The Rise of the Empire: Star Wars: Featuring the novels Star Wars: Tarkin, Star Wars: A New Dawn, and 3 all-new short stories

by John Jackson Miller

  Okadiah whistled. He regarded Kanan with mild wonderment for a moment and then placed his hands on the dashboard before him. “Well, that’s that.” He paused, seemingly confused. “We drink after work, is that correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Entirely the wrong order,” the old man said, wobbling slightly as he rose. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  THE HORN-HEADED Devaronian miner charged from the disabled personnel transport across the pressurized cavern’s floor.

  “You punk kid!” he yelled as Kanan exited Expedient. “What were you trying to prove back there?”

  Kanan was still in his early twenties, but he hadn’t answered to “kid” ever. And certainly not when the name came from a dunderhead like Yelkin, whose job it was to drill holes for explosives. Kanan turned and walked alongside his ship, opening up cargo hatches as he went.

  The muscular miner stomped after him and grabbed at his shoulder. “I’m talking to you!”

  With quick reflexes, Kanan grabbed Yelkin’s hand and spun around, twisting the other man’s arm. Yelkin winced in pain and fell to his knees. Kanan didn’t let go. He spoke in low, calm tones into his captive’s pointed ear. “Your ship was in the way, pal. I have a deadline.”

  “We all do,” Yelkin said, struggling. “You saw them shoot that freighter. The Empire’s come to check up—”

  “Then go faster. But don’t go stupid.” Kanan released his hold, and Yelkin fell to the ground, gasping. Kanan brushed off his long-sleeved green tunic and turned back to Expedient.

  Several miners arrived at Yelkin’s side. “Blasted suicide flier!” one said. “They’re all cracked!”

  “Someone needs to show you some manners,” another said to Kanan.

  “So I’ve heard.” Unworried, Kanan looked around the landing bay. The loader droids that normally helped hadn’t arrived, evidently unable to make sense out of the impromptu parking situation on the loading floor. It looked like it was going to be another one of those days when he had to do everything.

  Kanan unloaded a hovercart and parked it in front of the ship. Then he began the laborious process of hefting down metal crates. Cynda’s lesser gravity made the cases somewhat lighter than they had been on Gorse but no less bulky—or hazardous—to carry. Heaving the first crate, he carried it toward the milling miners.

  “You’re in the way,” he said. “For the moment.”

  Okadiah appeared on the far side of the spacecraft. “Gentlemen, I think a maxim is in order: Do not aggravate the man who carries high explosives.”

  The miners parted, glowering at Kanan as he passed. Rubbing his arm, Yelkin snarled at Okadiah. “You take in some real pieces of work, boss.”

  “Like I did all of you, one time or another,” the old man said. He pointed toward the south, and a bank of elevators. “Let’s get the shift started. If the Empire’s inspecting today, Boss Lal will be here, too. At least pretend to work.” He smiled toothily. “And let me add—in honor of that poor sap outside who got himself blown to smithereens—it’ll be happy hour all night tonight at The Asteroid Belt. We’ll even pick you up and drive you home.”

  Momentarily assuaged, the miners turned and made for the elevators. Okadiah watched Kanan set a case down on the hovercart. “Still winning friends and influence?”

  “Don’t know why I’d do that,” Kanan said.

  “Ah, yes. You’re not staying. Like you told me: You never stay.”

  “Clothes on my back,” Kanan said as he turned to grab another crate. “Travel light, and death will never find you.”

  “I said that, didn’t I?” Okadiah nodded. “You’ll work the bar tonight?”

  “If you can afford it.”

  Okadiah winked and ambled off after his co-workers. Kanan did keep the bar on occasion, but on some nights he was his own best customer. He’d also tried his hand as bouncer, although again, he’d wound up starting as many fights as he’d stopped. Still, this system had been closer to a home than any he’d known in years of wandering. It would be a hard place to leave.

  But he would. The day job was wearing on him. Giving up on the loader droids ever arriving to help, Kanan finished filling the first hovercart and pushed it into the freight elevator.

  As the doors closed behind him, he thought on it. He might miss Okadiah’s place, yes, and he’d certainly miss Cynda. In all his travels he’d never encountered a place quite like it. The landing bay didn’t look like much, but he knew to watch for the big show as soon as the elevator doors opened.

  They did, a thousand meters below—and Kanan was bombarded with a coruscating display of lights and colors. He was in one of the countless great caverns beneath the surface. Crystal stalagmites climbed and stalactites hung all around. Each one acted as a prism, refracting the lights of the work crew; to move was to see kaleidoscopic change. Better still, the crystals gave off warmth, making Cynda’s many oxygenated caverns as bright and pleasant as parent-planet Gorse was dark and sticky.

  Back before the Empire, the place had been a natural preserve. Cynda had been the literal bright spot in the lives of Gorse’s residents; tourism had been the moon’s—and Gorse’s—number one draw. And while Republic scientists had learned early on that Cynda’s interior contained massive amounts of thorilide, no one had wanted to mine for it while the workable nightside of Gorse still held any of the substance at all. As far as Kanan knew, no one even bothered looking for thorilide on Gorse’s dayside, where the heat was enough to melt any droid in manufacture.

  But then, almost exactly on the day that Chancellor Palpatine proclaimed the first Galactic Empire, a report had revealed that Gorse’s mines were exhausted. The refineries went idle. The Empire wouldn’t stand for it—and didn’t need to. Cynda was right there, readily available to exploit.

  Kanan saw the results now as he pushed the hovercart from the intact antechamber into the main work area. Pebble-sized crystal fragments littered the floor, and his boots crunched as he walked. Only the big industrial lights illuminated the cavity; the ceiling couldn’t be seen at all in the smoky haze above. A sickly burnt stench hung on the air.

  The Empire had defiled the place, but it could hardly resist. Useful as thorilide was in its processed form, in nature it had a fragile molecular structure. Efforts to free the substance from comets, already an insanely difficult process, often resulted in the collapse of the compound into its component elements. But Cynda was the mother lode in more ways than one, for its tough crystal columns managed to preserve thorilide inside them, even when blasted from their bases. Given how the prismatic structures reacted to laser torches, blasting was the only way.

  The need for explosives had given Kanan a job, but it had also given Gorsians cause to object. Some were more vocal than others. And a few were downright loud about it.

  Like that guy, Kanan thought, recognizing a voice coming from the far end of the work zone. Oh, brother. Skelly.

  “You’re not listening,” the redheaded man declared, gray dust puffing from his protective vest as he waved his arms. “You’re not listening!”

  In the perfect echo chamber the cavern provided, no one could help but hear Skelly, and if there were any stalactites left intact, Kanan half expected Skelly’s voice to bring them down.

  But Kanan saw that the target of Skelly’s harassment wasn’t paying much mind, and he couldn’t blame her. A four-armed, green-skinned member of Gorse’s Besalisk subcommunity, Lal Grallik was the enterprising chief of Moonglow Polychemical. Running it kept “Boss Lal” jumping from planet to moon and back. Skelly was just one more nuisance to deal with. “I am listening, Skelly,” she said. “I could probably hear you down on Gorse.”

  I’m sure she wishes she were there now, Kanan thought. Short and compactly built, Skelly had one mode: intense. Kanan was vaguely aware of the fortyish man’s war record as a tunneler; the scars and pockmarks on his face read like a walk through recent military history. But while Kanan felt for anyone who’d gone through all that
, he had little patience for the way Skelly always talked as if he were trying to yell over a barrage. The man could outshout a jet turbine.

  “I’m trying to save people’s lives here,” Skelly said, busy auburn eyebrows lowered in all seriousness. “Your company, too.” Seeing Lal return her attention to the electronic manifest in her four-fingered hands, Skelly turned around and shrugged. “No one listens.”

  Kanan knew Skelly worked as a demolitions expert for Dalborg, one of the other mining concerns. Okadiah had explained that Skelly had been fired by every major firm in the last five years. The only one Skelly hadn’t yet landed with was Kanan’s employer. It wasn’t too small a firm, Okadiah had said: just lucky. Kanan agreed. Skelly knew what he was doing with a demolition charge, but a variety of neuroses came with the package. And he always looked as if he’d slept on the floor. Even when Kanan did that for real, he made sure he looked presentable.

  Skelly turned to face the Moonglow chief. “Look, Lal, all you have to do is suspend blasting past Zone Forty-Two. You and the other firms, just for a while. Long enough for me to test my—”

  Lal looked at him in disbelief. “I thought you said you were giving up!”

  Skelly’s small eyes narrowed. “You’d like that, right? I forgot. All you guild outfits are the same. Out for yourselves…”

  Kanan tried to tune it out as he pushed his pallet past. “Coming through.”

  Lal, clearly pleased to have someone other than Skelly to talk to, looked down at the load Kanan was hauling and checked it against her manifest. “Glad you made it, Kanan. I heard there was some trouble out there.”

  “No concern of mine,” Kanan said, parking the hovercart. “Here’s your bombs.”

  “This batch goes to Zone Forty-Two,” Lal said, waving some workers over. She nodded to Skelly, who smoldered as he stared at the hovercart. “Someone’s favorite place,” she whispered.

  Skelly leaned on the hovercart handle. “I’ve told you, we can’t keep blasting down there. Not with these—”

  “Take them home, then,” Kanan said, walking around Skelly. “Blow yourself up.” He began to unload crates of explosives one at a time for the workers to carry away.

  “Wait,” Skelly said, finally noticing the freighter pilot. He stepped beside Kanan and looked back at Lal. “You’ll listen to Kanan, right? He’s one of your top explosives haulers—and one of my best friends.”

  “Right on one. Wrong on the other,” Kanan said, continuing his job.

  “Kanan flies with this stuff,” Skelly said. “He knows what it can do. He’ll tell you: Using microblasts to cut crystal is one thing, but you shouldn’t use it to crack open walls! He knows—”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Kanan said, turning and poking a finger in Skelly’s sternum, knocking him back a step. “I have a deadline. I’ve got more to unload. So long.” He returned to the empty cart and turned it around.

  Lal stepped aside to take a call. “Imperial channel,” she said, waving Skelly off. “This is important.”

  “This is important, too,” Skelly muttered to no one. Seeing Kanan pushing the hovercart away, he started marching after him. Catching up, he tried to match the pilot’s pace. “Kanan—pal, why didn’t you back me up over there?”

  “Get lost, will you?”

  “Lost is what we’ll all be if this keeps up,” Skelly said, huffing and puffing. “I know what the baradium family of explosives can do. Better than anyone. I’ve done the yield estimates. I’ve even studied the seismology of this moon—”

  “You must be fun on holidays,” Kanan said, pushing the cart back into the elevator.

  “—right down to what they never consider: the core!” Skelly kept talking as he pushed his way into the car with Kanan. “It’s sturdy up here, but way down deep? This moon could snap like a protein cracker!”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah is right. I knew it! You agree with me!”

  “No, food reminded me,” Kanan said, drawing a pouch from his jacket. “I skipped breakfast.”

  “I’m serious,” Skelly said, reaching into his own vest. He wore a single glove over a right hand that Kanan had never once seen him use, except as a pincer: There was something gripped in it now, not much larger than a coin. “It’s all on this holodisk. I’ve got my work right here. You know those groundquakes we get on Gorse when the moon passes close by? The only reason it isn’t worse on Cynda is because the crystal formations keep the tension in check. But we keep blowing them apart! If I can get just one person to read this—”

  “Why does it have to be me? I’m nobody.”

  “Everybody comes to Okadiah’s!” Skelly said. “You’re there all the time. You can talk to people.”

  “Why can’t you?” Kanan knew why. “Oh, yeah. He banned you, for aggravating people.”

  “Just have a look.” Skelly waved the disk before Kanan.

  “Get it out of my face, Skelly. I’m serious.” Kanan threw his food pouch to the deck of the pallet. Pushing back against workers for other firms always caused a hassle; Okadiah had warned him against it. But Skelly was friendless, and for good reason. Kanan was near his limit.

  Skelly’s face twisted into a disdainful snarl. “Yeah, that’s right. I forgot. You’re paid by the shipload, right? And now you’re all going to be running like eskrats, because the Empire’s dropped by.” He got in the taller man’s face. “Well, the Empire had better watch out, or it’s going to have a real disaster on its hands!”

  “Last warning!”

  Skelly opened his mouth again—but before a syllable emerged, Kanan’s fist slammed into Skelly’s teeth. Five seconds of violence later, the elevator doors opened to the landing bay—where waiting loader droids saw Kanan pushing the pallet with Skelly’s crumpled body atop it.

  “Good, you’re here,” Kanan said. He shoved the cart at them. “Put this somewhere.”

  As Kanan headed back to Expedient for another load, a dazed and flustered Skelly looked up at the puzzled droids. “Nobody listens.”

  “I HAVE A PING ON Cynda cam five-six-oh,” the operator in the second row said. “Threat to the Empire in spoken Basic. Elevator cam. Thirty-eight decibels, clearly intoned.”

  Across the crowded data center, Zaluna Myder didn’t look up from tending to her plants. “Who was listening?”

  “A transport driver.”

  And us, Zaluna thought to herself as she turned back to business. Her gray hand swept at the air in front of her—and a new half-meter-tall hologram appeared on one of the display platforms surrounding her work dais.

  Hundreds of thousands of kilometers above Gorse, a couple of people were having a conversation in one of the lunar mining station’s elevators. Or they had been having a conversation, until one person had decked the other. And it was all unfolding again, seconds later, in three static-laced dimensions in front of Zaluna’s enormous black eyes.

  Focusing on the moving image, the Sullustan woman reached for this hour’s mug of caf. Now in her fifties, Zaluna spent an hour each day in the corporate gym, but she still knew it was past time to do without the artificial stimulant. On the other hand, her work had only gotten busier—and the caf was the only vice she’d ever had. She knew for certain that fact put her in the distinct minority of Gorse’s residents—because in the last thirty-plus years, Zaluna Myder had seen and heard everything.

  She had to. It was her job. And in the earpieces plugged into her giant shell-like ears, she heard the words that had caught the system’s attention: “…the Empire had better watch out…”

  She glanced down at the terminal operator in the second row. “The listener was a transport driver, you say. Anybody we—”

  “Migrant, no record,” he replied. “Nobody we care about.”

  Zaluna didn’t need to ask whether the speaker was someone they cared about. His words alone were enough. The surveillance supercomputers had comprehended the statement, measured it against mysterious metrics, and kicked the incident up to the Myn
ocks, who’d taken it to her.

  Myder’s Mynocks. That was what the shift on her floor was named after she rose to supervise it. She had no children or grandchildren; she hadn’t needed any other family, ever. Standing here on her platform she was queen, lending her guidance to the surveillance operators and taking the occasional spare moments to tend her potted plants. She’d had the misfortune to be born onto a world where the sun never rose, but at least her office had full-spectrum lighting.

  Zaluna had been a fixture since her late teens here in World Window Plaza, the upside-down and truncated cone that was still the newest building on Gorse. Transcept Media Solutions had built the structure—which had no windows at all—as a local repository for marketing data about the planet’s residents. There wasn’t much commerce on Gorse unattached to the mining industry, but that didn’t matter: When people did leave, they took their purchasing preferences with them. And thanks to the monitoring stations it maintained, Transcept would have their profiles when they arrived elsewhere. That information was surely worth something, although who’d want it or why was a subject Zaluna rarely considered.

  Few people apart from poor transient laborers left Gorse anymore, but that wasn’t a concern. First the Republic and later the Empire had become Transcept clients—and Zaluna had kept her dream job. Watching and listening: That was what she’d been born to do. Not because of her giant Sullustan eyes and ears—though they missed nothing—but because as long as she could remember, she had loved to observe and absorb information.

  And neither did Zaluna forget anything.

  “Ah, our old friend,” she said aloud as her finger movement brought the holographic image to a halt. “Skelly, no surname. Human, born Corellia, forty standard years ago. Demolitions expert, Dalborg Mining, Cyndan operation. Last known address, Crispus Commons on Gorse. Clone Wars veteran. Injured, hand replaced. Two teeth missing—”