And since nobody started yelling and trying to open the crate, Ratua felt fairly confident that his ruse had gone undiscovered.
The hold was airless and unheated, but Ratua was protected in his suit, and he couldn’t imagine the trip to the station would take more than a short time. If he’d guessed wrong, he would eventually run out of oxygen, but few things in life were without risk. And so he settled down to wait, willing himself into a quasi-dormant state so as to conserve air.
After a few minutes, he felt the cargo ship stir to life and move, presumably, away from the warehouse.
Wherever he was going, he was on his way.
CIVILIAN TRANSPORT VESSEL PORTMINIAN, EN ROUTE TO THE HORUZ SYSTEM
The viewports were opaqued, there being nothing to see but a kind of impressionistic fuzzy strangeness. Memah had tried looking out into the higher-dimensional realm early in the voyage, and had quickly realized that the resulting headache and nausea were not to her liking. Rodo, who had undertaken more than a few FTL voyages, had warned her, but she’d had to check it out for herself. Memah Roothes had never been one to take another’s word for something when she could investigate herself; a trait, she reminded herself wryly, that had led to more than one headache over the years.
The vessel, while not a first-class starliner, was comfortable enough. Small but decent cabins, four passengers to a unit. Aside from Rodo, there were two other humans from Imperial Center in their cabin, both civilians contracted for troop services—one was a Corellian who specialized in recreational gaming, the other a woman who was somewhat less forthcoming as to her origins and exactly what her duties were to be.
Nobody had told them about how long the trip would take or where it would wind up, but they had been cruising at superluminal for several days, at least, so it had to be no small distance. Unless, of course, they were going around in circles or other random patterns to make it seem that way. Memah didn’t seriously believe that, though. The Empire might be willing to expend drive fuel and pilot pay to confuse high-ranking officials or important civilian clients, but a tavern keeper, a bouncer, a gamer, and a “dancer”? She doubted it.
And when all was said and done, it didn’t really matter, did it? She was going somewhere, and when she got there, she’d be running a new place and getting paid pretty well for it. Things could be worse. Things could be—and had been—a lot worse. At least no one was likely to burn down a tavern run by the Empire.
23
SSD DEVASTATOR, POLAR ORBIT, DESPAYRE
Darth Vader emerged from his hyperbaric chamber, refreshed insofar as the word had meaning for him. He had been thinking about the incidents that had impeded construction of the battle station, and they seemed to him to be ill formed and poorly operated. This surprised him somewhat, as he considered the Alliance more of a threat than even the Emperor did. That said, he knew that the Rebel network, like any large group, mostly comprised those who were at best adequate to the jobs with which they had been tasked. There were always a few who were adept, even brilliant, of course, and Vader was sure there were those among the Rebels who qualified for that description. Those were the ones to be concerned about, for they would fight to the last breath. Some of the Jedi had gone down very hard; the Emperor’s visage itself was testament to that.
Before Vader had himself been transformed, he’d watched Mace Windu inflict ghastly injury upon his Master. Had that been a test, as Vader suspected, to see if Anakin Skywalker would commit himself to the Sith Lord’s cause? Had Darth Sidious been in control the entire time, only pretending to be losing, and willing to absorb such malevolent energies purely to make a point? If so, it had been a heavy price for his Master to pay to learn what he’d needed to learn.
But be all that as it might, there was no Yoda, no Mace Windu leading this insurgency … no one who shone so brightly in the Force that Vader could not miss him. Whatever few Jedi might be left in the galaxy had nothing to do with this latest attack.
He would tell Tarkin as much. The cadaverous administrator had little imagination, but he was doggedly methodical, give him that. He could keep things on track. The project was not slowed so much that it needed Vader’s personal attention toward its completion. He had come to see what he needed to see, had corrected the problem he had found, and now it was time to move on to other, weightier matters. There was a war being waged, after all.
In the hallway outside his suite, Vader found a captain. “Find the admiral and tell him we are leaving within the hour.”
The captain saluted. “Yes, my lord.” He hurried away.
Vader entered the suite. It was well appointed but scarcely luxurious; it had been many years since he had taken notice of such things. He moved to the comm station to contact Tarkin and tell him he was done here. With any luck at all, Vader told himself, he would not have to return until the battle station was finished.
GUARD POST, SLASHTOWN PRISON COLONY, DESPAYRE
“Say again?” Sergeant Nova Stihl asked.
“Pack, Sergeant,” the loot said. “You are being transferred.”
“To where?” Not that he cared overmuch—after all, one place on this pestilent world was as good, or bad, as another. But to his surprise, the lieutenant pointed at the ceiling. “To that pile of I-beams and durasteel plate in the sky.”
Nova blinked. “To the Death Star? Why?”
The lieutenant sighed. “These insignia look like a Moff’s ranking to you?” He gestured at his uniform. “Not yours to reason why, Stihl, yours is only to do and die. There’s a shuttle leaving at midday; your orders are to be on it and so shall you be. Kiss your favorite prisoners good-bye and stuff your duffel.”
Nova shook his head in disbelief. “This makes no kind of sense. I’m doing good work here; since I started the lessons, murders and general population violence have been down by twelve percent.”
“Yeah, and we’re all gonna miss watching you, Sarge, but the military wants you there and not here, so there you will go.”
Nova shrugged. No way to argue against that. Orders were orders.
In his room, he was able to pack his gear in half an hour; it wasn’t like he’d been able to put down deep roots or anything. He’d supposed he would be moving on at some point, but he hadn’t ever really considered it all that much. And now here it was, and, when he got right down to it, what difference did it make? Watching convicts here or working a brig on a station—same difference. He’d miss the open air and sunshine, and the very few folks, either prisoners or guards, whom he thought of as friends. But he could work out anywhere he had a space big enough to lie down in, and he’d always been able to make new friends.
Nova looked around. It was just a place. He’d spent some time here; now he was leaving. Such was life. If he’d learned nothing else from his studies, it was that one went with the flow.
He wondered what kind of duty he’d be assigned on the station. Perhaps he’d contact a few people who owed him, try to find out.
Forewarned was forearmed, after all.
24
MACHINE TOOL STORAGE UNIT ALPHA-FOUR, CARGO TRANSPORT KJB-87, APPROACHING THE DEATH STAR
The smart thing for Ratua to do would be to stay in his crate until it was off-loaded and safely in a storage area somewhere. But after a couple of hours, he couldn’t stand the cramped monotony anymore, and so he undogged the hatch and cautiously emerged.
Save for the droids, which were all powered down for the flight, he was alone. The ship was on programmed remote control, so it was no risk at all for him to peep through a viewport to see what was out there.
He’d heard about the battle station, of course, even observed it once or twice through a dioptric scope he’d managed to scrounge from a guard. But he wasn’t prepared for this. Though only about half finished, the Death Star still loomed like a skeletal monster. He had no idea how far away it was; the lack of an atmosphere to blur distant objects rendered it stark and vivid, seemingly close enough to touch. The scale was unbelievab
le, and he wouldn’t have been able to tell how large it truly was save for the Star Destroyers and massive cargo ships that hung about the construction site, looking like so many children’s toys compared with the station itself.
Amazing.
Ratua thought, Should be no trouble at all finding places to get lost in on something that size.
He went back to his crate, latched himself back in, and began masticating some grain flakes.
CIVILIAN TRANSPORT VESSEL PORTMINIAN, APPROACHING THE DEATH STAR
Rodo whistled. “Check it out,” he said.
Memah moved to stand next to the much taller human. “Whoa!”
“Big sodder,” Rodo agreed. He pointed. “That’s a Star Destroyer moving off over there, see?”
“What is it? Some kind of troop transport?”
Rodo shook his head. “Battle station’s my guess. Too big for a troop carrier; you could probably stuff a couple million stormtroopers into that thing with room left over for a fleet of battleships, once they get it done—more than you’d need for any one Rebel outpost.”
“But why is it so big?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. I’d guess it packs a load of firepower.”
“You think that’s where we’re going?”
“Bet big credits to boiled chork it is.”
Memah stared at the huge, unfinished spheroid, already bristling with armament. Once completed, it would probably be able to blow ships, asteroids, maybe even entire moons, into cosmic gravel. She felt her lekku bristle in nervous anticipation.
Well, she’d hoped for a locale in which to ply her trade that would be safe, hadn’t she?
“Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured. Rodo glanced at her, but said nothing.
The station, already huge, kept growing larger as the transport approached.
MILITARY SHUTTLE NGC-1710, APPROACHING THE DEATH STAR
Nova had seen the holorecordings, but they didn’t even begin to give you the real scope of the construction site. The blasted thing was huge, big as a moon! He’d heard the scut, naturally, the military commvine was hot with it: the Death Star was going to carry an armada of ships, it would have more guns than an Imperial fleet, there were super-secret weapons that could pop Star Destroyers like soap bubbles, burn a continent down to the bedrock, trigger solar flares, and so forth. But he’d figured most of that for jaw-wag that wasn’t worth the air it took to repeat it. Now, however, seeing the place as the shuttle drew nearer, he revised his opinion. No way the Empire would spend this kind of effort and money if this thing didn’t have a big trick it could pull off.
One thing for sure: it promised to be far more exciting than herding prisoners around on a tropical pesthole like Despayre.
It looked like interesting times lay ahead.
25
CIVILIAN TRANSPORT VESSEL NORDIEUS, APPROACHING HANGAR BAY 1271, DEATH STAR
Commander Atour Riten—a rank that meant less than nothing to him—leaned back in his seat and looked at the viewer inset into the bulkhead next to him. My, he thought. It certainly is … big …
Of course, he had known that. Despite all the secrecy concerning the project, and even though he had not been cleared to top levels by the Empire, he had known that. One did not spend forty years working for the Library Galactica without figuring how to read between the lines.
So yes, this battle station was huge. He had known it, intellectually, but the reality of being able to see it with references that gave one an idea of its size was something else entirely. There were only a dozen or so sections of it finished enough for normal habitation, but even those portions were exceedingly large.
Atour mentally shrugged. It didn’t matter how big the thing was, only that the library inside it was worthwhile. And this one certainly was, if what he had been told was true. It wasn’t as large and encompassing as, say, Imperial Center Main, but it was much more complete than many planetary libraries—or at least it would be when he got done with it.
“Big suckah, idn’t it?” The man sitting next to him was some kind of construction worker, a contractor who specialized in magnetic containment vessels, a subject that had come perilously close, during the course of the flight up, to breaking Atour’s belief that nothing was boring, provided the person speaking of it understood it properly. Flux, gauss, m-particle and graviton shifts? Even with his not-inconsiderable general knowledge, those technical details were but mildly interesting, at best.
Still, Atour Riten believed firmly that there was no excuse for discourtesy, and so he nodded. “Indeed.” Unfortunately, this was taken as encouragement by his seatmate to launch into an enthusiastic description of the power requirements, in megajoules, that it took to run such a huge station.
Atour let him babble on while he waited for the docking procedure to begin and considered the vagaries of fate that had led him here, so late in life. That the library was a potentially good one had been an unexpected bonus, because he had not been posted here as any sort of reward. He’d been shunted off into this world-forsaken assignment as a way of getting rid of him, at least in a manner of speaking.
It had been, in a sense, his own fault: Atour Riten was, admittedly, not always circumspect when it came to controversial subjects—politics, government, personal relationships—and there were a fair number of people who hated to suffer his opinions as a result. Fortunately for him, those with enough power to have him killed with a snap of their fingers seldom had pristine pasts. Archivists, as a rule, knew how to dig into data banks and find just about anything, including bodies thought safely long buried. And old and smart archivists knew how to rig dead-man switches so that if they themselves suddenly died, no matter how natural it might seem, the locations of those bodies—many, many bodies—would come to light. Sometimes they literally were bodies; mostly they were bits of damaging, often illegal, information that would cause much consternation in high levels of government should they pop up on the daily holonews.
There were a whole lot of people who did not want that to happen, and some of them were passing smart, smart enough to at least realize that promoting Atour Riten to commander and shuffling him off into the middle of nowhere to run a military library and archive was a lot safer than deleting him. And so it had come to pass.
Truth to tell, he wasn’t that unhappy about the solution they’d found. His glory days of revamping and innovation were behind him. Weeks where he could stay awake and alert for three or four sleep cycles and burn in a work-fever were long past. He could still put together a top-rack system as well as anyone—false modesty aside, better than most—but these years it took longer than once it had. He was much nearer the end of his road than the beginning. And all in all, he had few regrets.
He sighed softly. Long had he been a thorn in the foot of whoever was in power. This latest shift didn’t really matter all that much: Republic, Empire, it was six to one, half a dozen to the other. It meant little to the average person struggling to make a life. Either form of government could make the mag-levs run on time, and both stepped on individual rights far more than they should. As far as Atour was concerned, the best government was that which governed least. Something a step or two above anarchy would be ideal.
Now there was a power-hungry Emperor running things. Both history and personal experience had taught Atour that in as little as a few years, or as much as a few centuries, there would come evolution—or revolution—and this, too, would pass. The new rulers would start out full of promise and hope and good intentions, and gradually settle into mediocrity. A benevolent but inept king was as bad as a despot.
The warning bell chimed, and the pilot’s voxcast said,
“Attention all passengers, docking will be complete in five minutes. Please check and make sure you have all your belongings before debarkation.”
Atour Riten chuckled softly. There was a word you didn’t hear that often. Debark, from Old Low Frusoise, meaning “to leave a small sailing ship’s secondary boat.” Who on board
knew that, save for himself and perhaps the pilot?
Probably no one. And probably no one cared in the least. When you got to be Atour’s age, you had to take your amusements where you could. Especially with a seatmate nattering on and on about hypermatter reactions.
MIDLEVEL CANTINA, DECK 69, SECTOR N-ONE, DEATH STAR
The size of the station was mind-boggling. Memah still couldn’t get her head around it. Her tiny part of it, which was to become a working cantina, was half again as large as the place that had burned to the pavement back in the Underground, and she had been given more or less a free hand to furnish and run it. At least, so far. She’d been assured that, as long as she didn’t go crazy and try to outfit the place with platinum draw taps or the like, the Empire would cover the cost.
If she kept getting news like that, she might just have to revise her opinion of the new regime.
Rodo drifted past the desk where she sat working up an order form for refreshments and intoxicants. If there was a fermented, brewed, or distilled spirit that wasn’t in stock, she had yet to learn of it. There were beers, ales, wines, liquors, malts, brandies … both generic and brand-named. The legally allowed chemicals that could be eaten, inhaled, dermed, or otherwise taken were likewise available across the board. All she had to do was tick it off on the complex Imperial order form and then wait for delivery. It was apparent that whoever had set this station up had planned ahead for such things.
Star Wars: Death Star Page 13