Tales From The Empire

by Peter Schweighofer

  the nearby Kuat Drive Yards. What stupid names they have, she

  thought--the Impervious, the Penetrator, the Inflexible, the

  Indomitable, the Inexorable, and the Exterminator. If I were naming

  Star Destroyers, she thought, I'd give them names like the Iron Hand,

  the Raptor, or the Titania. Still, what do you expect from people with

  so little imagination they let computers come up with their access

  codes?

  Shannon heard voices through the thin pre-fab walls of her room;

  someone had entered the apartment, and her parents were greeting the

  visitor. Deciding to investigate, she saved the Star Destroyer files

  under the password "dumbnames" and shut down her computer's code

  program.

  The Voorson family had been techs at Kuat Freight Port for

  generations.

  Most of them had spent their entire lives aboard the station--they were

  born in the company Wellness Center, educated in the company school,

  apprenticed to and then hired by Kuat Port Support Services.

  They married co-workers, raised their families in company housing, and

  rarely left the station, even to go so far as the planet Kuat itself.

  There was no reason to leave--the company stores on the station

  provided everything they needed, the pay and benefits for KFP workers

  were among the best in the system, and they had the pride and

  satisfaction of knowing that, as members of the Kuat Engineering

  conglomerate, they were helping build the finest starships in the

  galaxy. Still, every so often a Voorson would look beyond the

  comfortable walls of a station apartment to see what the rest of the

  thousand-thousand worlds had to offer. Shannon's cousin, Deen, was one

  of these wandering Voorsons.

  "Deen!" she squealed excitedly at the sight of the · young man

  embracing her father. "Oh, Deen, it's you!

  You're finally here! Where have you been? What have you been

  doing?"

  Shannon leapt at the guest.

  Her cousin turned to catch her. "Hey, Little Bit, I've miSSed you!

  Oof!" He 'grunted, as he tried to lift her off the floor.

  "You've grown, Little Bit let me look at you!

  You're so tall now, and your hair is so long--when I left, you were a

  baby, with braids only to your ears, and Aunt Nell had you sleep with a

  scarf on to keep them from standing straight up in the morning!"

  Nell Voorson nodded, and smiled wryly. "Now I have to keep her from

  chewing the ends."

  "Oh, Deen," said Shannon, "I've missed you so-come and see my room!

  It's all different now and I have my own computer and everything!" She

  tugged on his hand.

  Deen smiled indulgently at the child. "I've missed you, too, Little

  Bit, but don't you think your parents want to talk to me too?"

  "Oh, go with her, Deen," said Nell. "You can talk while Johan and I

  get supper on."

  "I can't believe you're really here," said Shannon, hopping up and

  down in the center of her room. "It's been four whole years! What

  have you been doing?"

  "Slaying dragons."

  Shannon laughed. "No, Deen, really!"

  "Really! Well, sort of. Helping to slay artificial drag-ons--I've

  been working as a tech." He took a seat next to Shannon's computer.

  "Where?"

  "Oh, different places," he said. His dark eyes wandered over the

  room.

  "Are you still reading those old stories grandmother gave you?" he

  asked as he spotted the story platform on her computer.

  "Yep," said Shannon, "even though Mother says I should outgrow them,

  like dolls."

  "I don't see many dolls here," said Deen.

  "Yep. I like computers now. I'm a slicer. I can slice into

  anything."

  "Anything?" Deen asked, chuckling.

  "Anything. So who do you work for? What kind of work do you do?

  Do you get paid a lot? Do you fix droids, or ships, or what?"

  "Hey," said Deen, "one question at a time! I work for some friends I

  made, right after I left here. They're good friends. I don't get paid

  a lot, but I like what I'm doing.

  Mostly I work on ships . . ."

  "What kind?"

  "Small starcraft, mostly, but some larger ones, and anything else that

  my friends need fixed. I have to be flexible."

  "What's the hardest thing you've ever had to fix?"

  Deen paused. "Well," he said, glancing at the closed bedroom door, "a

  few months ago, I had to adapt some airspeeders to operate at 20

  degrees below freezing . . ."

  "And did they work?"

  "Well enough . . . That's Vici of Alderaan, isn't it?" he asked,

  pointing to the story platform on the computer.

  "Yup, it's still my favorite. Vici is so brave."

  "One who has the Force need have no fear," Deen murmured.

  "That's what Vici's grandfather tells her. Say," Shannon asked, "did

  you get a chance to visit Alderaan? Before . . ."

  Deen shook his head. "No. I never did. I wish I could have.

  But I never had the chance."

  "It's not fair," said Shannon, settling on the floor.

  "That I never got to Alderaan?" asked her cousin.

  "That they blew it up. Stupid Empire. Why'd they do it?

  Grandmother always said Alderaan was a planet of peace and beauty.

  There weren't any weapons there. Why'd they do it?"

  "Because of that," said Deen, pointing.

  "Because of my story platform?"

  "Because of that story," said Deen. "That story, and others like it.

  The stories of Alderaan were more dangerous to the Emperor than any

  weapon."

  "How can a story be more dangerous than a weapon?" asked Shannon.

  "Because of the ideas in it. On Alderaan, people still believed in the

  Force. On Alderaan, people remembered the Jedi Knights and the Old

  Republic. The people of Alderaan remembered the way things were in the

  galaxy before the coming of the Empire, before the days of hate and

  fear. And their stories, libraries and universities held all of the

  ideas that can destroy the Emperor--that love is stronger than hate,

  that people are stronger than weapons, that combined together the

  people in this galaxy have a strength the Emperor can never oppose."

  Deen's eyes were shining.

  "So the Emperor," said Shannon, "destroyed Alderaan to destroy all

  these ideas?"

  "He tried," said Deen, "but he didn't succeed. He can never succeed.

  The only way for him to control all the ideas in the galaxy would be

  for him to kill or enslave everyone in the galaxy, and that's

  impossible. He can't

  win. The more crimes he commits, the more people will stand up to fight him . . ."

  "Deen," asked Shannon, "are you a Rebel?"

  Deen put a hand to his mouth.

  "It's all right," Shannon added, "I won't tell anybody.

  Not even Mom and Dad. Here," she said, switching to the computer,

  "look what I found today. Just before you got here. I'll give you a

  copy if you want . . ."

  "How did you access this?" Deen asked, staring at the list of Star

  Destroyers. "Do you have any idea . . ."

  "It's easy to slice into Imperial files; they have computer-rigged

  pass-names. I make up my own codes myse
lf. Usually animal names, like

  'nerf,' or 'bhillen,' or even 'dog."" "I can't believe this," Deen

  said, still reading the data-screen.

  "Do you know what this is worth--do you know what will happen to you if

  someone catches you at this?"

  "No one's ever gotten past my codes," said Shannon proudly.

  "Maybe no one's ever considered investigating the files of a

  nine-year-old girl," said Deen. "You've got to stop this--you'll get

  yourself killed!"

  Shannon bit her lip. "Does that mean you don't want copies of the

  files?"

  Mistress Voorson called them to dinner, cutting off D een's answer.

  Gathered around a pot of stewed bhillen, the family discussed the last

  four years: Shannon's schooling, Nell's promotion to senior docking

  supervisor of Kuat Freight Port, Johan and Deen's work as techs. Johan

  complained about impatient starship captains expecting miracles.

  Deen told horror stories of combatting heat, cold, humidity, dust, ice,

  offensive flora, fauna, microbes, and every other threat to machinery

  on backwater worlds he neglected to name.

  "You actually found moss growing in the ships' coolant coils?"

  asked Johan.

  "Yep," said Deen. "Two hours before launch."

  "Did you get 'em cleaned up in time?"

  Deen grinned. "Skin of our teeth."

  "The Force was with you," his uncle said.

  Nell frowned slightly. "It's good to have you home, Deen, after so

  long. I was beginning to think you'd left us for good. And now," she

  said, "here you are. Are you in trouble, Deen? Do you need

  anything?"

  "Nell," her husband protested, "can't a boy fly in without an ulterior

  motive?"

  Deen stared at his plate. "Actually," he said, poking his custard with

  a spoon, "I was wondering . . ."

  "Ah, here it comes," said Nell.

  "My friends," Deen continued, "the ones I work with . . . They've had

  some problems lately, lost a lot of equipment . . ."

  "Lost?" asked Nell.

  "Uh, yeah, damaged. Beyond repair."

  "How?" asked Johan.

  "Well . . . there were a lot of asteroids, and---it's a long story,

  but the point is, we need a Colony Class 23669 power generator, and .

  . ."

  "Why don't you contact the factory, then?" asked Nell.

  "If you put your order in now, you could have the generator in six

  months or less, barring rush orders from Imperial Procurement."

  "We need it sooner than that, and we've heard a generator's being

  shipped out of here to an Imperial outpost within two weeks."

  "I don't see what that has to do with you," said Johan.

  "Well, see, Aunt Nell, you control the docking stations, and we figured

  if we could arrange docking clearance, you could slip in our barge

  driver in place of the Imperials' . . ."

  "I cannot believe," Nell said, "that YOu are sitting at my dining table

  talking about hijacking 25 million credits

  worth of power generator as if you were asking to borrow a speeder."

  "But Aunt Nell . . ."

  "You're talking about stealing that generator, aren't you?"

  "But . . . we could pay you . . ."

  Nell's mouth fell open. Johan found his voice. "Deen, do you hear

  what you're saying? This isn't just another prank, like the time you

  sliced into the school comm-system with phony evacuation drills .

  . ."

  "This is treason," Nell finished. "Deen, I don't want to hear another

  word about these so-called friends of yours.

  Now, because you're my nephew, I'm not going to turn you in and we're

  all going to pretend this conversation never happened. Is that

  perfectly clear?"

  The meal ended in silence.

  Shannon couldn't sleep that night. Hearing voices from her parents'

  room, she crept to their door to listen.

  "The Alliance is desperate for equipment, Nell!"

  "Do you think I care? Johan, that Alliance will never feed my family

  or give Shannon an education that'll get her off this station?

  "But the Empire . . ."

  "... Owns this system, and everything in it. Including us. And they

  have ways of disposing of traitors. Accidents. Johan, do you honestly

  believe it was a coincidence your brother died in that reactor

  malfunction less than a week after he'd repaired those Rebels' ship?

  Nothing is worth the safety of my family, Johan, nothing. Not the

  Alliance, not Alderaan . . ."

  "Not even Deen?"

  Shannon didn't stay to hear her mother's answer.

  Deen left the next morning after a tense, silent breakfast.

  "If you change your minds," he began.

  "We won't," his aunt said. "Now drop the subject."

  "But if you do," Deen persisted, "I'll be in-system for a few days.

  Here's a signaller you can use to contact me," he said, dropping the

  hand-held electronic device on a table near the door. "May the Force

  be with you."

  "Destroy that signaller," said Nell after the door had closed.

  "I'll do it, Mom," said Shannon, snatching up the device and darting to

  the reclamator. The appliance disposed of the morning's trash with a

  satisfying "crunch"--but the signaller remained hidden in Shannon's

  pocket.

  The elder Voorsons behaved as if Deen had never come; if Shannon

  mentioned his "friends" or his request for aid, she was sent to her

  room without discussion.

  "I can't understand it!" she said to herself on one such occasion.

  It's not as if the station doesn't mix stuff up all the time, she

  thought. Mother's always complaining about this-or-that going

  missing.

  Bugs in the station net--that's what she always says.

  If she gave Deen that generator, everyone would just think it was

  another computer mistake . . .

  Rolling out of her bed, Shannon flipped on her computer.

  A few minutes and slices later, she had the list of upcoming exports

  scrolling across her screen. There it is, she thought, a CC-23669

  generator, to be picked up at loading dock 42, at 1430 hours, five days

  from now. All right, she thought, if I change the pickup date, Mother

  will surely notice and stop us. Can't change the dock number either,

  that would make a huge fuss. But if I changed the time . . . How long

  does it take to link a driver to a barge? Daddy says he can do it in

  less than an hour--would two hours be enough?

  She changed the pickup time to 1230 and hoped her mother wouldn't

  notice. Then she pulled Deen's signall'er from under her pillow.

  "Who are you?" asked the security guard.

  Shannon gulped and tried to look cute and harmless.

  "Shannon Voorson, ma'am," she said.

  "Oh, Shannon," the woman said, recognizing the child, "why aren't you

  at school yet? What're you doing here?"

  Shannon knew that "I'm running away to join the Rebellion," would not

  be a popular answer to that question.

  Fortunately, she had come prepared with a lie.

  "My daddy forgot his lunch, so's I'm bringing it to him before I go. A

  bhillen sandwich--see?" She set her portable computer down and opened

  the thermabag to thrust it into the guard's face so that she was sure

 
; to catch the aroma of Bestinnian tang-root.

  "Oh, ah, yeah, sure," said the guard, pulling back and blinking.

  "Go find your daddy. I'm sure he'll love it."

  "Thanks," said Shannon. She bolted off, thinking that raw tang-root

  was pretty stinky, but there was no way that guard was going to dig

  past it and find Deen's signaller.

  She continued down the corridor toward her father's work area for a few

  more steps, ducked into an alcove, peeked out to see that the guard was

  gone, and then doubled back toward dock 42.

  The techs hadn't arrived at the dock yet that morning, so Shannon had