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“Here I implement my master plan to destroy Centerpoint Station.”

Kyp scowled. “Excuse me, but that’s what you said half a kilometer back. When you made me fight all those CorSec personnel in what you said was the spin thrust control chamber.”

Seyah nodded. “That was my first master plan to destroy Centerpoint Station. This is my second. Cup your hands.”

Kyp slung his GAG blaster rifle and did as requested. “Out of how many?”

“Well, I’m doing three. Plus, there are hopes that if the Alliance successfully takes charge of this facility, the remaining crew will initiate some sort of self-destruct plan installed since I left. I’m actually banking on that being the way to kill this place. Let the enemy do the work.” He placed his left boot in Kyp’s hands and stood. Kyp held him high enough that he could reach the passageway ceiling. Rapidly, with tools at his belt, he undid a ceiling panel, revealing wiring above. “At the spin thrust control chamber, I spliced in programming telling the station to count down a certain amount of time, then reverse the spin that gives the station its simulated gravity.” From another pouch, he drew a datacard and began splicing it into the wires above.

“Which, if it did so rapidly enough, might tear the station to pieces.”

“Very good. You’re quite bright for a Jedi.”

“How hard would you like to be dropped?”

“I’m just messing with you. Scientists do that. Problem is, the station’s master programming, which is half ancient stuff, half cobbled together by the best minds Corellia could force to cooperate, and half evolved out of the interfaces between them—”

“That’s three halves.”

“I knew you were bright. Anyway, the programming resists change. It may reject my plan, for all that I worked years setting it up. Just as I worked for years on this one.”

“What does this one do?”

“I’m tapping into data feeds that supply the auxiliary star map databases used by the targeting system. I’m redefining every star and planet in the galaxy—starting with the near ones, graduating out farther and farther—with the same set of coordinates.”

“Which coordinates?”

“Here.”

“Right here?”

“Technically, no. They’re being defined to the exact center of Hollowtown—the geographic center of this station. But the effect of the hyperspace beam is broad enough that, even as narrowly as I’m defining the coordinates, the station and everything for kilometers around it will be squashed down to a mass the size of a pan of ryshcate, but not as sweet.”

“Uh-huh. And how much time does this approach give us?”

Finished with his splicing, Seyah reaffixed the ceiling panel. “As long as it takes from now until they fire the weapon. A day…two seconds. Unless, again, the master programming rejects the data I just submitted, in which case this master plan is also ineffectual. Down.”

Kyp dropped him. Seyah landed awkwardly but came upright, unhurt.

“And what’s master plan number three?”

“If we can get to the fire-control chamber, we can splice in programming that might cause Glowpoint, at the center of Hollowtown, to overload and explode.”

“Radius of the explosion?”

Seyah shrugged. “A few thousand kilometers? I’m guessing here.”

Kyp nodded, his expression fatalistic. “Facts, exact numbers, reassurance…a Jedi seeks not these things.”

“Good! Let’s get going.”

ABOARD THE ANAKIN SOLO

Leia pulled herself along the rectangular horizontal shaft. It was a meter wide, somewhat less than that tall, and seemingly endless ahead and behind. Bunches of cables, bound to the surface above by flexible ties, were thick enough to graze her back, particularly when they reached a cross-passage, and some of them—unshielded by accident rather than design, she was sure—carried current. Han had howled when his back had brushed against one, half a kilometer back.

Han was behind her, Iella ahead, and Iella was moving comparatively easily, despite the fact that she was broader in most dimensions than Leia.

“You’ve done this before, Iella.”

Leia sensed but could not see her companion nod. “A bunch of times. Since leaving CorSec, I