Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 05_ Agents of Chaos 02_ Jedi Eclipse - James Luceno [99]
“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 Corell’s five worlds should be treated as a separate entity, then it stands to reason that this station—which is certainly not indigenous to the system—should also be considered independent. As a result, I believe that Centerpoint may remain in New Republic hands for some time to come.”
Ebrihim opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it and fell silent for the remainder of the ride through the station’s two thousand levels of decks.
Originally a power-containment battery, Hollowtown was an open sphere, measuring sixty kilometers in diameter. The curving walls had once seen homes, parks, lakes, orchards, and farmland, basking in the overhead radiance of Glowpoint—a kind of pilot light for the entire station. But except for a few that housed scientists and the archaeological team before them, the houses had been dismantled. The only concession to what had once existed were the adjustable shadow-shields, installed to simulate night.
Positioned along the spin axis on both sides of Hollowtown were large cones ringed by six smaller cones, given the names North and South Conical Mountains. The arrangement of the cones was the geometry needed for a particular type of old-style repulsor.
Sonsen pointed out the sights as she ushered everyone to a small, well-shielded control room that had remained concealed during the station’s occupation, and had been discovered only by accident when a group of Mrlssi had been searching for a place to install a life-support monitor.
Consistent with the plumed avians from