The Rise of the Empire

by John Jackson Miller

  The Mon Cal’s confusion didn’t abate.

  Teller looked at Hask. “It was your job to check for trackers.”

  “I did,” the Zygerrian all but snarled. “There weren’t any.”

  “Or you didn’t find any,” Teller said.

  “Why would this Faazah attach a locator to Tarkin’s ship?” Anora said. “Or is that just a Sugi thing to do?”

  “Offhand, I can’t imagine a reason,” Artoz said. “But we can certainly outrace the Predator if we have to.”

  Teller considered it. “That doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better, Doc. Not if we’ve got a faulty stealth system.”

  “Teller, we are not being scanned,” Cala repeated. “The stealth system is operating impeccably. Check the status displays for yourself if you don’t trust me.”

  Teller made a placating gesture. “Of course I trust you. I just don’t get it.”

  “Should we contact our ally?” Salikk said.

  “No, not yet,” Teller said. “We’ll be updated soon enough, in any case.”

  “Unless…,” Hask began.

  Anora aimed a faint smile at the Zygerrian. “I’ll bet I know what you’re going to say, and yes, that occurred to me, too.”

  Teller and the others looked at the two of them. “What am I missing?” Teller asked.

  “Vader,” Hask said, exhaling. “Vader and Tarkin.”

  Teller continued to regard them. “What, the Sugi is giving them a ride?”

  Anora rocked her head from side to side. “Or they appropriated his ship.”

  “They could have.” Teller plucked at his lower lip. “Still doesn’t make sense, though—not if we’re invisible to the Predator’s sensors. Or are you saying that Tarkin’s got some secret way of locking onto us?”

  Cala spoke to it. “We disabled the slave circuit when we silenced the stormtroopers’ comlinks and the ship’s comm.”

  “Maybe Tarkin is a telepath, along with being a ship designer,” Salikk said.

  “Vader,” Hask rasped. “Va-der.”

  Teller locked eyes with her. “Vader has a way of neutralizing stealth technology?”

  Hask spread her slim, furry hands. “Who knows what’s inside that helmet of his? Besides, what other explanation is there?”

  “We should have launched sooner,” Cala said. “We’d be out of the system by now.”

  Teller shot him a gimlet look. “A couple of jumps from here, I’m going to remind you that you said that.” He glanced at Salikk. “How soon until we can go to lightspeed?”

  The Gotal studied the navicomputer display. “As soon as you give the word.”

  Teller took a breath and let it out. “Let’s see them try to track us through hyperspace.”

  —

  “Is this ship fast enough to close the distance?”

  Darth Vader pulled the yoke toward him. “It is faster than most, Governor, but unfortunately not as fast as yours. We need to disable the corvette before it can elude us.”

  Tarkin despaired. As disturbingly well armed as the late crime lord’s ship was, disabling the Carrion Spike was easier said than done. If the ship was, in some sense, a measure of his standing in the Imperial hegemony, then his vaunted reputation just might go down with her.

  They were at the edge of the Murkhana system, the eponymous world well behind them, already a memory, and a bitter one. He and Vader were sharing the controls, Vader wedged into an acceleration chair made for a much smaller being, Tarkin strapped into the copilot’s chair. Crest and the other stormtroopers were amidships, manning the ship’s quad laser cannons.

  Never having shared a cockpit with Vader, Tarkin was astonished by the Dark Lord’s piloting skills. Though perhaps he shouldn’t have been.

  The sound of Vader’s slow, rhythmic breathing overwhelmed the cockpit as he indicated an area dead ahead and slightly to port. “There.”

  Tarkin saw nothing but star-studded blackness. Nor did the ship’s instruments register the Carrion Spike, which was obviously running in stealth mode. He couldn’t imagine how Vader was managing to track the ship, but was for the moment content to be mystified.

  “Why are they still in system?” he said. “They can’t have shipjacked it for a joyride.”

  Vader glanced at him across a center console. “They were convinced we couldn’t follow them. They are merely taking time to familiarize themselves with the instruments.”

  “Then they must know that we’re tracking them.”

  “Indeed they do.”

  Tarkin found himself actually warming to Vader, especially after what had happened in the Sugi’s headquarters. No sooner had word arrived that Sergeant Crest and his stormtroopers were in possession of the Parsec Predator and the codes necessary to launch her than Vader exacted his revenge on the crime lord for having been kept waiting. Tarkin knew merely by the gasping sounds that began to erupt from the Sugi that Vader was performing that thumb-and-forefinger dark magic of his to crush the crime lord’s windpipe. By then, too, the ambassador’s stormtroopers had rushed into the headquarters, unleashing flash grenades and blaster bolts that had caught the Sugi’s underlings by surprise. At one point Vader had asked them whether they actually wanted to die for their leader, and it was when they replied with weapons that Vader drew his crimson-bladed lightsaber from beneath his cape. Tarkin had witnessed numerous Jedi wield lightsabers during the Clone Wars, but he had never seen anyone put an energy blade to such determined purpose or achieve such rapid and lethal results. Two stormtroopers had died in the exchange, but all the Sugi had paid with their lives; Vader’s blade had even reduced the repurposed battle droids to useless parts.

  “The ambassador owes you a big favor,” Tarkin had told Vader at the time.

  Now he said: “Surely we weren’t lured all the way to Murkhana just so the Carrion Spike could be shipjacked.”

  “And why not?” Vader said. “Stealth, firepower, alacrity.” He paused as if he were about to ask a follow-up question, but said nothing further.

  “Granted it’s one of a kind, but what is their plan? To strip and sell it for parts? To have it dissected and replicated?” Tarkin heard the words tumbling from his mouth in a rush and got control of himself.

  “A flotilla of Carrion Spikes,” Vader said, clearly dubious.

  Tarkin gestured in dismissal. “Not without the help of the top engineering conglomerates in the galaxy. More to the point, whoever they are, they now have the corvette, as well as a capital ship.”

  “You are convinced that the piracy was carried out by the same beings who attacked Sentinel.”

  “I am. Anyone with skill enough to create counterfeit holovids of ships and beings and to interrupt Imperial HoloNet signals would also have the skill to wrap the Carrion Spike in a mantle of silence, disabling not only the ship’s slave system but also her various communications systems, including comlinks and helmet radios.” He paused briefly. “Vice Admirals Rancit and Screed were correct about the cache being part of a more far-reaching plan. If the cache was merely the lure, then the plot is still unfolding.”

  “Then tell me how to disable your ship, Governor.”

  Tarkin firmed his lips. “There is a weakness. If the thieves can be persuaded to lower the shields, concentrated fire on the spine where the main fuselage meets the aft flare should do the trick. We were never able to resolve the problem of properly safeguarding the hyperdrive generator while the power plant is supplying the ion drives, the deflector shields, and the weapons. It’s not so much a design flaw as an accommodation to the ship’s size in relation to her armament. Even Sienar Fleet was at a loss.”

  “I will bear that in mind,” Vader said, though mostly to himself.

  “Frankly, Lord Vader, I’m more concerned about what the Carrion Spike’s weapons can do to us while we’re attempting to line up what has to be a very precise laser blast.”

  “Leave that to me, Governor.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Abruptly
Vader poured on all speed, accelerating away from the system’s outmost planet and taking the crime lord’s ship into the starry space he had indicated earlier. But then only to loose a guttural sound of anger and frustration.

  “They’ve jumped to lightspeed!”

  Tarkin ground his teeth. The situation was growing worse by the moment. In star systems lacking nearby hyperspace relay stations, a ship’s pilot had to navigate by beacon or buoy, unless the ship was equipped with a sophisticated navicomputer of the sort the Carrion Spike boasted, which could plot jumps well beyond the next beacon, all the way to the Core if necessary. According to the Predator’s inferior device, the Murkhana system had no fewer than a dozen jump egresses, and most of those were into other Outer Rim systems where beacons were still more plentiful than hyperspace relay stations.

  Vader broke his protracted silence to say, “They have jumped, but not far.” He stretched out his left hand to enter data into the ship’s navicomputer.

  Tarkin was nonplussed. Then it dawned on him: Vader wasn’t tracking the ship; he was tracking the mysterious black sphere he had had transferred to the Carrion Spike!

  Even so, his optimism was short-lived, undermined by a memory of something Jova used to say when they had turned the tables on a predator, making it the hunted rather than the hunter.

  “Think first when you’re in pursuit: Is your prey trying to escape, or is it going for reinforcements? Is it perhaps looking for a temporary hiding place from which to spring at you, or—still driven by hunger—has it decided to search out a more vulnerable target?”

  DARTH SIDIOUS WAS ANNOYED about having been disturbed from his meditations at the shrine. By the time he ascended to the pinnacle of the Palace spire to meet with Mas Amedda, he was ready to take someone’s head off.

  “Must I attend to every trivial matter, Vizier?”

  “I apologize, my lord. But I believe you will want to attend to this one.”

  Sidious eyed him for a moment. “Murkhana,” he said in arrant disgust.

  The Chagrian bowed his horned head in acknowledgment. “Just so, my lord.”

  Sidious took to his tall-backed chair while Amedda readied the table’s holoprojector, then moved to stand silently by the window-wall. In the hologram that emerged, several members of Military Intelligence and the Imperial Security Bureau were grouped before a positioning grid in one of the ISB’s situation rooms.

  “My Lord Emperor,” Harus Ison of ISB began, “I’m sorry—”

  “Reserve your apologies for when they are most needed, Deputy Director,” Sidious said.

  “Of course, my lord.” Ison swallowed hard and found his voice. “We thought it prudent to apprise you of recent developments on Murkhana.”

  “I’m well aware that Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin found and investigated the cache of communications devices.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Ison said. “But we have since received a subspace transmission from Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin informing us that the Carrion Spike has been seized.”

  Sidious sat straighter in the chair. “Seized?”

  “Yes, my lord. From a landing field on Murkhana—by unknown parties.”

  Sidious used the chair’s armrest controls to mute the audiovisual feeds and swiveled to Amedda. “Why have I heard nothing of this from Lord Vader?”

  “Without the Carrion Spike, neither Lord Vader nor Governor Tarkin has access to the Imperial HoloNet or other suitably encrypted communications devices. The first subspace message originated from the ambassador’s residence in Murkhana City. The second was sent from a starship in the Murkhana system.”

  “Lord Vader has procured a replacement ship?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Sidious re-enabled the holofeeds to the situation room. “Proceed with your report, Deputy Director.”

  Ison bowed his head once more. “Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin have commandeered the starship of a local crime lord and are in pursuit of the Carrion Spike. In their most recent transmission, they stated that they were jumping the commandeered ship to the Fial system, Coreward of Murkhana, though still far removed from the Perlemian Trade Route.”

  “Do we have a military presence in that system?”

  Vice Admiral Rancit stepped forward to address it. “No, my lord, we don’t. We do, however, have a presence in the Belderone system, which is nearby.”

  “My lord, if I may interrupt briefly,” Ison said.

  Sidious motioned with his right hand.

  “My lord, most of the star systems in that region of the Tion Cluster lack hyperspace relay stations. Given the likelihood that the ship Lord Vader commandeered has only a standard navicomputer, he and Governor Tarkin will be forced to navigate buoy-to-buoy.”

  “Your point?”

  “Only that we face a hopeless task in trying to establish a rendezvous while the pursuit is in progress.”

  Sidious swiveled the chair slightly. “Vice Admiral Rancit?”

  “Military Intelligence is even now calculating and prioritizing possible jump and egress points in those local systems, and on into the Nilgaard sector. Ships can be dispatched accordingly, my lord.”

  Sidious muted the feed once more, steepled his fingers, and brought them to his lips. During his meditations he had tried without success to trace a snaking current of the dark side to its source. What had it been trying to communicate to him?

  No doubt Vader was tracking the Carrion Spike by focusing his attention on his meditation chamber. But why had he not sensed a disruption in the Force when Tarkin’s ship had been taken? In the private transmission he had sent from Murkhana he had dismissed the communications cache as inconsequential; nothing more than misplaced hardware left over from the war. So did his inattention owe to a lingering sense of frustration about the mission? Perhaps he was at odds with Tarkin. Or had he allowed himself to step willingly into the trap, as Sidious had encouraged him to do?

  “Tell me, Deputy Director Ison,” he said when the audio feed was reestablished, “do you suspect any link between the communications devices and the theft of Governor Tarkin’s ship?”

  “My lord, we are investigating the recorded evidence and serial numbers in an effort to ascertain the identities of those who gathered the components. At the moment, however, we have no leads.”

  “There has to be some link, my lord,” Rancit said. “Those now in possession of the Carrion Spike had to have sliced into the ship’s security systems, and are likely the same assailants who launched the attack on Governor Tarkin’s base. That means they have now added one of the navy’s most sophisticated ships to their arsenal of warship and droid fighters.”

  Harus Ison was shaking his head. “There’s no proof of that. We don’t have enough information to establish a solid connection.”

  Sidious took a moment to consider the options, then said, “Vice Admiral Rancit, instruct your analysts to continue their calculations. You will also inform the Admiralty that their resources in the Belderone system should be prepared to jump to whatever target systems Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin deem significant.” He leaned toward the holocam’s lens. “Deputy Director Ison and the rest of you are to devote yourselves to unraveling the intentions of our new enemy.”

  “Imperial Security will not rest until it has done so,” Ison said with a stiff bow of his head.

  “We will apprehend them, my lord,” Rancit added. “Even if that requires repositioning half the capital ships in the fleet.”

  —

  The Carrion Spike reverted to realspace in the Fial system with the eyes of the six shipjackers focused on the main display of the sensor suite.

  “Anything?” Teller asked Cala.

  “No sign of the Predator so far.”

  Teller waited a long moment, then breathed a guarded sigh of relief and got to his feet. “Time to get down to business.” He turned to Salikk. “Coordinates for Galidraan?”

  Salikk watched the navicomputer. “Coming up.”

 
The words had scarcely left the Gotal’s full-lipped mouth when Cala said, “Teller!”

  “I knew it, I knew it,” Hask said, pacing through tight circles while Teller hurried back to the sensor suite.

  Cala was sitting stiffly in the chair, staring fixedly at the display. “The Predator!”

  “Right on cue,” Artoz said from the far side of the command cabin.

  Teller blinked in disbelief.

  In a gesture of concern, Cala touched his forehead below the dangling headcloth. “It’s the Predator, and she’s coming for us all speed.”

  “Not even Vader could do this,” Teller said. “There’s a tracking device hidden somewhere aboard this ship.”

  “Or on the hull or concealed in a landing strut or just about anywhere,” Hask said. “But unless you want to power down and perform a full EVA search you better come up with a revised plan.”

  Teller clenched his jaw. “We’re not revising anything. Not now, not anytime.” He glanced around him.

  Artoz and Salikk nodded, then Cala and Anora, and finally Hask.

  Teller rolled his head through a circle to work the kinks out of his neck and nodded to Hask. “You’ve got the comm board.” As Cala stood up from the chair, Teller added: “Doc, you and Cala better get yourselves positioned.” Then he turned to Salikk to say: “Jump us to Galidraan.”

  —

  Seated in the copilot’s chair, Tarkin watched Vader expectantly as the Predator emerged from hyperspace.

  “Full ahead,” the Dark Lord said.

  Tarkin was glad to oblige, though he saw nothing through the viewports but star-strewn space and nothing on the sensor screens but background noise.

  One moment Vader’s gloved hands were clamped tight on the yoke, then they flew to the navigation console. “They’ve jumped to lightspeed again.”

  “Just as I would have,” Tarkin said.

  Vader fell silent, then lifted his head as if just roused from a nap and swiveled to the navicomputer display, the fingers of his left hand punching the control pad keys.

  “Galidraan,” he said at last.

  Tarkin gave him a moment to complete the request for jump coordinates. “The chamber,” he said. “That’s how you’re tracking them.”