CHAPTER FIVE
Down the Hatch Thrackan Sal-Solo, self-proclaimed Diktat of the Corellian Sector, leader of the Human League, stared at the bottle in front of him and gave serious thought to the idea of getting himself good and drunk. There seemed precious little else he could do. besides wait. Thraekan had never been much good at waiting- which was ironic, for he had spent much of his adult life waiting. Waiting for a superior to resign or retire or be arrested, waiting for a plot to mature, waiting for the time to be right, waiting for the long-awaited offer of the succession from Dupas Thomree, Diktat of Corellia'-waiting until the day Thomree died, and that fool Gailamby had taken his place instead. Waiting for the Empire to wake up and understand the danger represented by the damnable Rebels, waiting for the Emperor to strike back from the hammer blows the Rebellion gave the Empire, waiting for Thrawn's con-terstrike to succeed. Waiting, all of it, in vain. Waiting for things that had never happened, waiting for sweet victories that had melted away into bitter, humiliating defeat. Thraekan grabbed the bottle by the neck, like an enemy he was trying to strangle. He stood up and walked around his desk, out of his office, and out into the corridor of the dig headquarters. The dig HQ was not as large or as comfortable a place as the old headquarters, but at least it was secure. Thrackan would have preferred to keep his headquarters in the underground bunker in the countryside on the far side of the city- but the Human League had been forced to abandon that supposedly secret location. The blasted Selonians had yanked their compatriot, Dracmus, out of there, along with Thrackan's traitor cousin, Han Solo. It hadn't taken much imagination to realize that a group that could take two prisoners out of an underground bunker could just as easily put one bomb in. So Thrackan had been forced to withdraw from there, and they were minus one headquarters. Call it another debt on the account Thrackan was drawing up against Han Solo. Sooner or later, Han Solo would pay for all of it. Thrackan walked out of the building and out into the fading light of twilight. He watched the second-shift men coming on duty, headed for their work underground. A number of them saw him and cheered. Thrackan forced a smile onto his face, put his hand to his forehead, and gave the boys a small, Informal sort of salute. He made no effort to hide his bottle. That was one nice thing about his boys. He didn't have to pretend he wasn't human, that he didn't like a drink now and again. Or even a drink more often than that. Now if only his boys were good at finding things. They were still searching for the Corellian planetary repulsor. It had to be hidden in the tunnels somewhere beneath them. It had to be. Or things were going to get very sticky indeed. Except things were already sticky. Solo had escaped. Leia Organa Solo had escaped. The Bakurans had busted through the interdiction field, somehow. They were loose in the system, and might have already seized control of Centerpoint. Things were not going according to plan. At least he had managed to accomplish a little bit of revenge, already. Lcia Organa Solo might have escaped, but others never would. With any luck at all, history would record that Governor-Gen- eral Micamberlecto had died of injuries he suffered during the initial attack. But even if the true story of the Frozian's demise came out, Thrackan wouldn't much mind. Terror could be a very useful tool. But killing the Governor-General was incidental. The stakes were much higher than that-and Thrackan knew just how dangerous a game he was playing. He knew more of the real story than anyone else in this star system. He knew how much of a bluff it all was. He knew how many dangers surrounded him from all sides. He had claimed to control the starbuster plot. For the moment, at least, it suited the purposes of the starbuster's real masters to let him go on claiming it. It provided them with additional cover, an extra level of protective deception. Not that they could do anything about it at the moment, but more than likely they believed Thrackan would keep to his side of the bargain, and back off his claim when the proper moment came for them to reveal themselves. They could believe what they wanted. Thrackan had no intention of doing any such thing. The starbuster's masters also believed that Thrackan would turn over the planetary repulsor on this world as soon as he found it, in return for granting Thrackan a free hand on the planet Corcllia. They could go on believing that, too, if they wished. Thrackan had other plans. The masters of the starbuster had told all the rebel leaders that the planetary repulsors were superb defensive weapons, nothing more. Thrackan knew better. Thrackan knew it would suit the starbuster's controllers just fine if no one ever got the things working, so long as the controllers sat on top of them and kept anyone else from getting near them. But Thrackan knew the repulsors were weapons of denial, blackmail weapons, weapons of threat that worked best if they were aimed, but never fired. Let the other rebel leaders, the dirt-grubbing Selo-nian Overden or those bumbling fools, the Drallists, think what they might. Let the scramble-brains on Ta- lus and Trains believe what they were told about the repulsors. Thrackan knew better. He knew the masters of the starbuster plot had double-crossed them all. And Thrackan also knew that a double cross was nothing more than the necessary first step toward a successful triple cross. But none of it would do any good unless his people could find the repulsor and get it operational. If the dirt-digging Selonians could do it, surely humans could do at least as well. "Diktat Sal-Solo! Diktat!" Thrackan turned around to see General Brimon Yarar, the man in charge of the dig, jogging toward him. "What is it, General?" "News, sir. Maybe big news. The Drall planetary repulsor just came alive." "What?!" "Just now, sir. The jamming is still in place, of course, so we can't get any more information. But our sensors just picked up a huge jolt of repulsor activity coming from Drall. Unfocused, uncontrolled, but it's there. The Drallists have got the thing working." "I don't believe it," Thrackan said. "I can't believe it. The Selonians, maybe. They're good at underground work. The Overden has some good technicians. But the DralHsts? They were never anything." In moments of honesty, Thrackan knew his own Human League forces were not exactly the cream of society. Thugs, most of them. Even with ail the help he got from the starbuster's masters, he had not been able to recruit many high-quality people. He had learned to accept that, and view his troops as the best tools he could lay hands on, if not the best tools for the job. But, thugs or not, compared to the Drallists, they were perfect gentlemen and leading scientists, every one of them. Thrackan had at least been able to buy himself a few disgruntled technicians, some ex-Imperial soldiers and administrators. Not the Drallists. Whatever else you could say against the Drallish spe- cies, the pompous little fools were relentlessly honest, upright, cautious people. There had actually been some sort of discontent on Corellia, and probably on Selonia and Talus and Tralus, around which to build a revolt. On Drall, the rebellion had been, out of necessity, completely artificial. Even the Human League wouldn't have taken on humans as low-down as the Drallists-and Drallist technical capability was no better than Drallisl behavior. The idea that they had been able to get a planetary repulsor up and running was simply incredible- Wait a moment. Wait just a moment. Maybe the Drallists hadn't gotten it running. Maybe someone else had managed that little trick. Suddenly Thrackan had a shrewd idea who that might be-and if he was right, he might just pick up a nice little bonus from all this. Because no matter who had gotten the repulsor running, Thrackan Sal-Solo was willing to bet they would not keep it long. He turned toward Yarar. "Get the best of the repulsor tech crews together, along with a strike platoon." He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a big swallow. A warm glow started to flow through his insides. "We're going to pay a little call on the Drallists." Luke watched the blinking light over the huge airlock chamber, and wondered who was on the other side, asking them in. Or more accurately, wondered if it would be wise to head on in. He and Lando had been debating the point for five minutes now. Luke decided to turn the debate on its head. "Okay, just for the sake of argument," he said, "suppose we don't go in that airlock. What's the alternative?" "I don't know," Lando replied. "If we landed on the other -ide of the sphere, or went in on the end of the farther cylinder, we -ight be able to explore f- weeks before anyone caugh
t up with us. And that might -e a goo- idea." "How so?" Luke asked. ugrave;'You know me, Luke. I think big." "That's for sure." Lando had made something like a career out of building huge projects of one sort or another. Of course, the projects had a bad habit of going bust for reasons that were no fault of Lando's, but that was neither here nor there. "So this place is big. What do you think about it?" "I thi nk something is wrong. I thought so the first time I saw this place, and the closer -e get, the surer I am. I think big, but I also -ink in function. Big makes sense for some jobs, but this is too -uch. That station has a hundred, a -ousand times the volume it should for any job I can think of that it might do, and the underlying design is all wrong. The -oeals don't see -at something's wrong because the station has been here so -ong. They take il for granted, think of it as a natural object. But trust me. Something about that station feels wrong." Feels wrong. Lando had no talent in the Force. Luke was sure of that. But that didn't mean his intuitions couldn't be right. Luke shut his eyes and reached out, probing with his Force ability, searching for the fee! of the station, of the beings aboard it. He could detect exactly one sentient mind, a human. Only one? Perhaps there were others, their minds shielded from him in some manner. He reached out and touched the one mind he could sense, touched as gently as he eouid. He discovered no sense of evil or bad intent. What he did find was a powerful sense of fear and uncertainty. He probed toward the blinking light, and the airlock door that was still opening and shutting. There was one mind there, a human one, a young woman. And that mind still seemed worried and afraid-but friendly enough, for all of that. "I say we accept the invitation," Luke said. "You're right-we could spend weeks exploring on our own. But J don't think we have weeks to spare. And 1 think the natives are friendly. At least, there's one friendly one." There was a dead silence on the line that lasted long enough for Luke to start wondering if the laser com system had given out altogether. But then Lando finally spoke. "When you're right, you're right," he said. "We have to take [he chance." "All right," said Luke. He brought his throttle forward just a fraction and flew toward the airlock, the Lady Luck right behind him. As they drew closer, the light stopped flashing and the airlock door swung open wide and stopped there. Luke had to do some tricky flying to line his fighter up with the airlock and match lateral velocity as it rotated. Doing so while flying inverted made it only slightly more difficult. Luke was used to flying in all sorts of attitudes relative to his target, and with the station spinning to simulate gravity, he had to make sure the X-wing's landing pads were pointed straight out at the sky as he made his way into the airlock. The closer Luke got to the airlock entrance, the bigger he realized it was. From a distance, it had appeared of ordinary proportion, but in reality, the thing could have handled the Imruder, the Defender, and the Sentinel flying side by side. Luke's X-wing Hew in with as much room to spare as an insect flying into Jabba the Hutt's wide-gaping mouth. Lando followed right behind in the Lady Luck. Admiral Hortcl Ossilege was less than happy when the Intruder's detectors picked up the massive, off-1he-scale repulsor burst from Drall. Surprises were rarely welcome in a military operation, but doubly so when one was this far behind enemy lines and dealing with forces of such power. Lando Calrissian had warned him that his tactics of audacious advance might get him in over his head. Well, so be it. There was no real going back. Caution would gain him nothing. He would have to investigate that repulsor burst. It was almost certainly another planetary repulsor. But the burst seemed to have fired at nothing at all-almost like a flare shot straight up in the air for no better purpose than to attract attention. Ossilege frowned to himself as he stared at the detector screen. Perhaps-perhaps-that was exactly what it was. With all conventional communications shut down, how else to announce one had captured a repulsor? A signal flare. But the enemy, the opposition, had kept their repulsor at Selonia secret. That suggested the people holding this repulsor were on the other side. Perhaps warning the other side that they were not the only ones with such a mighty weapon. Not just a signal flare, but a warning shot, perhaps. Clearly, Ossilege had no choice but to investigate. But the timing could not have been worse. His ships had just taken up their positions around Ccnterpoint Station. Gaeriel Captison and her party were now inside the station, completely cut off from any communication with the Bakuran forces. He could not abandon his position at Centerpoint or leave his people behind. He would have no choice but to divide his forces. For the briefest of moments, he considered sending nothing more than a flight of fighters or an assault boat loaded with troops. But no. The opposition was likely to move on the Drall repulsor as well. The Bakuran forces would have to go in ready to fight, not just investigate. Ossilege smiled, his lips forming into a thin line. Calrissian had, indeed, warned him against audacious action. But Ossilege had been extremely cautious as he moved in toward Centerpoint Station, and he had discovered something about caution he did not like it. Ossilege turned toward the ensign standing next to him. "My compliments to Captain Semmac," he said to her, "and relay my order to set course for Drall. The Intnider is going to investigate that repulsion burst. Sentinel and Defender will remain at Centerpoint." Ossilege looked back toward the detector screen. "Someone has sent us an invitation. I think it is only common politeness that we accept." Luke's X-wing and the Lady Luck floated fifteen meters off the deck, moving slowly forward into the airlock, their shields up and in formation so as to give each other cover. What good such precautions might be up against a space station the size of a small planet, neither of them asked. Luke brought the X-wing into a hover over the center of the lock and swung the fighter around to cover the Lady Luck as she came in. The Lady moved forward slowly, easing her way into the interior. The airlock chamber was cavernously huge and profoundly dark. The Lady Luck's landing lights came on and swiveled about, throwing a shifting spot of brightness on the interior wall of the lock, but Luke was not able to make much of what the spot revealed. The huge exterior airlock door lumbered shut, sealing them inside. Now they were trapped, if they wanted to think of it that way. Then the lock's own interior lights bloomed into life, coming up slowly enough that Luke's eyes were not dazzled. The interior of the lock was a half cylinder on its side, with the flat wall of the half cylinder forming the deck. The deck was littered with debris, odds and ends of all sorts. Bits of clothing, broken pieces of luggage, freight containers, abandoned machinery, even a small spacecraft with all its access ports open and its nose assembly removed. Obviously it had been cannibalized for parts. "-ooks like -ome folks got out of here in a -urry," Lando said. "Looks like," Luke said. What, exactly, had they been in such a hurry to get away from? And had they made a run for it last week, or a hundred years before? He didn't feel easy in his mind. "Listen, Lando, normally I'd say land the ship with the passengers first and let the fighter fly cover. But with that airlock door shui, there doesn't seem much point to it. I'll land first. Maybe if it's a trap, they'll spring it on me first and then-" "Then what?" "I don't know," Luke said. "But don't land until you're sure it's safe." "If 1 wait that long, we're -oing to be sittin- here in hover mode for a long time," Lando replied. There didn't seem to be any good answer for that, so Luke didn't try to offer one. "I'm headed down," he said. Luke eased back on the repulsors and brought the X-wing slowly down onto the deck. He made a nice smooth landing and was getting ready to undo his canopy and get out when Artoo beeped furiously at him. "What? Oh!" Artoo was right-the airlock chamber hadn't been pressurized. That could be a problem. Luke hadn't worn a scalable flight suit, and he was not entirely clear on whether there were pressure suits for all aboard the Lady Luck. But what was the point of bringing them in here if they couldn't get out of their ships? Luke looked around the airlock chamber again and noticed that the debris was all inside a fairly well-prescribed perimeler. Why had everyone crowded together like that in the midst of what seemed to have been a panicked departure? A burst of light suddenly flared to life in the center of the airlock chamber's roof. Four streaks of light split off from the center and
slid down to the four corners of the chamber. The streaks faded to darkness, and then the light burst came to life again, before splitting up and sliding down to the corners, and then the pattern repealed. It was as clear a signal as the airlock door opening and shutting. Go down, go down, go down. 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 differenc e between being in a cage with a bantha and climbing into the bantha's gullet," Lando muitered. "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 il 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 [here 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 ii 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 il. Luke watched his exterior gauges as the roaring sub- sided. 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 s.Thveepio, the protocol and translation droid, was close, and directed her attention to Ihe 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 lease." 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 lo 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 be!," 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 / 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 lo be [he Officer On Duty at the moment when the evacuation was declared, and under those circumstances, she was automatically designated the officer lo 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 lo smile. Lando never had had much use for bureaucratic double-talk. For a moment it looked as if Sonsen were aboul to bite Lando's head off, bul then backed down. "Maybe you've got a point. But I have to know whal 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 Gaerie! Captiscm, 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 lime 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 dro ids 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. Pressure 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," Son-sen 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 thai 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-ccihnged 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 downslopc, 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 lo 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 ftaresT' "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 turbovutor moved smoothly toward Hol-lowtown.
Star Wars - Correlian trilogy 3 - Showdown at Centerpoint Page 5