The Rise of the Empire

by John Jackson Miller

  “Help by dying.” With a mighty swat, Vidian smacked the disk away. It clattered to the floor beneath a conveyor belt. The second swing found Skelly’s face.

  —

  It had not been a good couple of days for snooping around, Hera thought. There was no getting near Vidian during his tour of the landing field, so she’d started in the personnel department, looking to see if Lemuel Tharsa—the person of Imperial interest, according to Zaluna’s files—was anyone important. He’d never been an employee, but the man had been to Moonglow: Visitor badges had been supplied to him on several occasions more than twenty years earlier. Before she could learn more, someone had found her. That was the problem with infiltrating a working factory on a day when the Empire came to inspect. No one had called in sick.

  Normally, she liked a challenge. But with the Moonglow security team going one direction and the stormtroopers going another, she’d been forced early into the skulker’s last resort: the ventilation shafts. Fortunately, the new building’s system was less vile than what she’d found in other factories.

  Peering down through another grate, she saw the Besalisk security chief again—Gord, Kanan had called him, the administrator’s husband. Gord was telling his aides they had to redeem themselves for losing Skelly the day before. Hera felt a momentary pang of guilt for getting the guy in trouble with his wife and the Empire. But it passed as Gord looked up and pointed, evidently noticing the indentation in the vent housing. That’s when the blasterfire started.

  Enough of this, she thought, scrambling through another tube. It was time to find Vidian.

  —

  Sloane emerged from the cab of the bulk-loader to see Vidian a few dozen meters away down on the factory floor, mercilessly pummeling Skelly. She activated the comlink attached to her wrist and pulled her blaster. “Troopers, to me!”

  Vidian lifted the intruder and hurled him through the air. Limbs flailed as Skelly hurtled end over end. His flight ended violently against a control console for one of the conveyor belts.

  “This is under control,” Vidian said, walking casually toward the spot.

  Sloane ran down the stairs anyway. She could see that Vidian’s opponent was bleeding and clutching his chest. Skelly stood, facing the approaching cyborg in a daze, before desperately scrambling up the side of the control station. Leaping, he reached for the overhang above and tried to pull himself up.

  “Stop!” Sloane raised her weapon.

  With a burst of energy that startled her, Skelly pulled himself up and onto the moving conveyor belt. Sloane fired—but the belt carried him around a turn, and her blaster bolt only singed his shin.

  Sloane looked back to see Lal, horrified and keeping her distance, up on the metal staircase. “Stop all the belts!” the captain yelled. Lal bustled down the steps to the controls.

  “Too late,” Vidian said, watching. The conveyor belt led back outside, to the loading area. Seeing Sloane’s troopers arriving through a side hallway, Vidian pointed. “After him!”

  Sloane stepped up to Vidian. “That was him? Skelly?”

  Vidian nodded—and started walking back up the aisle.

  “He won’t get off the grounds. I’ll alert everyone,” she said.

  “I’ve just done so,” Vidian said, his gaze cast low. He was looking for something, she realized, at the foot of one of the conveyor belts. “But you should go supervise. Someone in authority should be out there.”

  The whole episode puzzled Sloane. “What was Skelly trying to accomplish? What did he want?”

  Vidian knelt. He picked up a small object from the floor. “He wanted to give me this,” he said. It was a holodisk, Sloane saw. “It’s of no consequence. When you find him, tell him I destroyed it. He should die knowing the futility of defying the Empire.”

  —

  Kanan removed a bolt from the Smoothride’s engine for the fourteenth time. Then he proceeded to put it right back.

  He didn’t stick his neck out for many—hardly any, really!—but there was something about Hera that had kept him from leaving. He was still working out what it was. She was beautiful, of course—but she knew how to play it cool, something he liked a lot. She also seemed reasonably competent—she’d caught on to his ruse back at the cantina right away. All good traits, suited for whatever it was she was playing at. Kanan still didn’t quite know what that was, but that was all right. He could play along, as he had many times before when something or someone caught his interest for a while. He had nothing else to do.

  Outside, a siren blared. Looking out from beneath the engine bonnet of the hoverbus, Kanan saw several stormtroopers on speeder bikes racing into the security zone and rushing toward the factory gates. Some were headed toward Moonglow’s airfield, where Expedient sat parked amid a few other vehicles; others were headed for the main facility.

  So much for competence, he thought. Looked like Hera was in trouble.

  He slammed the engine lid shut and started to turn toward the factory. He didn’t have his badge, but he knew a place around the corner where he could scale the fence ringing the aerodrome.

  Reaching the spot, Kanan leapt and swung himself over the railing. Hitting the soft ground, he rolled—

  —and was met by stormtrooper blasters pointed in his direction.

  Harsh lights flooded the corner of the airfield, nearly blinding him. He could just make out a brown-skinned woman in an Imperial captain’s uniform stepping toward him.

  “And where,” she asked sharply, “do you think you’re going?”

  —

  Skelly had closed the sewer grating over his head just in time. He heard the boots of stormtroopers running past, above, even as he struggled to make his way down the iron rungs of the ladder.

  Reaching the bottom, he collapsed in the ankle-deep brackish water, battered and broken. His head was bleeding, and his cheekbones felt as if they were moving beneath his skin. He fumbled with his left hand to count his teeth—and felt anguish when he realized how many were gone. He struggled to roll over, certain his ribs had been cracked.

  Skelly coughed, bewildered. Vidian was supposed to be different. The rule breaker. The paradigm destroyer. He had reached the heights of both the public and private sectors by ignoring the bureaucracies and their conventions, by listening to everyone and everything, and deciding based on facts.

  Yet he had turned out to be just another sadist, as deaf and blind as he had been before the prosthetics.

  Seeing his pack nearby, Skelly fought through the pain and dragged his body close to it. There was a medpac in there—and more. Much more.

  If words couldn’t save the moon, it was time for something else!

  BESALISKS LOOKED miserable in a way that few species could, Vidian thought. With enormous wide mouths and droopy skin sacs hanging beneath, when they frowned, you could read the expression from orbit.

  Count Vidian wasn’t interested in Lal Grallik’s embarrassment over Skelly breaking in, any more than he was interested in her apologies. The encounter with the saboteur had deterred him from his intended schedule. She had taken him without delay to the refinery building: the oldest part of Moonglow, she’d said, dating back to when the firm was part of Introsphere.

  She eagerly showed him her updates—and he ignored her obvious disappointment as he just as quickly undid them, stripping away one safety practice after another. Toxic exposure was a small price to pay to meet the Emperor’s quota.

  Vidian hated being dependent on surface refineries for thorilide: His comet-chaser harvesters required few workers and were closer to the source. But cometary deposits were already microscopic, while the shards coming from Cynda had to be reduced to a refinable size without damaging the material within. Worse, thorilide-bearing comets were exceedingly rare, and the Empire’s insatiable demand for materials had nearly swept the galaxy clean of them. It had idled many of the giant harvester vessels Vidian operated—and had given the slackers in this system job security. It would take forever to r
eplicate Gorse’s refining infrastructure on Cynda: He would be reliant on fools like Lal Grallik forever.

  Thorilide was Vidian’s franchise within the Empire—it, and several other strategic materials. Meeting the need for it had brought him power and position. Now he was failing at meeting his Emperor’s demands. And Vidian’s rivals knew it.

  He’d been preoccupied since Baron Danthe’s second message, the night before on Ultimatum. Danthe wasn’t calling to tell him the Emperor was re-raising production quotas, at least, but what he’d said was almost as bad. Another comet-chaser fleet was returning to Calcoraan Depot, having exhausted what was once a rich supply of thorilide-bearing comets.

  And worse, Vidian had learned next from his aides that Danthe had been whispering to the Emperor, casting aspersions on Vidian’s whole production scheme. The count knew what Danthe wanted: to turn Gorse into another market for his family’s manufacturing droids. Vidian had no quarrel with droids, which could in many cases be much more efficient than organics. But he wasn’t about to let Danthe colonize an industry that belonged to him. Vidian had taken out his temper on his stateroom, then—but he’d longed to have Danthe’s windpipe in his robotic hands.

  Grallik led him to the far wall, and a narrow door. Beyond it was another large room with colossal pipes in the ceiling and the long pools cut into the floor. Long and narrow, like harvesting troughs in a farm for sea life. The droids were here, too, some shoving cartloads of crystals into the roiling green liquid, others trolling the pools with long implements.

  “We’re very proud of this, my lord. This is a prize project of mine—the only automated xenoboric acid bath on Gorse. The crystals from Cynda start here, and the droids do the rest.”

  Vidian looked down into a pool. Deep and long, a roiling cauldron with an endless appetite for matter. “And how many days do you lose from droids falling in during groundquakes? Organics would keep their balance better.”

  “Yes, sir. But the fumes and splashing would be dangerous—and of course, if someone went in, that would be much worse than a droid.”

  “Worse, how? The baths cannot be used for purification until the offending matter is consumed. Droids take much longer to digest.”

  Lal was struck speechless by that one. Vidian didn’t care. He had a call coming in. He switched his ears to comlink mode.

  “Commander Chamas aboard Ultimatum, my lord. Message from Coruscant.”

  “Patch it through.”

  Lero Danthe appeared before his electronic eyes. “My compliments to Count Vidian.”

  What was left of Vidian’s vocal cords stirred in a growl, a vocalization that for him had no electronic counterpart. The young man appeared life-sized, superimposed over Vidian’s surroundings: There was no holoprojector here, but it worked basically the same way. “What is it?” he finally said.

  The blond baron smiled. “I’ve just emerged from another series of meetings with top authorities, working at the highest levels on projects of the greatest…”

  Vidian stopped listening. He was too busy moving his head around, digitally dumping the chattering baron in one pool of acid after another.

  “…and to make it all possible, the Emperor will require an immediate doubling of thorilide deliveries. Effective immediately.”

  Vidian gawked. “What? Doubling?”

  “Correct.”

  “A doubling of the original quotas.”

  “No,” Danthe said, explaining as if he were talking to a child. “Your quota was increased by half yesterday, remember? So—”

  “So it’s really a tripling.” Vidian felt his ire bubbling over, angrier than any acid bath in the room. “And you didn’t argue against this? This target is impossible. The failure will be yours, too.”

  The baron shrugged. “I’m attached to your administration, my lord, but I serve the Emperor in all things.” He paused, before continuing gingerly. “I did suggest a number of things I could do to help—but of course those would require putting some of your territories in my hands.”

  “I’ll just bet you did,” Vidian snarled. “This isn’t finished, Danthe!”

  “So what should I tell the Emperor?”

  “That I’ll succeed! Vidian out!”

  Vidian seethed. This was deception on a grand scale. Vidian had never played games of court well; it was his biggest weakness. The other aristocrats knew it, and one had finally pounced. He was undermined, completely and totally, in a way that he hadn’t experienced since years earlier, when he was a different person—

  Lal stood near one of the acid baths and looked back in puzzlement. “Are you all right, my lord? You—er, haven’t moved for a while.”

  Vidian wore no emotion, as always. The words came from his neck. “I need triple the output from this factory, immediately.”

  Lal laughed out loud. Immediately embarrassed, she covered her wide mouth with two of her hands. “I’m sorry. You can’t be serious?”

  Vidian turned and began stalking toward her. “I am always serious.”

  She stepped back, nervously. “We can’t do that. We were struggling to meet the original Imperial targets.”

  “Which you never met, either.” Vidian stepped up to her. Lal shook, eyeing him fearfully. “Can you meet these targets?”

  “N-n-no.”

  “Then what good are you?” Vidian’s arms lanced out, shoving Lal with his open palms. She tumbled backward into one of the boiling troughs.

  She screamed, the acid bubbling all around her. “Help! P-p-please!”

  Vidian turned and found one of the tending poles, constructed of material designed to withstand the chemical abuse. But instead of fishing her out, he jabbed at her, pushing Lal farther in.

  “I am helping,” Vidian said, electronic eyes shining. “I need this vat returned to operation. Now hurry up and dissolve.”

  —

  Hera heard the scream.

  She had been staying a step ahead of the Besalisk security chief by entering the refinery and running among the rafters. There were plenty of pipes and catwalks providing routes for one as nimble as she. She’d been hoping to double back, to finish looking for what she’d entered for—when she’d heard the cry. Horrible, unlike anything she’d ever known.

  She couldn’t help but run toward it.

  When she arrived, it was too late. The body was visible from her high vantage point—barely—in the depths of the turbulent pool, but there was no way to get down there without falling in herself. Count Vidian stood at the edge with a tending pole. It had to be him; no one else looked like that. He watched the pool for a moment before dropping the pole, turning, and heading off.

  Hera saw a place where she could safely leap down, up ahead. She started working her way toward it.

  But Gord Grallik arrived first—and broke her heart.

  ON THE REFINERY FLOOR, Gord Grallik wailed.

  The security chief had rushed into the room, still looking for Hera. She was heading down the stairs herself when he stopped between the frothing acid pools and looked down. Hera had already seen from above that the four-armed figure in the acid was unmistakably Besalisk.

  “Lal!” Gord scrambled around, looking for one of the acid-proof prods. By the time Hera reached the floor, he had given up. He turned to the pool, ready to dive into the acid bath and save his wife.

  “Don’t!” Hera called out. Skidding to a stop so as not to knock them both in, she grabbed at the security chief’s left arms. “It’s too late!”

  Gord struggled. “I’ve got to!”

  Hera clung to him desperately. She didn’t even know if he was aware of her as he struggled to step toward the pool. He greatly outweighed her—and yet she was using every bit of her strength to keep him from jumping. “You…can’t…do this!”

  At last, Gord stopped. She didn’t know if he’d finally registered her presence, realizing she would fall in, too—or if he’d simply seen again what was left of Lal. So little. “No,” he said in a low voice. He fel
l to his knees. “No.”

  The Twi’lek hung on to his arms. “I’m sorry,” she said. She was trying to pull him back from the edge, without much success.

  Gord looked at her—and anger blazed in his eyes. “Did you do this?”

  “No! I swear I didn’t. It was Vidian!” Hera fell away from him but did not run. “Check the security monitors. You’ll see!”

  Besalisk hands grabbed her. With Hera in tow and murder in his eyes, Gord moved quickly with her to the security control station at the far wall. “I’ll see,” he said.

  —

  Vidian stood outside the refinery and looked up at the moon. He’d killed another tour guide, yes, but there really wasn’t any sense in continuing with this tour, or any other. Moonglow was the best-case operator on Gorse. Even if the Empire seized direct control of the factories—a tool in his kit that he found to be of mixed effectiveness—there was no way to make the Emperor’s new quotas.

  And the first deliveries were due in a week.

  Vidian turned and punched the wall. His hand smashed into the permacrete, leaving an indentation. Baron Danthe was at fault for this—a supposed underling, turning him into just another worker scrambling to meet an ultimatum from above. He already knew there was no way to find enough ready thorilide in his territory, or anyone else’s. Not without tearing the moon completely apart…

  Vidian stopped. He played back what his eyes and ears had recorded from earlier, the rantings of the madman Skelly.

  “You’ve got to stop the blasting on Cynda. You could tear the whole moon apart by mistake!”

  Remembering, he reached into his pocket. The holodisk was there, the one he had planned to destroy.

  Vidian strode purposefully toward a nearby office building. Yes, looking at it would almost certainly be a waste of time for a man that did not waste time. The fact he considered it at all was a true measure of the desperate situation he faced.

  —

  Sloane wasn’t the first Imperial captain Kanan had met. But she was certainly the best-looking—even if she did insist on pulling that wonderful black hair back beneath the little hat. One of her aides was shining a light into his face, entirely unnecessary under the light from the moon.