of the two destroyers?”
“Not easily,” Lando said. “It’d probably be easier and faster just to fly over to the closest ship, dock, open the hatch, and ask what’s going on.”
“Then let’s do that,” Gaeriel said. “We can decide what to do when we know more.”
“A ver
y sensible attitude, that,” said Lando. “We’re on our way.”
* * *
Jaina let out a sad sigh. Things were very bad. The prisoners sat, sad and forlorn—and rather crowded—in the mobile stockade, unable to do anything but watch as the Human League troopers and technicians unpacked their gear, obviously getting ready to settle in for a long stay.
The mobile stockade was really nothing more than a force field generator designed to stay outside the force field itself, so that those held in the field could not get at the generating machinery. The force field was transparent, however, and those inside could see the generator, plain as day, straight in front of them.
This did not sit well with Anakin, to put it mildly. The idea that he could see but could not touch the device that was holding them prisoner seemed to upset him far more than the fact that he was a prisoner.
The other two children tried to keep him as distracted as possible, but it was not easy. On the bright side, struggling to keep Anakin cheered up distracted them from their own worries. The two Drall, Ebrihim and Marcha, seemed to have decided that being locked up gave them a chance to catch up on a decade or so of family gossip—and they clearly had an enormous family. They sat there, for hour after hour, discussing the doings of this cousin, the money problems of that uncle, the scandalous failure to divorce of that great-aunt twice-removed and her fifth husband.
Chewbacca paced back and forth, from one side of the hemispherical force field containment to the other. He was forced to watch the Human League techs poking around the Millennium Falcon, wandering around on the upper hull, opening the access panels, and studying the interiors. Once or twice, a League tech would open a panel and laugh out loud at what he saw. It was difficult to restrain Chewbacca at those moments. He would pound his fists on the force field and roar his frustration, but doing so gained him nothing more than slightly singed fur on his hands and upper arms.
Perhaps only the two Drall were calm and settled enough to deal with the situation rationally when Thrackan Sal-Solo marched over from the assault boat. Jaina certainly wasn’t in any mood to be reasonable. A Human League tech was by his side, carrying a holographic recorder.
“Good afternoon to all of you,” said Thrackan in that voice that was so close to her father’s, and yet so far away. Cousin Thrackan—strange and unpleasant to think of him that way, Jaina told herself, but that was what he was.
“Hello,” said Jaina, and Jacen muttered a hello as well. Anakin took one look at his father’s cousin and burst into tears—and Jaina couldn’t blame him. It was upsetting just to look at—at Thrackan. He looked so much like their father—just a little darker, a little heavier, the hair a different shade. The beard helped make him seem at least a little different from Dad, but somehow that only made the similarities more upsetting. It was like looking at—at a dark side version of her father, the way he could have been, if anger and resentment and suspicion had taken hold of him.
“Make that child stop crying,” Thrackan said, as if Jaina could make Anakin quiet with a wave of her hand.
“I can’t,” she said. “He might calm down in a minute, but he’s scared of you.”
“There’s no reason to be scared of me,” said Thrackan. “Not yet.” That was less than comforting.
Jaina knelt down and gave her little brother a hug. “It’ll be all right, Anakin, honest,” she whispered to him, hoping that she was telling the truth.
“Why are you here?” Jacen asked, glaring at Thrackan. “What do you want?”
“Not much at all, not much at all,” Thrackan said. “I merely need some pictures of all of us together.”
Chewbacca roared, growled, and bared his teeth, then gestured for Thrackan to come into the stockade containment.
Thrackan smiled. “I don’t speak your barbaric language, Wookiee, but I understood that. No, thank you. I can get quite close enough to you for my purposes from outside the force field.”
“Why do you want holos of us?” Aunt Marcha demanded.
Thrackan smiled. “I should think that would be obvious, even to a member of your species. I am in the process of turning off the jamming of communications. When the jamming is off, I will broadcast the holos to demonstrate that you are my prisoners. While I doubt anyone will much care what happens to a pair of rotund Drall or a psychotic Wookiee, I would expect that the children’s parents will be inspired to more reasonable behavior if they knew I had their children—and a planetary repulsor.”
Marcha, Duchess of Mastigophorous, drew herself up to her full height and glared at their jailkeeper. “You are on the verge of a most serious error,” she said. “For your own safety, I urge you to reconsider this act.”
Thrackan laughed out loud. “You are scarcely in a position to make threats, Drall. Save your breath.”
“Very well. May the consequences be on your head alone. Honor required me to say what I did. But a wise being can tell a warning from a threat.”
For the briefest of moments, the bland smile flickered off Thrackan’s face, but then it was back, as calm and meaningless as ever. “I need say no more to any of you on this subject,” he said. “Now I want the three children on this side of the stockade, closest to me, and you three aliens on the far side.”
“Why—” Ebrihim began.
“Because I wish it!” Thrackan snapped. “Because if you do not obey, I can manipulate the force field to make the stockade half the size it is. Because I can shoot you all dead if I so choose.” Thrackan paused, and smiled. “Because I can and will harm the children if you do not,” he said. “Now go to the other side.”
The two Drall and the Wookiee exchanged looks with each other. It was clear they had no real choice. They moved to the opposite side of the stockade.
Anakin had more or less settled down by this time, and Jaina urged him to his feet. There was always one sure way to distract Anakin, and that was to have him watch someone use a machine. And of course there might be other benefits to watching the procedure. “Look, Anakin,” she said. “Watch what the man does.”
Anakin nodded and wiped his nose. The three children stood as close as they could to the edge of the field and watched intently as the technician knelt down by the stockade’s force field generator. He pulled a very old-fashioned metal key out of his pocket, shoved it into a slot on the generator, and turned it a quarter turn to the left. Then he changed several of the settings on the device. A new force field, a vertical wall running across the middle of the stockade field, and separating the adults from the children, came into being. He turned the key back a quarter turn to the right and pulled it back out. “Ah, Diktat, sir, it might also be wise to intensify the fields somewhat, so that they are more plainly visible on the holographic recording.”
“Will it make the prisoners themselves harder to see?”
“Very slightly, sir, but they will be quite recognizable, and the sight of the force field will make a very clear visual statement that they are prisoners. It will make your words stronger.”
“Very well,” Thrackan said. “Make the adjustment.”
The technician turned a dial, and the force field turned a trifle darker.
“Very good,” said Thrackan. “Very good indeed. “Now, then. Take your holo recorder and shoot,” he said. “Get a nice long sequence of each face in turn, and then a wide shot of all of us together. I don’t want there to be any chance of someone not being sure I have the children, or of someone thinking that it’s been faked in some way.”
The technician lifted his holographic recorder to his face and set to work, recording the image of each unsmiling face in turn, then taking a wide shot of Thrackan with all the prisoners. At last he was done. “That should do it, Diktat Sal-Solo,” the tech said.
“Very good,” said Thrackan. “Let’s go get the transmitter set up and get ready to send that out.”
“What about setting the force field back, sir?”
Thrackan looked at the stockade for a moment. “Leave i
t,” he said. “It might be wise to keep the children separate from the aliens. It might make it harder for them to scheme together.” With that, he turned and walked away, the technician following behind.
Jaina watched as the two of them walked away. “Did you see enough of what the tech did?” she asked Jacen.
“Not really,” he said. “I don’t think I could manipulate the controls with the Force, anyway. I don’t have that kind of fine control. And besides, the tech had that key.”
“Anakin, what about you?”
“I could do something if I could get at it,” he said. “Change some stuff. But you need that key to turn a field on or off, or cut all power. You saw him. Have to have that key to turn it off.”
“No hope there, then,” Jaina said.
“Hush, child,” said the Duchess Marcha from the other side of the vertical force field wall. “There is always hope—particularly against an opponent who believes everything can be won with bullying.”
Jaina went over to the vertical wall, the other children trailing after. “Has he really made a mistake, Aunt Marcha?” she asked, wanting comfort and reassurance as much as information.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “very much so, child.”
Chewbacca laughed gently, a small growly noise, and then let out a yip and a hoot. The Wookiee looked around to make sure no Human League trooper was close enough to watch. Then he moved up as close as he could to the vertical wall and opened the palm of his hand.
Star Wars: The Corellian Trilogy III: Showdown at Centerpoint Page 17