Motti was still musing about Helaw’s story when the Star Destroyer Undauntable suddenly ceased to be the oldest ship of the line in the quadrant behind him.
In a brilliant, silent white-hot blast the Undauntable blew apart.
39
COMMAND DECK, OVERBRIDGE, DEATH STAR
“You were there,” Tarkin said.
“I didn’t blow it up,” Motti replied.
Tarkin silently counted to ten. Behind him, at a discreet distance, Daala stood, pretending not to hear their conversation.
“What could have happened?”
“It could have been an accident,” Motti said.
“You don’t really think that.”
“No more than you do, sir. Admiral Helaw was as good as any commander in the Imperial Navy and better than most. I cannot imagine an accident of this magnitude would happen on a ship he ran.”
“The Undauntable was an old ship.”
“Even so.”
Tarkin nodded. “I’m afraid I agree.” He paused. “It would be better if it had been an accident.”
Motti said nothing, but Tarkin knew the man was no fool. He understood.
“Darth Vader’s recent visit was supposed to have eliminated the threat of sabotage,” Tarkin continued.
“So I understand. Apparently it did not.”
“If that is the case, we could, I expect, depend on another visit from Vader in short order. Not the worst thing that could happen to us, but certainly another burden we don’t need, with sprawl construction nearly complete.”
“One would expect such a visit, yes.”
“Whereas if there was an accident, on an old ship—a leaky hypermatter containment valve, perhaps … that would be unfortunate, but understandable, and there would be no need for the Emperor’s representative to come all the way out here again.”
Motti frowned deeper. “It would be a shame, however, for such an ‘accident’ to be laid at the feet of Jaim Helaw, whose memory would forever bear that blot on his otherwise perfect record.”
“It would be a shame. However, with Jaim dead, that won’t really bother him, will it? And he had no family.”
Motti said, “The navy was his family.”
“Just so. And Jaim was loyal to the bone. He would not wish his ‘family’ to suffer, would he?”
Motti didn’t like it, that was plain, but Motti was also a loyalist. There was no need for Tarkin to remind him of his duty. The admiral nodded, a crisp, military motion. “So, then: an unfortunate accident, and a single black mark on an otherwise brilliant career.”
“Unfortunate, indeed,” Tarkin replied. “And we all move on.”
After Motti was gone, Daala moved over to stand next to Tarkin. “Isn’t this a bit risky?”
“Not really. Motti is ambitious, and he knows this station is his transport to greatness. He’ll be promoted to Moff as soon as the Rebels are vanquished, and it would be foolish for him to raise a fuss about this. He liked the old man—I was rather fond of him myself—but nothing we can say or do will bring him back, and better that his death serves us rather than gets in our way. So, it was a terrible accident. These things happen.”
She nodded. “But that doesn’t solve the problem entirely, does it?”
He sighed. “You are quite right, Admiral. We still have among us a traitor who somehow managed to vaporize a Star Destroyer. We need to find the ones responsible, before the Rebels can claim credit for this heinous action. And by we, I mean—”
“Me,” she finished. “Do you think that wise? I should be getting back to my duties at the Maw.”
“They will keep. I need you here more than they do there.”
Daala nodded. “Well. I suppose that if it is my duty, what else is to be done?”
She smiled. He returned it.
“I’ll start immediately,” she said.
Tarkin cleared his throat. “Perhaps not immediately. I seem to recall there were some other matters we intended to discuss.”
“In the privacy of your quarters?”
He smiled again. “Just so.”
THE HARD HEART CANTINA, DECK 69, DEATH STAR
Teela Kaarz wasn’t much of a drinker. Sure, she’d have a little wine with dinner, a social drink now and then, but she was too happy a drunk, too willing to go along with whatever anybody wanted just for the fun of it, and that had gotten her in trouble more than a couple of times. Better to stay sober than to have to deal with the regrets later—she had enough of those as it was.
But here she was, in this cantina, listening to a young woman on the small stage playing a stringed instrument, something classical and quiet, barely audible over the sounds of people drinking, laughing, and talking. She was here because she had won a bet—one of the other architects had doubted her ability to redesign a dining hall to a specification change suddenly required because somebody had mistranslated a measurement system. Whereas the specs said the room’s floor was to be nine hundred square meters, whoever had written the blueprint had somehow used the Trogan meter instead of the Imperial standard meter, and the difference could not be made to fit in the available space, since there was a 25 percent variation in the measures.
Back when she had been in school, such an error would have been unthinkable, but the relationship of academe to real construction was that of night to day. It happened all the time. Just last week an automated supply ship had plowed into a warehouse on Despayre, destroying the ship entirely and half the building it hit, because somebody had set the autopilot’s deceleration speed to centimeters per second instead of meters. If you impact at a hundred times the velocity you’re supposed to, it makes something of a difference.
Vishnare, the architect who had proposed the bet, lifted his cup in salute, as did the other five people from her workgroup, and she raised her own cup in acknowledgment.
A noisy group entered the cantina just then, drowning out whatever toast Vishnare had to offer, along with the music. Teela looked at the new arrivals: half a dozen human males all dressed in pilots’ informals.
She sipped a tiny bit of her drink and put the cup down. The pilots were loud, full of themselves, oozing overconfidence and arrogance. She had dated a former military pilot once who’d left the service and taken a job flying commercial transports on her homeworld, but he hadn’t left the attitude behind. Look at me, it said, I’m so much better than everybody else. I can fly!
That relationship hadn’t lasted long. Being secure in what you did was a good thing, but being obnoxious about it? Not so much.
The pilots took a table, and a droid went over to take their orders.
Teela surreptitiously glanced at her chrono. She had to stay for a while more just to be polite, but since she wasn’t much for small talk, mostly she’d just sit there and smile and nurse her drink until she could make an excuse and take off. She had some journals she wanted to read, and crowded, noisy rooms had never been her favorite spaces. She needed to go to the refresher, though, and while she preferred to do that in her own cube, when you had to go, you had to go.
She smiled, stood, and worked her way toward the ’fresher.
She was on her way back to her table when a large fellow wearing storage workers’ greens decided he would give her an opportunity to enjoy his company. The man lurched to his feet and blocked her path. “Hey, sweetlook, wha’s y’hurry? Lemme buy you a drink!” He was at least half soused, from the smell of his breath and his unsteady motion.
“Thank you, but I already have a drink. I need to get back to my friends there.” Teela nodded at her table, four meters past where the storageman wavered on unsteady feet.
“Naw, naw, y’ll’v much more fun here’t my table, ’strue.” He belched, and a rum-tainted miasma drifted past her nostrils.
Teela was aware that she was not altogether unattractive, and over the years since puberty had resculpted her body, she had learned how to deal with unwanted attention well enough. Sometimes you could smile them away, sometime
s you put a little steel in your voice, and most times you just flat out told them you weren’t interested. Drunks didn’t always get the subtle hints, so she went for direct: “Sorry. Not interested.”
She moved to go around him. He slid over and kept her route blocked. “Y’don’ know what y’re missin’, sweetlook. I’m prime!”
“Good for you. Tell somebody who cares.” She turned, intending to go back the way she’d come and loop around—
He grabbed her wrist as she started away. “Y’sayin’ no t’me?” His tone was definitely less friendly now.
Teela twisted her wrist, trying to pull free, knowing in advance that it would only serve to make the storageman hang on tighter. She was right.
Conversation at the tables immediately surrounding them lagged as the patrons, mostly male and mostly as drunk as or drunker than her aspiring boyfriend, watched in bleary interest. The storageman was as large as he was drunk, which made him quite formidable. Teela stopped struggling, because at this stage that was what her assailant wanted. She had heard that the cantina’s bouncer was fast and reliable. She hoped so, because she knew from past experience how quickly a situation like this could get really ugly …
“Oh, look,” a man’s voice said.
Teela turned. It was one of the pilots. He looked about twenty-five, and he also looked like, if he worked out hard and ate his Flakies every morning, he might someday have a chest as big as the storageman’s neck.
Great, she thought. A hero. Where’s the fripping bouncer?
“Your shin hurts,” the flyboy continued, smiling at the big drunk as guilelessly as a freshly decanted clone.
The storageman frowned. “My what?”
The pilot kicked, a short, low move, and the inside edge of his boot sole impacted the bigger man’s lower leg, just below the knee. He scraped his foot down the bigger man’s leg and stomped on the storageman’s instep.
“Ow—feke—!”
The pilot put his right hand on the big drunk’s chest and shoved. Since the other was hopping on one foot, clutching his insulted leg and yelling, it took very little effort to move him backward, where he sat down heavily into his seat.
Before he could do more than blink in bleary surprise, a very large man appeared as if by magic directly behind the storageman and laid a hand the size of a wampa’s forepaw on the seated man’s shoulder. “Is there a problem here?” he asked in a quiet voice. It was a pleasant voice, with no anger in it, but it nevertheless made Teela think of a sheath covering a razor’s edge.
“Nope,” the pilot said. “Our friend here is a little over his limit, and felt unsteady on his feet. The lady and I were just helping him regain his seat safely.”
The bouncer standing behind the storageman smiled. “Ah. Well, then, enjoy the rest of your evening.” He looked down at the befuddled storageman. “And you were just leaving, weren’t you?”
“Whuh?”
“Nicely put. Let me help you to the exit.”
When they were gone, Teela said to the pilot, “I don’t want to seem ungracious, but that wasn’t necessary.”
“When a man lays unwanted hands on a woman, I believe it is. It’s discourteous at best; brutality, at worst.” He smiled. “I’m Lieutenant Vil Dance, by the way.”
She had to admit that his smile was attractive. Down, girl, she cautioned herself, but despite that she couldn’t deny the tingling that had started in her stomach.
“Teela Kaarz,” she replied. “And I appreciate the sentiment, Lieutenant, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.”
“Appreciation, even without agreement, is certainly better than a poke in the eye. Would you allow me to buy you a drink?”
“Thanks, but no. I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Me, neither, really. I’d rather be in my cube studying technical journals.”
“Really?”
He grinned again. “Actually, no. But I’m hoping that if you believe I’m the serious sort, maybe you’ll think better of me.”
His smile was infectious. Teela couldn’t help smiling in return. “Does that work for you often?”
“Pretending to be studious?”
“No, pretending to give away your pickup line that way.”
Now he laughed. “Oh, I like a smart and funny fem.” He dimmed the smile a little. “Let me buy you a caf or sucosa. Water, even. Sit and visit with me for a little while.”
“I don’t know …” Which was a lie; she knew very well what she wanted to do. In her mind’s eye, the small mental projection of her conscience and common sense gaped in disbelief. I can’t believe you’re seriously contemplating this, it scolded.
“Come on. It’s war, I’m a pilot, my number could be up any moment. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing I went out to meet my end smiling at the memory of you?”
You just barely escaped a dangerous situation with one man, her conscience avatar said, and here you are letting yourself be sugar-talked by another.
Teela laughed at Dance’s line. “You pilots and your platinum tongues. All right. I suppose it won’t hurt anything.”
Her conscience threw up its hands in resignation and stalked off into the gray corridors of her brain.
As they approached the table, she saw the other pilots look at them. More than a few looked twice, or closer, and all were blatantly impressed. They stood. “Hey, Vil,” one of them said. “We have to shove off. See you back at the barracks.”
Dance eyed him. “You’re sure about that?”
“Oh, right. Um …” The flier was obviously uncomfortable, and the concealed smiles of the others, not to mention the glare he was getting from Dance, weren’t making things any easier for him. “Right. We have to, uh … go over our technical specs. Down in the hangar.”
The five pilots left. Teela gave Dance a measured look. “You had a bet going with your friends,” she said. It was not a question.
He shrugged. “Of course. First man back with a woman wins the table. They’ll go see if the odds in the pub on Level Six are better. One doesn’t need a bunch of comrades cramping his run if one gets lucky.”
“You aren’t going to get that lucky, Lieutenant. Not tonight, anyway.”
He flashed that high-wattage smile at her again. “You’re too sharp for me, Teela Kaarz. I really like a woman who makes me have to stretch.”
She sighed. No way was she getting into anything remotely serious with a navy pilot. No way.
But a cup of caf couldn’t hurt …
40
THE HARD HEART CANTINA, DECK 69, DEATH STAR
Memah Roothes was aware that she was—well, not to put too fine a point on it—primping. That was a bad sign, she knew, when she started to care what a new male thought of her appearance. The actions themselves didn’t look like much: a slight adjustment of her posture, a little brush over the brow to smooth out a bit of makeup, a quick glance at her reflection when she passed a mirror to check her lekku positions. Nothing major. But she knew. She wanted to look good, and she wanted Ratua to notice that she did.
She wasn’t too old, ugly, or fat, and she wasn’t stupid. He already did like her—you didn’t run cantinas for as long as she had without being able to feel the heat come off a male when he looked at you. Still, the fluttery sensation she felt, the quickening of her heartbeat and breath—those were all bad signs. She didn’t need a new complication in her life right now.
And Green-Eyes was definitely that. For one thing, he didn’t exist, according to what Rodo had found—or hadn’t found—in his HoloNet search, and that meant he was a bad boy of some kind. Could be a legal bad boy—a sub-rosa agent for the Empire, say. Or he could be a Rebel spy. Or some kind of criminal …
But he made her laugh, he was quick and clever, and those eyes … she’d never seen any quite that color before. They were like liquid emerald, bright and alert.
Hence, the primping.
At the end of the bar, a pair of CPOs were talking about a rumored prison break in the d
etention area. Memah overheard one of them say, “Way I heard it, nine guys broke out, one of them a Jedi.”
The other petty officer laughed. “Hate to point it out, but Jedi are real scarce these days.”
“Just telling the story, Tenn.”
“Yeah, I heard it, too. Only I heard it was fifty guys, all captured Rebels, led by five Jedi. And they took over the superlaser and started blasting Star Destroyers. ’Course, the big gun isn’t even operational yet. Anyone knows that, it’s me. But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good story?”
The first chief laughed and sipped at his ale. “Sounds almost like a sim run, don’t it? A really wacky sim run.”
The second CPO said, “Time this war’s over, want to bet that story’ll have a Rebel army nearly destroying the station? Every action I ever been in, stories like that pop up. One floob spits on the slidewalk, by the end of the cycle it’s turned into a crack unit of Rebels knocking over a fortress.”
The first one laughed again. “Yeah. Next they’ll be saying it took the Five Hundred and First to put ’em down.”
Both men laughed.
Memah smiled. She had heard some of those stories, too. Why people felt the need to embellish the truth, or even fabricate something completely different, when reality was all too often quite fantastic enough, was light-years beyond her.
She happened to be looking at the door when Ratua came ambling in as if he owned the place. He caught her glance, smiled, and headed for the bar. Once there, he looked her up and down in frank appreciation.
Star Wars: Death Star Page 20