Star Wars: The New Jedi Order V: Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse by James Luceno

Author:James Luceno
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307795526
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-03T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

Larger than the Death Star, Centerpoint Station hung gray-white and ominous between Talus and Tralus, drawing its power from the gravitic output of the so-called Double Worlds. Rotating slowly around an axis defined by two thick polar cylinders, the station had been designed to act as a gravity lens capable of directing amplified bursts of repulsor energy through hyperspace, sufficient for the capturing of distant worlds or the destruction of far-flung stars. Its surface was a mishmash of boxy superstructures as tall as skyscrapers and force-bubble pressurization access ports the size of impact craters. A bewildering tangle of piping, cables, and conduits coursed in all directions, winding through multi-storied forests of parabolic antennae, conical arrays, and setose projections. A prominent feature was the remains of a crashed spacecraft that had been macrofused to the hull and converted into living quarters.

“I was the first person to greet your uncle Luke, Lando Calrissian, Belindi Kalenda, and Gaeriel Captison when they came aboard,” Jenica Sonsen told Anakin, Jacen, and Ebrihim while a turbovator smelling of fresh paint conveyed them along a dark-pink tunnel toward the station’s core.

“I think we met you on Corellia afterwards,” Jacen said.

“You did. I’m delighted that you remember.”

“The simulated gravity is increasing,” Q9 interrupted in Basic, speaking through a vocoder the droid had adapted to form words like a mouth. “The increase is obviously a consequence of our traveling away from the axis of rotation.”

“Thank you, Queue-nine,” Ebrihim said, in deference to the droid’s oft-stated opinion that machines should be useful at all times and in all places.

Sonsen smiled at the exchange. “It has long been our hope to provide Centerpoint with artificial gravity, but for the time being, we’re relying on centrifugal gravity. Perhaps if we’re successful in assisting in the war effort, the New Republic will finally allocate the funds necessary to despin the station. But even without artificial gravity, the Mrlssi have done wonders to make Hollowtown and many other areas perfectly livable.”

She was an upbeat, handsome woman, with black curly hair, a long, thin face, and expressive eyebrows. Eight years earlier, following Centerpoint’s unexpected flare-ups—which had not only destroyed two distant stars with precise hyperspace shots but had also incinerated thousands of colonists who had been living in Hollowtown—Sonsen had been left in charge of the station, while survivors fled for the safety of Talus and Tralus. Since then she had headed up the cartography team that was slowly mapping the complex interior of the immense orb, a task Sonsen herself doubted would be completed in her lifetime.

“Did your team get along with the archaeologists who were deported?” Jacen asked.

Sonsen frowned. “They weren’t deported, so much as removed for their own safety. But, yes, of course we got along. All of us are interested in learning whatever we can about the species who built Centerpoint and assembled the Corellian system. I’m afraid, however, that the archaeologists may have erred by making a political issue of their removal. If, as the Centerpoint Party advocates, each of

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