And it occurred to Lando that he ought to make it his business to tell Han.
Now. Before it was too late. Captain Thrag sat in the smoky control cabin of
his assault boat, and laughed, but there was little joy or happiness in the
angry sound. "How have the mighty fallen, O mighty Diktat," he said. "They
have beaten you, beaten you completely. Shot down by children. Children so
young they probably had trouble seeing over the control panel." "Shut up,
Thrag," said Thrackan. "Shut up or I'll kill you on the spot." Thrag let out
one last chuckle and looked out through the assault boat's viewport. The
enemy ship's tractor beam was pulling them in. They would be aboard in a few
seconds' time. "The horrible thing is that you might even do it," he said.
"And why not? If there has ever been a man with nothing left to lose, you
are that man now. They have you, Diktat Sal-Solo." He nodded to the ship in
the viewport, the ship that was getting closer with every second. "Now they
have you, body and spirit." eyed and solemn, as they led Thrackan Sal-Solo,
Diktat of Corellia, away. "Our cousin is a very bad man," he said. Neither
of the other children could think of anything more to say. The Millennium
Falcon set down in the hangar deck of the Intruder, the tractor-beam
operator setting the ship neatly down. The three children powered down the
ship's systems as best they could, and made their way to the access ramp.
Anakin worked the controls, and the ramp came down. The three of them filed
down the ramp-and stopped dead at the foot of it. They had brought the
assault boat in first, and already the Bakurans were taking the Human League
troopers into custody. One by one, they were led out of the boat, hands on
their heads, and hustled out toward the detention block. The next-to-last
man out was a short, grubby-looking man, dressed only in his underwear and a
thin undershirt. All the other prisoners had looked scared or angry, but
this man was laughing. Laughing out loud. But the last man out, the last one
of all, was not laughing. Thrackan Sal-Solo came out of the assault boat,
walking straight and tall, hands at his side. He paused for a moment as he
stepped down onto the hangar deck, and looked around himself. He spotted the
three children by the Millennium Falcon, and the smooth, arrogant look on
his face melted away. A look of pure hatred, pure anger and malice, took its
place. The three children backed away a step or two, and Thrackan actually
took a step or two toward them before the guards grabbed him by the arms and
led him away. Anakin stood between his brother and his sister, holding each
of them by the hand. He stared, wide- "This is doing no good, Dracmus," Han
said. "You come. You tell us there might be progress. You go away. You come
back. You say it again. Around and around. There are people at war out
there. A whole star system could die while you go back and forth." "I am
knowing, I am knowing, I am knowing," said Dracmus. "But believe me, there
is nothing more we can be doing. We Hunchuzuc know the deadline. We are
trying. But it is a very delicate situation. Push the Sacorrians of the
nameless clan too hard, and they might commit suicide. Or die of shame. And
die of shame not expression, like with you people." Dracmus seemed ready to
offer an explanation of that statement, but then she caught Han's eye and
got back to the point. "The best thing you humans can do to hurry us along
is just to be here, looking impatient, checking the time, reminding us to
hurry. I go tell negotiators you impatient, time growing short, and they
work faster." Just then, there was an odd, muted sort of beeping noise
coming from Mara's pocket. At exactly the same moment Artoo suddenly kicked
up a fuss, whistling and chirping and spinning his view dome back and forth.
Mara looked confused for a minute, and then seemed to remember something.
She stood up, shoved her hand in the pocket of her coveralls, and pulled out
a comlink. "It's been so long since these things worked I forgot it was
there," she said. She pressed a stud on the side of the comlink, and the
beeping stopped. 'That's a call from the ship's monitoring systems. A high
priority message just came in." "Artoo," asked Luke, "are you getting it
too? The same message?" Artoo let off an affirmative-sounding trill. "Gotta
be the same one," Mara said. "I've got to go over to the Jade's Fire to read
my copy. Anyone care to tag along and see what it is?" Artoo confirmed it
was the same message the moment he plugged into the dataport on the cockpit
of the Jade's Fire. That saved having to decode it twice. The decryption
system on board the Jade's Fire was good, very good. It unbuttoned the
message in only a few seconds-a job that would have taken Artoo a good many
minutes. Mara, sitting at the ship's command station, hit the play button,
and a hologram shimmered into life a meter or so above the floor. It was a
full-length view of Lando, shown at about half life size. "Hello," he said
in a very solemn voice. "I don't know exactly what your situation is, so I
will send duplicate copies of this to all of you. A lot has happened. The
bad news is that the real enemy has finally shown up. It's the fleet from
the Sacorrian Triad. Luke knows about it. They are the real enemy.
Everything else-alt the rebellions-are not much more than diversions. The
fleet has a total of about eighty ships of all sizes, and they are
closing-very slowly-on Centerpoint. They seem to be timing it so they will
get to Centerpoint just as the Bovo Yagen shot goes off. We haven't
interfered with them-yet- and they haven't made any hostile gesture toward
our ships. I doubt that's going to last long, though. "That's the bad news,
and it's bad." The image of Lando paused for a moment, and then broke into a
broad smile. "The good news is very good indeed. Don't ask me how, because
we haven't had time to sort it all out yet, but the children have escaped
from Thrackan-and they did it aboard the Millennium Falcon. They flew the
ship. And before you can turn blue, Han, the Falcon doesn't have so much as
a scratch on her. But the punch line is-they captured Thrackan. Han, you
should have seen it. The kids flew a classic inside loop and put two
disabling shots right into Thrackan's stern. The Bakurans have taken
Thrackan prisoner. Anyway, I know you won't believe it, but the kids did it
all- "I don't believe it," Han.said. "Sssh!" said Leia. "-and they are all
safe and sound aboard the Intruder. Chewbacca and two Drall who got mixed up
in all this are being picked up from the repulsor right now. They're okay
too, as best we can tell. "But the real reason I sent this message is to ask
you to come here. Gaeriel Captison has called a council of war for eighteen
hours from now. We need you all there. Madame Captison wants a Selonian
representative as well. Please arrange that if you possibly can. Also, to be
blunt about it, the odds arc good we're going to need every scrap of
firepower we can get before the end of this. We need all of you, we need the
Jade's Fire, and we need Luke's X-wing. Send a return message as soon as
possible, reporting your intentio
ns. But whatever you do, please hurry. We
are almost out of time."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Last Good-bye Leia Organa Solo, Chief of State of the New Republic, ran
full-tilt down the access ramp of the Jade's Fire, onto the hangar deck of
the Intruder, and nearly knocked over two of the honor guard as she rushed
forward to her children, flinging her arms around the twins. Anakin escaped
her first swooping hug simply because he was hopping too fast and too high
with excitement to be an easy target. But Han Solo was hard on the heels of
his wife, and he scooped Anakin clear up off the ground. Luke joined the
happy little knot of chaos, hugging the children, greeting them, tousling
Jacen's hair, tickling Jaina, lifting Anakin out of Han's arms to hold him
in his own. Threepio tottered around, offering his own greetings- and
generally getting in the way. "Anakin! Jacen! Jaina!" said Leia. "Oh, let me
look at you all." But then she threw her arms around all three of them, and
held them so tight it didn't seem likely she could see much of anything at
all. Lando Calrissian joined the tangle of welcome, throwing his arm around
Han, shouting a friendly insult in his ear, pounding him on the back, giving
Selonian representative, Dracmus, followed. Admiral Ossiiege allowed himself
a thin, wintry smile as he watched the proceedings. "Not the most dignified
of entrances, eh, Madame Prime Minister? I would have expected more poise
from the Chief of State." Gaeriel probably could have managed some
commonplace comment about ceremony giving way to family, or that there were
other considerations besides dignity in the universe, but somehow she
couldn't bring herself to do it. She thought of her own little daughter,
Malinza, back home on Bakura. She looked to Luke Skywalker, lifting his
niece up onto his shoulders, and thought of how good he was with children,
and of all the things that might have been, but never could be now. But
still, the admiral seemed to be expecting some kind of reply. So she decided
to speak, and somehow, the truth slipped out. "I think it's beautiful," she
said, Admiral Hortel Ossiiege turned toward her and regarded her with frank
surprise. "Indeed?" he said. "Clearly, then, standards of beauty vary
greatly. Mine do not include noisy and unruly children." "Then I pity you,"
said Gaeriel, quite surprised with herself for being so blunt. "I know of
nothing else that brings more beauty into my life." Gaeriel Captison stepped
forward, leaving a stunned Admiral Ossiiege in her wake. She moved toward
the newcomers and offered them a simple, graceful bow. "Madame Chief of
State," she said. "Captain Solo. I bid you welcome to the Intruder, and wish
you much joy of this wonderful reunion." And with that, she knelt down in
her very official ministerial robes and gave each of the children a kiss.
Let the old sourpuss chew on that for a while, she told herself. Gaeriel had
had something of a wild streak in her youth. It was good to know it had not
completely abandoned her. "The situation is, in one sense, complicated and,
in another, quite simple," said Belindi Kaienda, addressing the council of
war gathered on the flag deck of the Intruder. And a motley crew this
council is, she told herself. To her immediate left was Ossilege in his
perfect dress-white uniform and his chestful of medals, Gaeriel Captison in
her ministerial robes, Lando Calrissian with a rather swell-looking purple
cape thrown over one shoulder of his burgundy blouse, and Han Solo in a
rather rumpled light brown shirt, with a utility vest worn over it. That
vest had obviously seen a lot of use over the years. Then came Solo's wife,
Leia Organa Solo, the Chief of State, in a plain blue shirt and dark slacks
borrowed from Mara Jade. All of the Chief of State's own clothes had of
course been lost, destroyed, or abandoned along the way in the last few
weeks. Next to Leia was her brother, Luke Skywalker, in his neatly pressed
and insignia-free flight suit. Behind him, against the wall, his two droids,
R2-D2 and C-3PO, stood by in case they were called on. Both of the two
Drall, Ebrihim and Marcha, wore nothing but plain brown fur-though both
seemed to have gotten bits of their fur cooked off in the last two days.
Then came the Wookiee Chewbacca, who seemed either moody or thoughtful-she
didn't have much luck reading Wookiee expression. Jenica Sonsen had managed
to find herself wedged in next to Chewbacca on one side and a
nervous-looking Selonian named Dracmus on the other. Sonsen did not look too
thrilled about her seating position. By her expression, she expected the
Wookiee and the Selonian to start arguing over light meat or dark at any
second. On the other side of Dracmus the Selonian was Mara Jade, looking
cool and elegant in a well-tailored but otherwise quite ordinary ship's
coverall. And, Kaienda reminded herself, she was there too, of course. The
last few days and hours had been so chaotic that it would have been easy
enough to forget her own existence. "To cover the simple side of it first,"
she went on, "the enemy is closing in on Centerpoint. They need to keep us
from interfering with the next starbuster burst-which, of course, we must
interfere with, no matter what the cost. Considering the number of lives at
stake if we fail, I do not think anyone will disagree with me when I suggest
for victory. "And we must face the fact that we run such a risk. We have
three major combatant ships carrying a total of thirty-two flight-worthy
fighters. The enemy has at least eighty larger spacecraft. If all of them
carried a full complement of fighters-though I very much doubt they do-the
number of fighters on their side would be well up in the hundreds." The
numbers were daunting enough to cause a flurry of whispers and mutters
around the table. Kaienda waited for the murmuring to settle down, and then
continued. "We do have a few advantages I can tell you about. We have
managed some fairly good long-range scans of the enemy fleet. We've gotten
some good imagery of some ships. Most are not that large or that weli armed.
I can tell you that many of those ships are old, some predating the Imperial
period. I doubt that any of them are of post-war construction. They are
probably both dated and in relatively poor repair. Parts for many of those
ships are going to be hard to come by. They are all but certainly relying on
nonstandard and jury-rigged repairs. I would also expect the qualities of
their crews to be below average. Their pool of potential recruits could not
have been the best. Probably most are flying with a minimum of previous
training and experience. However, don't count too much on that. Some of
those crews are probably going to be as good as ours. We just don't know
which ones." "In short," said Admiral Ossilege, "we have better ships, but
the numbers are most definitely against us. However, we do have a plan for
dealing with the situation. We will come to that a bit later.1' He looked
over
and nodded at Kalenda. "Continue," he said. "The complicated side of
the situation is that we almost, but not quite, control two of the
repulsors. To the best of our knowledge, none of the various front groups-I
don't think 'rebel groups' quite suits the case anymore-none of the various
front groups controls one at this time. I believe that was a major
miscalculation on the part of the Triad. They assumed that locating and
activating a repulsor would take much less time than it did." "Unless they
got the estimates exactly right," said Mara Jade, "and the Triad's people
are sitting on the Talusian and Tralusian and Corellian repulsors, just
waiting for the signals to push the button." "Exactly right," said Kalenda.
"Obviously, the Double World Talus and Tralus repulsors are the most
worrisome ones. If the enemy controls those, he has the ability to crush our
ships down to rubble in any millisecond he chooses." "But we don't think
they have that capability," Os-silege said. "Their fleet is moving in with a
great deal of caution. Their behavior is consistent with fears that we
control one or more repulsors, while they control none. In my considered
opinion, it is not consistent with their controlling any of the repulsors.
It is not even consistent with a bluff. If the enemy had the Talus or Tralus
rcpulsors operational, this battle would be over already." "That caution
might also explain why they haven't reactivated the interdiction field,"
said Mara. "They might want to be sure they have a way out of here." "That's
possible," said Jenica Sonsen, "but we don't think that's why it's still
down. We've run some numbers on how Centerpoint must operate, what it can
do, that sort of thing. The short form is that we don't think they can
reactivate it while Centerpoint is at this stage of powering itself up for a
starbuster shot. Too much power being diverted, too many systems busy. You
can turn on an interdiction field while the system is in standby. You can
turn one off at any time. You can leave it on while the system is powering
up. But you can't initiate an interdiction field while the Glowpoint is
charging. At least we think that's the case." "It damned well better be the
case," said Ossilege. "Our plans with Source A depend on it." "Excuse
please," s aid Dracmus. "What or who is a Source A?" "We'll come to that a