Star Wars - Correlian trilogy 3 - Showdown at Centerpoint

by Allen McBride

  CHA PTER TWO

  Landing Leia Organa Solo, Chief of State of the New Republic, sat at the navigator's station aboard the Jade's Fire, watching the coneship drift in toward the planet Selonia. She had been a fool to let Han stay aboard that bucket of bolts. But she knew perfectly well that there had been no chance at all to get him off that ship, once he had decided he owed something to the Selonians on board. But what, exactly, was he getting them into? Leia was forced to think not just like a wife but like a politician. She could not see any way of avoiding it, but there was no question that Han was being drawn in by these Selonians-and that Leia was being drawn in as well. It would be easy, all too easy, for the New Republic to find itself on one side or another of a light it had no business in. It would be even easier to get tempted into bargains with these Hunchuzucs, bargains that had a few too many hidden strings attached . . . "He'll be all right, Leia," Mara said. "We'll stay right with them, all the way down. The Fire can offer them more protection than you think." "Hmmm? What? Oh, yes," Leia said, pointlessly embarrassed. It was somewhat mortifying to be reassured by Mara Jade, of all people. Somehow to have Mara assume that Leia was worrying about her husband's safety when she was really thinking about the politics of the situation made it even worse. Was she so callous that calculation of political advantage even pushed aside worries about her husband? So calculating that even Mara Jade was capable of more concern for Han? But Leia told herself, rather firmly, that she had more sense than that. She had no choice but to think on more than one level. What good would it do Han if she got so tied up in sentimental worrying that she failed to foresee the dangers ahead? "Han will be all right," Leia said again, trying to convince herself as much as her companion. "If anyone can get that tub down to the surface, he can." "If anyone can," Mara agreed, none too reassuringly. Mara was at her usual post, at the pilot's station, guiding the Jade's Fire down toward the surface. She frowned and adjusted the thrust controls a bit, slowing them down again. "Trouble?" Leia asked. Mara shook her head without taking her eyes off the viewport. "Nothing we can't handle, but I don't like being behind the coneship. That Sefonian pilot needs a flying lesson or two. If she hits the brakes like that too many times, she's going to get our nose assembly right up her stern." "Can we back off a little?" "Not if we want them to stay in visual contact with us. That stern holocam has no resolution at all. We might be too far back for it to see us as it is- Burning stars, she doesn't know how to fly!" Mara pulled her joystick violently up and to the right. "She's doing the pitchover maneuver way too early-and without shutting off her engines. Nearly clipped her." Leia watched as the lumbering bulk of the coneship began its turnover, flipping end over end to direct its sublight engines toward the planet and slow its descent. It was painfully obvious that the pilot was not managing very well. The ship was lurching abruptly from one attitude to the next, pausing at intermediate stages of the maneuver instead of moving smoothly from a nose-to-planet attitude direct to stern-to-planet. It only made it worse-much worse-that the pilot was doing it under power. Leia was a pretty fair pilot, and she would have been very reluctant to try doing it that way. Mara was forced to fly two more evasive patterns just to keep the Fire from crashing into the other ship. Finally she backed the Fire off by five kilometers. "They're going to be nose-on to us anyway," Mara said. "They'll be able to see us reasonably well." "With a little luck," Leia said, a bit doubtfully. The Fire had first-rate detection systems, and could have tracked the coneship halfway across the Corellian system, but all the eoncship had was straight visual. Leia peered out the Fire's viewport and managed, with great difficulty, to spot the tiny dot that was the coneship. The bright bulk of the planet's dayside loomed up behind the ship, rendering it all but invisible. How easy would the Fire be to see. a little spot of red against the blackness of space? Mara wasn't even using the main viewscreen anymore, but watching her detector displays. She wasn't relying on visual detection. Oh, well. As long as at least one ship could see the other, things should be all right- "Trouble!" Mara announced. "Leia, weapons and shields to standby, fast!" Leia ran the power-up routines as quickly as she could. She ran quick checks on the ship's turbolasers and shields. "All weapon and shield systems functional and on-line," she announced. "What's happened?" "Power up the defense tracking systems and tell me," Mara said. "All the nav systems can tell me is that a bunch of blips just showed up out of nowhere." "Light Attack Fighters," Leia announced as the defense trackers came on. "A double flight of them, twelve in all, coming in from right over our stern. Must have dropped out of a high polar orbit." Mara shook her head as she stared down at the navigation display. "We can handle them, but it won't be easy. Not with the coneship to cover." "We're too far off to extend our shields toward the coneship." "And we're going to stay that way," Mara said sharply. "I'm not getting any closer to that pilot than I have to-especially in combat. She's already nearly rammed us twice. Get close enough to provide shield cover, and we'll all be dead. Covering fire is the best I'm going to be able to do. How soon until the LAFs get here?" "Firing range in thirty seconds." "Stand by for combat maneuvers." "No! Wait! We have to blink-code to Han, warn them!" "You've got twenty-five seconds," Mara said, steel in her voice. There was no point even trying to argue. Leia reached for the landing light controls and flipped them back to blink-code mode. She forced herself to take a full five seconds to compose her message, and then sent it three times, in rapid succession. "Done," Leia said. "Good," Mara said. "Hang on." Han was almost too busy trying to keep from being flung out of his chair to notice the flashing lights visible in the overhead viewport. "Smooth and gentle, Salculd! Not sudden!" he shouted as he tried to concentrate on the blink code-not easy to do when the ship he was on was flailing about like a cornered bantha. The trouble was that Han was only marginally better at reading code than he was at sending it. Even under perfect conditions, he might have had problems. He struggled to catch it all. At least Leia used the special word-end signal between words. Otherwise, he'd have never gotten anywhere. "B-A-N-D-I- something- something word ends," he muttered to himself. "Bandi? Bandits! Oh, great!" He tried to concentrate on the next word. Missed something -R-O-M word ends. Burning suns, Leia, do you have to send so fast? Missed something -E-H-l-N-D word ends J-A-D-E-S-F-I- Han missed the end of it as the coneship bobbled about again, but he had read enough to know the score. Bandits, enemy fighters, were headed this way, coming from behind the Jade's Fire. And either by bad luck or good timing they were heading in right as the coneship was at its most vulnerable. Han glanced over at the Selonians. You didn't have to be an expert at reading Selonian expressions to know that they were both scared silly, Salculd only slightly less so than Draemus. Han reminded himself she did not speak Basic. There was no point at all to telling Salculd about the bandits until she had the ship under control. Han was sure she hadn't even seen the blink-code message. Good. Let her work. Let her work. The coneship slowly lumbered around into braking position, its fat stern pointed almost precisely straight down at the planet, but canted just slightly into the ship's direction of travel, so the braking run could kill the craft's forward momentum as well. Han checked his instruments, doing his best to make sense out of the Selonian notation. By some miracle or other, Salculd seemed 10 have gotten them into the right position, and at the right attitude. "Good, good," he said as calmly as he could. Probably they had just a few seconds left before the bandits jumped them. But trying to rush Salculd would be worse than useless at this point. If she got any more scared, she might freeze completely. "Now then, Salculd, one other matter. Is time to, ah, lest our defense plan. You will bring the ship to spin, please, of three spins per minute." "Test?" Draemus sputtered. "But you said it was a one-time-only trick." Han had been hoping no one would bring that up. At least Dracmus had spoken in Basic. There was still a million-to-one chance Salculd hadn't caught on. "Quiet," he said in Basic before switching back to Selonian. "Make the spins, please, Honored Salculd. Make sure all is weli, in case needed." It was clear that Sal
culd did not believe him-but it would seem she was willing to pretend she did, at least for a little while. "Yes, yes," she said, "of course. Commencing axial spin." The ship began to rotate around its conical axis, so the stars pinwheeled across the sky. Han studied the overhead view, as best he was able. He could just about spot the Fire, and the bandits were almost certainly sma ller, and coming from behind. There was no way he could find them, especially with the ship spinning like a top. He gave it up. No point in worrying about things he could not change. "Disable internal damping," Han said calmly, casually. The inertial dampers prevented anything more than a few percent of a ship's acceleration and motion from being felt by those aboard. Without them, the occupants of a ship accelerating to light speed could be squashed to jelly. No one liked turning them off-but sometimes you had to do what you didn't like. "But if we cannot restart inertial damping-" "Worry about such later!" Han snapped. He knew better than Salculd what it might mean if they couldn't get the dampers back on. But they would have to live long enough for the problem to come up. "We need to use centrifugal effect if plan is to work, and inertial damping cancels it out. End damping!" Salculd inhaled nervously and reached out her hand to cut off the inertial damping system. All of a sudden, Han felt his weight double, then triple, as the dampers stopped compensating for the ship's deceleration. A moment later he felt the disorienting sensation of the ship spinning. "Confirm all inner airlocks sealed," Han ordered. "All inner airlock doors sealed. Pressure in locks," Salculd said. '"Honored Solo, must we truly- "Quiet! We must. Be ready for next step! Maintain course, maintain thrust, unless I order otherwise!" Han struggled to concentrate on the spinning starfield overhead. If this was going to work, it would take exact timing. But how could he time anything if he couldn't see? Maybe he would get lucky and the Jade's Fire would signal the all clear. And maybe he would wake up and discover the whole nightmare trip to Corellia had just been a dream. If only wishing could make it true. He had done his best. Now all they could do was hang on and see how it came out. "Rear, ventral, and dorsal shields to full, forward shields to one quarter," Mara ordered. "Divert shields as needed for ship safety." Leia worked the shield settings. "Shields conligured as ordered." "Good," Mara said. "Maintain turbolasers at standby. We arc going to hold this course and speed. Act like they aren't there. They can't know how good or bad our detectors are. They've never seen this kind of ship before, but I know LAFs. They have the gear to detect turbos going on-line, but not shield activation. If we keep the guns off and stay on course, they might decide we can't see them." "What good does that do us?" Leia asked. "They might blow right past us and zero in on the eoneship. My guess is that whoever is on those LAFs is targeting the Hunchuzuc, not us." "But Han is- "Safer this way," Mara said, watching her displays. "We can handle seven or eight of them at once, but not twelve. Not in a direct engagement. But if the LAFs don't engage us, we'll have nice, clear forward view shots right up their stern plates while they're focused on the coneship. We can pick off three or four of them before the rest bring fire to bear on us. Set up the targeting system for tracking follow-fire. If they engage us directly, we return fire. If they go past us, commence fire when they are three kilometers past us. Understood?" "Yes, but- "No buts," Mara said. "This ship fights my way, or not at ali." Leia gave in again. Mara had far more experience at this sort of fight than she did. "Very well," she said. "Stand by. Here they come." Leia watched the stern detector displays as the LAFs came in, directly behind the Fire's stern, trying to hide in the detection shadow produced by the sublight engines. They were trying to sneak up. From that bearing they wouldn't even show up on most ships' detectors. The LAFs swept in, their images in the detection screen breaking up just a bit due to interference from the sublight engines. Leia tensed up as they swept through the optimum firing range, and felt herself relax just a trifle as they swept on, past the Fire. But she didn't relax too far-not when they were passing her by to take a crack at her husband's ship. The LAFs flashed past the Fire, zeroing in on the coneship. "The coneship!" she cried out. "It's spinning up. They must have got our warning." "Let's hope Han's idea works better than it ought to," Mara said. It wasn't the most tactful thing to say, even if Leia had been thinking the same thing herself. But there was no time. "Coming up on three kilometers distance," she said. "Commence fire," Mara ordered. "Not unless they fire first!" Leia said. "Maybe they're just here to throw a scare into us, or they might be on escort duty. No way to tell with communications jammed." "All right," Mara said, the doubt plain in her voice. "You can make that- But the first flash of turbolaser fire from the lead LAF shut down the argument. Leia released the safeties on the Fire's follow-fire circuits and started selecting targets, aiming first for the LAF that had opened fire. "Here they come!" Han .shouted in Basic, forgetting for a moment to speak in Selonian. Salculd got the message all the same. She looked up through the viewport at the tiny spots of light in the sky, and understood precisely what was going on. She let out a most undignified squawk. The whole slowly spinning cone-ship lurched to one side and came close to heeling over into a disastrous tumble. "Calmness!" Han shouted. "Be calm, alert. Throttle down all engines. End all thrust. Stand by to open outer airlock doors on my command." "Throu-throttling down ali engines," Salculd said. "Ready on the airlock doors." "Wait for it," Han said, watching the LAFs come closer. Weight faded away as Salculd powered down the engines. With the inertia] dampers off-line, and the engine thrust gone, Han found himself in zero gee for the first time in a long time. Han knew people who had spent half their lives in space without experiencing zero gravity-and with the flip-flops his stomach was doing all of a sudden, he could understand why. But there was no time for that now. Not with a sky full of Light Attack Fighters heading in. "Be ready, ready." he told Salculd. The lead LAF fired and caught them with a glancing blow to the starboard side, slamming into the hull like a giant fist. "It's all right!" Han shouted, having not the least idea if it was or not. "It's all right. Stand by on the airlock doors. Wait for it. Be ready-" The Jade's Fire's forward quad turbolaser blazed away, tracking the lead LAP across the sky. The LAP broke off its attack run, trying to fly an evasive pattern and escape. For a moment it managed to break out of the tracking pattern, but the Jade's Fire regained a positive lock and poured in fire again. The LAF's shields flared and blazed for a moment before giving way altogether. The fighter exploded, a blossom of fire that flared up and was gone. Leia fed two new targets to the follow-fire system, and got busy herself with the manual guns, reading the detection screens for herself. But the rest of the LAFs were not going to be such easy pickings. They had their rear shields powered up to maximum, and did a better job of evasive maneuvers, good enough to completely bamboozle the follow-fire systems. But not good enough to fooi Leia. She settled in with the manual controls and began looking for targets. She concentrated her fire on the toughest shots, the LAFs closest to the coneship. She got a lock on one and fired, holding the guns on target long enough to burn through the shields and blow the fighter to bits. Just then the coneship cut its engines, allowing it to drop straight for the planet's surface. It threw the LAFs off, if only for a moment or two. Leia shook her head and sighed. Not much of an evasive maneuver, but probably the best Han could manage with that clunky piece of junk. But suddenly her detector displays showed a cloud of debris blooming out from the coneship in all directions. Fear stabbed at her heart. That one hit on the cone-ship's hull couldn't have done that much damage, could it? Could the craft be breaking up before her eyes, with Han aboard? She had no desire to watch the death of her husband-but then something happened to one of the LAFs, and then another, and another. As they swooped in close to the coneship, they bounced and skittered and wobbled off course. Two of them lost power, and the third was rocked by a small explosion amidships. Leia got a target lock on one of the survivors and fired, catching a piece of him before he managed to get his shields up. Leia tried to track to a new target, but the LAFs had plainly decided lo take the hint and accept the fact they
weren't welcome. They scattered, hightailing out of there in all directions. But how in the blazes had- Suddenly she understood. Of course. Of course. "Mara! His trick worked! Get us out from behind Han, fast! New course, five or six kilometers to one side of him, and try to overtake him if you can. It's not going to be so safe to be behind him for a while." She smiled, relief flooding over her. She should have known Han wouldn't give up without a fight. Han listened closely as the last of the junk went lumbering out of the airlocks, banging and clattering and thudding and reverberating through the ship. There was no air in the locks left to transmit noise, of course, but there was on the other side of the interior bulkheads-a fact that had made itself known with every bit of broken-down hardware that had slammed around the locks. Han had spent half a day policing the ship, looking for every bit of surplus or broken hardware he could. Buckets of bolts, worn-out spare parts, garbage from the galley, unidentifiable bits of machinery that had been sitting in the hold for who knew how long-he had thrown all of it into the locks. And all of it had tumbled out into space when the locks were opened, thrown clear by centrifugal force. Result-a cloud of slow-moving space junk left right in the path of the attacking LAFs. And the LAFs had quite sensibly configured their shields for maximum power aft, to defend against laser blasts from the Jade's Fire-leaving them with minimum power forward. But plowing through a cloud of hits and pieces of broken meta! and plastic at a closing speed of something like a thousand kilometers an hour was very far from a good idea. However, piling a ship into a planet was an even worse one. "Good!" Han said. "They're gone! But we are not out of this yet. Reestablish inertial dampers and cut ship spin." "At once, Honored Solo," Salculd replied. There was an odd shimmering sort of vibration as the inertial field came back on and weight returned. The ship's ungainly spin slowed, and stopped-and then started up again in the opposite direction-and started lo get faster. "Salculd!" Han called out. "This is no time for the playing of games!" "I am not doing so, Honored Solo. Failure in lateral attilude control system. I cannot shut it off!" "Oh, for-" Han scrambled up out of his seat and dove for the main circuit breaker box. He yanked it open and tripped the lateral attitude control breaker by hand. That killed the thrusters that were producing the spin-but also killed the ones that fired in the opposite direction, and could bring it to it halt. He slapped the access door shut and returned to his seat. "Hope everyone is liking lo spin," Han announced in Selonian. "We are to do it for a while. Saiculd! Restart to main sublight engines-and nice, slow throttle-up, please!" "At once, Honored Solo," Salculd replied. She reached for the throttle controls and began adjusting them. Nothing seemed to happen. "Not that slow, Salculd. We need to do some braking!" Salculd looked a! Han, and the panicked !ook that had seemed on the verge of fading away was there in full force, and no doubt. "No activation!" she announced. "Engine initiator not responding!" "Horror!" cried Dracmus. "We incinerate for certain." "Quiet, Dracmus, or I send you out the airlock. Salculd, try again!" Han said. "Firstly confirm you have power to all engine systems." "Board shows all power systems fine and lovely," Salculd said. "Board says is working, but it not." "Not helpful," Han said, jumping up. "Off I go again. Keep trying, and listen to the comm!" Han rushed for the ladder to the lower decks and clambered down as fast as he could. As soon as he reached the lower deck, he smelled smoke. There was trouble, big trouble. That one hit from the LAF must have hit something in the transverse power coupling. Han jogged around the circumferentia! corridor until he reached the proper access hatch. It was sealed, praise be. The bad news was the smoke was coming off the painted metal on the hatch. Han checked the readouts. They showed there was still pressure in there, if the numbers were to be believed. The temperature gauge was pegged at the high end. He worked the hatch controls to pop the compartment's spill valves. They should have operated automatically once fire broke out. Obviously they hadn't. But even if the automatics were out, at least the manual controls were still working. There was a sort of clank and a thud from behind the hatch, and then a roaring hiss that faded off into nothing as the air in the compartment vented into space. The ship lurched slightly to one side before the inertial dampers corrected for the off-center thrust. Han resealed the spiil valves. The hatch had a manual spill valve of its own that allowed pressure between the two sides of the hatch to equalize without opening it up. Han burned his fingers getting the safeties off, and then popped the hatch valve. The corridor was suddenly filled with a roaring, thundering rush of air that almost knocked Han over. Han looked around, and, for a miracle, spotted a fire extinguisher within reach right where it was supposed to be. He peeled off his shirt and wrapped it around his left hand, then look the extinguisher in his right. He grabbed the manual hatch control with his left hand, and the shirt instantly began to smolder. He pulled the lever and swung the hatch open. A blast of heat struck him in the face; he ehecked his grip on the extinguisher. If the renewed supply of oxygen started something burning, he wanted to be ready for it. But he did not want to try doing emergency repairs on equipment that was covered with spray foam if he could possibly avoid it. Not that spray foam could have made things much worse. Han stood in the hatchway, stared at the compartment, and felt sick. The initiator was just not there anymore. There was no need for the extinguisher. Anything that could have burned already had. Han looked down at the blackened deck plates. The compartment was just under the outer hull, ft looked as if the LAF's turbolaser hadn't quite burned through the hull, but it had clearly come close. The entire compartment was still hot, but was cooling rapidly now, the metal pinging and clinging as it gave up its heat to space. But Han wasn't here to see what happened after an equipment bay fire. Think, Han told himself. Think as fas! as you ever have. The coneship had a very awkward engine-start system, and one that had caused plenty of trouble already on this trip. More modern systems worked differently, but on this bucket, the initiators served as massive capacitors, storing up huge amounts of energy and slamming it all out at once to get the sublight engines over the power threshold where their energy reaction was self-sustaining. With the initiators out, the sublight engines could not restart. And without those engines the coneship was going to drop like a slone, a shooting star aimed straight for the planet. They had to restart those engines. They had to. But there was no other system in the ship with anything like enough power to let the sublights reach their minimum start-up energy. Even if they overloaded every single- Wait a second. Thai was it. It was unlikely it would work. But it definitely wouldn't work if he didn't give it a try. And give it a iTy fast. They were in free fall, heading straight for a spot that was going to have a new crater in a few minutes. Han stepped back out of the initiator compartment and rcsealed the hatch. Where would the repulsor feedback dispersal system be on this tub? Useless to ask Salculd. She was so close to the edge she probably wouldn't remember where the pilot's station was. She had given him a tour of the ship when he had first come aboard-that was it! Just on the other side of the main power room. Perfect. Han rushed back down the circumferential corridor the way he had come and found the right access panel on the wall. He pulled it open and traced the connections. Good. Good. For a wonder, they were all standard hookups. He tripped the breaker by hand. Cable. He needed power cable. Stores room. They had all but cleaned it out to fill the airlocks with junk, but there had to be something left. He charged down the corridor and threw open the hatch to the stores room. Nothing. Down to the bare walls. Utterly empty. Han started to swear to himself and at himself with impressive fluency, but there was no time for such indulgences. Think, Think. Life support. Main power to life support. No sense keeping it on. They were all going to be dead in about five minutes anyway if he didn't get some power cable. Life support. Where could he kill power to life support? Right! Cut it right at main power and yank the cable from there. Han rushed back to the main power room, threw the hatch open, and went inside. Not everything was labeled, and what was labeled was in Selonian, of course. He struggled to sort out what was what. There! If he was
reading the labels right, that junction was main device for rue blowing of air MEANT FOR BREATHING, and thilt One was CLEANSING OF AIR FROM POLLUTANTS FOR PLEASANT BREATHING. A little verbose, perhaps, but clear enough. He found the circuit breakers on the junctions and slammed them off. Han could hear the fans and blowers dying all over the ship. He yanked the power cables out of their sockets and pulled them down off their cable guides. He pulled the other ends of the cables, and then found a label reading power input herk from the powerful INITIATORS WHICH ARE IN ANOTHER COMPARTMENT. He pulled the cables running from the destroyed initiators and plugged in his borrowed life-support cables. He snaked the cables out into the corridor, praying they would reach, and gave thanks when they did. He made sure the repulsors were off-line, then yanked the lines running to the rcpulsor feedback dispersal unit and plugged in his borrowed cables. He stepped back and double-checked his work. "Okay," he said to no one at all. "That ought to work. I thi nk." He turned and ran for the ladder up to the command deck. "Something's wrong," Leia said, watching her detector screens. "The spin has reversed instead of stopping, and they haven't restarted their main engines." "Maybe they took some bad damage from that hit," Mara said. "Can we dock with the ship and get them off?" Leia asked. "Not before they hit atmosphere," Mara said. "There's nowhere near enough time. Besides, that cloud of debris they threw out is stil! traveling with them. We'd get hit the same way the LAFs were." "A tractor beam, then," Leia said. "We could set that up and- "And what? That ship isn't all that much smaller than this one. The tractor on this ship doesn't have a tenth the power to hold that ship. If we tried it, more than likely they'd pull us down instead. I'm sorry, Leia. There's nothing at all we can do." Deep in her heart, Leia knew Mara was right. But it felt wrong to give up without a fight. They had to do somtgt;ihing, "Stay close," Leia said. "Get as close as you can without getting into the debris cloud and take up station keeping." "Leia, there is nothing we can- "Suppose they get temporary control, or slow just enough thai they can abandon ship?" Leia asked. "We need to be close enough to get in and help." Mara hesitated a moment. "All right. But we won't be able to hold station keeping long. We're about five minutes from atmosphere right now, and once we hit it-well, that will be the end of things." Leia knew that. Without shielding, without braking from the engines, the coneship would turn into a meteorite, a streak of fire that burned across the sky before crashing in the planet. "I'll stay close as long as I can," Mara said. "But it won't be long." "Do it," Leia said. But even as she urged Mara onward, she wondered why. What good would it do to watch from closer in as her husband was incinerated? "Out!" Han shouted at Salculd as he came up out the hatch to the command deck. "Out of pilot chair now! I take over." "But what are you- "No time!" he snapped. He sealed the hatch, just in case they lived long enough to worry about air leaks. "I must take over. No time to explain what to do. Out! Move!" Salculd moved, undoing her seal restraints and bailing out of the pilot's station. Han dove into the vacated seat and checked the status board. Good. Good. Repulsors showing full power in reserve. "Switching on rcpulsors!" he announced. He adjusted them for their tightest beam and maximum range. "Honored Solo! The repulsors cannot work at this range!" Dracmus said in Basic. "They arc only effective within two kilometers of surface!" "I know that," Han said. "They need something to work against before they can set up a repulsion effect. But at these speeds, they'll encounter a fair amount of resistance from the top of the atmosphere. I know, I know, not enough to slow us down-but enough to start large power transfers through the feedback dispersal loop." "But what good does that do?" "I've taken the disperser out of the loop and run the cables through the initiator, power intake on the engine power system. The feedback energy is just accumulating in the repulsor system. When the power level is high enough, I'll reset the feedback power breaker and dump the energy right into the initiator intake on the engine power systems." "What?!" "Jump-start it," Han said. "I'm going to jump-start it." There was a moment of dead silence in the control cabin before Dracmus let out a strangled moan and covered her face with her hands. "What is going on?" Salculd demanded in Selonian. "I go to start engines by accumulating repulsor feedback power and dumping through initiator manifold," Han replied. "But feedback buildup will destroy repulsors!" "Get even more destroyed by crashing into Selonia," Han said in his awkward Selonian. "This not work and you have idea, you try yours. Hang on." The idea was crazy. Han knew that. But not doing anything at all would be crazier still. Even a million-to-one shot was better than no chance at all. He watched the feedback charge accumulator display as the excess energy built up in the repulsor system. The more power, the better the chance of restarting the engines-unless he accumulated so much power the repulsors simply blew out. The closer they got to the planet, the more resistance the repulsors encountered, and the faster the feedback accumulated. But of course, the farther they fell, the less time they would have to put on the brakes, if and when the engines did light. Han knew that even the maximum power output he could hope for would be borderline minimum to get the sublight engines going-and he was going to gel exactly one chance. Whether or not this stunt worked, it was going to blow out the repulsors and the feedback accumulator and half the other systems on the ship. Han checked his estimated flight path meters. Twenty seconds from the average top of the sensible atmosphere-though the tops of atmospheres had a nasty habit of not being where they were supposed to be, raising and lowering depending on storms and tides and solar heating. But twenty seconds was the outside, the longest he could possibly wait. The repulsors were not likely to provide much more charging of the accumulator if they were being melted off. It was going to be a tough call, a threading of the needle between competing disasters. Han checked the altitude and acceleration displays. The coneship was gathering speed, terrifying speed, with every second. Even if he got the engines lit, there might not be time to slow the ship before piling it in. "Honored Solo! Hull temperature suddenly increasing!" Salculd cried. "Atmosphere's here a little early!" Han said. "Hang on! We're going to jump this thing and see what happens." One chance, Han told himself. Exactly one chance. For a fleeting moment he thought of Leia, watching from the Jade's Fire and unable to do anything. He thought of his three children, off somewhere in the care of Chewbacca and Ebrihim the Drall. No. No. He could not die. Not when they ali needed him. One chance. The ship bucked and shuddered as the atmospheric buffering shook it hard enough to get past the inertial dampers. One chance. Han waited as long as he dared, then one moment longer, then one more. And then- He slammed down the relay reset switch as hard as he could, dumping all of the feedback energy directly into the engine start manifold. He stabbed down on the engine start button-and felt a horrifying lurch, just as a low, rumbling explosion shook the ship from base to apex. That would have to be the repulsors blowing. For a long, sickening moment, nothing else happened. But then the engines now certainly arc initiated kuij.y indicator came on, and Han had three good engines. Three? Not four? One of them must have been blown out by that LAF fighter. Han had been afraid of that. But even if he had one less engine than he had hoped for, that was three more than he had expected. Ignoring all his own advice on the subject, he brought the throttle up fast. There wasn't time to nurse the engines. There was a distant bang and sudden flurry of violent vibrations that faded almost before they started, but the engines were holding. At least for now. At least for now. Han watched the acceleration meter, the velocity gauge, and the none-too-reliable altitude meter. For a wonder, the displays were all in standard units, and not some obscure Selonian format he had never seen before. But what he was seeing was by no means reassuring. He had flown enough reentries to know at a glance that they were far from out of trouble. The best they were going to manage was a controlled crash. Han risked a glance out the viewport and saw that the Jade's Fire was still staying close, somehow. Mara was some kind of pilot. Now if only he had a view that would show him the direction he was going. Unfortunately, the ship was flying stern-first, and the stern holocam, whic
h might have shown him at least a vague idea of where he was heading, had given up altogether at some point in the proceedings. On the bright side, air friction was slowing down the ship's axial spin. Finally it stopped altogether, which at least made piloting the coneship that much easier. It was about time something got easier. Han watched his velocity and altitude gauges, and knew just how much trouble he was still in. He had to shed some more speed. He had no choice in the matter. There was a way to do it, but it had its own drawbacks. And making it work without maneuvering thrustcrs was not going to be easier. He would have to do all his steering by playing with the thrust of the main engines-not simple when he was already juggling their thrust vectors to compensate for the missing engine. Still, it was doable. Maybe. He eased back just a trifle on the thrust to number three engine, and the coneship slowly pitched back, until it was flying at about a forty-five-degree angle of attack. It was still falling straight down, but now its nose was pointed an eighth of a turn away from the vertical. If Han had it figured right, that ought to start the coneship developing a bit of aerodynamic lift, in effect causing it to work like an airfoil. The coneship began to move sideways as well as down, and every millimeter of lateral movement came straight from the energy of their f all. The ship began to bang and shudder violently, but every crash and rattle was that much more excess energy expended. "Honored Solo!" Dracmus protested above the racket, "You have put us in lateral flight! Where are you taking us?" "I haven't the faintest idea," Han said. "But we have to go lateral to shed some speed." "But suppose we land outside the zone controlled by my Den?!" "Then we have a problem," Han shouted back. Dracmus did not reply to that, but she had a point. Landing completely at random on a planet in the midst of civil war was not exactly prudent. Han pushed it from his mind. The job of the moment was getting this thing down in one piece. Down where, they could sort out later. He checked his gauges. They were still falling like a rock-but like a slower rock, a gliding rock. And hull temperatures were actually falling, just a trifle. Maybe, maybe, they were going to make it. Of course, landing on the sublight engines, rather than on the now-dead repulsors, and landing blind would be challenges in their own right. It would be at least another ninety seconds before he had to worry about such things. He checked the gauges and shook his head. The lateral flight trick was slowing them down, but nowhere near enough. At this rate, they'd be lucky to drop below the speed of sound before they hit. There was no way around it. He was going to have to get something more out of the engines. What about that fourth engine, the one that had refused to light? Maybe it was just its initiator link that had been blown off. Maybe the engine itself was still there, if he could just get it to come on. Maybe if he tried a parallel backfeed start. With the other engines up and running, he could borrow part of their energy output and back-flush it through the unlit engine. It might work. Han reset the power flow from the number two engine, routing five percent of it through the initiator lines to engine three. He stabbed down the button marked