Showdown at Centerpoint Read Online Free PDF Page A

centrifugal effect if plan is to work, and inertial damping cancels it out. End damping!”
    Salculd inhaled nervously and reached out her hand to cut off the inertial damping system. All of a sudden, Han felt his weight double, then triple, as the dampers stopped compensating for the ship’s deceleration. A moment later he felt the disorienting sensation of the ship spinning.
    “Confirm all inner airlocks sealed,” Han ordered.
    “All inner airlock doors sealed. Pressure in locks,” Salculd said. “Honored Solo, must we truly—”
    “Quiet! We must. Be ready for next step! Maintain course, maintain thrust, unless I order otherwise!” Han struggled to concentrate on the spinning starfield overhead. If this was going to work, it would take exact timing. But how could he time anything if he couldn’t see? Maybe he would get lucky and the
Jade’s Fire
would signal the all clear.
    And maybe he would wake up and discover the whole nightmare trip to Corellia had just been a dream. If only wishing could make it true. He had done his best. Now all they could do was hang on and see how it came out.
    *   *   *
    “Rear, ventral, and dorsal shields to full, forward shields to one quarter,” Mara ordered. “Divert shields as needed for ship safety.”
    Leia worked the shield settings. “Shields configured as ordered.”
    “Good,” Mara said. “Maintain turbolasers at standby. We are going to hold this course and speed. Act like they aren’t there. They can’t know how good or bad our detectors are. They’ve never seen this kind of ship before, but I know LAFs. They have the gear to detect turbos going on-line, but not shield activation. If we keep the guns off and stay on course, they might decide we can’t see them.”
    “What good does that do us?” Leia asked.
    “They might blow right past us and zero in on the coneship. My guess is that whoever is on those LAFs is targeting the Hunchuzuc, not us.”
    “But Han is—”
    “Safer this way,” Mara said, watching her displays. “We can handle seven or eight of them at once, but not twelve. Not in a direct engagement. But if the LAFs don’t engage us, we’ll have nice, clear forward viewshots right up their stern plates while they’re focused on the coneship. We can pick off three or four of them before the rest bring fire to bear on us. Set up the targeting system for tracking follow-fire. If they engage us directly, we return fire. If they go past us, commence fire when they are three kilometers past us. Understood?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “No buts,” Mara said. “This ship fights my way, or not at all.”
    Leia gave in again. Mara had far more experience at this sort of fight than she did. “Very well,” she said. “Stand by. Here they come.”
    Leia watched the stern detector displays as the LAFs came in, directly behind the
Fire
’s stern, trying to hide in the detection shadow produced by the sublight engines. They
were
trying to sneak up. From that bearing they wouldn’t even show up on most ships’ detectors.
    The LAFs swept in, their images in the detection screen breaking up just a bit due to interference from the sublight engines. Leia tensed up as they swept through the optimum firing range, and felt herself relax just a trifle as they swept on, past the
Fire
. But she didn’t relax too far—not when they were passing her by to take a crack at her husband’s ship.
    The LAFs flashed past the
Fire,
zeroing in on the coneship. “The coneship!” she cried out. “It’s spinning up. They must have got our warning.”
    “Let’s hope Han’s idea works better than it ought to,” Mara said.
    It wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, even if Leia had been thinking the same thing herself. But there was no time. “Coming up on three kilometers distance,” she said.
    “Commence fire,” Mara ordered.
    “Not unless they fire first!” Leia said. “Maybe they’re just here to throw a scare into us, or they might be on escort duty.