Tendra Risant was asleep when it happened. The first she knew that there was anything going on was when a large booming noise echoed through the hull of the Gentleman Caller. To say she found it a startling way to wake up would be a massive understatement. She nearly jumped out of her skin. She sat up in bed, listening fearfully. What was it? Had a meteor crashed into the ship? Had something in the engine room blown up? Then she heard the whirring noise of doors sliding open and air pumps working. The airlock! Someone had docked with the Gentleman Callerl She scrambled out of bed and pulled her robe on. Who was it? What did they want? A weapon. She needed a weapon. Was there even a blaster on board the ship? She stepped out into the corridor-and froze in her tracks. There he was, right in front of her, grinning from ear to ear. "I tried to call ahead," he said, "but there wasn't any answer." The hours crawled past. The Triad ships moved toward Centerpoint, the Sentinel and the Defender kept up their guard over Centerpoint, and the Intruder's little fleet of armed trading ships and fighters moved in toward the Triad ships. Ossilege watched it all on his status boards, hour after weary hour, alone on the flag deck. No one needed to come here. Not until the battle began. Time was the enemy now, and time was the ally. They had to thread this needle carefully, oh, so carefully. Too soon, and they would give the game away, and all of Source A's efforts would be in vain. Too late, and the other side would jump first, attack the Bakuran ships and be done with it. And then there was the whole vexed question of the rcpulsor. Would they have it, or wouldn't they? Would it work, or wouldn't it? Were Calrissian's figures for the timing of Centerpoint's next shot even accurate? They had checked over the figures a dozen times, and they seemed correct. But what of the error no one saw, the bad assumption that everyone agreed to without even realizing it? They were the sort of questions that had plagued military commanders from the beginning of time, and they were likely to keep on doing so for quite some time to come. Time. That was the question. What was the proper time? There was no way of knowing for sure. No way of reading intentions off a display grid, no way of judging enemy morale and fighting prowess from a remote infrared image. The ships moved closer to each other. Closer. Closer. At last Admiral Hortel Ossilege stood up, walked over to the main display grid, and inspected it carefully, studying each ship, each status report in turn. Satisfied, or at least as satisfied as he was going to get, he returned to the admiral's chair, sat down, and pressed the com button. "This is Ossilege. Advise all ships via prearranged signal. Commence Operation Sidestep exactly on the hour, thirty-five minutes from now." One hour after Sidestep, it would be time for Source A. One hour, five minutes, and fifteen seconds after Sidestep, Centerpoint would fire. Either they would manage to deflect the shot, or they would not. One hour. They would have to hold for one hour. He let go of the com button, and wondered if he had gotten the timing right. "All right, Chewie," said Han, haif an hour later. "Jump off in five minutes. Let's look sharp. Leia-time for you to get up to the turret and strap in." Leia stood up from the observer's seat and nodded. "I know," she said. But she didn't leave. Not immediately. First she stepped forward, pulled Han's head toward hers, and gave Han a kiss. A warm, lingering kiss that did not so much end as fade gently away. "I love you," she said. "I know," said Han. "And you know I love you." Leia smiled. "You're right," she said. "I do." She stood up straight, reached over, and ruffled the fur on top of Chewbacca's head. "So long, Chewie," she said. "See you on the other side." And with that, she turned and left the cockpit. Han turned and watched her go, then looked over to Chewbacca. "You know, Chewie," he told the Wookiee, "there's a lot to be said for this being married business." Chewbacca let out a low, rumbling laugh and went back to double-checking the shield settings. Han checked the time. Four minutes to go. Luke Skywalker sat in the cockpit of his X-wing and felt the old tingle of fear and excitement starting to build. He reminded himself that he was a Jedi, that Jedi were calm in battle, that there was no fear. But Luke, better than any human being alive, knew that Jedi did not live in a world of absolutes and abstracts, any more than other people did. It would be just as bad to force all emotion from his life as to wallow endlessly in all his feelings. It was time to fight. He was ready to do so. His Jedi abilities made him more ready. That should have been enough. And it was. Luke glanced at his chronometer. Three minutes. Mara Jade sat alone in the command center of her ship. AJone. She had come to this star system with a pilot and a navigator, Tralkpha and Nesdin. They had vanished, along with so many others, in the first days of the war. Mara did not know if they were dead, or cap- tured by one group or another, or hiding under some pile of rubble until it was safe to come out. Mara knew war as well as anyone. She knew full well that it was most likely that they were dead. They had been good at their jobs, and good, honest people, both of them. And now they weren't there anymore, more than likely executed for the simple crime of getting in the way of someone's bloody ambition. If nothing else had happened to inspire her to fight, that would have been enough. But, of course, plenty more had happened. And she was going to start giving it back in about two minutes' time. "I'm not so sure I did you any favor by rescuing you," Lando said, strapping himself in. "Where you were, you might have been killed by accident. Now if you get killed, it'll be because someone did it on purpose." Tendra shook her head and smiled. "Trust me, Lando. If there is one thing I learned on board the Gentleman Caller, it's that I don't want to die alone. I've had enough being alone for a lifetime." Lando reached out a hand to Tendra, riding in the copilot's seat. She took it, and held it tight. Neither of them said anything more, but the silence in the cabin said more than enough. But then the countdown alert beeped the one-minute warning, and there was no time. Belindi Kalenda was already there, along with the rest of the flag staff, but Gaeriel Captison just got back to the flag deck in time to strap herself in. "I was in my cabin," she said, though Ossilege hadn't asked. "Meditating." And thinking about my daughter. My daughter, Malinza, who has already lost her father. Is this the day she stops having a mother as well? "A good time for it," Ossilege said. "There will not be much leisure for thought, starting in another thirty seconds." Gaeriel dug her fingers into the arms of her acceleration scat, and stared out through the flag deck's main viewport, out over the Intruder's main bridge level, and through the bridge's forward viewport. The stars, she thought. The warm and inviting stars. Was one of the ones she saw Bakura?'Probably her home's star was nowhere near bright enough to be visible at this range. Home. She thought of home, and longed to be there. "Ten seconds," the main speaker announced. "All hands, prepare for the jump to light speed. Five seconds. Four. Three. Two, One. Zero." And the stars lanced out into spikes of fire, starlines that filled the viewport with a blaze of light-and then the starlines flared away, and were gone, and the familiar stars of Corellia's sky were right back where they had been. But now there were more than stars in the sky. Ships. Ships of all sizes and descriptions had suddenly popped into existence. The Intruder, the Sentinel, the Defender, and ail the lesser ships had made simultaneous, precision minimum-distance hyperspace jumps straight into the thick of the enemy fleet. Ossilege had hoped it would give them the benefit of surprise, and it would appear that it had. The Intruder's main laser cannon opened up at once, stabbing out at the ship nearest her, a boxy, ramshackle old troop transport that had no business in the middle of a combat fleet. The transport exploded in a bloom of fire, but by then the main lasers had already found another target, a modern-looking corvette about the size of the Jade's Fire. The corvette got her shields up in time, but they were not intended to hold off intense short-range fire from a light cruiser's gun. Her shields failed and she went up as well, another blaze of hellfire glory. The Intruder'?, fighter screen winked into existence around her, fifteen General Purpose Attack fighters that immediately went over to the attack, blazing away at the smaller, lighter craft in this part of the fleet. The Intruder's secondary battery began to speak, blasting away at some target out of Gaeriel's view. A Triad ship fired and caught a GPA coming out
of a loop low over the Intruder's main bridge. The fighter exploded, a blinding bright flash of light that heaved a torrent of debris at the cruiser. The shields deflected most of it, and slowed the rest of it. Loud crashes echoed throughout the bridge as debris banged into the outer hull, but there did not seem to be any re al damage. Except, of course, to the GPA and its pilot. The surviving fighters whirled and dashed about, blasting the X-TIE Uglies and B-wing chop jobs out of the sky. At last an opponent worthy of the Intruder hove into view, an old, tough-looking ex-Imperial destroyer of a class Gaeriel did not recognize. The ship was smaller than the Intruder, but quite possibly her match in firepower. The Intruder opened up on her, directing all-guns fire directly at the destroyer's forward laser turret. The destroyer returned fire from her forward and rear turrets, but failed to concentrate her fire with any effectiveness. The destroyer's forward battery blew up, and the Intruder instantly redirected fire to her rear battery. The destroyer's overall shields must have been damaged in the first explosion, for they gave way completely after only a few seconds of concentrated fire on the rear turret. The turret went up in a dramatic sheet of flame, and the destroyer was disarmed. Gaeriel glanced over at Ossilege, and was astonished to see that he was paying no mind at all to the fire and chaos outside. His eyes were glued to the tactical display in front of him as he watched the overall progress of the fight. He was letting the Intruders Captain Sem- mac fight her ship, while he attended to the larger battle. "It's going well," Ossilege announced to no one in particular. At least, thought Gaeriel, it's starting well. "Hang on, Artoo!" Luke cried out as he flipped his X-wing over onto its back and then pulled its nose up, pursuing the X-TIE Ugly, that was making a run in on the Lady Luck up ahead and above. "Lando, break starboard and down, hard, on my mark. Three, two, one, MARK!" Luke broke the X-wing down and to starboard a fraction of a second before the Lady Luck did. The X-TIE Ugly, a monstrosity of a ship slapped together out of the combined wreckage of an X-wing and a TIE fighter, was nowhere as mancuverable as an X-wing. The Ugly fell into the trap, making a longer, shallower dive in pursuit of the Lady Luck-and setting itself up for a perfect shot from Luke. Luke fired, and the starboard TIE wing blew clean off the Ugly, sending it tumbling out of control and out of the fight. It took Luke a moment to find the Lady, and he was not surprised to see her already in trouble again, trying to fight off a pair of what looked like Light Attack Fighters with beefed-up engines and weapons. Heavy Light Attack Fighters. It was nearly always a mistake to hang overpowered weapons and propulsion on a design that wasn't meant to support them. That sort of beefed-up compromise was usually nothing more than a collection of weaknesses held together with wrap-wire and optimism. Luke decided to test the theory by experiment. He poured fire into the closest HLAF from extreme range, and caught it in the port-side engine, setting the fighter tumbling out of control before the pilot could kill the starboard engine. The engine flared over and started spewing thick clouds of vapor that enveloped the HLAF. The vapor dissipated instantly in the vacuum of space, and the HLAF was hidden inside a strange, fast-moving cloud tumbling across space. Luke checked Lando, and saw he had dispatched the other HLAF himself. For the moment their little patch of sky was clear. That meant it was time to move elsewhere. "Lando!" Luke called. "I'm tracking a slow-moving destroyer toward the rear of the formation. You have it?" "I was just about to call it in to you, Luke," said Lando. "Let's go for it. Just what we're looking for." The plan was for the attacking craft to move through the Triad formation toward its rear, picking off targets of opportunity and trying to get the Triad ships to reverse course and pursue. And never mind the obvious flaw in trying to encourage eighty major armed vessels and all their auxiliaries to chase you with all guns blazing. Sometimes you just had to take your chances. "Off we go," Luke agreed. Anakin sat in the control chair, listening intently to Technician Antone as he ran down the checklist. "All right," said Antone, "that clears out the targeting sequence. We should be locked on to the South Pole of Centerpoint. Ready for the power initiation sequence?" "Don't think so," Anakin said, a little doubtfully. "Something doesn't feel right." Antone shoved his long black hair out of his eyes for about the ziflionth time and looked nervously at Anakin. "Feel right?" he asked. "What do you mean it doesn't feel right?" "He does it all by feel," Jacen said. "He knows by instinct and intuition. You've got an instruction manual. You're the one who said you didn't think he understood what it did." "Do so!" Anakin protested angrily, glaring at his brother. "Do you, Anakin?" Jaina asked. She was plainly getting as fed up as Antone. "Do you really understand or are you just showing off?" Anakin frowned deeply and crossed his arms. "Stop being mean to me, or I won't help you anymore." And with that, he hopped down off the chair and stalked away. "Oh, boy," said Jaina. "I suspect that young Master Anakin is overtired," Threepio said. "He was up too late last night. He is often rather cranky the next day on such occasions." Antone's eyes bugged out, and his jaw dropped open. It was at least a full five seconds before he was able to speak. "He's cranky? He's the-he's the only one who can-who can-" Antone gestured frantically at the control panel. "The starbuster is going to fire in an hour, and you tell me he's crankyT' "Take it easy," Ebrihim said. "But he's gone!" Antone said. "He's the only one who can run the machine!" "You've been up all night," Ebrihim said. "You're overwrought. We'll get him back." "Yeah. Up all night," said Technician Antone, nodding manically as he paced. "Maybe I'm just cranky too." He turned and stopped his pacing to face the twins. "Except that's not quite it. Actually, I think I'm in full-blown panic! I've got relatives on Bovo Yagen," Antone went on, half raving. "If I get her planet incinerated, my aunt is going to kill me." "Settle down," Ebrihim said in a sterner tone of voice. "He can't have gone far. We need both of you to make this work. Jacen, go and get your brother back. Calm him down. And try to remember that the lives of twelve million people are riding on one cranky seven-year-old saving them in an hour's time. So please. When he comes back, let's everyone be nice to him." "All right," Jaina said, her own voice turning a bit sulky. "But only for an hour." "Concentrate volley fire on the forward airlock hatch!" Mara's voice called out from the ship-to-ship link. "Those welds look nice and sloppy!" Fire poured from the Jade's Fire into the lumbering, old, much-repaired Mon Calamari frigate that had ended up fighting for the other side. "Copy that," said Han. "Leia, hang on. I'm going to pitch over a bit to give you a clean shot." "I'm in the clear already," Leia said. "Commencing fire." The quad laser turret started shooting. The outer door of the airlock had gotten jammed open somehow in the fighting. It began to glow red, then orange, then fire-white-and then the inner hatch blew off, the ship's atmosphere streaming away into space. The airflow cut off suddenly as a hatch slammed shut somewhere on the ship. The frigate fired back, heavy volley fire straight into the Millennium Falcon. The shield alarms went on almost at once, and then cut off just as quickly as the Jade's Fire blew the frigate's main laser turret clean off with a mini-torpedo. Disarmed and damaged, the frigate seemed to decide she had had enough. She came about and boosted away for all she was worth. "Let her go," Han said to Mara. "She's out of the fight, and that's all that matters." "How long has it been?" Leia asked over the intercom. "About forty minutes," Han said. "Watch out, a pair of B-wing Uglies coming in from above." "I'm on them," Leia said, the strain in her voice plain to hear. Fire lanced out of the quad laser turret. An explosion broke up one B-wing, and the other decided that discretion was the better part of valor. If only the Falcon could have the luxury of reaching that conclusion. Sooner or later, one of those attacks was going to get through. "Mara!" Han called out. "Let's keep moving through them." He reached over and cut out the ship-to-ship comm link. "Another twenty minutes," Han said to Leia and Chewie, "another twenty minutes, and it'll be over." And so it would. One way or the other. "Defender reports damage to main armament, but secondary weapons fully functional," said Kalenda. "Numerous minor hits, no major damage so far." But a hundred minor hits could serve to weaken the ship enough for the hundred
and first to destroy it. Os-silege shook his head. That was no way to think. Not for an admiral in the midst of running a battle. "What of SentinelT' he asked. "Sentinel has partial loss of propulsion. Explosive decompression of unspecified aft section, reported as contained. All weapons functional, reports numerous successful engagements." "Very well," Ossilege said as he studied his tactical display. Intruder had taken a similar amount of damage. // was working, he thought. They were paying a high price indeed, but it was working. Ossilege had assigned a lane through the enemy formation to each big ship, and to each pair of smaller craft. The idea was to drive through the enemy ships toward the rear, keeping up a series of running engagements, intended to cause disruption as much as damage. And it was working. The tidy enemy formations were unraveling, and it seemed that half of them had reversed course to head off in pursuit of their tormentors. "Sir! Captain Semmac reports four frigates closing on Intruder. It appears to be a coordinated attack." "Does it indeed? I was wondering how long it would take them to mount one. Very well. Now we will see Captain Semmac's skills as a defender." Ossilege watched his tactical displays. Four identical bulbous-nosed frigates were closing in from four different directions, lasers blazing. The Intruder's shields held, at least under the initial onslaught. Captain Semmac brought the nose of the Intruder up and accelerated, trying to get out of the crossfire. The Intruder's main guns began to return fire, concentrating on the closest of the four frigates. The ship's nose came down hard as Semmac attempted to break free, but the frigates adjusted course to stay with the Intruder, matching her move for move. Ossilege frowned. Something was wrong. The frigates were pouring laser fire into the Intruder, but it was having no effect. There should have been local burn-throughs, the shields should have been weakened here and there. Ossilege checked the power levels from the frigate's lasers. Why were they so low? Unless-unless ' the lasers were just there as a deception, a distraction. And come to think of it, how were the frigates able to absorb so much fire from the Intruder! He brought up a close-up view of the nearest frigate on his tactical display and felt his blood run cold. Its windows were painted on. Painted on over what looked like solid durasteel. He slapped down his comlink. "Captain Semmac! Those frigates are camouflaged robot rarnships! Their guns are harmless. They are merely trying to get in close enough to- But it was too late. The first of the ramships fired its high-boost engine and accelerated at terrifying speed, directly at the Intruder, a multimegaton battering ram headed straight in at them. It struck just forward of the bridge. "Okay!" Jacen said. "I have him back." "Good," said Technician Antone. "Great. Let's get back to it." Anakin came back into the compartment and looked long and hard at each of them before he took his seat again. "Okay," he said. "Ready." "Good, good," said Antone, forcing a smile onto his face. "Then let's start the power initiation sequence." "No," said Anakin. The sweat was standing straight out on Antone's forehead. "Anakin, please. Try to understand. This isn't a game. Lots of people-lots and lots of people- are going to, to die unless we fire this repulsor at exactly the right time in exactly the right direction," "I know that," said Anakin. "But it isn't aimed just right. It's too heavy. Too heavy somehow." "What do you mean, too heavy?" Antone asked. "Gravity!" Jacen shouted. "He means gravity! Those instructions you got are for the repulsor on Selonia! The gravity is different there." "Right!" said Anakin. "Too heavy." Antone thought for a minute, muttering frantically. "Sweet stars in the sky. He's right! He's right!" He checked the countdown clock. "And we've got ten minutes to recalculate the aim from scratch." Antone grabbed one of the other techs by the shoulder and shoved him at Anakin. "Run him through the power initiation sequence and the rest of it, and we'll retarget just before we fire." And with that, Technician Antone raced frantically away to find a desk and a datapad. The second and the third robot ramships slammed into the Intruder, sending the ruined hulk pinwheeling across the sky. The fourth ram missed, but that did not matter. The ship was dead already. Ossilege picked himself up off the deck and staggered back over to his chair. Gaeriel had managed to stay in hers. Belindi Kalenda climbed to her feet and looked around in shock. They were the only ones left. Everyone else on the flag deck was dead. Ossilege didn't even bother looking down to see if anyone had survived on the bridge. Most of it wasn't there anymore. "ABANDON SHIP!" the overhead speaker shouted. "ALL HANDS, ABANDON SHIP!" "I can't feel my legs," Gaeriel announced. "I can see they're bleeding, but I can't feel them, and I can't move them." Ossilege nodded, not really knowing why. Spinal damage, he thought. She must have been slammed around hard by those impacts. Admiral Hortel Ossilege realized that he was holding his left hand over his stomach. He lifted his hand away for a moment and saw the red, open wound. Astonishing that he wouldn't feel something like that. "ABANDON SHIP!" the automatic voice called again. Ossilege looked from himself to Gaeriel Captison, to Kalenda. "Go!" he shouted at Kalenda. "We can't make it. You can. Go!" Suddenly he felt very weak. "But-" Kalenda began. "But I have a gut wound and the Prime Minister cannot walk. We would not survive the trip to the escape capsule, and if we did we would not survive until pickup. Go. Now. That is an order. You-you have been a good officer, Lieutenant Kalenda. Do not waste yourself now over a pointless gesture. Go." Kalenda looked as if she were about to say something more, but then she stopped. She saluted Ossilege, bowed to Gaeriel, and then turned and ran. "Good," said Ossilege. "I hope she makes it." "We have to blow the ship," Gaeriel said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Don't let her be captured." Ossilege nodded to her. "Yes," he said. "You are right. But we must wait. Give the survivors time to escape. Wait until we are in deep among the enemy ships. Take them with us. Wait-wait for Source A." "Source A?" Gaeriel asked, her voice vague and weak. "Source A," said Ossilege. "We have to wait for Admiral Ackbar." "One hour, Luke!" Lando shouted. "Let's get out of here while we're still in one piece each!" "Copy that, Lando," said Luke. "Back the way we came, and fast" "What's going on?" Tendra asked. "Why are we retreating?" "We're not retreating," said Lando as he heeled the Lady Luck around. "We're following Ossilege's plan. A plan so simple that even we could follow it. Get in, do as much damage as you can for one hour, and then get out of the way." "Get out of the way for what?" "For Source A, my dear Source T." "What are you talking about?" Lando laughed out loud. "It's not much of a code name system, but there it is. Source T for Tendra, Source A for Admiral Ackbar. Ossilege started getting coded hyperwave messages from him the minute the jamming field went down. Ackbar had spent every waking moment since we left Coruscant trying to put some sort of task force together. It sounds like he wasn't able to get that big a fleet together, but twenty-five modern ships with modern weapons-well, that ought to do some good out here. Especially if the opposing force is already pretty banged up and disoriented and out of formation and pointed in the wrong direction." Lando dodged the Lady Luck around the shot-up wreck of a modified B-wing, and ran at top speed, straight for Centerpoint Station. "I think we'll head for the north end of Centerpoint, thank you very much. The end that doesn't fire interstellar death rays." "But what about Admiral Ackbar? What's the rest of the plan?" "Well, that's pretty simple too. When Admiral Ackbar does his precision hyperspace jump, he'll land right on top of them, and they'll never know what hit them. And our ships don't want to be sitting in the shooting gallery." "When does he show up?" Lando checked the ship's navicomputer and the chronometer. "Uh-oh," he said. "Right here. And right now." The piece of empty space in front of them was suddenly ablaze with the flaring light of starships coming in out of hyperspace, ships that were streaks of blazing white, flashing into existence and screaming past the Lady Luck to either side, over her, under her, so close that they could almost hear the nonexistent winds of space rushing past them as the ships roared by. It was an incredible sight, a beautiful sight-and a terrifying one. Lando clenched his teeth and wrapped his hands around the flight stick. He held on for dear life, forcing himself by sheer strength of will not to try to dodge the oncoming ships, for fear of flying smack into one he did not see. And
then they were past, and then they were gone, And then Lando slowed the Lady to a reasonable speed, and breathed. And then the war was over, for Lando, and for Ten-dra. Gaeriel Captison was starting to feel the pain. Not in her legs, of course, but everywhere else. Admiral Os-silege sat beside her, barely conscious himself, bleeding badly. Gaeriel thought she could smell something burning behind her. Not that such things mattered anymore, of course. In spite of everything, somehow Ossilege had managed to open up the control panel set into the side of his chair, the ship's self-destruct. He had flicked up all of the safeties and pushed down all of the buttons. All but the last. He was waiting, still waiting, still watching his tactical displays. They were barely working, but they would not have to work well at all to show him what he needed to see. "There!" he said. "There! Ships coming in! They're here." "It's time, then," said Gaeriel. "You're a good man, Admiral Ossilege. You did your duty. You held th em. You stopped them. Well done." "Thank you, ma'am. I was-I was proud to serve with you." "And I with you," she said. "But now it's time to go." She thought of her daughter, Malinza, left all alone in the universe. She would be cared for, of that Gaeriel had no fear. Perhaps-perhaps the universe would compensate for all the sorrow of her young life, and bring her nothing but good as she grew older. It was a comforting thought, Gaeriel decided. A good thought to go out on. "I can't-I can't move my arm," said Ossilege. "I can't push the button." "Here," said Gaeriel. She looked up and saw at least three Triad ships were near. She smiled and reached over. "Here," she said again. "Let me." The explosion lit the sky, tore a hole across the Triad fleet. For a few glorious seconds a new light blazed up, a pillar of fire brighter than all the stars in the sky. "Oh, sweet stars in the sky," said Tendra. "That was the Intruder. They're gone. They're all gone. It's over." Lando looked down at the ship chronometer again, then to Centerpoint Station, and then toward the distant dot of light that was Drall. "No it isn't," he said. "But in one minute and twenty seconds, it will be. Maybe for a lot of people." "Antone!" Jaina shouted. "Now! Now! We have to do it now!'1 Technician Antone came rushing back in, his eyes buiging out of his head. "I can't," he said, and held up the datapad. "It's still running. The last part of the problem is still running. It won't be done for another five minutes at least. Twelve million people. Twelve million people." Antone sat down on the floor and covered his head with his hands. "We're doomed!" Threepio moaned. "If they control the starbuster, our enemies will destroy us all." Jacen Solo stood riveted to the spot, his eyes as wide as they could be. Everyone in the chamber was rooted to the spot. Twelve million people. They had one chance to make this work, and it would fail because they couldn't give the right numbers to a seven-year-old kid. "Wait a second," he said to himself. "Who needs numbers?" He turned toward his brother, still seated at the console. "Anakin," he said. "It felt too heavy, right? Can you fix it? Can you close your eyes and feel it? Make it feel right, make it go right?" "What are you saying?" Ebrihim asked. "You want him to guessl" "Not guess," said Jaina. "Feel. Reach out to it, Anakin. Let go of your conscious feelings. Reach out with the Force." Anakin looked at his brother and his sister, and swallowed hard, and then he shut his eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah." Eyes still closed, he held out his hands for controls that weren't there, controls that took form under his hands even as he reached for them. Glowing grids of orange and purple and green appeared and flared up and vanished around his head, but Anakin did not see them. Deep beneath their feet, a deep, determined vibration began to build. They heard the crash of thunder from the repulsor, and the sound of power being gathered, of unimaginable force being channeled and focused and held in ready. The joysticklike control materialized, slithering up perfectly into Anakin's'grasp. He pushed the control stick slowly forward, and a cube of perfect blazing orange appeared before his still-closed eyes. He made tiny, imperceptible adjustments with the controls, and the orange cube flickered once and grew brighter. He held the stick forward for a long, long moment- And then he pulled it down, as hard as he could. The chamber shuddered with power, and a stream of lightning blazed down the corridor and out into the chamber. They could not see it in the control chamber, except for Anakin, who saw everything perfectly from behind closed eyes. But those on the surface and those in space could see it. They could see the repulsor thunder and roar with repressed power, power that seethed and pulsed and flickered in its eagerness to be set free. They saw the power in that repulsor that built up and up and up. And they saw it leap out of the repulsor chamber, tear across space, land square on the south end of Centerpoint, just as practically every countdown clock in space reached zero, just at the moment Centerpoint was to fire. The South Pole lit up with the energy that was supposed to stream out invisible, unseen, undetected, into hyperspace, was supposed to reach out across space and murder a star. But the repulsor beam broke up the opening into hyperspace, defocused the beam, detuned it enough that some small part of its energy was converted into visible light. The South Pole of Centerpoint began to glow, began to throb and pulse with its own power. The glow spread, expanding outward, stretching itself out into a magnificent bubble of light, harmless light, that lit the skies of all the Corellian worlds, gleaming, shining, blooming, growing-and then guttering down to nothing. Lando Calrissian watched it all from the North end of Centerpoint, and started breathing again. He hadn't even realized he had stopped. "Now," he said to Tendra. "Now, it's over."
Star Wars - Correlian trilogy 3 - Showdown at Centerpoint Page 19