The Rise of the Empire

by John Jackson Miller

  All interstellar empires rose and fell, ultimately, on their ability to deliver on this one simple, unexciting thing: logistics. Her military history studies had told her of the war forges of the ancient past—she didn’t doubt that Vidian had studied them, too. He could well be the great armorer of future legend—and she, his preferred deputy.

  It was just still a little surprising to her that an entire planetary population might wind up between hammer and anvil. Even as motley a group of specimens as lived on Gorse. The workers on her homeworld, so much closer to the galactic center, were much better behaved.

  Commander Chamas approached from the door to her ready room. “I see Lieutenant Strangechild has left you in peace.”

  Sloane rolled her eyes. “You want something?”

  “You have a call,” her first officer said. “I think you’ll want to take it. A very important person.”

  “Vidian again?”

  Chamas smirked. “A different important person.”

  —

  She had seen him once at the commencement ceremonies at the Academy. He’d stood on the stage and shaken some hands. Not hers, but she could hardly forget him. Baron Lero Danthe spent more on a suit than her family spent on its house on Ganthel.

  “My lord,” she said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “You and your crew do the honor, by your service,” the young man said, bowing. “I heard about the attempts on Count Vidian’s life. I was calling to thank you for protecting him.”

  “Most generous.” Extremely so, considering the bad blood she’d heard to exist between Vidian and his subordinate in the administration. “They haven’t made the saboteur who can foil the Empire.”

  The golden-haired man smiled. “Very glad you’re on our team.”

  She liked hearing it. They were separated by title and fortune, but she and Danthe represented the New Imperials—the media’s catchphrase for the first generation of people to ascend to adulthood under the Empire. With few exceptions, her naval superiors were part of a class that had struggled to reach the top, only to see all the rules change; now they were spending every waking moment trying to keep pace. Perhaps not Vidian, she thought. But it was tiring dealing with them all. The Empire would be a better place once people her and Danthe’s age were in charge.

  But in the military as in government, the time of apprenticeship had to be respected. She knew Danthe was already fabulously wealthy, having inherited control of a firm manufacturing heavy-duty droids for use on fiery worlds like Mustafar. But Vidian’s holdings were wider, his name already established. And given the cyborg’s health, she couldn’t imagine him handing off power for decades to come.

  Not that the young man wasn’t eager. “The count hasn’t had time to fill me in on this special project of his involving Cynda. How would you say it’s faring?”

  “I couldn’t judge, my lord. I’m simply the escort.”

  “Hmm.” Danthe frowned ever so slightly, before brightening. “Well, I am sure you will do well in that. I want you to know, Captain, if you ever have the smallest need, please contact me immediately. My people will put you through directly.”

  “I…thank you, my lord.” The transmission ended.

  Vidian, now Danthe? Were all interim captains this popular with the elite?

  THROUGH HIS OWN reflection on the passenger-seat window, Kanan beheld the whole of Calcoraan Depot. He’d seen other such sights in his travels: enormous examples of Imperial ingenuity and excess. They seemed to get bigger every year.

  But his focus was on his reflection—and the question he now asked himself. Caleb, what are you doing?

  He hadn’t gone by that name in years, and he didn’t consider it relevant to the person he was now. Yet whenever Kanan stuck his neck out further than was comfortable, Caleb Dume was usually the culprit. Caleb, the little Jedi cut off before his date with destiny, his career as a galaxy-saving superhero stunted. He couldn’t believe now that he’d ever been that person. That kid didn’t know what real life—or real fun—was like. That boy was a nobody, a never-was. An unwelcome squatter in the back of his gray matter. Whenever Kanan had an idea that Caleb Dume would have agreed with, it was usually better to stay inside and order a double.

  As much as the Emperor, Caleb was responsible for making Kanan’s early adolescence miserable with his constant regrets. Caleb was all counterfactuals and what-ifs, all mental replays of the deaths of Depa Billaba and the other Jedi, always looking for some way disaster could have been averted. It was just as well that he was avoiding other people then, because it had made the young fugitive unbearably morose. While the other teenagers in the hangouts he’d tried to blend into were thinking about podracing, he was off in the corner trying to figure out how Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi could have better protected himself on Mygeeto, or Master Plo Koon on Cato Neimoidia. Every name he’d found out about in those days had just set the whole thing off again, making it impossible for him to forget.

  A waste of time. Except for one thing: All that thinking and hiding in those early days had trained him to analyze situations quickly and thoroughly. The tactical smarts Hera seemed to like had sprung from there. In that case, he thought, there was one good thing that had come of it. Because looking at her in the pilot’s chair now, he determined that he’d follow her anywhere.

  If he didn’t get her killed first. Or if she didn’t do the same to him.

  Hera was chipper as she braked Expedient. “Told you we’d catch up,” she said as the ship neared the tail of the freighter convoy. It had been open to question whether they would arrive at all. Expedient had left Cynda just as the straggler freighters were following Ultimatum into hyperspace. Kanan, who had never used the ship’s hyperdrive before, had worried that it might not work at all. Ships on the lunar run were there for the very reason that their long-haul days were past. But the fact that none of the other ships was better off made them catchable for the right pilot, and Hera had talked nicely to Expedient, getting her way. She did that a lot.

  It had worked that way with him, too. He liked that Hera had direction and drive. All women were magical creatures to Kanan, but there were happy forest nymphs, and then there were wizards. There was so much more to Hera, and it might take days or weeks or years to find out what was motivating her.

  Time, he had—but he wouldn’t stick around long if it meant constantly letting Caleb Dume call the shots. Hera had seemed to sense that old dutiful instinct in him, and had gotten him to come this far by appealing to it. The problem was, that person was someone he’d never really been, and could never be again. Okadiah’s death deserved an answer, yes, and Gorse needed to be protected if possible. But both were responsibilities of a kind he had avoided for years. He intended to keep avoiding them.

  Hera was clever, and pretty, and he loved her voice. If the only way to keep hearing it, though, was to play at her cloak-and-dagger games, he might have to be on his way, with thanks for the memories.

  “Okay, you’re up,” Hera said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m not the pilot of record,” she said, sliding out of her seat. They were approaching the outer security perimeter, an invisible energy shield surrounding Calcoraan Depot. TIE fighters circled the station, demarcating the location.

  “Right.” Kanan squeezed past her—a not unpleasant experience—to take his usual seat. Grabbing the control yoke, he slowed Expedient to a stop just short of the barrier indicated on his viewscreen.

  A gruff female voice came across the comm system. “What’s your identifier?”

  “Moonglow-Seventy-Two,” Kanan replied.

  “Not anymore.”

  The response startled Kanan for a moment. “What do you mean?” He pushed a button. “Here, I’ve switched on the ID transponder. You can see who I am. I’m from Moonglow—”

  “And I said not anymore,” the woman answered. “You’re now Imperial Provisional Seventy-Two. Name, license, and personnel.”

  “Kanan Jarrus. Gu
ild license five-four-nine-eight-one.” He paused to look back. “Passengers, three laborers.”

  “That’s two more than you’re supposed to carry.”

  “We’ll get loaded up faster,” Kanan said. “What do you care?”

  “Not at all. Continue on your heading to landing station seven-seven. Follow the lights, and go slow.”

  Kanan did so. Expedient cruised into one of the largest assortments of starships he’d ever come across. Every Baby Carrier he’d ever seen in the skies between Gorse and Cynda was here, and more from elsewhere. And yet, unlike on the lunar run, all the ships were moving in an orderly and precise fashion. He soon realized why, as Expedient shuddered and he felt the control yoke go dead in his hands.

  “Tractor beam parking attendants,” Kanan said. “Nice. I hope we won’t owe anyone a tip.” He sat back, a passenger again like all the others.

  Hera watched as Expedient circled the facility. “Are we going to have a problem getting back out?”

  He shook his head. “Doubt it. These beams are for traffic manipulation. This place is so well protected, they wouldn’t need tractor beams rated to yank fleeing ships from the sky.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  Kanan stood up to stretch his legs—and thought back. There was one thing the controller had said that had disturbed him. “Weird. They changed our call sign.”

  “I know why,” Zaluna called. Kanan turned to see her on the chair across from Skelly. As soon as they’d left hyperspace, she’d gotten her datapad out and started looking for news on the public channels. “They changed your name because there is no more Moonglow.”

  “What?”

  “Moonglow has been blamed for the big blast on Cynda.”

  Across the aisle, Skelly gawked. “That’s not true!”

  Zaluna shook her head. “It was a Moonglow team that found your first bomb, remember?”

  Kanan rolled his eyes. “I was there. Don’t remind me.”

  “I was in the Transcept monitoring room when the word went out on that,” Zaluna said. “They called it a natural occurrence, so nobody would get spooked about the mining company’s practices—”

  “Or would see that a dissident existed,” Hera put in.

  “Right. Now they’ve totally changed that story, saying that the collapse earlier this week and the giant explosion were both Moonglow’s doing. The company has been dissolved, with its assets placed under Imperial control.”

  “Nothing like stomping all over someone’s good name after you’ve killed them,” Kanan said. Lal Grallik had been nice to him. Count Vidian was starting to roll up some big numbers in the debt column.

  Expedient traced a long arc toward a massive disk-shaped landing station connected by huge spars to the rest of the facility. Several open ports revealed a sprawling loading area.

  The comm system came to life again as the vessel cruised into the landing bay. “On landing, debark and begin loading product as it arrives on the conveyers. Take standard precautions—you’re on our turf now.”

  “Great,” Kanan said when the transmission ended. “Now I guess I work for the Empire.” He looked to Hera. “What’s the plan?”

  “The plan is, you do what they tell you,” she said, standing up and checking her comlink. “Load the ship. And wait for my call.”

  Kanan’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re leaving?”

  “That’s right,” she said, adjusting the blaster in her holster. “I’m going to destroy the station.”

  KANAN NEARLY FELL OVER Hera’s feet trying to get between her and the door. “Destroy the station?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “I thought you were all about being careful and undercover. Now who’s the loose cannon?”

  “I know what I’m doing.” Hera looked directly up at him and explained, a little less patient than she had been until now. “Cynda isn’t just some little rock in the sky above Gorse, Kanan. I read up in the ship’s gazetteer while you were sleeping. Zaluna was right. It’s a rogue planet that entered the system and got captured—massive enough they might start revolving around each other in a million years, if Cynda doesn’t break up first.”

  She pointed her thumb toward the aft of the ship. “But you saw how many starships are here. They’re going back to break up the moon for sure, and not in a million years. They’re doing it now. The people down below on Gorse are in danger now. So something has to be done now.”

  Kanan refused to budge. “Here I thought I was the suicide flier.”

  “I call it logic.” She crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the deck. “Now, are you going to get out of my way or not?”

  Shaking his head, Kanan stepped away from the airlock door.

  She looked back at the others. “I’m sorry things worked out this way. If I don’t make it back, you should try to warn people somehow. Then Kanan can take you someplace safe.” She paused. “Somewhere besides Gorse.”

  Kanan looked at Zaluna, who was clutching her bag tightly to her and shaking her head over the thought of losing her homeworld. “The Jedi used to take care of these things.”

  The remark startled Kanan. Jedi were a topic people weren’t supposed to speak of. “What do you know about the Jedi, Zaluna?”

  “More than that silly story the Empire put out about them.” She looked up wistfully. “I saw Jedi in action, you know, long before you were born. If innocent lives were threatened, they would figure out what to do. Even in a no-win situation.”

  Hera nodded. “We could use one, now.”

  “Or maybe it’s time for people to be their own Jedi.” Emboldened by the subject she was speaking on, Zaluna looked confidently from Hera to Kanan. “They weren’t gods—just people like us, who saw a need. If they could find a way, I’m sure we can.”

  Maybe, Kanan thought.

  And then it came to him.

  “Wait,” he said, as she started to work the door handle. “Let’s say you somehow blow this whole monstrosity up. Are there other depots like this?”

  Hera looked back at him, nodded. “Not exactly like this, but there are stockpiles in every sector.”

  “So if the Emperor thinks having a bunch of easy thorilide is worth ruining the Gorse system already, wouldn’t he just try it again?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “Then I don’t get what you’re trying to accomplish,” Kanan said. “You’re the one that thinks futile gestures are stupid.”

  “I’m buying time.”

  “For what? Is it worth sacrificing yourself to delay the inevitable?”

  Hera shrugged. “I don’t want to sacrifice myself, no. But you’re describing a situation where we just sit back and let the Empire do whatever it wants.”

  “No, no. There’s another answer. It’s not enough to prevent it now. We’ve got to make them never want to try it again.”

  Kanan’s mind raced. Hera watched him, curious. “Go on.”

  He began talking, not yet sure where he was going. “Okay, look. The Empire didn’t even have this fool idea until they got it from Skelly—”

  “Fool that I am,” Skelly interjected bitterly.

  “—and then they tested it, back there with that big blast. But how did they know the test worked—that it didn’t destroy the thorilide it freed?”

  “I saw probes searching the debris,” Hera offered.

  “So did I,” Kanan said. He began pacing. “Vidian wouldn’t just demolish a moon without the Emperor’s say-so. He’d have to send a report.” He paused and snapped his fingers. “So we send another report—or ‘fix’ the one he’s about to send.”

  “Yeah, just let me at it,” Skelly said, interested. “I can throw cold water on the whole thing. I’ll say crushing the moon will ruin what they’re going after!”

  “So we say the test didn’t work.” Hera nodded. “It would cause confusion—maybe slow them down until we can warn people. But can we make it look legitimate?”

  “No problem,” Zaluna volunteered. “Where would somethi
ng like that be kept?”

  “With Vidian,” Kanan said. He scratched the side of his head and looked at Zaluna. “Would you be able to find him using the station’s surveillance?”

  “Maybe,” she said. Then, “Yes. Just get me to a terminal I can slice.”

  Hera seemed pleased. “I like it better than blowing the place up. But this will be harder than just me sneaking around. Skelly’s known, and we may be, too, for all we know.”

  Kanan nodded. Then something told him to turn around. Outside, a flash of color caught his eye. “Wait,” he said, recognizing what it was. “Look!”

  Hera and Skelly joined Kanan far forward and looked out onto the landing deck of the shipping node. A dozen other freighters—Baby Carriers and former thorilide haulers alike—were parked with their ramps down. Under the watchful eyes of ranks of stormtroopers, individuals short and tall descended from the vessels, all wearing head-to-toe coverings in fluorescent orange.

  “Hazmat suits,” Hera observed.

  “We’re here to load baradium-357, all right,” Kanan said. “That’s Naughty Baby.”

  Supporting himself against the back of the passenger seat, Skelly nodded. “It’s like we guessed. They need the big stuff to destroy the moon. I ran the numbers on it in my report—wishing I hadn’t.”

  Hera stared. “What are the suits for? Does it blow up if you breathe on it?”

  “That’s not the reason for them,” Skelly said, hobbling back to his seat. “The canisters have an outer shell full of toxic coolant. Nasty stuff, if it leaks.”

  “Will it kill you?”

  “Maybe. But you’ll kill a bunch of people first. It’s psychoactive—produces irrational violent impulses.”

  Kanan laughed. “Check around your house for some, Skelly. It’d explain a lot.” Then something dawned on him. Kanan snapped his fingers and turned. Expedient’s supply cabinet was between the forward compartment and the cargo area. Opening the door, he beheld his own supply of bright orange outfits, hanging neatly from a rack. Masks sat on an upper shelf. “I’ve seen these in here but never used them.”