by James Luceno
Sidious occupied a simple chair well removed from the twin pools of light, the droid 11-4D off to one side and, slightly behind him, Vizier Mas Amedda close at hand as well. Opposite him across the barren room, a pair of Royal Guards flanked the carved stone doorway.
The Koorivar—Bracchia—was an Imperial intelligence asset assigned to Murkhana; the human—Stellan—the Koorivar’s Security Bureau case officer stationed on Coruscant. Sidious already knew all he needed to about their separate backgrounds and records of service. He sought nothing more than to observe them through the Force, and to evaluate their responses to a few simple questions.
“Koorivar,” he said from the chair, “you served the Republic during the war, and more recently you provided some assistance to Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin on Murkhana.”
Light reflected off the Koorivar’s spiral horn as he lifted his head a bit. “I helped them rid Murkhana of arms smugglers, my lord.”
“So it seems. But tell us what you told them at the time about your initial survey of the HoloNet jamming devices.”
“My lord, I stated that I did not chance upon the devices on my own, nor was I cognizant of any rumors indicating that such a cache existed in Murkhana City. I was merely executing a directive I received from Coruscant.”
Viewing him through the Force, Sidious saw the eddying waters began to relax and surrender themselves to the current.
“Case officer,” he said to Stellan, “by ‘Coruscant’ he means you, does he not?”
“Yes, my lord. The investigation was carried out at my request.” A thickset human man of indeterminate age, he had brown wavy hair and large ears set low on a blockish head.
“Then tell us how you came to learn of this cache.”
The man lifted his nondescript face to the light, squinting and blinking in puzzlement. “My lord, forgive me. I assumed you were aware that the information was provided to ISB by Military Intelligence.”
Sidious’s pulse quickened. Instead of smoothing out, the hydraulic tightened on itself and began to spin more rapidly, as if summoning Sidious to follow the swirling funnel beneath the surface to whatever irregularity below had given rise to it.
It may as well have been the dark side that rasped: “Explain this.”
Humbling himself, the case officer lowered his head. “My lord, Military Intelligence was in the process of conducting an inventory of caches of armaments, vehicles, and supplies that had been left abandoned during the war on a host of contested worlds, from Raxus all the way to Utapau. In the case of the HoloNet jamming devices, MI wasn’t certain if the cache had been on Murkhana for several years, or if it was of more recent origin, and worthy therefore of further investigation. Given that an investigation of that sort fell outside its purview, MI relayed the matter to Imperial Security.”
“To you,” Sidious said.
“Yes, my lord, I received a crude holovid that showed the devices.”
“A holovid? Cammed by someone in Military Intelligence?”
“That was my assumption, my lord. I didn’t see the need to pursue the matter, nor did the deputy director. We simply instructed … Bracchia to conduct a survey.”
Sidious thought back to the initial briefing that had taken place in the audience chamber. Defending ISB’s apprehensions that the jammers could be used to spread anti-Imperial propaganda, Deputy Director Ison had wondered aloud why Naval Intelligence was suddenly so troubled by the cache when on first learning of it they had expressed no such concerns. None of the admirals—not Rancit, Screed, nor any of the others—had replied to Ison’s question.
Without taking his eyes from the case officer, Sidious said in a low voice, “Droid, locate this holovid sent by Military Intelligence to ISB.”
OneOne-FourDee extended its interface arm into an access port behind Sidious’s chair. After a long silence, the droid said: “Your Majesty, I find no record of the holovid.”
“As I suspected,” Sidious said. “But you will find it in ISB’s archives.”
Another moment passed before 11-4D said, “Yes, Your Majesty. The holovid is archived.”
And when projected, Sidious thought, it would show corruption of a telltale sort. Because the holovid was counterfeit; faked by someone with access to Imperial codes and to devices capable of subverting the HoloNet.
Deep beneath the surface he had found the irregularities responsible for the turbulence above. And it was apparent now that they were closer at hand than even he had realized.
IN THE MOST SECLUDED of the Executrix’s several tactical rooms, Tarkin closed myriad programs running on the immense battle analysis holotable, and entered a restricted Imperial code that tasked the projector to interface with the HoloNet. He then submitted himself to a series of biometric scans that allowed him to access a multitude of top-secret Republic and Imperial databases situated on Coruscant. He had already issued orders that he was not to be disturbed, but he double-checked that the door had sealed behind him and that the tactical room’s security cams were offline. He called for the illumination to dim, set himself atop a tall castered stool within easy reach of the table’s complex controls, and allowed his thoughts to unwind.
The Star Destroyer was holding at Obroa-skai, awaiting redeployment orders from Coruscant, now that the Emperor had given Vice Admiral Rancit command of the task force created to capture or destroy the Carrion Spike. Only a few hours earlier the dissidents had attacked an Imperial facility at Nouane, a client-state system in the Inner Rim. To Tarkin, the dissidents’ choice of targets seemed as illogical as would have been their showing up at Obroa-skai. But with major systems becoming so heavily reinforced, perhaps the choice merely reflected the fact that their options were dwindling. At Nouane the rogue ship had been prevented from inflicting serious damage and had nearly become a fatality. The win had gone to Rancit, who through a painstaking process of elimination had predicted where the Carrion Spike would strike and had dispatched a flotilla in advance of the corvette’s arrival. Even stealth had failed to allow the corvette to evade a continuous onslaught of long-range lasers. From what Tarkin had been given to understand, there was good reason to believe that the Carrion Spike had sustained heavy damage before a last-ditch retreat to hyperspace. The rumor mill had it that Rancit’s assignment—some called it a promotion—was an indication of the Emperor’s disappointment with Tarkin, but Vader had assured Tarkin that the Emperor was merely trying to free him from having to wear too many hats. Tarkin was to leave the chase to others for the time being, and devote himself instead to ascertaining the dissidents’ ultimate objective.
And so he was.
When stalking game on the plateau, Jova would tell him that a careful study of prints on a trail could reveal not only the species of animal that had left them, but also the animal’s intentions.
With a flourish of input at the holotable’s keypad, Tarkin created an open field above the table and instructed the computer to render his voice into lines of text and place them in order in the field. Then he turned slightly in the direction of the nearest audio pickup.
“Access to confiscated warship modules, Separatist weapons, and HoloNet interrupters—either through salvagers, crime syndicates, or other sources,” he began. “The ability to make use of purchased or pirated Separatist technology. The ability to transmit real-time holovids through the HoloNet, and the ability to create and transmit counterfeit holovids by accessing public HoloNet archives and other media sources. Knowledge of the existence of Rampart and Sentinel bases. Knowledge of Lieutenant Thon’s assignment to Rampart Base. Knowledge of the existence of the Carrion Spike, and familiarity with her sophisticated systems. A crew of spacers conversant with Imperial procedures and with a knowledge of Imperial facilities. Possible assistance from Imperial assets with high clearance.”
One by one the lines of text appeared in the field and Tarkin studied them for a long moment, his elbow planted on his raised left knee and his chin cupped in his hand.
Vader’s
interrogation of the Reticent’s crewmembers hadn’t resulted in anything more than heart failure for the freighter’s Sy Myrthian navigator. However, as a recompense of sorts, the Dark Lord had received a significant piece of information from one of his sources inside the Crymorah. A lieutenant in the crime syndicate claimed to have negotiated a deal with Faazah—the Sugi smuggler on Murkhana—for a supply of custom fuel cells, which had been shipped to the planet shortly before Tarkin and Vader’s arrival. This in itself wasn’t entirely surprising, considering that the Carrion Spike’s stop at the Phindar fuel tanker was evidence enough that the dissidents had added fuel to the ship before absconding with her. What was surprising was that the deal for the fuel cells had been arranged through an agent on Lantillies, whom Tarkin suspected was the same human the captain of the Reticent had named as their broker.
Knotts.
Tarkin instructed the HoloNet database to launch a search for Knotts, and in moments the hologram of a silver-haired human with a deeply lined face was rotating in place above the projector. Knotts had a world-weary look Tarkin associated with veteran soldiers who had seen more than their share of tragedy. Extracting the holoimage, he saved it off to one side of the table and regarded it in silence while machines hummed, chirped, and beeped around him.
What he read in the concise précis accompanying the holoimage supported the fact that Knotts had resided on Lantillies for some fifteen years. Digging a bit deeper, Tarkin was able to retrieve Knotts’s documents of incorporation, his Republic and Imperial tax records, court proceedings of his divorce agreement, even images of the modest apartment he owned on Lantillies. Native to the Core, he had relocated to the Outer Rim and established himself as a middleman, bringing clients in want of goods or services together with groups of freelance spacers who could fulfill those needs. He was something of a dispatcher and an agent, taking what struck Tarkin as a fair credit percentage on each transaction.
The eyes-only Coruscant databases—which Tarkin hadn’t had reason to access since his days as adjutant general of the Republic Navy—provided a more complete and compelling portrait of Knotts. Yes, for fifteen years he had operated a profitable if minor Outer Rim enterprise, but during the Clone Wars he had also functioned as a subcontractor for Republic Intelligence, responsible for the covert transport of arms and other materials to resistance groups operating on Separatist-occupied worlds, one of which happened to figure prominently in Tarkin’s past, as well: the Mid Rim moon Antar 4.
Tarkin sat taller on the stool. The discovery of Knotts’s secret past stirred a memory of the excitement he had felt on the plateau when encountering a sudden, unexpected turn along a game trail. Had his quarry gotten wind of him? Had a different threat presented itself? Was his prey keen on reversing the situation by circling behind to stalk him in his own tracks?
Antar 4 had been a member of the Republic almost from its inception, but the Secessionist Movement that preceded the Clone Wars had created a schism among the moon’s indigenous humanoid Gotals and given rise to terrorist groups aligned with the Separatists. Shored up by the Republic, Gotal loyalists had managed to retain power until shortly after the Battle of Geonosis, when the moon had fallen to Separatist forces and, for a brief period, become a headquarters for Count Dooku. Tens of millions of Gotal refugees had fled to their colony world, Atzerri, replaced on Antar 4 by an influx of Koorivar, Gossams, and other species whose homeworlds had joined the CIS. As a result, the moon became a political imbroglio, and had spawned one of the first resistance groups, made up of loyalist Koorivar and Gotals whom the Republic supported with tactical advisers and secret shipments of arms and matériel. Though the resistance was successful in carrying out hundreds of acts of sabotage, the moon remained in the grip of the Separatists for the length of the war.
Tarkin recalled the Koorivar captain’s words to Vader: Not all of us were Separatists.
With the deaths of Dooku and the Separatist leadership, and the deactivation of the droid army, Antar 4—like many CIS worlds—had soon found itself in the Empire’s crosshairs. More to the point, in the crosshairs of Moff Tarkin, who had been given Imperial orders to make an example of the moon. No attempt was to be made at repatriation, nor was Tarkin to waste time sorting the Separatists from those resistance fighters and intelligence operatives waiting to be exfiltrated to safety.
COMPNOR did its best to cover up the fact that many Koorivar and Gotal loyalists had been swept up in the arrests, executions, and massacres, but the media eventually got hold of the story, and for a while the Antar Atrocity had become a celebrated cause in the Core—this despite the swift disappearances of many beings who had attached themselves to reporting on the story. Instead, the disappearances so fueled the public’s hunger for details that the Emperor decided to remove Tarkin from the controversy by assigning him to pacification operations in the Western Reaches and had ultimately installed him as commander of the bases servicing the deep-space mobile battle station project, replacing Vice Admiral Rancit, who was reassigned to Naval Intelligence.
In thinking back to that period, some four years earlier, Tarkin recalled the case of two Coruscanti journalists who had risen briefly to the forefront among a host of anti-Imperial irritants. A quick search of the HoloNet archives conjured their holograms, which Tarkin placed above the table alongside that of Knotts. In the Coruscant database, Tarkin located intelligence reports detailing their activities.
An attractive, dark-skinned human woman with blue-gray eyes, Anora Fair had been the most vocal and volatile of the Core media correspondents who had fixated on the events at Antar. An ambitious journalist, Fair had already attracted attention for her probing interviews with Imperial officials and her editorials critical of Imperial policy, as well as of the Emperor himself. Her unrelenting reports on the Antar Atrocity had been brought to life with holographic recreations of arrests and executions, produced and directed by a rubicund Zygerrian female named Hask Taff, whom many a pro-Imperial pundit had deemed “a master of HoloNet manipulation.”
It was clear to COMPNOR that the two of them knew more than they could possibly have known without the help of an intelligence community insider, and suspicions at the time had focused on a disaffected former Republic station chief named Berch Teller.
A HoloNet archive search for Teller came up empty, but an access-restricted database search returned a decade-old image of a rangy, dark-haired human with thick eyebrows and a cleft chin. Extracting the hologram, Tarkin placed it alongside those of Anora Fair and Hask Taff, then changed his mind and moved Teller’s hologram to the center, with Knotts—the broker—to one side, and the two media professionals on the other.
Tarkin contemplated the arrangement and was pleased. With each new set of prints, the trail was beginning to surrender its secrets.
Captain Teller’s intelligence network résumé indicated a long and distinguished career. Early in the Clone Wars, Teller had been involved in covert operations on a host of Separatist worlds. That, however, paled in comparison with the fact that Teller had been one of the intelligence officers who had debriefed Tarkin following his rescue and escape from the Citadel, with the plans to a secret hyperspace route into Separatist space.
He and Teller had history.
And there was more.
Assigned to Antar 4 in the war’s final year, Captain Teller had helped train and organize Gotal and Koorivar partisans into well-armed resistance groups, which had carried out raids, destroyed armories and spaceports, and generally made a nuisance of themselves for the governing Separatists. Sensing what was in store for Antar 4 after the war’s abrupt conclusion, Teller had appealed to his superiors in the intelligence agencies to arrange for the extraction of his principal assets before Tarkin could bring the hammer down on the moon. Republic Intelligence had tried to provide aid in the form of documentation and transport, but COMPNOR, by then on the rise in the Imperial hegemony, had refused to intervene, and so many of Teller’s operatives, despite their long-standing loy
alty to the Republic, had been arrested and executed.
The Imperial directive to make an example of the moon had made perfect sense to Tarkin at the time. He wasn’t a retributionist; it was simply that separating friend from foe would undoubtedly have allowed many Separatists to flee into hiding. Eliminating them en masse on Antar 4 was preferable to having to hunt them down later, in whatever remote regions they found shelter. His actions had conveyed a message to other former CIS worlds that defeat didn’t grant them absolution for their crimes, or assure them that the Empire was ready to welcome them back into the fold with open arms. The message had to be made clear to Raxus, Kooriva, Murkhana, and the rest: Surrender all former Separatists, or suffer the same fate as the population of the Gotal moon.
Still, Tarkin could see how a Republic officer like Teller might feel betrayed to the point where he would attempt to wage a campaign of revenge against all odds. The military was filled with those who refused to accept that collateral damage was acceptable when it served to further the Imperial cause. In the absence of order, there was only chaos. Did Teller expect an apology from the Emperor? Compensation for the families of those who had been unjustly executed? It was witless thinking. Multiply Teller by one billion or ten billion beings, however, and the Empire could face a serious problem …
He continued to peruse Teller’s résumé, wading through the dense text that scrolled in midair in front of his eyes. By the time Teller had made his appeal to his intelligence chiefs, he had already been reassigned to head up security at—
Tarkin stared at the words: Desolation Station.
The clandestine outpost responsible for overseeing much of the research for the deep-space battle station.
But Teller wasn’t there for long; he had vanished shortly after the events at Antar 4 and hadn’t been seen since. Some in Military Intelligence believed that he had been assassinated by COMPNOR agents, but others were convinced that it was Teller who had not only fed information about Antar 4 to Anora Fair and Hask Taff, but also been instrumental in spiriting the media partners to safety hours before they were to have been disappeared by COMPNOR.