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

  “Good enough for me,” Kanan said. He walked back to Vidian’s table. “Get that medical droid back over here. I’ve got a plan.”

  “STEP LIVELY, THERE! If you were loading torpedoes on my ship, I’d be launching you, next!”

  The orange-clad workers began moving marginally faster, but now they were walking so as to avoid Sloane, negating any increase in speed. It wasn’t going well. Three of the miners from Gorse had dropped canisters, causing coolant leaks that cleared the floor for ten minutes each time. And while the repair workers had removed the fool droid that had somehow gotten itself crammed into the pneumatic tube, they had put a long gash on the inner cushioned wall in the process. Now that was being repaired. Civilians!

  At least this experience gave the lie to a little of Vidian’s legend, she thought. If Calcoraan Depot was supposed to be the domain of the man who saw everything and kept everything moving, he was sleeping on the job.

  There’d been no sign of trouble otherwise. Aware that the bomber from Gorse might be among the workers drafted to load explosives, she’d accepted a pistol and holster from the stormtroopers. It hadn’t been necessary. Neither had any of the workers tripped to what they were really assisting in: the possible destruction of their own homes. That, she thought, could get ugly.

  Her comlink beeped. She reached for it. “Sloane.”

  “Captain,” droned a familiar voice.

  “Count Vidian,” she said briskly. “The loading is almost complete. We’ll be ready to return to Gorse shortly.”

  “I need you. Report to my executive chambers—alone.”

  Sloane’s brow wrinkled. “Is it something about the report to the Emperor?”

  “You could say that,” came the reply. “Come at once.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She snapped off the comlink. She was growing tired of being at Vidian’s beck and call—but Ultimatum’s regular captain could show up to reclaim his command at any moment, sending her back to the waiting list with everyone else. She had to do as told.

  She passed a lieutenant as she marched toward a waiting tramcar. “Tell Commander Chamas to monitor the loading,” she said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

  —

  Vidian’s antechamber was lavishly appointed, but the workplace’s occupants seemed oblivious to their surroundings. Two dozen men and women of various species, all “enhanced” with cybernetic computer implants, wandered the opulent room like monastics, nodding as if listening to music. Not one noticed Sloane’s arrival. Each was tuned in to events many systems away, all managing the flow of goods and services vital to the functioning of the Empire in Vidian’s managerial domain. Sloane wondered if anybody had ever walked into an open elevator shaft while his or her mind was on moving widgets from Wor Tandell.

  Identifying herself to the stormtroopers standing guard, she entered a long hallway. The double doors at the end opened as she reached them. The room beyond lay in darkness.

  Sloane rolled her eyes. More weirdness. Taking a deep breath, she took a step inside. “Count Vidian?”

  Another step—and the doors behind her clanged loudly shut. Sloane heard movement in the dark. She reached for her sidearm—only to feel pain in her wrist as someone kicked the blaster from her hands. The weapon clattered off in the dark. A lithe, shadowy figure whisked by to her right: her assailant. The captain reached again, this time for her comlink—when someone grabbed her arms tightly from behind, spun her around, and shoved.

  Sloane didn’t hit the floor, or anything else. She heard the hum in the air above, felt the strong pull of an invisible force holding her body in place. It was a stasis field, like the ones in her brig. The person who had pushed her walked ahead in the dark before turning and shining a bright portable light in her face.

  “Captain Sloane?” It was Vidian’s voice, coming from the direction of the light.

  “Count Vidian? What’s going on?”

  The light shifted—and Sloane saw that while Vidian’s voice had indeed spoken to her, the man himself was strapped to a table, motionless. The light traced slowly across the count’s form. There was a dark recess in his neck ring where his electronic speaker belonged.

  “Glad you got my message.” This time, Sloane realized the voice was coming from the person with the portable light—and squinting, she could just make out the figure pressing something against his own neck. “Nifty little doodad. Triggered by the throat muscles.”

  “You impersonated him!”

  “And well,” the speaker said, still using the device. His light shifted back toward Vidian, and the speaker turned his back to her. “Get this hooked back up,” she heard him say to someone in a different, softer voice. Someone else in the room shuffled toward the table.

  Sloane strained to see, to move, to do anything.

  “Release us now,” she said in her most commanding tone. “You won’t get away with this!”

  No answer.

  “The count had better be alive and unharmed, or you’ll have a death mark in every system in the galaxy!”

  Still no answer.

  Sloane grew concerned. Fanatics like the bomber on Gorse might not care about getting away. After a short silence, she decided on another tactic.

  “Look,” she said more calmly, “I can get your grievances a hearing. But that’ll only happen if you let me and the count walk out of here right now.”

  The figure with the light directed it at her again. “Oh, don’t go so soon. This is our first date!”

  She recognized that voice. Gawking, she said, “You’re the mouthy pilot!”

  He moved the light underneath his chin and flashed a devilish smile. “Nice to be remembered.”

  Sloane was flabbergasted. “We checked your badge back on Gorse. Kanan something.”

  “Kanan Something will do.” He shone the light on her again.

  She put the pieces together. “A pilot at Moonglow. That’s how you got here.” She glared into the light. “You’ve wandered off the tour, mister.”

  “I had to see you,” he said, voice sugary. “You missed me, right?”

  “Kanan!” came a loud whisper from the shadows.

  Sloane’s eyes darted to the speaker. “Ah. The co-worker.” She was the person who’d kicked at her, she realized. And there were other shadowy figures in the darkness, including a slender person at the table fiddling with Vidian’s vocoder. “Did you all come with him? You’re accomplices. What did he ask you to do?”

  “Forget about them,” Kanan said. “Haven’t you figured it out? I am an infiltrator—but on a mission you’ll approve of. I serve the Emperor.” He paused, before adding: “Directly.”

  Sloane stared down at Kanan for several seconds. Then she burst into laughter. “You, an agent of the Emperor?”

  “What?” Kanan scowled. “It’s possible.”

  Sloane struggled to stop laughing. “I think he can do better than you! What do you suicide fliers do, drink your way from port to port? Did you wander off from your keeper?”

  Kanan thumped his chest. “I’m a man with a mission.”

  “You’re an oaf with a delusion. Do you know what the penalty for impersonating a personal agent of the Emperor is?”

  “No.”

  “A personal agent of the Emperor would!”

  “You’re wrong. There is no penalty—because nobody would ever do such a thing.” Kanan sat the lamp on the floor, angled to point up at Sloane. He walked to a control panel near where she was suspended and touched a dial. “Now listen to what’s going to happen. I’m going to give you my message, and be on my way. The stasis field’s timer will release you with enough time to do what you need to do, before Vidian wakes up. Is that understood?”

  “Let me tell you what will happen instead,” Sloane said. “You’ll let me down, turn on these lights, release Vidian—and then we’ll march you down to the detention block. You can do your talking to an interrogator droid.”

  “That would be a mistake.” Kanan began pacing aro
und the darkened room. “I have information that’s vital to you—and to the Emperor.”

  “If you’re the Emperor’s agent, you’re already reporting to him directly. What do you want from me?”

  “Vidian controls all communications from this depot. I can’t afford to have this intercepted. I need an Imperial captain, with her own resources.” He looked at her cannily. “You are resourceful, aren’t you?”

  “I can tell when I’m being played.” She strained against the stasis beam. “Enough of this. Someone is going to come looking for me.”

  “Then I’d better talk fast,” Kanan said. “And you’d better listen. Like your life depends on it.”

  BACK IN HIS hazmat suit, Kanan heaved another baradium-357 canister off the hovercart and onto a shelving unit in Expedient. “The seed’s planted.”

  Through her mask, Zaluna looked at him. “That was both the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life—and the most exhausting. What do we do now?”

  He locked the cylinder into a magnetic support. “Ditch these forever,” Kanan said, peeling off his hazmat mask and throwing it to the deck. Once the canisters were secured, the bulky protective wear could be dispensed with.

  As Zaluna pulled off her mask, Kanan saw that the Sullustan woman looked winded. “I meant, what if what you did doesn’t work?” she asked. “With the captain, back there?”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll work,” Kanan said, climbing out of his suit. “Sloane was sold. I could tell.”

  “You could, could you?” Once the airlock door sealed behind her, Hera removed her mask and frowned. “Sloane thought you were cracked.”

  Kanan waved dismissively. “Skelly is cracked. I sounded like a responsible adult.”

  “Who wanted to buy her a drink. That charm thing of yours is not for every situation, Kanan.” Hera hustled past him and slid into the pilot’s seat. “See to Skelly.”

  Skelly, facedown where he’d collapsed on the acceleration couch, feebly tried to peel off his hood with his one working hand. He finally succeeded when Kanan gave the mask a yank. The man looked rough. They’d had to load the explosives and make their way back to the ship quickly, and there hadn’t been room left on the hovercart for Skelly to ride. The walk had been hard on him, and Hera and Zaluna had supported him part of the way. They’d been the last crew to make it back, just barely avoiding notice.

  Skelly looked up, his face twisted in pain. “I still think…we should have killed him.”

  Kanan shook his head. He wasn’t going to explain it again. He pushed Skelly upright in his seat and strapped on an oxygen mask. “Trust me, everybody. This’ll work.”

  “If…it doesn’t,” Skelly said between breaths, “we need…to warn Gorse.”

  “What’s the point?” Kanan asked, shuttling forward. “The Empire’s declared full groundstop on Gorse. Nobody can take off.”

  “There are tunnels,” Skelly said. “And bomb shelters.”

  “Hera tells me they make fine homes,” Kanan said, settling into the passenger seat beside her. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Zaluna looked forward as the engines revved. “You need to talk to everyone on the planet at once…”

  Kanan looked back at her. “You got something?”

  She shook her head. “It—it’s nothing.” She slumped back in her seat, weary. “We’ve done too much already.”

  Hera turned to face Zaluna. “Come on, Zal. You have a way to help, don’t you?”

  Zaluna let out a deep breath. “I think there’s a way,” she finally said. “But I can’t do it with this ship’s transmitter. I need something built in the last thousand years.”

  “Hey, I’m sure there was a refit a century ago,” Kanan said, looking up at the bulkhead. He wasn’t about to get defensive about Expedient, no matter how much he and the ship had been through. He looked at Hera. “How about your lovely ride?”

  “It’s got everything,” she said, pulling back on the control yoke. Expedient heaved off the deck. “My ship should be up to date for whatever you need. If we can land on Gorse and get to it.”

  “We’ll be shot at on the way down and up again.”

  “Up I’m not worried about.” She smiled.

  I have got to see this ship, Kanan thought again as Expedient turned in midair. “What have you got in mind, Zaluna?”

  “I still have Vidian’s passcode from earlier. If we can send a signal mimicking an Imperial override request, we can push out an emergency message onto every electronic system on Gorse that Transcept is spying on.” She looked at Kanan with trepidation. “We’d only be able to do it once, ever. They’d close the door immediately.”

  “One message, then. It’ll have to be enough,” Hera said, guiding the ship through the magnetic field into space. “We’d have to get there and do it before he changes the passcode.”

  “If he doesn’t realize we did anything,” Kanan said. “And he won’t.” He gestured forward. Traffic was moving along outside the station, and he could see the TIE fighters routinely flying past. “See? Nobody’s shooting us out of the sky.”

  “That’s just because your new friend hasn’t called out the heavy artillery yet,” Hera said—

  —and as she did, Expedient shuddered violently. Zaluna yelped. Kanan and Hera glanced warily at each other.

  “Just the parking tractor beam guiding us out,” Kanan finally said, nodding forward. The ship was turning, making progress toward the perimeter.

  Hera took a deep breath and let out a whistle. “We’d better hope this thing lets go of us before the stasis beam lets go of Sloane.”

  “I’m telling you not to worry,” Kanan said, leaning back and stretching his legs. “None of this is necessary. Vidian is done for. Sloane is sold.”

  —

  “My lord! My lord!”

  Count Vidian roused. Awareness always returned quickly to him after sleep, medically induced or otherwise. His eyes activated a second after his ears did, and he saw the fraught face of the Star Destroyer captain leaning over him.

  “Sloane? What’s going on?”

  She yanked at the straps binding him to the operating table. “You were unconscious,” she said, straining to remove one of the durasteel cuffs binding his wrists. “Are you all right?”

  “I believe so.” Whispering a command, he cycled back through everything his eyes had recorded in the last several hours. There was nothing there from the time he was under—not even any of the feedback his nightmares had been producing lately. And neither had his senses recorded anything from the hour before, during the battle with the pilot and his companions. A glitch, caused by damage in the fight?

  The servos in his hips activated, and he sat up on the table. He looked around at the mess of his living space. “Someone drugged me.”

  “There were intruders here,” Sloane said, moving to work on the cuffs holding his ankles. “They attacked me, too, when I entered. They trapped me in your stasis beam. Then they left.”

  Vidian looked around. “Through the floor?”

  Sloane nodded. “It was dark—I couldn’t see much. What did they want?”

  “Me.” Vidian leaned down and ripped at the ankle cuffs with his metal hands. The manacles were designed to withstand his thrashings, and yet they couldn’t survive against his rising anger. “I want a full search. Lock the station down!” He opened a channel on his internal comlink and prepared to give the command.

  Sloane spoke before he could. “My lord—one of them talked to me.” Her dark eyes were full of concern. “He claimed to be an agent of the Emperor.”

  “What?” Vidian closed the audio channel and stared at her. “Who?”

  “One of the people who waylaid me,” she said.

  “An agent of the Emperor?” Vidian rose from the table and stood, turning his back to the captain. “What…did he say?”

  “A lot of nonsense. He claimed you were acting against the Emperor’s interests in the Gorse project. That your plan w
as to destroy the moon and its thorilide, regardless of the yield.”

  Vidian froze. Cautiously, he turned to face her. “Most amusing. Pray tell, what reason did this mystic give for my doing such a thing?”

  “It was senseless ranting, Count Vidian. I didn’t listen.”

  “Perhaps he thinks I’m some kind of traitor? Some kind of plant in the hierarchy?”

  Sloane laughed. “I think he was insane.” She looked at him. “Have you called for security already, or should I?”

  “I’m doing so now,” Vidian said. But directing his eyes to check the station’s surveillance reports, he found precious little for his staff to go on. Nothing unusual had been seen aboard Calcoraan Depot in the last few hours. He’d recognized the gunslinger from Cynda, and he’d remembered Skelly. But all the workers aboard were in hazmat masks, and the ships had already departed. Even a check of the data feeds from his medical droids in the room confirmed that their memories had been wiped.

  The infiltrators were good, whoever they were.

  Reports from the TIE sentries on the system perimeter confirmed that all the ships had gone to hyperspace on the same heading: toward Cynda, as ordered. If his assailants weren’t still aboard the depot, there was only one other place for them.

  Vidian thought quickly about his next move. He wasn’t sure who his attackers were, but neither was he sure what they would say if found. All that mattered was making sure nothing interfered with the destruction of Cynda.

  And he had a way to do that. “Ultimatum will arrive in the Gorse system before the last of the baradium haulers?”

  A little startled by the change of topic, Sloane nodded. “They haven’t built the freighter that can outrun a Star Destroyer.”

  “Good. I want your whole complement of fighters deployed, managing the final delivery. Bring in additional TIEs from here, using the Gozanti freighter carriers. If any hauler moves a centimeter out of line, I want that ship destroyed, cargo and all. Regardless of any danger to the pilot doing the shooting. Is that understood?”

  “They’ll do their duty—for me.” Sloane looked at him searchingly. “You think the intruders are headed for Gorse?”