Star Wars
Corellian Trilogy
book 3
Shutdown at Centerpoint
by Roger McBride Allen
Chapter1 Approach Honored Solo, we are running out of time!" the voice
squawked from the comm unit. "We will be entering atmosphere soonest if our
approach is not controlled!" The intercom gave out a strangled squeal.
Either the comm circuit up to the ship's control cabin was on the verge of
giving out again, or else Han had just gotten lucky, and Dracmus was about
to lose her voice. That would be a blessing. Han slapped the answer switch
and tried to stay focused on his work. "Keep your shirt on, Dracmus," he
said, shouting just a bit. "The comm unit send-circuits needed work as well.
Tell honored Pilot Salculd that I'm nearly done." Why did the universe
require all shipboard repairs to be on the rush? What I wouldn't give to
have Chewbacca here, Han thought. "What shirt?" the voice asked worriedly,
"Should shirts be worn? Is this for safety?" Han sighed and pushed the
answer button again. "It's an expression. It means 'be patient,'" he said,
struggling to keep his own patience. Dracmus was a Selonian, and most
Selonians did not like being in space. Understandable for a species that
mostly lived underground, but having an agoraphobic being in command was
enough to drive anyone crazy. Han Solo made the last hookup, closed down the
last of the inspection hatches, and crossed his fingers for luck. That ought
to do the trick, he told himself. It had better, it was about time that
something worked properly. If the coneship he was aboard was a fair example
of the breed, Selonian spacecraft weren't much for reliability. Han engaged
the power switch and waited for the inverter system to energize. Han was
starting to question his own sanity in volunteering to help fly this
particular coneship down out of free space to the surface of Selonia. He
could have said so long and good luck and ridden down with Leia on the
Jade's Fire. But when a job needed doing, and no one else could do it,
volunteering was not really all that voluntary. He hadn't had much choice in
the matter. He couldn't have left Dracmus high and dry. He had obligations
to her, and to her people. And Dracmus had made it clear they had to get
this ship down. Her people couldn't afford to abandon any spacecraft, no
matter what shape the craft was in. The nameless coneship might be a piece
of space-going junk, but Dracmus had assured Han that it was better than
anything else the Selonians had at the moment. Or, more accurately, it was
better than anything that the Hunchuzuc Den and their Republicists had.
"Hurry, Honored Solo!" Dracmus called again. Why couldn't that intercom
break down the way everything else did on this ship? Han hit the answer
button again. "Stand by, Dracmus. Pilot Salculd-watch your power settings!"
Knowing he was with the Hunchuzuc would have been a bit more useful if Han
had had some clear idea about who or what the Hunchuzuc Den was. All he knew
for sure about them was that the Den was part of an amorphous faction of
Selonians who lived on Corel-lia, and that, so far as Dracmus knew, they
were still allied to a pro-New Republic alliance of Selonian Dens called the
Republicists, and that he was mixed up with them. Dracmus was a member of
the Hunchuzuc, and she had either kidnapped Han or rescued him from Thrackan
Sal-Solo-or both. Han was still not sure. The Hunchuzuc seemed to be having
a fight with the Overden, the leadership on Selonia proper, a fight that was
going on in parallel with the Republic's battle against the rebellions in
the Corellia system, though the two fights did not seem to be directly
related to each other. The Overden was on the Absolutist side, which wanted
absolute independence For Selonia. But even if the Ilunchuzuc were
Repubiicist and the Overden were Absolutist, Han was coming to the
conclusion that neither side much cared about principles, either way. Each
was primarily against the other. But Han did know a few things for sure. He
knew that Dracmus had saved his life, and that she had taken risks to treat
him well. He knew that a member of his own family-Thrackan Sal-Solo-had
treated Dracmus's people with the utmost cruelty. By Selonian standards,
that alone was enough to brand Han himself as a villain, a killer, a
monster. Yet Dracmus had given Han every benefit of the doubt. She had
treated him with decency and respect. If that was all Han knew, it was also
all he had to know. "When will it be working?" Dracmus called, her voice
growing more strident. "The planet is getting closer!" "That is the idea
when you're trying to reenter," Han muttered to himself. Decency and respect
to one side, there was no denying that Dracmus could be one major pain in
the neck. Han pressed the answer stud again and spoke. "It's working now.
Tell Salculd the inverter is back on-line. Have her power up the control
circuits and let's see how it goes." "We shall do so, Honored Solo,'" said
the faint, worried-sounding voice from the comm unit. "Saieuld says she is
initiating control circuit power-up." Han was kneeling down in front of the
inspection hatch, and a low-powered hum made him think he might be just a
bit too close to the inverter array. He stood up and backed away. The hum
faded out after a moment, and the array's indicator lights came on, showing
normal operation. Han pressed down the answer button again. "Don't hold me
to this," he shouted, "hut I think it's working. The spare parts off Mara's
ship did the trick. We ought to be able to get underway anytime you like."
"Good to hear, most Honorable Solo," Dracmus said, the relief in her voice
almost painfully obvious. "Very good to hear indeed. We shall proceed at
once." The indicators flickered a bit to show the inverters were drawing
more power. "Take it easy up there," Han said. "Throttle up nice and slow,
all right?" "We are doing so, Honored Solo. And we shall hold at one-third
power. We have no desire to overload our systems again." "That's very
reassuring," Han said. "But 1 think I'd better head up there and keep an eye
on you just the same." Han crossed to the access ladder and climbed up to
the nose cabin of the coneship. The coneship was just that-a fat cone, with
the engines at the base and the control cabin in the point. The nose itself
was nearly all transparent transplex, affording a spectacular overhead view.
The pilot, Salculd, lay flat on her back, looking up and out at the sky
ahead. For a human pilot, it would not be the most comfortable way to work.
Of course, Selonians were most decidedly not human. Salculd looked over to
the lower deck access hatch as Han climbed out of it. She gave him a toothy
smile and then returned her attention to her work. She looked comfortable
enough. Dracmus was pacing at the rear of the cabin, looking anything but
cairn or relaxed. Though they we
re fairly standard bipeds, Selonians were
taller but thinner than humans. Their arms and legs were shorter, and their
bodies rather longer. They could manage equally well walking on two feet or
four. Retractable claws in both their hand-paws and foot- paws made them
impressive climbers and diggers. Their tails were only about half a meter
long, but they packed a major wallop when used as a club-as Han had reason
to know. They had long, pointed faces, and their entire bodies were covered
in sleek, short-haired fur. Dracmus was dark brown. Salculd was mostly
black, but her belly fur was light brown. They both had bristly whiskers
that were as expressive as human eyebrows, once you got a little practice in
interpreting them. They also had mouths full of very sharp teeth. Han had
been able to interpret the teeth with no practice at all. In short, they
were elegant and impressive-looking creatures. "How does all go?" Han asked
Salculd the pilot, speaking in his rather labored Selonian. Salculd did not
speak Basic. "All is well. Honored Solo," Salculd replied. "At least until
the next subsystem flips out." "Wonderful," Han said to himself. "Everything
be well, Honored Dracmus?" he asked in Selonian. "Fine, line, all is fine,
until we crash and die," Dracmus replied. "Glad we have a consensus," Han
muttered to himself. "It is good to plan ahead like that," Salculd said.
"Here 1 was just going to land the ship the regular way. Now 1 arn knowing
that I will fail and we will crash. It is most comforting." "That is enough,
Pilot Salculd," Dracmus snapped. "Concentrate all attention on your duties."
"Yes, Honored Dracmus," Salculd said at once, her tone of voice most
apologetic. Salculd was a fairly experienced pitol, and knew her ship at
least reasonably well, if not as well as Han would have preferred. Dracmus,
on the other hand, was trained to deal with humans, and incompletely trained
at that. When it came to ship handling, she had ' no experience, no
knowledge, and no skill. Even so, she commanded the ship-not just in
deciding where it would go, but down to the last detail of every maneuver.
Salculd could not, or would not, overrule her. Dracmus was of higher status,
or seniority, or something, relative to Salculd, and that was that, insofar
as either of the Selonians was concerned. Neither seemed much concerned by
the fact that Dracmus had only the slightest understanding of space
operations, or by the fact that during the raid on Selonia she had
repeatedly ordered the ship to do things it could not, and come alarmingly
close to getting them all killed. Saiculd might have a smart mouth, and an
irreverent attitude, but she followed all of Dracmus's orders-no matter how
boneheaded-with alarming dispatch. It took some getting used to. Han took
his own place in the control seat next to Salculd. He had done his best to
adjust the padding to fit a human frame, but the seat would never be
comfortable. Han lay back and looked up. The view out the transparent nose
of the coneship was nothing less than spectacular. The planet Selonia hung
big and bright in the sky, filling the middle third of the field of view.
Selonia had smaller oceans than Corellia, and the land mass was broken up
into thousands of medium-sized islands, more or less evenly spaced across
the face of the planet. Instead of two or three large oceans and four or
five continental landmasses, Selonia's surface was a maze of water and land.
Hundreds of seas and bays and inlets and straits and shoals separated the
islands. Han remembered reading somewhere that no point on land anywhere on
Selonia was more than one hundred fifty kilometers from open water, and no
point on the water was more than two hundred kilometers from the nearest
shoreline. But there was more to the view than the spectacular planet. Mara
Jade's personal ship, the Jade's Fire, hung in space a kilometer or two
away, her bow hiding a bit of the planet's equatorial region. She was a
long, low, streamlined ship, painted in a flame pattern of red and gold. The
ship looked fast, sleek, strong, maneuver-able-and Han knew she was all of
those things. He wished, not for the first time, that he was aboard her, and
not just because the Fire was a better ship. Leia was aboard the Fire, along
with Mara Jade. After Dracmus had managed to blow out nearly every system on
board the coneship, the Fire had rescued them and provided Han with the
spare parts he needed to repair the craft. Now the Fire was preparing to see
the coneship to a safe landing. Han did not like Leia being on one ship
while he was on the other, but the arrangement made too much sense. Mara,
not yet completely recovered from her leg injury, still needed some looking
after, and she needed a copilot, at least until she recovered. Space knew
the Selonians, Dracmus and Salculd, needed all the help they could get.
Besides which, Leia spoke Selonian- spoke it better than Han, for that
matter-and given recent events it made more than a little sense to have at
least one speaker of the Selonian language aboard each ship, in case of
difficulties at the landing field. The plan was for the two ships to fly
toward Selonia in formation and land side by side. But even if it all seemed
perfectly reasonable and harmless for Leia to stay on Mara's ship while he
flew in the coneship, Han didn't have to like it. He didn't need to ask what
could go wrong. So many things had gone wrong already. A bright light
flashed on and off from the forward port of the Fire. Leia was using the
landing lights on the Jade's fire to send Mon Calamari blink
code--combinations of long and short flashes to form the letters of the
Basic alphabet. The technique was slow and clumsy, but the normal com
channels were jammed and it beat not being able to talk at all. READY TO
BEGIN ENTRY, Han read. SIGNAL WHEN YOU arE ready. "They say they are ready."
He turned to Salculd. "Are we prepared?" "Yes," said Salculd. "Very well,"
Han said, "Honored Dracmus," he said in Basic, so that Salculd could not
understand. "You will now do what I say. Stop pacing, take your seat, and
instruct Salculd to accept orders from me. I would then ask you most kindly
to shut up until we are on the ground. I want you to give no orders and say
nothing. I just want you to sit quietly. Or else I tell the Jade's Fire that
escorting us is a suicide run. I will instruct them to leave us here." It
was all bluff, of course, hut Dracmus was panicky enough that she wasn't
likely to think it through. "But-" she protested. "But nothing. I know blink
code and you don't. I can talk to the Fire and you can't. You nearly got us
killed ordering this ship around before, and I'm not going to put up with
that again." "I must protest! This is robbery of the worst kind!' Han
grinned. "Actually, it's more like piracy. Or you could call it a pretty
miid form of hijacking. And I might add that if you don't know robbery from
piracy, you have no business running a ship." Dracmus glared at Han, about
to protest-but then she shook tier head. "So be it. I must accede. Even to
my eye, my ship orders were none too good, and I wish to live some more."
She
shifted to Selonian. "Pilot Salculd! You will obey the orders of Honored
Han Solo as you would rny own, and do so until such time as we reach the
ground." Salculd sat up in her seat and looked from one to the other before
grinning even more widely than before. "Yes, Honored Dracmus!" she said. "I
obey with pleasure!" "See that you don't find too much pleasure in obeying,
Salculd," Dracmus growled. "Honored Solo, if you would proceed." "Take your
seat," Han said to Dracmus in Selonian. "We all must strap in and prepare
for acceleration. Salculd, you will fly a standard approach to the in-
tended field of landing, starting on my command. Is that understood?" "Yes,
indeed," Salculd said. "Absolutely." Han picked up the handlight placed next
to his seat for the purpose, and signaled back to the Fire. BEADY FO
COMMENCE EMNTRY MANEUVERZ, he signaled, managing to spot every mistake just
after he made it. "Someday I gotta take the time to brush up on this stuff,"
he muttered to himself. we are jus'i about beady ourselves, Leia signaled
back. TAKING POSITION TO YOUR STERN. WILL FOLLOW
YOU IN.
"Ha, ha, ha." Han said. "Glad 1 married such a humorist." He shifted back to
Selonian. "Very well, Salculd, take us in. With much care." As he watched,
the Jade's Fire came about on her long axis, putting her stern toward the
coneship. Salculd edged the throttle upward, transferring minimum power to
the engines. As the coneship began to accelerate toward the planet, the Fire
drifted back, falling astern off the port side. As the faster, more
maneu-verable ship, and the one that was easier to control, it made sense
for the Fire to go in second, where she could keep watch on the coneship.
But even the spares on board the Fire had not been enough to patch up the
coneship's stern detector grid. The coneship was, and would continue to be,
all but completely blind astern. All she had was one wide-angle holocam set
in the base of the cone, between two of the sublight engines. It would be
useful during the final approach and landing, but even with the main engines
off, its resolution was so poor that the Jade's Fire would be lost to view
if she drifted only a few kilometers away. Once the engines came on, the
stern holocam view could only get worse. In other words, Han might-or might
Showdown At Centerpoint Page 1