Showdown at Centerpoint Read Online Free Page B

viewport. “Smooth and gentle, Salculd! Not sudden!” he shouted as he tried to concentrate on the blink code—not easy to do when the ship he was on was flailing about like a cornered bantha. The trouble was that Han was only marginally better at reading code than he was at sending it. Even under perfect conditions, he might have had problems. He struggled to catch it all. At least Leia used the special word-end signal between words. Otherwise, he’d have never gotten anywhere.
“B-A-N-D-I- something-something
word ends,” he muttered to himself. “Bandi? Bandits! Oh, great!” He tried to concentrate on the next word.
Missed something -R-O-M word ends
. Burning suns, Leia, do you have to send so fast?
Missed something -E-H-I-N-D word ends J-A-D-E-S-F-I—
    Han missed the end of it as the coneship bobbled about again, but he had read enough to know the score. Bandits, enemy fighters, were headed this way, coming from behind the
Jade’s Fire
. And either by bad luck or good timing they were heading in right as the coneship was at its most vulnerable.
    Han glanced over at the Selonians. You didn’t have to be an expert at reading Selonian expressions to know that they were both scared silly, Salculd only slightly less so than Dracmus. Han reminded himself she did not speak Basic. There was no point at all to telling Salculd about the bandits until she had the ship under control. Han was sure she hadn’t even seen the blink-code message. Good. Let her work. Let her work.
    The coneship slowly lumbered around into braking position, its fat stern pointed almost precisely straight down at the planet, but canted just slightly into the ship’s direction of travel, so the braking run could kill the craft’s forward momentum as well.
    Han checked his instruments, doing his best to make sense out of the Selonian notation. By some miracle or other, Salculd seemed to have gotten them into the right position, and at the right attitude. “Good, good,” he said as calmly as he could. Probably they had just a few seconds left before the bandits jumped them. But trying to rush Salculd would be worse than useless at this point. If she got any more scared, she might freeze completely. “Now then, Salculd, one other matter. Is time to, ah,
test
our defense plan. You will bring the ship to spin, please, of three spins per minute.”
    “Test?”
Dracmus sputtered. “But you said it was a one-time-only trick.”
    Han had been hoping no one would bring that up. At least Dracmus had spoken in Basic. There was still a million-to-one chance Salculd hadn’t caught on. “Quiet,” he said in Basic before switching back to Selonian. “Make the spins, please, Honored Salculd. Make sure all is well, in case needed.”
    It was clear that Salculd did not believe him—but it would seem she was willing to pretend she did, at least for a little while. “Yes, yes,” she said, “of course. Commencing axial spin.” The ship began to rotate around its conical axis, so the stars pinwheeled across the sky. Han studied the overhead view, as best he was able. He could just about spot the
Fire,
and the bandits were almost certainly smaller, and coming from behind. There was no way he could find them, especially with the ship spinning like a top. He gave it up. No point in worrying about things he could not change.
    “Disable internal damping,” Han said calmly, casually. The inertial dampers prevented anything more than a few percent of a ship’s acceleration and motion from being felt by those aboard. Without them, the occupants of a ship accelerating to light speed could be squashed to jelly. No one liked turning them off—but sometimes you had to do what you didn’t like.
    “But if we cannot restart inertial damping—”
    “Worry about such later!” Han snapped. He knew better than Salculd what it might mean if they couldn’t get the dampers back on. But they would have to live long enough for the problem to come up. “We need to use