by Renee Ahdieh
The prisoner stirred now, groggy, moaning softly. True to her rebel spirit, though, the first thing she did was start to raise the pistol. TK-4601 kicked it away angrily. She gazed up at him, blinking rapidly as her eyes slowly focused. At the sight of his face—his helmet—an expression of disgust flitted across her face.
That beautiful visage was as much a face of the enemy as any scarred, bearded one. Leia Organa was a killer. She looked at them and did not see the people, only the Empire they served. To her, Tarvyn Lareka had no name, no face, only a number. He was nothing more than a uniform of the hated foe, to be shot at and eliminated as quickly as possible.
He reached down and grabbed her wrists, hauling her to her feet. The princess struggled, but TK-3338 pressed the blaster into her back. She stiffened, and stilled.
“Lord Vader wants to see you, Senator Organa,” TK-4601 said. He snapped a pair of stun cuffs around her slender wrists. “You can either come along with us on your own two feet, or we’ll stun you again and bring you to him that way. Your decision.”
For a moment, he thought she would lunge at him. Instead she composed herself. “I’ll walk,” she said. Her voice held no quiver at all. It was as cool and regal as the rest of her.
But TK-4601 thought of Vader’s abilities, and the torture droid, and he suddenly, abruptly, did not want to be the one who delivered her to the utter lack of mercy she would receive at Darth Vader’s hands. To the ominous whir of the hovering torture droid, and its myriad drugs with which to torment the prisoners.
He said on his comm, “This is TK-4601. TK-9091 is down. We have a prisoner in custody. Request two additional troops to escort prisoner to Lord Vader per his instructions.”
“Copy, TK-4601. We see your position. TK-7624 and TK-8332 are en route.”
The other two looked at each other, then at him. “Sir?”
He ignored them and continued speaking into the comm. “Request permission to transfer to active-duty unit for the duration of the battle.”
“Permission granted,” came the voice. “Nothing official, but I’ve got a hunch we’ll be sending some troopers to the surface if Vader doesn’t find what he wants here. No stone unturned. Lot of sand there, though.”
“Copy that,” TK-4601 said immediately. “Transfer me to that unit if it’s deployed.” Leia Organa’s eyes narrowed as she regarded him speculatively. Doubtless, his team was startled and wondering what the hell he was doing. He was a member of Vader’s Fist. He could be here fighting, killing the rebels, doing what they had trained for, and instead he’d requested what amounted to a demotion. They’d be even more shocked if they knew what he was thinking.
TK-4601 loved the Empire. He believed in it. He knew it could bring order and peace to the galaxy. But he also knew that he couldn’t keep doing what he was doing now…killing rebels while looking into their faces, their eyes, seeing them open and exposed, emotions naked to him, while they only saw flat black and white.
He could still kill them—but only when the battlefield was even. Only when he couldn’t see them, as he saw this senator, this princess, this rebel. He could shoot them out of the sky, and he would—but not shoot them in the heart.
The two new stormtroopers arrived. TK-9091 was left where he fell. Per orders.
He’d have understood.
The four escorted the princess to meet the Dark Lord, each of them towering above her diminutive height. As TK-4601 watched them go, the princess turned to look at him searchingly.
Spontaneously, without thinking, he removed the helmet.
The princess seemed startled to see him—a human male not much older than she, fair-haired, blue-eyed, his cheeks flushed.
Their gazes locked for a moment, then she gave him a slight nod and turned around. TK-4601 didn’t kid himself that she understood the gesture, or that they had made any kind of connection.
But damn it, he’d reminded her that there was a person inside the plastoid armor. And more important, he’d reminded himself.
“Psst! Arvira, I need your help!”
I looked up from the tiny text scrolling by on my screen. Behind the stacks of tablets teetering on my desk appeared the anxious face of Bolvan, gunnery captain.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something here,” I said, gesturing vaguely at the tablets full of datawork. Interruptions were part of my job, but surely he could see I needed a chance to catch up?
Everyone thought being fleet logistics liaison (grade 4) on an Imperial Star Destroyer was a cushy job. But it took a lot of datawork to keep the crew of a massive ship like this fed and clothed and in fighting shape. Desk jobs in the Imperial Navy were no less stressful than combat ones.
“Please, I really need you!” he persisted.
I sighed. Officers were just like babies: When they needed something, it was always the most important thing in the world. “I haven’t forgotten the entertainment holos you wanted. But I have to prioritize processing the captured corvette Tantive IV. Especially since Lord Vader—”
“No, no! It’s something else.”
I paused the scrolling screen. It was clear he wasn’t going to leave me to my work until I took care of his problem. I tried to put on my most convincing smile. “How can I help you?”
He glanced back into the corridor to be sure it was empty, closed the door to my office, and sat down. “Er…it’s like this…”
I sat there patiently until he finished his tale.
“So you ordered Hija not to shoot the escape pod?” I asked, just to be sure I understood.
“Right.”
“And why not? Wait, is it because you wanted to avoid the datawork?”
I wasn’t joking. Like all militaries, the Imperial Navy ran on datawork. Most officers spent more time filling out forms and filing reports than shooting at rebels. Per Imperial Naval Regulation 132.CAT.ch(22), shooting an escape pod (other than during an armed engagement with an intensity classified as above Category V) required the gunnery captain to file a Form XTM-51-CT to explain why the action was necessary. This was to avoid giving those squawking senators an excuse to claim that the Imperial Navy engaged in war crimes. Bolvan had always tried to get by with as little datawork as possible.
He shook his head no.
Well, this was interesting. “Are we trying to conserve lasers now?”
He ignored my sarcasm, but his face turned red. “The sensors detected no life-forms aboard. I thought…um…we wouldn’t have been scored with a kill…so…”
Of course; now his actions made perfect sense. Annoyed with rebel propaganda that showed Imperials to be poor shots—frankly, the stormtroopers could do with more targeting drills—fleet bureaucrats had issued a new policy that tied gunnery officers’ promotions to their kill ratios. Shots fired at unoccupied escape pods would indeed be considered wasted. I thought this was a terrible idea at the time. The new policy would encourage some ambitious gunners to aim for rebel pilots in disabled vessels rather than dangerous, armed drones. But the brass never asked for my opinion.
“Fine, so you let the empty escape pod go. What’s the problem?”
“Lord Vader ordered the Tantive IV be torn apart until the secret plans stolen by the rebels were found, but now that they’ve gone over every centimeter of the ship, Commander Praji still hasn’t located the plans. I…I’m afraid—”
“Ah…” I understood. “I take it the escape pod didn’t just drift into space?”
“No,” he said. “It followed a trajectory to the surface of Tatooine. I just thought it was a malfunction at the time, but maybe that wasn’t it. What if the plans were aboard?”
“This is indeed a tricky problem,” I said thoughtfully.
I’d always liked Bolvan. He never made too many outrageous demands on the logistics corps, and he was a terrible card player, which meant that I usually managed to win extra credits from him in private games among the officers. I didn’t want to see the poor man court-martialed for negligence if the plans were somehow a
board that escape pod. Even worse, Lord Vader often didn’t even bother with a court-martial. It must be nice to be able to ignore datawork requirements whenever one pleased.
“That’s why I came to you,” he said, his voice pleading. “I figured if anyone knew how to patch up a problem like this, you would.”
Now, not to be boastful, but I did have a reputation for expertise in datawork. I knew the ins and outs of the hundreds of thousands of ever-changing forms and questionnaires and applications and data grids and charts and reports and requisition communiqués that kept the Imperial Navy humming. I knew just what checkboxes to tick to get my ship priority service in docks, what keywords to stick into blank forms to avoid a surprise inspection, and the secrets for requisitioning entertainment holos even when all the shipboard bandwidth was supposed to be reserved for combat-related transmissions.
And I shared my wisdom liberally. Junior officers who wanted to avoid snoring roommates came to me for advice on the XPTS-7 Bunking Application (claim a propensity for sleepwalking and punching sources of noise); senior officers who wanted to maximize their shore leave came to me for help with the SS-VAC-2B Visa (pick a departure port on the other side of the vacation planet from the arrival port); and even the captain came to me when it was time to fill out the estimated operating budget (the trick: …Ha, as if I’m going to share that trick here). Some called me a datawork wizard, or maybe even a datawork Jed—Oh, never mind that. The point is: I liked helping people, and if they chose to thank me with little favors or gifts or credits, it would have been impolite to say no.
Oh, all right, let me just come out and say it. It was nice to have people in your debt. With the political situation as volatile as it was, you never knew when you’d need to call in a favor. By helping people today, I was just helping myself for the future.
A good datawork master needed to have strings out to as many puppets—er—I meant students as possible. It was prudent.
After thinking over Bolvan’s problem for a moment, I had an idea.
I handed him a tablet. “Here, start filling this out.”
“What is this?” Bolvan looked wary.
“That’s a Form INS-776-TX.”
“What…what does it do?”
“Don’t you even bother reading the instructions? Oh, all right, I’ll explain. That’s the form you use to request an immediate mid-cruise extra-vehicular-armament inspection.”
“Why would I want to do that? That’s going to send all the gunners in EV suits to inspect every single one of the Devastator’s guns. It will take hours to complete!”
I shook my head in mild annoyance. It was really hard sometimes working with people who had no understanding of the subtleties of datawork. “As the gunnery captain, you are one of the few officers on board with enough authority to request such an action, and Imperial regulations require the chief gunnery officer to be in charge of the inspection. Hija will be occupied for the rest of the day climbing from gun embankment to gun embankment outside the Devastator.”
Bolvan still looked confused. “He’s going to hate me. He never wants to go outside—says it gives him spacesickness—”
“If he’s outside,” I said, “then Lord Vader isn’t going to corner him in a hallway and ask him about any escape pods! He’s the only other witness.”
Bolvan’s eyes widened with understanding. “Oh…Ohhhhhh! What do I put down for ‘Reason for requesting inspection’?”
“ ‘Reports of non-responsive triggering mechanism.’ ”
Bolvan’s fingers danced over the tablet. “I take it this is to lay the groundwork for later claiming that the guns wouldn’t respond? Clever.”
“This is just going to buy you a little time,” I said. “It doesn’t solve the whole problem.”
He looked up, alarmed. “So what else do I do?”
“You fill out a Form DKS-77-MA(n).” I flicked the form over onto his datapad.
Bolvan looked at me with his helpless, watery eyes.
I relented. “That’s the form used to request the detailed manifest of any non-military vessel. In this case, since you’ll be asking for the manifest of the Tantive IV, a consular ship on her last departure, you’ll need to add in Appendix P2, Declaration of Classified Military Need.”
“What am I supposed to do with the Tantive IV’s manifest?”
I flicked over yet another form onto his tablet. “You fill out Application SUG-171-TI.”
He looked about ready to collapse in the face of this mounting pile of datawork. “Which is?”
“Don’t you pay any attention to the training holos? You filled out an acknowledgment stating that you watched a holo on this family of forms just two days ago.”
Bolvan’s confused expression told me that he probably signed the acknowledgment without reading it just to get it off his desk.
“The SUG-171-TI is used to dispatch an operational suggestion to another officer. It’s used when you need to bypass the chain of command and there’s no military emergency. Fleet command is very proud of this innovation in improving the initiatives of all officers.”
He acted like he wanted to tear his hair out, but he managed to force himself to calm down. “Who am I making the suggestion to and what do I suggest?”
“Commander Praji, like you, hates datawork. You just told me that he has gone over every centimeter of the Tantive IV, but I bet you he hasn’t documented his search. I know, I know, when Lord Vader is breathing down your neck, the last thing you want to do is more datawork. But trust me, if the plans aren’t found, everyone is going to want to make sure their behind is properly covered. That’s why you want to make a suggestion to Praji to get his troops to fill out multiple copies of Form SRS-98-COMP, Inventory of Captured Vessel.”
“But if the plans are on that escape pod, how is documenting the rest of the ship helpful?”
I knew then exactly how my teacher felt back when I was a kid and I just couldn’t see the point of “showing my work” on tests. Even datawork wizards had shameful moments like that.
I had to be patient with him. “The point, Bolvan, is to let Praji be the one to figure out that the missing plans might be on that escape pod without exposing your own role in its escape. So you have him do the careful inventory, and send him the ship’s manifest you obtained in the previous step. Praji will then do the comparison and notice the missing escape pod.”
“But then he’s going to ask me why I didn’t shoot the pod when it jettisoned, which puts me back exactly where I started!”
“We’re not done yet,” I said. “The trick with datawork is layering and complementing.”
“Sounds like you’re talking about fashion,” he muttered.
I let it slide. “Your goal is building an unassailable structure for diverting responsibility elsewhere—a kind of escape pod for yourself, if you will. So far I’ve taught you how to get Hija out of the way and how to lead Praji to discover the missing escape pod, and the only remaining piece is to erase any hint that you could be responsible.”
“How?” he spat. I could tell he was about ready to grab my lapels and shake me.
I deliberately slowed down. “You’re going to file a Maintenance Request NIW-59-SUD, with a Schedule P.”
He groaned pitifully. He was like a drowning man ready to give up on the straw he was clutching. “What…is that going to do?”
Time to explain the coup de grâce.
“This is the form you use to report visibility-impaired viewports and viewscreens and request a cleaning.”
“A cleaning?”
“That’s right. Specifically, a washing of the viewports and viewscreens near your workstation.”
He just looked at me. “A viewport washing? What…? How…? Why…?”
“Once you put the request in, maintenance will dispatch multiple droids to the station you designate—I suggest where you and Hija were standing—and cover every viewport and viewscreen with a thick, white foam. The droids will even do it fr
om the outside of the viewports. It’s the latest cleaning and polishing agent from the Imperial labs, specifically designed to remove laser scarring and scorching from battles.”
I watched his face go through the stages of terror, confusion, anger, disbelief, astonishment, epiphany, rapture.
“C-cover all the viewports?” he stuttered.
“That’s right, all of them.”
“With a th-thick foam?”
“Very thick. Can’t see a thing through them. Can’t see the stars, or the Tantive IV, or even Tatoo—”
“Or any escape pods! Oh, Arvira, this is brilliant!”
“This will explain why you couldn’t see any escape pods from where you were. Praji will just assume that the escape pod was jettisoned without anyone detecting it.”
“And he will have to then bring the bad news to Lord Vader and face the consequences.”
That smile on his face was truly delightful to see. I loved helping people. “Exactly. Now go and get all the datawork done ASAP. You’ve still got time.”
He got up, tablet in hand, and ran for the door. But before exiting, he turned around. “What can I do to make this up to you? A game of cards tomorrow night?”
Aha, so maybe he didn’t know much about datawork, but he did know how to pay for a favor without being too obvious. “Maybe. But you know, I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to fire the guns on this thing. Even datawork wizards like pew-pew-pew, you know?”
He grinned. “I’m sure I can work out a target-practice session sometime.”
I waved for him to go and returned to my endless datawork, glad to have laid down another strand in my invisible web of influence.
If one were to try to find the perfect summation of what life on Tatooine is really like—the sparseness, the intolerable dryness of it all—one would not need to look further than the sandcrawlers that checker the planet’s surface with fleeting tread marks each day.
Every centimeter of a sandcrawler is prudently designed to fit the ship’s grueling function, and sandcrawlers have a lot of centimeters. Each ship is an identical monument to practicality, and performs each day’s work with exacting precision. They do so indomitably, overcoming Tatooine’s considerable environmental hazards with ease.