[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(32)

More importantly, in harnessing the very forces that held the universe together, the station promised an improved scientific understanding of how the universe itself worked. If Centerpoint was lost, that opportunity might be gone forever.

But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. Dr. Seyah had stressed to the Jedi again and again his belief that destroying the computer controls the Corellians were installing throughout the system would be sufficient to keep control out of Corellia’s hands. With any luck, they’d listen. With any luck, they’d agree.

Boop. Now his shirt was a deep blue, with a stylized rancor rearing up on the front, arms outstretched. The little boy chuckled.

Dr. Seyah looked over at the boy’s mother. “Will you two be debarking at the station?”

She nodded, sending into motion her blue-frosted black hair, so fine that every little breeze from the shuttle’s life-support system stirred it. “I’m a cartographer, a member of the station-mapping project. Loreza Plirr.” She extended a hand across her boy.

Dr. Seyah shook it. Words bubbled up inside him. Don’t get off at the station. In hours, you could be superheated gas. Go back to Talus. Instead, he said, “I’m Toval Seyah.”

This was his job. This was the dark side to being a scientist and spy, something he’d never even tried to explain to the boy Jedi. He might just have to let a pretty young woman and her innocent son die.

Blast it.

“And this is my son, Deevan.”

“Hello, Deevan.” Gravely, Dr. Seyah shook the little boy’s hand. Deevan chuckled.

On the monitor screen, the stars twisted and elongated. Of course they didn’t in reality-but that was the visual effect of entering hyperspace. The ship left hyperspace almost as quickly, the duration of the greater-than-lightspeed portion of this flight mere seconds … and when the stars were returned to normal, in precisely the same positions as before, Centerpoint Station occupied the center of the monitor screen.

The station wasn’t pretty, wasn’t even elegant like the Death Stars whose size it exceeded. A gray-white blob with axial cylinders protruding at two opposed points, it was merely impressive in its scale and in the potential damage it could do.

At this distance, of course, its scale was not apparent. What looked like a smooth surface would, as they got closer, be revealed to be a rough, scaly exterior of towers, spires, antennae, parabolic dishes, conduits, traffic tubes, ports, spacescraper-sized battery arrays, shield generators, and other apparati, something like the surface of Coruscant in its busiest sectors but without that world’s feeble attempts at maintaining a consistently pleasing set of architectural standards.

Home, to Dr. Seyah, was an ugly spot in space.

He tugged at his shirt collar, and as he did so he squeezed a chip embedded there. The pressure activated the chip, causing it to transmit a single coded pulse on a single frequency. The transmission lasted a few thousandths of a second.

Boop. This time the shirt changed without the boy poking it. It was the shirt’s acknowledgment that it had received a countertransmission. The boy chuckled anyway.

Dr. Seyah settled in to watch the station grow larger on his monitor, and to compose himself for the struggle, and perhaps tragedy, that was to come.

In the shuttle’s cargo hold, in a cargo container the size of an average groundspeeder, Jacen Solo was awakened by a melodious alarm chime. His eyes flickered open.

There wasn’t much to see. The interior of the compartment was dimly lit by the device to the left of his head, a combination computer and life-support system. It blew cool air on him.

The air wasn’t cool enough. The heavy enviro-suit he wore kept him too warm. He’d been sweating as he slept, and the crate smelled like a rancor nest.

He glanced over at the computer monitor screen. Text there indicated that Dr. Seyah had just transmitted that they’d completed their final hyperspace jump before arriving at Centerpoint Station.

Jacen reached over and switched the computer off, plunging the crate interior into darkness.

By touch, he located the valve knob just inside the collar of his bulky suit. He turned it until it locked in the open position. Gas hissed out from the valve-breathable atmosphere. Half an hour’s worth was contained in the bottles he’d be carrying with him.

He reached up to the right of his head and found the suit helmet waiting there. He pulled it into place over his head and twisted it against his collar until it locked. Only then did he reach down to the latch beside his waist and trip it.

The top of the cargo box lifted away from him, revealing a dimly lit cargo-hold roof only a couple of meters above him.

Awkward in the enviro-suit, Jacen struggled into an upright position, dragged his atmosphere bottles to lock them into place against his back, and clambered out of the box.