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“We’ve heard the rumors,” Jacen said.

Thrackan sneered. “That’s your mother talking. What about you, Anakin? Are you here on a tour, or are you really willing to do what’s necessary to safeguard Corellia from attack?”

Anakin considered it. “That depends on what you have planned for Centerpoint.”

Thrackan adopted a look of puzzlement. “What we have planned is an interdiction field. What else could we hope for?”

“How about the ability to vaporize every unwanted ship—Yuuzhan Vong or otherwise—that shows itself here?” Jacen chimed in. “The Watchkeeper was destroyed by one shot from the repulsor on Selonia, and Centerpoint has a thousand times the firepower of all five planetary repulsors combined. It can create a compression wave strong enough to induce a star to explode.”

Thrackan looked to a pale, thin-faced technician. “This is Antone,” he said. “He was also here during the crisis. In fact, he had family at Bovo Yagen, the star that would have been destroyed if Anakin hadn’t intervened in time.”

“Centerpoint can indeed induce stars to go nova,” Antone said. “The Triad caused the explosions of EM-1271 and Thanta Zilbra, but those results cannot be duplicated.”

“You’re saying that Centerpoint can’t be used as a weapon?” Jacen asked.

Antone shrugged. “Frankly, we’re not sure. In order to loose a burst of repulsor power from the South Pole, the station has to reorient its spin axis, then go through a series of power surges, pulses, transient events, and radiation releases in advance of actually firing. When Centerpoint destroyed EM-1271, Glowpoint’s energy spikes killed thousands of colonists.”

“No one wants to risk a repeat of that catastrophe,” Thrackan said.

Jacen looked at him. “If it’s true that you’re only interested in fashioning an interdiction field, then you should be able to do that yourself. During the crisis, you were the one placed in control of Centerpoint’s jamming and interdiction field capabilities.”

“Yes,” Thrackan said slowly, “but the crisis was resolved before I got to try my hand at operating Centerpoint. What’s more, things have changed since your uncle Luke and the others shut Centerpoint down. Now neither of those systems is responding the way they once did.”

Antone cleared his throat meaningfully. “One problem is that the station’s barycenter point is no longer stable. Centerpoint has always moved about to stay properly positioned and oriented, but the repositioning maneuvers have become erratic.”

“In other words,” Thrackan clarified, “we haven’t been able to initiate an interdiction field on demand.”

“Only Anakin can do it,” Antone said nervously. “As a result of his activation of the Drall repulsor, the entire system imprinted on him.” He looked at Anakin. “On your fingerprints, your DNA, perhaps even your brain waves. I’ve been proposing this for eight years now, but no one was interested in having you return here until now.”

“There’s only one way to find out if Antone’s theory merits further investigation,” Thrackan said. He gestured toward what was obviously a special console. “Take the controls, Anakin. Let’s see where it goes from there.”

Jacen and Ebrihim threw Anakin troubled looks, to which Anakin responded with a nod, meant to be mollifying. But even as he moved toward the console—with every tech watching—Anakin could feel the system beginning to respond to him.

Vague memories of his experiences inside the Drall repulsor surfaced as he sat down and ran his hands over the console. After a moment, as had happened long ago on Drall, he seemed to glimpse a virtual array of switches and controls and linkages, all of which had little to do with the knobs and levers and dials that covered the control panel.

Hesitantly, he placed his hands on the console.

A tone sounded and a flat spot on the panel began to twist and shimmer, then swell upward, forming itself into a handle like a spacecraft’s joystick.

When Anakin reached for it, the handle reshaped itself to fit his left hand, and everyone in the room—even Jacen—gasped.

In his mind, as if on a display screen, Anakin could