any day of the week." "How far have you gotten?" asked Anakin as he looked
over the gleaming silver control panel. It looked just the way he had left
it, after pushing one button too many a few days before. The technician's
name was Antone, and he was a thin, wiry-looking fellow, dark-skinned with
shoulder-length, shiny black hair that hung straight down on either side of
his face. He didn't answer at first, but instead gave Anakin a strange look,
a look Anakin had seen before. It was the look Anakin got from grownups who
had heard he was weirdly good with machines, but didn't quite believe it
yet. Antone glanced at Jaina and Jacen, and got an encouraging nod from both
of them. "I assure you, young Master Anakin is remarkably talented,"
Thrccpio volunteered. Antone seemed unwilling to take the droid's word, but
Ebrihim and Marcha and Q9 were there too, and somehow the presence of the
Drall seemed to convince Technician Antone to take things seriously and
cooperate. "I'd say we're stuck," he said, "except that might be saying too
much. It makes it sound like we'd been making progress and then stopped. But
we never got anywhere in the first place." "Not at all?Anakin asked. "Not at
all. The system won't respond to any commands we give it." "Sure it will,"
said Anakin. He sat down at the control panel and pushed his hand down onto
a flat, featureless spot on the console. He pulled his hand away, and the
surface of the console started to shift and rise up, forming itself into a
joysticklike shape-but one perfectly shaped to Anakin's hand. Anakin touched
the joystick, just touched it, and a hollow wireframe five-by-five-by-five
of cubes appeared in the air over the control panel. Anakin let go of the
joystick. It remained in place for a moment, then melted back down into the
console as the cube display vanished. "How did you do that?'1 Antone
demanded. He scooted Anakin out of the chair and pressed his own hand down
on exactly the same place on the panel. Nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Antone gave Anakin another strange look, and then comprehension dawned in
his face. "Burning stars," he said. "Burning stars. It must have imprinted
itself on your personal characteristics the first time you used it." "Huh?"
Anakin said. "What do you mean?" demanded Jacen, "It imprinted on him,
somehow. It locked in on his fingerprints, or his DNA, or his brain waves,
or something, and locked them into its memory. It'll only work for him."
Anakin's eyes lit up with a wild gleam. "Only for me?" he asked. "It's all
mine?" "There must be a way to let other users use it," Jacen objected.
"Yeah, probably," said Antone, "but we don't have time to look for them. We
have to work with what we've got." "Wait a moment," Ebrihim objected. "Are
you saying what 1 think you're saying?" Antone nodded solemnly. "Your little
friend here is the only person who is going to be able to operate this
control panel. And from what I've seen, and what you've told me, even if he
can make it work, I'm not sure he really understands what it does." "I
believe," said Threepio, "that you have just offered an excellent
summing-up." Gaeriel Captison watched Admiral Ossilege pace the floor of the
flag deck, and could not help but feel sympathy for the man. They were, for
the moment, alone on the flag deck, and that fact spoke volumes. He had told
everyone to go off and do his bidding, and now they were gone. Later,
perhaps, this place would be chaos, with aides rushing in and out, mountains
of message forms covering every flat surface, klaxons blaring and orders
bellowing out from the overhead speakers. But now it was quiet, empty, a
lonely place. And Ossilege must be an especially lonely man right now. There
would be decisions yet to make, orders to give, but now, for the most part,
his job was over. He had deployed his forces, issued his instructions, laid
his plans. Now all he could do was wait. "It isn't easy, is it?" she asked.
"You send them out to do your bidding, and off they go, following your
instructions, living or dying, winning or losing, because of what you
ordered." "No," he said, "it isn't easy. Everyone else knows what to do,
because I have told them. But who tells me?" For Ossilege, that was a
remarkable bit of introspection, bordering on self-pity. He himself seemed
to realize that had given too much away, for he stopped his pacing and sat
down in the admiral's chair. A chime sounded, and a deep, melodic robotic
voice spoke from the overhead speaker. "All outbound craft launched and
clear," it said. "Intruder getting under way in thirty seconds. All hands to
assigned battle stations." Ossilege sat motionless throughout the
announcement, not moving or speaking. Gaeriel could not tell if he was
listening to it intently or not even aware that the voice had spoken. The
chime sounded again, there was a change in the vibrations of the ship, and
the flag deck instruments started reporting forward movement. They were on
their way. "Tell me," Ossilege said at last, speaking after such a long
silence that Gaeriel jumped ten centimeters in the air. "The plan. Do you
think it will work?" The irony was almost too obvious. After endless weeks
of being trapped aboard the Gentleman Caller, wishing above all else to move
faster, get to where she was going sooner, Tendra Risant now had not the
slightest desire for her ship to go anywhere at all. The Gent floated
quietly in the darkness of space, in a stable free orbit of Corell-an orbit
that put her squarely between the Triad fleet and the two Bakuran
destroyers. She had not the slightest doubt that both sides were tracking
her, watching her go by. Probably both of them recognized her ship for what
she was-a civilian non-combatant, accidentally caught between the two
fleets. As long as she floated, unpowered, through space, she represented no
particular danger. But she also had no doubt at all that both sides would
fire immediately if they felt in the slightest way threatened by the
Gentleman Caller. And the Gentleman Caller was surrounded. There was no
direction at all she could find that wouldn't take her close to the path of
one ship or another. She did not dare maneuver, for fear of one side or the
other deciding she was a booby trap, a bomb or a weapon disguised as a
civilian ship. All she could do was sit here, and pray to whatever gods she
could think of that no one decided she was getting in the way. No one knew
exactly what was going to happen next, Tendra least of all. But whatever did
happen, she was going to have a ring-side seat for it. It has been said, by
more than a few observers, who have put it more than a few different ways,
that warfare consists of long stretches of boredom, interspersed with short,
sharp bursts of chaos and terror. Lando had been through battles enough in
his day to realize the truth of that description. Or, to put it another way,
it was a long, long flight from Drall to Centerpoint. Long enough that Luke,
aboard the X-wing, returned to the Intruder twice for brief rest periods as
they traveled. Luke, Jedi Master that he was, certainly could have toughed
it out, but Luke was not a fool. A
nd only fools deliberately went into
combat worn and unrested. The others-Han and his crew, Mara, and Lando
-could all get up and stretch, set the autopilot, and sneak off for a nap.
Not Luke. They could have used a very brief jump through hy-perspace to
shorten the trip substantially, but there were reasons they did not want the
Triad fleet thinking too much about hyperspace. And they also wanted the
Triads to have their attention focused on the Intruder, the three trading
ships, and the Intruder's fighter escort. The more they looked there, the
less they would look in other directions. Lando punched up his own detector
system and tried to get an idea of how the Triad fleet was reacting. So far,
they didn't seem to be in the least bit distracted by the Intruder, The
whole fleet was still moving in toward Centerpoint at a slow, steady pace of
its own. Nothing substantially different from the last time he checked, or
the time before that. Soon, though. Soon. They were getting close enough to
start picking targets, planning their attack- Wait a second. Lando frowned
at his display. Had that been there before, or had he just missed it? A tiny
ship, civilian by the looks of what the detectors could tell him, right
smack in between Centerpoint and the Triad fleet. And wait another second.
Where could that ship have come from? Lando sent a signal querying the
Intruder's position board database for the last few days. He went back to
the time just before the interdiction field went down, and played it forward
from there. The tiny ship winked into existence before the Triad ships. But
how could anybody get here before the Triad, unless- Lando sat bolt upright.
Unless they were closer than the Triad ships, coming from much closer in.
From inside the interdiction field, for example. Lando finally had the sense
to try it the easy way. He sent the standard ship-ID query signal. Fifteen
seconds later he had his answer back. Twenty seconds after that he had
changed course and accelerated to his top sub-light speed in order to
intercept. It was a full minute later before he realized he should have
asked permission, a realization he came to mostly because his com board
started lighting up. He punched the transmit button. "Lady Luck to
Intruder," he said. "I've, ah, just spotted something. I'm just heading over
to investigate it. I'll be back with the fleet in good time for the main
event." "Intruder to Lady Luck," replied a rather fussy-sounding voice. "The
object you are on intercept for is an identified and uninvolved civilian
spacecraft. No need to investigate." "Well, I'm going to anyway," Lando
said. "She might not be as uninvolved as you think." Or at least, he
thought, she's not going to be uninvolved for long. To Ebrihim's eye, the
control room of Drall's planetary repulsor looked as if a bomb had hit it.
It was knee deep in crumpled bits of paper and discarded food containers.
Little knots of technicians were huddled in every corner of the room,
arguing over readings, debating what various arrangements of purple and
orange and green cubes and bars of light might mean. Handwritten labels were
stuck over about half the controls on the console. As the other half of the
controls seemed to appear and disappear and change shape and size almost at
whim, it was a trifle more difficult to label them. Jaina and Jacen were
asleep on cots in the next room over. Ebrihim and Marcha were still on the
go, in the thick of it, helping the techs order their readings, sketching
out the various transmutations of the control panel. Q9 usually seemed to
have two or three remote sensors out as he traced this signal or that
through the interior of the control system and took power readings, and he
and Threepio had found any number of things to bicker about. But all the
rest of them could work as hard and as much as they wanted. Anakin was still
in the center of it all, still going strong, working the controls as he was
asked, shifting the system' from one mode to another, helping the grown-ups
understand what all the buttons meant. He had that wild-eyed look in his
eyes that human children sometimes seemed to get when they had been up too
long or had been too stimulated for too long. Sooner or later it would all
be too much for him, and the poor child would simply keel over from
exhaustion. Ordinarily, it would already be time, and past time, to get the
child to bed, but under the circumstances they had to get as much out of him
as possible before- "Newses! I have good ncwses!" an excited voice shouted.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up as Dracmus rushed into
the room. "The Sacorrian Selonians! What a splendid idea this bribing was!
Must congratulate honored Jade on fine suggestion!" "They've agreed to
cooperate?" Ebrihim asked eagerly. "No, Honored Ebrihim!" said Dracmus in
the same gleeful voice. "They refuse! They delay! Maybe later they come
around, but not yet." "Then why are you so happy?" Marcha demanded. "Because
bribe suggestion gives them idea." She held up a datapad and waved it in the
air. "They still not willing to help with their repulsor-but they willing to
sell instruction manual!" "Lemme see that," Antone said, and grabbed at the
datapad. He turned it on and paged through it, grin- ning more and more
widely as he did so. He nodded enthusiastically. "This is it," he said.
"With what Anakin has shown us, and what this tells us about the notation-I
think-I'm not sure but at least I think, we can run this place." "You mean,"
said Ebrihim, "you think that Anakin can run this place for-" He stopped in
midsentence. "Oh, dear," said Threepio. "He's done it again. It often
happens when he stays up too late." Anakin was still sitting in the control
panel's chair, but his head was resting on the panel itself, and he was
sound asleep. Ebrihim nodded in wonder. Human children. Bizarre creatures.
Anakin had been wide awake and busily working not thirty seconds before.
"Ah, well," Ebrihim said. "The rest of us can keep working, but I suppose a
child has to get a good night's sleep if he's expected to save two or three
star systems in the morning." "Lando?" she asked. He was the first human
being she had seen in a month. "Tendra." And suddenly they were in each
other's arms, holding each other tight. "Oh, Lando. Lando. You shouldn't
have come. You shouldn't have. There are ships on all sides of us, and
sooner or later the shooting is going to start and-" "Hey, hey," said Lando.
"Shh. Take it easy," he said. "Take it easy. My ship is plenty fast enough
to get us out of here. We'll be all'right." "But it's too dangerous!" she
insisted. "It was too risky." "Come on," Lando said, stroking her chin and
giving her a big, warm smile. "I had to think of my image. How could I
possibly turn down the chance to rescue the damsel in distress?"
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
Showdown At Centerpoint Page 29