Read Online Showdown at Centerpoint by Roger MacBride Allen - Free Book Online Page A

sky, and then return to base before the field went back up.”
    “But she broadcasted constantly for days without anything happening to her,” Kalenda objected.
    “She didn’t have any choice. She had to transmit until I responded. Now she doesn’t have to take that chance. Your radionics broadcasts are much more powerful than hers, and they’re closer to anyone listening in the inner system. If the opposition spots your transmissions, they’ll know to look for her.”
    Kalenda’s face was expressionless. Had she known all this, and elected to risk Tendra’s life on the chance of getting more information? Or had it not occurred to her? That seemed unlikely enough in an officer as sharp as Kalenda seemed to be—though the last few days had been hard on all of them. Lando half expected her to offer excuses, to lie and say she hadn’t thought it through.
    But even if Kalenda played a cagey game, she didn’t play a dishonest one. “It’s never easy,” she said, “figuring the balance. I knew the risk was there, but I had to weigh the danger to her against the consequences if she had some bit of data without knowing about it—something that could save dozens, or hundreds, or millions of lives. If I had her
here,
and I could do a proper debriefing, I’m sure she could tell us all sorts of useful things.”
    “But you don’t have her here,” Luke said.
    “No, I don’t,” Kalenda agreed. “Even with a standard comlink I could get somewhere. But this business of waiting hours and hours for an answer, and then waiting hours and hours for her to hear the next question—it makes it impossible to get anywhere. If I had a comlink we could scramble so there was at least some chance of keeping it private—then we could get somewhere.”
    “That’s a lot of ifs,” Luke said. “Let’s leave them all out. What are the odds on your being able to get anything more out of Tendra as things stand?”
    Kalenda sighed and shook her head. “Just about zero,” she said. “But the
stakes
are so high.”
    “So high you had to try,” Luke said. “I understand. But if it can’t be done, it can’t be done.”
    Kalenda smiled humorlessly. “That doesn’t sound like a Jedi attitude,” she said.
    “Even Jedi know their limits,” said Luke.
    Kalenda nodded reluctantly. “Very well,” she said. “There are a large number of warships parked in orbitof Sacorria. That’s all we’re going to get out of Source T.”
    “All right then,” Lando said. “Let’s leave it there. We’re coming up on Centerpoint Station. Figuring it out ought to be enough to keep us busy right there.”
    Kalenda looked toward Lando again, and this time her glance seemed to meet his. “That’s an understatement, if ever I heard one,” she said.
    *   *   *
    It didn’t take Belindi Kalenda long to confirm that idea. Centerpoint was so absurdly big, so complex, and so unlike anything in her experience, that it was all but impossible to know where to start. Over the next day or so the Bakuran fleet moved in on Centerpoint, advancing very slowly. If Ossilege was merely pretending to be cautious, he was doing a good job of it. He moved his ships in carefully, pausing repeatedly in his approach to scan every bit of the station to the limits of the Bakuran detection systems. Not that Kalenda could blame him for caution. Not when Centerpoint could have swallowed the
Intruder
whole through the smallest of its sally ports.
    But even from the closest range Ossilege was willing to risk, the scan results weren’t good enough to satisfy Kalenda. She sat at a scan station in the
Intruder
’s intelligence section, sifting through the endless, inconclusive images of Centerpoint.
    It
seemed
as if the place was deserted, but go try to prove a negative. The enemy could have hidden a whole fleet of Star Destroyer-type warships in there, and a whole army of stormtroopers. If the ships were properly powered down to standby, and if the enemy was using