Star Wars: Death Star

by Michael Reaves

  She turned to the console’s controls. Another image appeared, this one a routing manifest.

  “The rigged container’s ID number is not visible in the recording, but the number of the one eight down is, so it was a simple matter to figure out the one we want.”

  True, Tarkin thought. Loading droids were not known for creativity. They stacked cargo containers by the numbers.

  “You can see that this container came from the cargo vessel Omega Gaila, itself from the ammunition stores at the Regional Naval Supply Area near Gall. The container carried high explosives, so that’s what a scan would show—if anybody bothered to do one.”

  She waited again.

  Tarkin thought about it. “The RNSA at Gall is a high-security facility. Extremely tight. Nobody on or off the base without top clearance, even the cargo handlers.”

  “Yes.”

  He frowned. Shook his head. “Not possible.”

  “Yet somebody got into a container and rigged it with a bomb powerful enough to blast a Star Destroyer apart. And they weren’t shooting in the dark, hoping to hit something, because it took somebody on the other end to arm the device.”

  “So they knew where it was bound,” he finished for her. “No way to have agents at every possible destination. Once it got to our storage facility, it could have gone to any of several ships.”

  “Or to this station,” she said. “It was the luck of the draw that Undauntable needed ammo before we did.”

  “So it’s being run by somebody higher than a cargo handler. At the very least, there had to be somebody from Routing involved, and enough of a conspiracy to be able to place or contact an agent already here. We are talking about a Rebel spy in the Imperial Navy with more than a little reach.”

  “Just so.”

  “We can probably determine who loaded the container, and who routed it.”

  “Which is good, but also doesn’t stop something similar from happening again if the next shipment comes from a different source.”

  “Correct. We need to find whoever is running the agents here,” he said.

  “I concur.”

  He looked at her. “How do you plan to do this?”

  “I’m assuming that the agent did not choose suicide. We have the day and time the device was activated. He or she would have had to arrive before that time, and depart before the explosion. Undauntable’s operational logs were backed up on the station’s computer, the last entry coming just before the ship’s destruction. It might take some time, but we can access those and narrow down the possibilities.”

  “Good,” Tarkin said. “Do so immediately.”

  She smiled and adjusted the lapels of her robe. “Immediately?”

  He did not return her smile. “Yes. There are times for dalliance, and times for action. I want a report by zero five hundred hours.”

  Daala nodded and began to dress, quickly.

  45

  MEDCENTER, SECTION N-ONE, DEATH STAR

  Uli looked at his commander incredulously. Since Hotise had arrived and set up shop on the station, they hadn’t seen each other that much, and Uli wasn’t happy to be seeing him now.

  “What?” Hotise said. “You seem to think that I personally run this war, Doctor. Believe me, if I did, it’d be run a sight better. As it is, there are things that are simply in short supply. Medical doctors, not to mention psychiatrists, are hard to come by, even here with the big green light. It won’t kill you to step into the breach now and then. You did rotations in both disciplines during your residency.”

  “Of course I did. I’m not complaining about the work. But I’m a surgeon, not an internal meds doctor. My skills are rusty outside my specialty.”

  “Well, you have state-of-the-art robotics backing you up, as well as the top-of-the-line diagnosters in the galaxy. A first-year medical student or a competent droid could run those and hit the mark ninety-five percent of the time.”

  “You’re making my point for me, Doctor.” Uli held his hands up. “These are for cutting, not tapping knees and treating headaches. It’s not the best use of my talents.”

  Hotise shrugged. “Making best use of talent has never been the military’s mission, son. They change about as fast as a space slug molts. If they want to have a doctor digging trenches in the field of battle, they will have him do just that—because they can.

  “If routine physicals get in the way of your surgery, then let them slide. But as long as you aren’t slicing and gluing, we don’t have enough help for you to sit around waiting for another body to open up.” He leaned forward, putting his hands on Uli’s cluttered desk. He looked, Uli thought, about twenty years older than he had months before, when he’d assigned Uli his duties. Uli could also smell a faint whiff of alcohol on his breath.

  “Eventually,” Hotise continued, “we’ll be fully staffed, but until then, we have to spread ourselves around.”

  “And if the spread is too thin for the good of the patients?”

  Hotise straightened. “Suck it up, Dr. Divini. There is a war on, after all.”

  Uli sighed and nodded. He hadn’t really expected anything else. And tired or not, drunk or not, the man was right. A surgeon lying on a couch could just as easily be treating routine lumps and bumps.

  Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

  “You have patients to see,” Hotise said. “So I’ll get out of your hair. Have a nice shift.”

  The older man exited the office, and Uli glared at Hotise’s back as he left.

  “I’m unfamiliar with all the nuances of human behavior,” C-4ME-O said, “but I think it’s safe to say that you didn’t come out the best in that exchange.”

  “You’re the second wise-mouth droid I’ve met. If I never meet another one, my life would not suffer a bit.”

  “Here’s the next patient’s chart, Doctor.”

  “Go find something useful to do before I decide you need to be reprogrammed as a latrine cleaner. We can do that in the military, you know. Take a medical droid and put him to that use.”

  “Idle threats do not become you, Dr. Divini.”

  Uli smiled despite himself and looked at the chart. It described the complaint of one Sergeant Nova Stihl, a guard, who was having …

  Bad dreams?

  Great. Wonderful. He knew less about psychological maladies than he did Rodian influenza.

  In the exam room, the patient sat on the table wearing a disposable flimsi gown. Offhand, he looked fit and muscular; on the face of it he didn’t appear to be beset with any major psychosis. His affect was calm.

  “Sergeant Stihl. I’m Dr. Divini. What seems to be the problem?”

  The man gave him a little shrug and looked embarrassed. “Trouble sleeping.”

  “I see. Says here you’ve been having nightmares?”

  “Yeah. I hate to waste your time on piddly stuff, Doc, but I’m starting to doze off at work. Maybe you can give me a pill or something?”

  “No problem there, we have all kinds of sleeping meds. But we should probably try to figure out the cause before we try curing it.”

  Stihl shrugged again. “You’re the doctor.”

  “How long has it been going on?”

  “Hard to say. I used to have a bad night once in a while at my last posting, but they’ve gotten worse since I was transferred up here. More frequent.”

  “Uh-huh. Any stress at your job?”

  Stihl laughed. “I’m a guard. I deal with sodders locked in detention who don’t want to be there, most of whom did something illegal to get there. Stress goes with the territory.”

  “Been doing it awhile?”

  “Since I joined up. Eleven standard years.”

  “Okay. So the stress level now is what? More, less, the same?”

  “A little less, actually. I was posted dirtside before. Some real touchy types on Despayre, most of ’em crazier than a rabid Shistavanen. Guys detained here on the station are generally military or civilian contractors who got too frisk
y or greedy. Not many career criminals. Easier to deal with, ’cause they got more to lose.”

  “Okay. Recreation?”

  “I do martial arts.”

  “Getting hit in the head more than usual?”

  Stihl laughed. “Other way around. I’m the teacher—I don’t get tagged, much.”

  “Anything new or different so far as diet? Alcohol? Quarters? Relationships?”

  “Not that you’d notice. I get along with my unit, eat the same stuff I usually eat, don’t spend my time drinking. Basic barracks are the same all over the galaxy; I share a cube with a few other NCOs; they aren’t any trouble. I tend to serial monogamy and don’t have anybody I’m seeing right now.”

  Subjective analysis seemed normal. “Could be an allergy. Lot of construction chaff and microscopic dust floating around before the filters catch it. Let’s do a physical, make sure all your systems are online, run some analyses of blood and urine and stuff like that, do a mag-scan. If we find something we can fix, we’ll fix it. If everything checks out, I’ve got meds that will knock you out like you were hit with a mallet, and guarantee a dreamless sleep for six hours.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Uli did a physical exam, which was unremarkable. The man was as fit as he had first thought, at least to the trained eye. He had C-4ME-O take the patient to the diagnoster array and run the standard battery of tests, covering all the major systems. The machines were fast; the first results started coming in before the second batch of tests began.

  Things looked unremarkable. Stihl was in great shape for a man his age, better than most humans twenty years younger. Myoconduction, brain scan, EEG, MEG, dendrite function were within limits. Afferent/efferent speeds were slightly better than normal; heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen, pancreas, repro, bowels …

  Uli looked at the blood composition readout. Platelets fine, WBC normal spread, hematocrit, hemoglobin, all normal.

  Except—

  His midi-chlorian count was over five thousand per cell.

  Uli blinked. That was unusual. Normal human range was less than half that. He didn’t know a lot about midichlorians; nobody did anymore—most of the research on the subject had been done at the Jedi academy by their own healers, and their records were not available for study. A shame. The Jedi were all gone …

  Like Barriss …

  He shook his head. He didn’t want to rocket down that particular space lane, thank you. When he’d met Barriss, he’d been up for his first tour in the field, young and idealistic. Now Barriss was gone—and so was his idealism.

  This blasted war …

  He pulled himself back to the task at hand. Could the high midi-chlorian count be somehow responsible for the sergeant’s dreams? If the Jedi were correct, these were the vital living components that connected everything to the Force. And he’d heard that the Force could sometimes cause strange, even prescient dreams. It seemed to make sense, especially given that it was the only anomaly on the tests.

  “So what’s the drill, Doc?”

  Uli explained the stats to him. The sergeant looked blank. “Mini whats?”

  “Midi. Chlorians.”

  “And you think that might be the problem?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know. Not my specialty. I’ll check into it and get back to you, but in any case it shouldn’t be dangerous at your levels. You aren’t going to die from it.”

  Stihl looked relieved. “That’s something, anyhow.”

  “I’ll give you some tablets that should allow you to rest.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate it.”

  “Just doing my job,” Uli said.

  After the sergeant was gone, Uli accessed the station’s medical library. Not surprisingly, there was no more to be had on midi-chlorians than he already knew.

  Maybe there was a doctor with specialized knowledge of cell biology on the station, or assigned to one of the warships in the area. He started to post a query on the Med-Net, but then stopped. Was this a good idea? he asked himself. The Emperor had ordered a complete ban on any and all data having to do with Jedi and the Force. So thorough had been the revisionism that now, barely two decades after the Jedi heroism of the Clone Wars, nearly every reference in every data bank in the galaxy had been purged of matters and information relating to the order. Most beings born since then knew little, if anything, about those larger-than-life characters whose names had once been on everyone’s lips, and their elders were smart enough not to talk about the subject. The ban, as far as Uli knew, was still in effect. Did he really want to put up a query on a public forum concerning such a highly sensitive topic? After all, Sergeant Stihl seemed to be in no danger, immediate or long-term. He’d never heard of midi-chlorians being associated with any pathology. Did his oath to heal extend so far as to put himself in harm’s way by asking for information on a forbidden topic, especially when the patient seemed to be in no danger?

  Yes, he reluctantly decided. If there was the slightest chance that the midi-chlorians were causing, or had the potential to cause, ill health for Nova Stihl, It was Uli’s duty as a healer to pursue all courses of inquiry.

  C-4ME-O entered. “Your next patient is ready, Doctor.”

  As he interviewed the next patient, Uli realized that, while he’d resented Hotise’s laying additional work on him initially, now he was glad of it. It took his mind off what a moral quagmire the galaxy had become.

  46

  ISD DEVASTATOR, ARKONIS SECTOR, OUTER RIM

  “Lord Vader?”

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  The lieutenant practically stank of fear. Normally that was to be expected and not a problem, for fear was a useful tool. But occasionally it could be time consuming.

  “You aren’t afraid,” Vader said, drawing his fingers together to concentrate the Force.

  “I’m not afraid,” the lieutenant echoed. The tightness in his face and body relaxed, somewhat.

  “You have something for me?”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant held up a printout flimsi sheet. “One of your warning flags has been tripped. A surgeon on board the battle station has requested from the local Med-Net information on midi-chlorians.”

  “Very well. Leave it here. You may go.”

  “Sir.” The man left. Weak-minded idiot he still was, but at least he wasn’t shaking in his boots.

  Vader read the new dispatch with interest. He considered the knowledge therein. Why would someone on the battle station be looking for information on midi-chlorians?

  Vader knew all about midi-chlorians, of course—he personally had the highest count per cell ever recorded, more than twenty thousand. More than Yoda, and, he knew, more than his erstwhile Master, Kenobi. Which meant that, potentially, he could have a stronger connection to the Force than anyone. Since most, if not all, of the Jedi were no more, that was all the sweeter, though Vader was convinced that Obi-Wan had remained hidden all these years, as had Yoda, assuming the latter had not finally shuffled off into death. Yoda had been very old, after all, and the defeat and deaths of the Jedi could not have helped him age any easier. He could be dead. But it was unwise to make such assumptions about such a powerful Jedi Master.

  Back to the subject at hand. It might be wise to have a word with this medic and see what he was up to. Midichlorians did not normally figure into the medical treatment of most beings. This was unusual.

  Not unusual enough to leave his current mission and go investigate, however. Soon enough he would have reason to return to the battle station. He would deal with this doctor and his strange request when he went.

  For now, it was time to go again to his hyperbaric chamber, to rest and recharge. There was much that needed to be done in the service of his Master, and never enough time to do it all.

  ARCHITECTURAL OFFICES, EXECUTIVE LEVEL, DEATH STAR

  Teela saw the flowers on her desk when she arrived for her shift, a spray of everlilies, rojos, blueblossoms, and purple passions, artfully arranged by someb
ody who knew how to mix and match them for the most visual appeal. She could smell the spicy, peppery scent of the rojos wafting in the office air currents as she drew nearer.

  The card with the arrangement said, SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

  That, she thought, is a good question.

  There wasn’t any real future for them. He was an Imperial TIE fighter pilot on war duty, and she was a convicted criminal working as a trustee on the biggest battle station ever designed and built. Their backgrounds were too different, their loyalties too far apart. While it was true that they would both go where the Empire told them to go, and do what they were ordered to do, Teela did so because there was no real choice, whereas Vil gloried in his work.

  Construction on the station kept getting faster as the crews learned from the first sections built and were able to build new ones with less wasted effort. Some parts of the process had been so streamlined that the work went nearly twice as fast as it had before. The army of construction droids worked tirelessly, day in and day out; an interior structure that would ordinarily take months to finish with organic labor would often be completed in only a few days. It was amazing and, to an architect, most gratifying to see such constructions appear as if by magic. The only ones who came close to matching the droids’ speed were the Wookiees. Teela remembered an old saying: Give a Wookiee a knife and send him into a forest in the morning, and by evening he would have carved you a table to eat dinner on—and a house to put it in.

  They were on schedule in many areas, ahead in many more, and behind in only a few. Teela felt mixed emotions at this. After the station was completed, it would go off to engage the Rebels and help destroy the insurrection, and Vil would be in the thick of all that. And where would she be? Probably back on the prison planet for the rest of her life.

  Then again, life was always uncertain. You could get hit by a hovertruck crossing a street. There were myriad diseases that would kill you in short order. Somebody could forget to weld a seal and a decompressive blowout could spit you into cold vacuum, where you’d be dead and frozen solid before anybody came to collect you, if they even bothered. You didn’t get up every morning expecting such things to happen—that way lay depression as deep as space itself—but you had to know that life was short and there were no guarantees.