interior of the pad, tracing the eireuits, the logic paths, the potentials
and safeties that were inside the machine. It had been asleep for so long,
so very long, waiting for someone to wake it up. And now. Now was the time.
He knew, knew with absolute certainty, how to make it work. No Q9-X2 here to
tease him, or make him worry about trapdoors and stuff. He knew. He was
sure. Anakin Solo reached out and pressed the center button of the
five-by-five grid. The green button turned purple. Good. He paused for a
moment, and then, stretching his fingers as far as they would go. he pressed
all four of the corner buttons at once. They turned orange, not purple. He
frowned. That wasn't quite what he had expected, but never mind. Move on.
Starting at the top and moving counterclockwise, he pressed the center
button of each outer row in turn. These did indeed turn purple. That made
him feel a bit better. The keypad made the chiming noise again, but this
time it wasn't just once. It kept going, over and over and over. Anakin
closed his eyes once more and held his palm over the keypad. Yes. Yes. That
was it. Starting from the bottom right, and moving clockwise, he pressed
each of the corner buttons in turn. Each turned from orange to a reassuring
purple as he pressed it. He paused, only for a moment, just before he pushed
in the last one. Was this such a good idea? He was going to get in trouble
for this, he knew that much. But would it be so much trouble that it
wouldn't be worth it? No. He had to do it. There was no turning back now. He
pushed in the last orange button. It turned purple, and suddenly the chiming
noise was louder and higher-pitched. There was a low-pitch hum from behind
Anakin, and he turned around. A section of the floor was sliding away. For a
moment he wondered if he had been wrong about trapdoors. But then a whole
complicated console rose slowly up out of the floor, a strange-looking
control panel, all in the same silver stuff as the chamber itself, in front
of a stranger-looking little seat that looked as if it were intended for a
being that bent in different places from a human. Hopping with excitement,
all doubts forgotten, Anakin sat down in the odd little chair and did not
even notice that it was adapting itself to his body, reforming itself,
lifting him up and moving him forward so he would be able to reach the
controls more comfortably. He stared at the instruments for a full minute,
then extended his arms and spread his fingers out as far as they would go.
He shut his eyes and reached out into the intricately, beautifully
complicated universe of switches and paths and controls and linkages behind
the knobs and levers and dials that covered the control panel. Power
ratings, capacitance stowage, vernier control, targeting subsystems, safety
overrides, shielding constraints, thrust balancing. What they all were, what
they all meant, how they all worked, and worked together-all of it flowed
into him, as if the ancient machines were speaking to him, telling him their
story. He knew it all. He knew it all now. Anakin put his hands on the
control panel and felt it all flow through him. Wake it up. He had to wake
it up. The whole system had slept for so long. It wanted to come awake, to
revive itself, to do its proper work. He moved as if he were asleep, in a
dream, moving to what his ability in the Force told him he could do, not to
do what needed doing, or what he ought to do. He knew, somehow, the
compulsion, the desire to make the system come on, was within himself, that
the machinery was nothing more than machinery. But it fell as if it were the
machine whispering to him, not his own in- stincts and abilities urging him
on. Pull that long lever to start the initiator process activator. Twist
that dial to bring the geogravitic energy transfer system on-line. Tap in
that command sequence at the standard five-by-flve keypad to clear the
safeties. Somewhere, deep below him, the ground shuddered slightly, and a
low, powerful hum began to build. The chiming noise grew more and more
intense, becoming louder and louder, the chiming coming faster and faster. A
flat spot on the control panel twisted and shimmered and then started to
swell upward, to form itself into a handle like a spacecraft's joystick.
Anakin reached out to it with his left hand, barely aware of what he was
doing, not noticing that the handle was lorming itself, reshaping itself, to
fit itself to his hand. A graphic display appeared in the air over the
handle. a hollow wireframe cube, made up of a grid of smaller cubes five
high, five across, and five deep. All the smaller cubes were transparent,
but, as Anakin watched, one cube, in the far lower left corner, turned
green. Slowly, carefully, he pulled back on the joystick. The solitary green
cube turned purple, and suddenly the three transparent cubes it touched
turned green. The corner cube turned orange, the second layer turned green,
and a new layer of cubes turned purple. The colors spread out until the
entire five-by-five-by-five grid shifted through green to purple to bright,
glowing orange. The ground trembled again, and the hum of power grew deeper,
and. somehow, more emphatic, more solid, the sound of massive energies
waiting to be unleashed. Anakin let go of the joystick. At the moment he
did, the chiming slopped. The control chamber was suddenly silent as the
power hum dropped away into lower and lower frequencies, until it was so
deep a tone it was below the threshold of hearing. The joystick melted away,
flattened itself back down into the control panel. And there, in the blank
space at the center of the panel, a new button created itself, flowing up
out of the panel surface, shaping itself into a disk about six centimeters
across and a centimeter high. As he watched, the button shifted its color,
changed from silver to green, green to purple, purple to orange, plain
orange to a throbbing, pulsating orange, pulsing from the color of molten
iron to the ciull near red of a dusky sunset. The chamber was silent. Anakin
stared in open-mouthed fascination at the final button, his eyes wide, the
light of the throbbing orange button throwing weird and shifting colors onto
his clothes, his face, his eyes. The button. The button was there. It called
to him, or else his own compulsion, his compulsion to make machines work, to
make machines do, called from deep inside himself. He did not know. He did
not care. He reached out his left hand. He held it poised over the button
for a moment. And then he pushed it down. Lightning flared out from the apex
of the central cone in the great chamber, lancing out toward each of the
lower cones, slamming into them with sparks and fire. Thunder, deafeningly
loud, the sound of the earth eracking open and splitting itself apart,
roared out through the great chamber. Blinding light exploded out from the
lightning strike to reflect off every silver surface, flooding the chamber
with brilliance. The lesser cones answered back, sending their own
thunderbolts hack to strike at the top of the center cone, blasting it into
incandescence. Then, as suddenly as it had be
en there, the lightning was
gone, and the cones were as they had been, unaffected by the massive power
that had played around them. The sound of the thunder echoed through the
chamber, reverber- ating back and forth like the angry war cry of some
long-forgotten god. The chamber shuddered and shook with the thunder.
Chewbacca, aboard the Falcon, was thrown from his bunk as the ship' bounced
and lurched along with the chamber. He was halfway to the ship's control
room before he eame fully awake and realized the ship was on the ground. Not
just on the ground, but under it, in a sealed chamber, with no hope of
escape. Shields. The Falcon's shields would provide at least some
protection. He had to get everyone aboard, and fast. He turned and headed
for the open access ramp. The twins had gotten out from under the ship. They
were on their feet and struggling to stay that way as the ground bucked and
heaved under their feet. Chewbacca shouted for them to get aboard, but the
echoes of the thunder were so loud that even his voice did not carry. He
waved his arms, gesturing for them to get aboard. Jacen saw him and nodded
vigorously. He grabbed his sister's arm and pulled her toward th e ramp. The
simple effort of trying to move at all was enough to knock them both off
their feet. But they kept on moving, crawling toward the access ramp. The
shaking of the around seemed to ease off, even as the echoing roar faded
away. But Chewhacca had no illusions that things would stay quiet for long.
He rushed down the ramp even as the twins were crawling up it. The others.
He had to get to the others. Moving as if he were on the deck of a
storm-tossed ship in the sea, he made his way to the far side of the ship.
The hovercar had toppled over on its side. As he moved toward it the side
hatch popped open and Kbrihim came crawling out, half carrying, half
dragging his aunt Mareha. She seemed to have a bad cut on the left side of
her head. She looked half-stunned. Somehow, without even knowing how he did
it, Chewbacca crossed the distance to the hovercar. He reached out and
lifted Mareha away from Ebrihim's side, then tucked her under one arm and
lifted Ebrihim down to the ground with the other. He shouted at Ebrihim to
get aboard the Falcon, and pointed toward the ship. Either Ebrihim could
understand what Chewbacca was saying or else he understood the gesture. He
nodded and started toward the ship. The ground had all but stopped moving,
and Ebrihim was to walk more or less without being knocked over. Chewbacca
looked toward the ship himself and saw Qy, down and inert, slumped over next
to his charging stand. Still carrying Marcha, he moved to the charging stand
and examined the situation. The droid looked completely dead and motionless.
Chewbacca pulled at the cable connecting the droid to the charger, but the
connection seemed to have gotten jammed somehow. Chewbacca yanked harder,
and the cable snapped. He scooped the droid up in his free hand and headed
for the Falcon. At that moment the lightning struck again, blasting out from
the central cone toward the six smaller cones that surrounded it. Chewbacca
looked up involuntarily to see the dazzling bright display, but then
realized his mistake and looked away before he could be blinded by the
light. The light he could look away from, but the sound, the overwhelming
sound-there was nothing he could do to shut that out. He hurried toward the
ship as the lesser cones answered back to the master, sending their own
bolts of fire back toward the central cone. The noise redoubled, louder than
ever, and the ground bucked harder, nearly knocking Chewbacca over. The
Falcon was bouncing on its landing jacks, riding their shock absorbers.
Chewbacca staggered around to the far side of the ship and got to the entry
ramp. He had to time his rush up the ramp between the buckings and surgings
of the silver surface of the ground. Judging the moment to be right, he
rushed aboard ship. He hit the switch to raise the ramp, then got to the
lounge. He set the Duchess Marcha and Q9-X2 down on the deck as gently as he
could. Ebrihim had already produced a first-aid kit from somewhere, and
knelt down next to his aunt. The two Drall, the droid, the twins-Chewbacca
suddenly realized that Anakin wasn't there. He had half assumed the youngest
child would be with the twins. He turned and headed toward the door.
"Anakin's safe!" Jacen shouted over the thundering din, clearly reading
Chewbacca's thoughts from his action. "He's in some sheltered side tunnel. I
can feel him in the Force. He's not hurt, and he's feeling more scared we'll
be mad at him than scared he'll get hurt. I think he set this off."
Chewbacca just stood there and stared at Jacen for a moment, unsure what to
do. He had sworn to protect the children above all else. If Anakin were
indeed safe, then he could button up the ship and wait this thing out. But
if-if-Anakin were in danger, then what could he do? Search all the endless
side corridors for him during this massive disturbance? But if he did that,
he would be exposing the ship, and those aboard her, to greater danger. He
would have to get the shields raised and lowered so he could go in and
out-and no one besides him knew the ship well enough to keep the shields up.
"lo keep the others safe, he would have to stay here. Very well. It was not
certain, it was not perfect, but it was the best judgment, the best decision
he could make under the circumstances. If he had judged wrong, and harm came
to Anakin as a result, then, he knew, his own life would be forfeit, and
rightly so. It took him but a moment to think it all through. But thought
was nothing without action. He rushed for the cockpit and activated the
Falcon's, shields at full strength. The sound faded away somewhat as the
shields engaged. Chewbacca tried to activate the ship's rcpulsors to raise
her up off the heaving deck of the chamber, but they would not engage. He
checked the propulsion readouts. Every propulsion system was offline. He had
no idea why. But there was no time to worry about that now. He needed to get
the ship up off the deck before it was bounced apart. Even without the
propulsion systems, there was a way to do that. Chewbacca worked the shield
controls, shifting power away from the upper shields to the lower ones,
extending the lower shields as far as they would go, and softening them, so
they formed a gradual thickening membrane rather than a hard edge-if only
the trick would work. The Falcon hesitated a moment, and then rose up off
her landing jacks to rest on a cushion of softened lower-side shields. The
bouncing and bucking and heaving of the deck was still there to be felt, but
the shields smoothed it down and gave the ship a chance to ride it out. He
set the shields to self-compensate and maintain their betting. He could at
least hope the shields would protect them against what was happening, but he
would not be able to do more than hope until he knew what was going on. All
he knew for sure was that it seemed to be happening above them all. He
looked up, just as another spectacular cycle of lightning bursts flashed
back and
forth between the tops of the cones, and then another, and another.
The cycle was clearly growing faster, and more powerful. There was no way of
knowing what sorts of energy and radiation those bolts were putting out.
Chewbacca could do little more than hope that the Falcon's shields would
protect those inside against it all. The lightning transfers grew faster and
faster, more and more powerful, until all the cone-tops were a constant
blaze of light, joined together by spikes of fire. Then, it seemed, the
cone-tops drew the fire in, absorbing the energy that flowed around them.
The roaring thunder of the lightning faded away as the cone-tops flared and
flickered with energy, light of every color sparking and shimmering on their
surfaces. Just when Chewbacca thought the display had reached its climax, he
realized the scintillating colors W'cre flowing down the cones, toward the
bottom of the chamber-toward the Millennium Falcon. Chewbacca tried
frantically to activate one of the propulsion systems, any of the propulsion
systems-but ail of them stayed stubbornly off-line. Suddenly the entire ship
was balhed in lightning, a firestorm of sparks and flares that coursed
around the shields, sparking and flaring everywhere. Every circuit breaker
and safety cutoff in the ship tripped at once, and Chewbacca made no effort
to reset any of them. He had no desire to have any active circuits running
with that much power flowing around the ship. As suddenly as it had flowed
over the ship, the wave of power swept past it. Chewie craned his neck
around to watch the energy wave moving, just in time to see it incinerate
the hovercar, detonate Q9's charging stand, and set everything else left
outside ablaze. The blaze of energy swept on, swooping up the sides of the
chamber's conical interior wall, rushing up toward the apex of the chamber,
a ring of seething power that grew brighter, more powerful, more energetic
as it moved higher up the cone. The ring of fire merged into a single point
of raging power at the apex of the cone and exploded outward in a torrent of
light that streamed forth in all directions, blindingly bright. The walls of
the cone seemed to shudder, shake, expand as the power burst rippled through
them. Another stream of scintillating power coursed down the big central
Showdown At Centerpoint Page 8