Inside the shielded supply room, Daala waited at the head of the long table she had installed for the express purpose of the detente meeting. The table was irregularly shaped, with rounded corners and a looping perimeter intended to dismiss any subtle hierarchy in seating order. The gathered warlords were all equal as far as Daala was concerned: equally pompous fools. But she needed to foster an impression of fairness and impartiality, if they were ever to begin open negotiations.
Without windows the place seemed like a dungeon, so Daala had added electric-blue illumination crystals around the room to shed a soothing cool glow from shoulder-high metal staffs, high-tech torches reflecting off the dull gray walls. Outside the door, scarlet-robed Imperial Guards stood ominously silent, heightening the aura of command in her presence.
Daala sat back in her uncomfortable chair; she preferred rigid furniture because it kept her attention focused. She took several deep breaths, collecting her thoughts, gathering her stamina for what she knew would be a dreadfully difficult meeting. Daala despised meetings, preferring instead to make unilateral decisions and follow through on them--but that wouldn't work in this case. At least not yet.
She had to give the warlords a chance.
Pellaeon stood to one side of the door as an honor guard. High Admiral Teradoc was the first to pass through the doorway, fat and sweaty-faced, staggering even in the low gravity. His beady eyes were filled with seething hatred as he flicked a venomous glance at Pellaeon. With an out-thrust lower lip, Teradoc took the nearest chair to minimize the distance he had to walk. He placed himself equally distant between Pellaeon, whom he considered a traitor, and Daala--which, as an interloper, was probably worse.
After him came Supreme Warlord Harrsk, the little man with the hideously scarred face. Then Superior General Delvardus, a tall and skeletal man with dark-brown hair and shock-white eyebrows that stood out like electrical discharges from his forehead; he had a square chin bisected by a deep cleft.
Following Delvardus came an endless string of High Moffs, Honored Overlords, Supreme Leaders, and other commanders with similarly pompous yet meaningless titles.
When the last of the warlords had taken his seat, Pellaeon clicked his heels together and marched briskly to the front. Making his turns sharp and exaggerated, he came to stand at attention beside Daala. "I want to thank you all for coming here,” he said. "I know this is a difficult compromise even agreeing to meet, but you must hear us out for the future of the Empire."
Daala rose slowly to her feet, moving at the exact pace she hoped would capture their attention: fast enough so as not to distract them, slow enough to give them time to dread what she might say or do. She flashed her emerald eyes. "One Empire, one fleet--only this will guarantee us victory."
From his seat obese High Admiral Teradoc made a rude sound with his lips. "Those platitudes might work with impressionable young soldiers, but not us. We're beyond all that high-sounding nonsense."
Pellaeon stiffened beside Daala, and his face blanched. She could sense the genuine anger boiling up inside him as he said, "Sir, they are not just platitudes. We're talking about the fate of the Empire."
"What Empire?" Teradoc said. "We are the Empire." He waved his pudgy hand to encompass the other warlords and scowled.
Daala threw her words out like a fistful of ice chips. "High Admiral Teradoc, that would be cause for immediate execution if the Emperor were here."
"Well, he's not here," Teradoc snapped back.
"And so we must function without him." Daala glared at the High Admiral for a heartbeat, then swept her gaze across the other warlords who seemed alternately amused or bored by the altercation.
"I have seen what remains of the Imperial starfleet," she said. "I've visited most of you in the past year, urging you to put aside your differences. Supreme Warlord Harrsk has a fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers. High Admiral Teradoc has a force of Victory'-class warships. You others have blastboats, capital ships, millions upon millions of stormtroopers--unstoppable military might if we choose to use it as such!”
"Grand Admiral Thrawn proved the Rebels have not yet managed to consolidate their own meager resources. Because of your rivalries, every one of your sectors has devoted vast resources to creating weaponry. It is time to use those resources against our real enemies instead of against each other."
"Fine words, Admiral Daala." Warlord Harrsk mockingly clapped his hands. "And how do you propose that we do that?"
Daala pounded her gloved fist on the table. "By forging an alliance. If the Rebels can do it, so can we."
Superior General Delvardus at a far corner of the table stood up to leave, brushing himself off. "I've heard enough. This is just a poorly disguised power grab. I've spent more funds than any of you on military buildup." His forehead wrinkled, and his bright white eyebrows crawled together. "I'm not sharing my glory."
As the skeletally thin man turned his back to Daala, she touched a hidden control panel under the table. The heavy durasteel door heaved up on hydraulic pistons and slammed into place, sealing gaskets around the edges. Multicolored lights scrambled like outraged insects on the square panel of the operating mechanism.
"What is this!" Delvardus said, whirling.
"That is a cyberlocked door with a timing mechanism," Daala said. "Even I can't open it for the next three hours. You will sit down, Delvardus."
Several of the warlords lurched to their feet. High Admiral Teradoc attempted to rise, but his bulk dragged him back down, and he simply smacked a sweaty palm on the tabletop. The Imperial commanders shouted and bellowed and hammered their fists and lashed out at each other, but Daala stood firm, weathering their tantrums.
Pellaeon remained beside her, looking decidedly uneasy.
"This is not a power grab," Daala finally said when the uproar had died down. "I know that other Imperial officers have left the fleet, throwing their lot in with criminals and lowlifes because it gives them a chance for a pathetic personal gain, but you—which while I resent your destructive tactics--at least hold a shadow of allegiance to our once-great Empire.”
"You have three hours to choose a nominal leader. There's nothing else you can do. We are all sealed inside this chamber--so you may as well make the best of it."
She sat down and clasped her hands, squeezing the black leather between her fingers with a soft strangling sound. And she waited. Hour after hour the squabbling grew more strident, more childish. Rivalries erupted between competing warlords: old vengeances were redcld, allegations of betrayals and threats of reprisals hurled in each other's faces.
For the first hour Daala was disturbed, but still held out some hope. In the second hour, though she kept her anger well hidden, she wanted to bash their skulls together. By the middle of the third hour Daala gave up any attempt to mask her contempt for the squabbling warlords.
Finally, Warlord Harrsk lost control of himself during a shouting match with Teradoc; the little scar-faced man leaped across the table, scrambling on his knees, and launched himself at the obese High Admiral, trying to wrap his short fingers around Teradoc's fat throat. The chair tipped over, and both crashed to the floor, cursing and shouting.
The other warlords stood up, some cheering, others yelling for them to stop. Pellaeon finally stormed over to the scene, grabbed Harrsk, lifted the short man bodily in the low gravity, and cast him onto the flat table. Teradoc bellowed in rage, his face florid. His breathing rasped into his lungs like a damaged air-recirculation system.
Daala turned and ripped one of the electric-blue glowtorches from the floor behind her. "Enough!" she shouted. She raised the durasteel staff high and smashed it down upon the tabletop. The glowcrystal exploded into shards with crackling blue sparks, and transparent fragments flew in all directions. She hammered the rod down again and again, denting the table, bending the staff, and fragmenting the end. Five minutes remained on the cyberlocked door.
Her action, unexpected and violent, brought the dissenting leaders to a surprised s
tandstill. She tossed the metal pole to the floor, where it clanged and clattered and finally lay still.
In utter disgust Daala spoke, her voice low and heavy like a blunt instrument. "I didn't want to rule. I had no intention of becoming a political leader. I wanted to crush the Rebels instead--but you give me no choice. I cannot leave the Empire in the hands of fools like you."
Daala reached into the hip pocket of her olive-gray uniform and withdrew a translucent breathmask, which she placed over her mouth and nose. She activated the mask with a fingertip, and it sealed itself to her face, grafting its edges to her skin cells. Beside her, Pellaeon suddenly looked up in dawning comprehension. He grabbed for his own mask as Daala reached under the table again and pressed a button, triggering the nerve-gas systems she had programmed the worker droids to install. The air vents made hissing sounds, like serpents expelling venomous breath into the room.
In unison, the warlords howled at the treachery; Daala noted with amused irony that at last they had found a way to do something together.
Teradoc attempted to haul his bloated form to his feet. Daala presumed he would die of a heart attack if the nerve gas didn't get him first.
Warlord Harrsk and three others didn't waste time venting their rage but rushed to the door, pounding at the cyberlock, trying to trigger its release. But the timer had four minutes yet to run, and Daala knew the gas required only seconds to complete its fatal action.
Tall, skeletal Delvardus snatched at the insignia on his chest with an intent look of concentration on his face. He managed to clip several badges and medals together. He withdrew a strut from one of his shoulderboards, and when he had finished clicking the components together, Daala saw that he had assembled a wicked-looking, if primitive, knife.
On his long, bony legs Delvardus staggered toward her, raising the blade. His face grew splotchy with rose-colored eruptions of tiny blood vessels in his cheeks and eyes. He gasped.
Daala remained standing where she was, a ready target. She stared at him with polite interest.
Delvardus had accepted the fact he would die, and he meant to slash Daala before the nerve gas caused him to succumb.
The warlords were falling right and left now, slumping atop each other. Some choked, clutching their throats; others vomited. Two sprawled across the table. Most had managed to make it to the floor.
Delvardus kept coming, one plodding step at a time, as if his limbs were sheathed in rapidly hardening duracrete. His eyes were a deep red, filled with blood from the inside as he strained, lifting his knife.
Daala watched him topple at her feet. The knife clattered on the floor plates.
Pellaeon looked shocked but resigned as he watched the unexpected carnage. Fat Teradoc continued to wheeze and cough. Daala was surprised to see that the obese warlord was the last to die ...
A few moments later Daala and Pellaeon stood like statues, the only two survivors, surveying the massacre of Imperial military commanders. Pellaeon blinked in shock. "It's done, then," he whispered, as if he still couldn't believe what he had just witnessed.
Daala merely nodded grimly and said, "This is what had to be."
Right on time, the cyberlock clicked, and the heavy door swung open, setting Daala and Pellaeon free.
CHAPTER 20
Admiral Daala's consolidated fleet arrived in a threatening posture at the military outpost of dead Superior General Delvardus.
She took an ample landing force as a show of strength when she went to parley with Cronus, Delvardus's second in command.
The skeletal Superior General had chosen a small world on the outer fringe of the habitable band from its sun, an arid place of rusty sands, barren rocks, and labyrinthine canyons left over from ancient, long-dried floods.
From her newly commandeered Star Destroyers, Daala gathered a squadron of assault shuttles that looked like deadly beetles that streaked down in an impressive phalanx through the pale green atmosphere, homing in on the secret location of Delvardus's fortress. She had taken the coordinates from highly useful spy files that Pellaeon had down-loaded from the central databanks of High Admiral Teradoc's flagship.
The squadron cruised low over the broken and veined landscape, following the blistered cracks and fissures. Looming canyon walls cast thick shadows. As the ships penetrated the canyon network, the box-ended gorge stopped abruptly in an imposing facade--the personal fortress of Superior General Delvardus.
The assault shuttles landed in front of the huge stone gates, settling onto a dry wash as hard as duracrete. Daala and Pellaeon emerged, accompanied by half of her heavily armed stormtroopers. The remainder of her troops stayed inside the assault shuttles, manning the weapons. The Gamma assault shuttles hissed and ticked as their engines cooled, settling in for the siege.
She had no idea how Delvardus's second in command would react.
Two of the stormtroopers opened the back cargo compartment and withdrew Daala's most important show of force. "Vice Admiral Pellaeon and I will walk out front," she said.
"Two of you will carry the trophy, and the rest follow on either side as my honor guard."
They marched up the paved wash to the towering edifice of the fortress, their boots making sounds like gunfire as they clomped across the ground. The arid wind issued a quiet moan. Daala saw no other movement.
The stormtroopers wrestled with a blocky frame on antigrav mounts, trying to keep it from jerking in the brisk breezes. Suspended in the middle of the frame, crackling and preserved in a high-powered force field, like a dead insect trapped in amber, hung the gangly, cleft-jawed body of Superior General Delvardus. His face was blotched and contorted in a grimace, his eyes squeezed shut from the effects of the nerve gas.
Daala glanced behind her, fiery hair whipping about in the cold gusts. Her lungs burned from the thin air, but she didn't want to appear weak wearing a breathmask.
Pellaeon straightened his uniform and stood with Imperial demeanor. Daala held her head up and strode toward the massive doors five times her own height--Daala suspected the grandeur was mostly for show. Despite Delvardus's proclaimed enormous military expenditures, she had seen virtually no armed presence around the entire planet, and she wondered if the second in command might be planning some sort of ambush.
Stepping apart so that all observers could witness the suspended body of Superior General Delvardus, Daala and Pellaeon stood before the towering stone doorway and waited. She spotted voice pickups cleverly concealed in crevices in the rocks.
"I have a message and a gift for Colonel Cronus," Daala said in a normal speaking voice, turning her mouth toward the voice pickups.
With a sound like a disgusted sigh, the great stone doors cracked open by two meters, revealing an armed contingent of Imperial soldiers hiding inside. Daala did not permit herself to look the least bit ruffled. "Your Superior General has acted in a heinous and traitorous manner, putting his own wishes ahead of the future of the Empire."
The guards looked as if they wanted to blast her for insulting their former master so blatantly, but they didn't dare act in front of Daala's stormtrooper escort and the heavily armed Gamma assault shuttles.
"Delvardus did not act alone, but continued a war of attrition, fighting other warlords to the detriment of us all. I present here"--she withdrew a holo cube from her pocket and set it in front of the sparkling frame that held the suspended body--"a recording of our entire détente council, so that you may see your general's actions, as well as those of the other warlords. Then you will understand why it was necessary to take such a drastic step.”
"These assault shuttles are merely a fraction of our forces, but they are sufficient to cause significant damage to your fortress. The rest of our fleet waits in orbit. Look over these items and decide whether to join us as part of a reunited Imperial force--or whether to be considered renegades like your former master. You have one hour to deliberate. If we don't hear from you, we will come back and destroy you as accomplices."
She spun abo
ut. The stormtroopers set the heavy frame down, switching off its antigrav platform before marching behind Daala and Pellaeon. Daala did not turn to watch, but she heard the guards hustle out of the fortress and gather up their fallen leader and the message cube. They rushed back inside, and the thud of armored doors echoed in the narrow canyon.
After the hour was up, Colonel Cronus decided to join Daala's forces.
Wholeheartedly.
An armored fast transport from the fortress hangars took Daala and Pellaeon, along with a contingent of their suspicious stormtrooper guards, away from the planet. Colonel Cronus himself piloted the armored transport, transmitting recognition signals into deep space. Leaving Daala's battleships behind, Cronus took them straight up out of the system, perpendicular to the ecliptic and toward the sparse cometary cloud.
Colonel Cronus was a small man but packed with power. His shoulders were broad, his chest rippled, and his swollen biceps showed that he took great care to maintain himself at peak physical form, even in the reduced gravity of the small, bleak planet. His curly black hair was seeded with silvery strands that gave him a distinguished appearance. His complexion was deeply tanned and seamed with lines that made him look weathered; his large brown eyes constantly flicked back and forth, drinking in details. He spoke sparingly, answering questions put to him with just the right amount of information.
"I need to make a brief hyperspace hop," Cronus said, "to get us far enough to the edge of the system--unless you'd rather we spent weeks at full burn of our sublight engines?"
Daala stiffened. Pellaeon frowned suspiciously, and the stormtrooper guards snapped to attention; but she decided that Cronus had little to gain here by sudden treachery--and that trusting him with a responsibility such as this could only plant the seeds of deeper loyalty. "Very well, Colonel," she said. "I'm anxious to see what Delvardus has managed to create with all the credits he's been spending."
Pellaeon looked at her as if in warning, his heavy mustache drooping; but she shook her head imperceptibly. The vice admiral sat back and forced himself to relax. Cronus accepted her orders without question and began programming the navicomputer.
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