Showdown at Centerpoint Read Free Page B

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 not—be able to see the
Fire
’s blink code signals if she signaled again. In theory, he could use the coneship’s running lights to send blink code of his own, but he would not be able tosee the lights himself, rendering it just that much harder to send accurate code. Han was hoping the question of signaling wouldn’t come up.
    The poor visibility to the stern made for another good reason to have the
Fire
go in second. Better to have a ship you trusted at your back.
    At least a ship you more or less trusted. Han had managed to put to rest most—but not all—of his reservations regarding Mara. He could think of no reason, no motive, for her acting against Han and Leia and the Republic, and there was no hard evidence that she had done so. But she had never explained her actions to his satisfaction, either. She had been in the right places at the right times—and the wrong places at the wrong times—a bit too often in recent days.
    On the other hand, if she had wanted to do real damage, Mara was too much of a pro to let things be bungled. And the opposition had certainly done some bungling, thank the stars. Not everything had gone their way. Say whatever else you might about the woman, but Mara was competent.
    And that was a compelling argument.
No,
Han told himself as the
Jade’s Fire
was lost completely to forward view.
Leave it be
. They really had no choice but to trust Jade. He watched as the
Fire
came into somewhat fuzzy view on the stern viewscreen. It was time to forget everything else and remember that the main thing was to get this crate down onto the surface. “Now, Salculd, it is your task,” he said. “Do well.”
    “I will,” Salculd said. “Don’t worry about that.” The ship chose that moment to lurch to one side, and Salculd grabbed frantically at the controls. “Sorry, sorry,” Salculd said. “Stabilizer overcompensating. All right now.”
    “I can’t tell you what a comfort that is,” Han said. For a moment he considered the idea of shoving Salculd out of the pilot’s station and taking over, but he knew better than that. The controls were set up for a Selonian, and the coneship had so many idiosyncrasiesit made the
Millennium Falcon
look like a standard production ship. It might be an alarming thought, but unless things got really hairy, it was probably safest to trust Salculd.
    Salculd edged the throttle up just a trifle more and the coneship moved just a bit faster in toward the planet. At least the coneship was not such a relic that it relied on ballistic reentry, using friction with the atmosphere to slow itself down. It could make a nice, civilized powered reentry. At least Han hoped so. Most spacecraft were designed to survive at least one ballistic reentry, but not this thing.
    The planet moved closer. In another few minutes Salculd would have to turn the ship over and point its engines forward to slow the craft. That was the part that worried Han. Once they were decelerating, they would be at their most vulnerable. The coneship’s fragility was far from the only source of danger. Someone on Selonia had sent a whole fleet of Light Attack Fighters up to meet the Bakuran ships.
    The Bakurans had done a fair amount of damage to the LAFs, but Han had to assume that whoever commanded them would have the sense to hold some of them in reserve.