Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [98]
The Maw, from far away, was visible only as a big splotch of color with dark singularities sucking in colorful gasses. It was a convergence of black holes, their random placement almost completely enclosing within it an area of space. The extreme gravitational and light distortion caused by the overlapping fields of effect made it impossible for light within that space to escape and made it fatal for any ship to try to enter or depart along a straight path. The routes to the interior space were complicated and devious, skirting areas made impossibly dangerous by the black holes’ gravitational exertion. Only a very good pilot could navigate one of the known approaches. Only an extraordinary pilot could find a new one.
Today Han was playing it safe, traveling along one of the known approaches. Knowledge of those routes was confined to a very few people. Leia knew Han could probably feel his way through a new approach, but now, with a ship full of children and teens aboard, with Yuuzhan Vong conducting activity at the nearby Kessel system, was not the time to explore.
Eventually Han made the final course correction and vectored toward Shelter, the space station growing at the center of the sheltered space of the Maw. He breathed out several minutes’ worth of tension and said, “There it is. Uglier than ever.”
Shelter was an ad-hoc collection of parts assembled by Lando Calrissian and a collection of advisers and patrons he trusted. Cobbled together into its structure were remains of the original Maw Installation, a collection of hollow planetoids that had housed the workers and technicians who had fabricated Imperial superweapons, plus components of old space stations, modules stripped from cargo vessels, and extrusions whose origins Leia couldn’t identify.
In minutes, they were docked at their designated berthing area, a domelike attachment—whose base was about four times the diameter of the Millennium Falcon, and whose surfaces, a matte silver decorated with patches of rust, hinted at similar antiquity—which had not been in place the last time they’d visited, several weeks before. Waiting for them as they descended the ramp was a tall woman whose elegance and expensive dark clothes spoke of aristocracy … and distant times and places where aristocrats might enjoy the benefits of their station.
Leia hurried ahead of the descending line of Jedi kids and embraced her. “Tendra! I didn’t know you were here.”
Lando’s wife gave her a return smile. “You almost missed me. I brought some matériel and I’ve spent the last few days making sure it was up and running.”
“What matériel? ” Han asked.
Tendra waved her hand, her gesture taking in the entire docking bay and, by extension, the rest of the dome. “This. It’s a deep-space habitat module used by worldshapers. It has its own gravity generator, even a crude old hyperdrive. It’s been in storage on a Corporate Sector scrap heap for generations. I was able to pick it up for, well, less than it’s worth.”
“And now it’s the core of the Jedi portion of Shelter? ” Leia asked.
“Yes. I’ve made sure some of the areas originally intended for worldshaping materials have been restructured for training halls. It’s pretty short on supplies—”
“We brought supplies,” Han said. “In the other freighter, as well as the Falcon. Food, fabrication machinery, energy cells and fuel, recordings …” His gaze fell on the Jedi children spreading out through the docking bay, looking at the cargo loaders and Tendra’s ship, the Gentleman Caller. “And brats.”
“Hey.” Valin Horn, Corran’s son, stopped a couple of meters away and gave him a scowl. “I’m not a brat.”
“No, your dad’s the brat in the Horn family.”
Valin