Catalyst

by James Luceno

  “Obviously I’ve failed to make myself understood, Chieftain.”

  “Perhaps. But time is hardly a precious commodity on Vallt, so we don’t mind wasting it, as you so colorfully put it. Time enough for an inquest, followed by a trial before the Tribunal. And all the while away from your wife. I can certainly appreciate your position, but I would have thought you would want a better life for your child.” She paused to blow out her breath. “Well, Marshal Phara is taking the matter under advisement. Should your innocence be established you will of course be permitted to leave Vallt.”

  Galen shook his head in elaborate disappointment. “There’s a test we run at the ignition facility. We subject certain crystals to intense pressure in order to entice them to produce a kind of electrical current. Conversely, those same crystals can be made to shrink in size when excited by an external current. I’m trying to determine which of the tests I’m being subjected to just now.”

  Gruppe’s eyes clouded over; then she smiled with what struck Galen as genuine warmth. “You’re an odd sort of being, Dr. Erso.”

  “You’re not the first to make that observation, Chieftain.”

  “You seem to take pride in being stubborn.”

  “I only know one way to be.”

  Gruppe took a deep breath. “It must be difficult to live with.”

  He tried to read her. “Having principles?”

  “No.” She tapped the side of her head, clearly indicating Galen’s. “All that deep thinking.”

  —

  Lyra’s hands were shaking as she unfolded the letter Nurboo had delivered. Handwritten on parchment of the sort the Valltii used, the message filled both sides of the stiff sheet. The wide margins on one side were crammed with drawings of faces and figures, interspersed with fragments of equations, as if Galen was multitasking—one part of him writing to her while another part sought to solve some calculation spinning through his head. She had to turn the sheet ninety degrees each way and upside down to decipher some of the jottings. The reverse side was covered top-to-bottom and edge-to-edge with Galen’s near-microscopic scrawl. His handwriting was almost as indecipherable as his theories about crystals and their potential to provide inexpensive power, but years of transcribing Galen’s personal notes had allowed her to interpret both.

  The letter began:

  I have learned—from Chieftain Gruppe, who has interrogated me on three separate occasions so far—that you are, in her words, “in safekeeping” in the northern wing of the Keep. As luck would have it, I can see a bit of that architectural monstrosity from the small crazed window in my room—my cell, really—though I have to perch myself precariously on a three-legged stool I set upon the hard slab of my sleeping platform, and what with the pale winter light I’m left staring directly into the smudge of Vallt’s distant primary. Even so I try to imagine the room you inhabit and hope that you have reason from time to time to peer across the city at Tambolor, your gaze alighting on my candlelit cubicle.

  In fact she hadn’t done that because she hadn’t known where he was being kept. But now that she did she eased herself out of the plush chair at the foot of the broad bed and moved slowly to the bay window, one hand supporting her ever-expanding belly. Wiping frost from the bubbled glass, she peered out across the courtyard and across the blockish hand-built city beyond. Central to the courtyard sat an enormous statue of a taqwa rider dressed in cape and helmet, with a war club raised in his right hand. High above, a dozen broad-winged fliers were wheeling in the monochrome sky. In the city, a few Valltii could be glimpsed going about their business: a scattering of beast-drawn sleds maneuvering through the city’s maze of frost-heaved lanes. The imposing prison sat on a tableland far to the east and resembled the Keep in many ways, as it had served as the palace in a bygone era. Lights flickered in some of Tambolor’s lower-story windows, but the upper stories, all the way to the exaggerated roof—too steep even for snow to accumulate for very long—loomed black as night. Which level, which cell? she wondered. Why hadn’t Galen provided her with an appointed time to look, so that he could wave a candle in his window and she would know where he was and that he was all right?

  She lowered herself onto the soft cushion of the bay’s window seat and as she did the baby stirred and either kicked or elbowed her, which made her smile and wish all the more that Galen was with her so she could press his hand against her abdomen to feel the life within. One of her handmaidens was a midwife, and she was excited by the prospect of witnessing and assisting in a human birth. Giddy as children and loyal to Phara only when the marshal’s henchmen were within earshot, the handmaidens were as eager to meet Galen as Lyra was to hug him to her.

  Lifting the message into the meager light, she continued reading.

  As prison cells go mine isn’t too bad. It’s remarkable what the Valltii can do with stone, and this room, this entire building really, is about as impressive an example of worked stone as I’ve seen anywhere on- or offworld. The walls are a meter thick, the high ceiling a flawless geometry of ovoid arches, the massive columns left raw and unadorned, as if to call attention to the skill of the masons who raised them. The corridors are filled with the incessant sound of hand chisels at work.

  There are, of course, the bars that seal me inside, the dim light, the odors, and the daytime chutes of snowmelt running down the walls from the sloping roof. When the temperature plunges at night I can almost ice-skate across the tiled floor. I have, though, discovered some interesting patterns and faces in the growths of algae and moss, even in the arrangement of the unhewn stones, some of which I include here for your amusement. Plus I have been running all make and manner of calculations in my head. The strict routine of toilet breaks and meals of starchy root crops is allowing me to make a lot of headway.

  But enough about me and my predicament.

  Chieftain Gruppe has also assured me that you are being treated well, but how can I know for sure? Nurboo, when he visited to collect this missive, said that he hadn’t been able to ascertain anything about your living conditions or, more important, the state of your health. Your remark about that downhill trip on Chandrila stirred many recollections of that expedition, and how crucial your knowledge of the wilderness was to our survival. Can you recall the interior of that cave as lucidly as I can—the stalactites, the drip water, the extraordinary view over the glacier? We have had some times, haven’t we; some amazing experiences. Adventures! And just as we’ve always managed to get out of tight spots, we’ll get out of this one. We just need to hold out and trust.

  Once more she raised her eyes from the sheet as memories tugged her from the present. It was so like Galen to go off on tangents. In his usual fashion, he was deliberately misremembering. He’d had as much to do with ensuring their survival as she had. Even with a torn knee he had stoked the fire, helped prepare their meals, melt snow for cooking. He was forever underselling himself, downplaying his innate strength and power. She recalled the first time she’d set eyes on him on Espinar, thinking: If this guy was any more magnetic, pieces of metal would fly across the room and start sticking to him…

  She went back to reading.

  I take full responsibility for this imbroglio—unlike Chandrila, which really wasn’t my fault. (I will also lay the blame on those cheap bindings.) You were reluctant to come to Vallt and in retrospect I should have listened to you. It was only a matter of time before Vallt aligned itself with the Separatists, and I should have seen that coming. Well, perhaps I did and simply refused to acknowledge it. For the research, of course, and—you have to admit—we have forged some lasting friendships these past months. Then there is the crystal research itself, and the discoveries the team has made. We’re onto something big with this last batch of kyber synthetics; I can feel it. There’s no telling at this point what the limits are: power enough to supply enriched and renewable energy for entire continents, certainly. Perhaps for entire worlds. I do ache to get back to the facility to continue the work. Research is the onl
y thing I’m good at, and I’m determined to provide for you and our child. I lament that that seems a long shot just now.

  But enough about me again!

  What I really ache to do is hold you, and I will do whatever I must to be with you when you deliver our child. Chieftain Gruppe has said over and over that I hold the key to our freedom. It is contingent merely on my agreeing to work for the Separatists rather than for Zerpen. All these false charges of espionage will be dropped, and we can go back to living as we were just weeks ago. And this is where I have to ask you: Should I simply accept their terms? I will do it—for your sake, for the sake of our unborn daughter. You need only say the word. Take solace in the fact that my mind remains free—to dwell on you from afar. Until we are together once more. All my love.

  She frowned as she set the letter down alongside her on the cushion. He knew full well that she would never tell him to act against his principles. But where it might strike some as a kind of ploy—a shifting of the responsibility for his decision onto her to keep himself from being held accountable—she understood that he meant every word of it. She picked the sheet up to reread, her eyes brimming with tears by the time she reached the end. As painful as it was to read, the letter had been the first she had received from him in years and she cherished it.

  —

  Assis came to with a start.

  Its optical sensors registered that a Valltii soldier with long and bejeweled mustachios had removed the restraining bolt a different soldier had installed…27 local days, 18 divisions, and 6.23 fragments earlier.

  It was still just inside the entrance of the domed docking bay in which Dr. Erso and Lyra had been netted. A Zerpen spacecraft rested on a sheen of ice that had formed since their capture. Several soldiers were circling the craft at the moment, their breathing forming small clouds in the frigid air. One was clearly aware of the sounds of Assis’s restart and self-diagnostic, but was paying it no mind. Assis’s alloy extremities were rendered slightly brittle by the cold. Its relays and conductors were slow to warm.

  As per Dr. Erso’s programmed commands, the TDK-160’s sensors reached out in search of devices with which it could communicate. It found the spacecraft’s hypercomm transceiver and entered into a jaunty dialogue with it.

  While the two machines spoke, Assis’s intelligence ran through various scenarios regarding its fate once the Valltii determined that it had executed Dr. Erso’s task. One scenario had it undergoing a full memory wipe and rebuild; another, a full dismantle and recycling; a third, commendation by those it served and to whom it belonged.

  A relationship with the craft’s hyperspace communications suite established, Assis relayed audio and visual data regarding Dr. Erso’s arrest and the commandeering of the research facility by soldiers loyal to Vallt’s new government, which the transceiver in turn relayed to the appropriate parties in a burst broadcast.

  All of this occurred in the blink of an eye.

  ON A WORLD AS POPULOUS as Coruscant where the guest list for an invitation-only event could run to the tens of thousands, the mixed-species gathering of 150 beings taking place in the Strategic Planning Amphitheater at the summit of the Republic Center for Military Operations raised the definition of exclusive to new heights. Not a standard year earlier, before the start of the war and the Republic’s still-astonishing acquisition of a Grand Army of clone soldiers, the very notion of a Strategic Advisory Cell would have been viewed as just another ruse by members of the Senate to fatten themselves on the rich drippings of the bloated Republic coffers. Now, in light of intelligence regarding the state of the Separatist war machine, the committee was seen—certainly by the assembled insiders—as crucial to Republic efforts to counter and defeat the Confederacy of Independent Systems.

  Lieutenant Commander Orson Krennic, the person largely responsible for remodeling and expanding the building, was seated halfway between the amphitheater’s rounded stage and the tiered balconies reserved for a few select senators and representatives of the industrial cartels that had remained loyal to the Republic: Corellian Engineering, Kuat Drive Yards, Rendili StarDrive, and the like. Just turned thirty, Krennic was of average height, with bright-blue eyes, narrow lips, and wavy light-brown hair. Recently transferred from the Corps of Engineers to the cell’s Special Weapons Group, he wore the same white tunic affected by some members of the intelligence and security services.

  Seating in the room hadn’t been assigned by rank, species, or order of importance, but Krennic was determined to move himself closer to the wings of the stage where Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s right-hand man, Mas Amedda, sat with several of his gaudily attired key advisers in front of a curved windowwall that looked out on the southern sprawl of Coruscant’s Senate District. In the months since the weekly briefings had begun, Krennic had managed to advance ten rows toward his goal, and was confident of reaching it by the first anniversary of the Battle of Geonosis.

  The room contained as many uniforms as not. Seated to Krennic’s left was the chief of naval intelligence and to his right the director of COMPOR—the Commission for the Protection of the Republic. Elsewhere were high-ranking members of the military, structural engineers, starship designers, and theoretical and experimental physicists. Many of them were near- or nonhuman—a handful of the latter immersed in tanks of liquid or wearing transpirators that supplied the atmospheric gases native to their homeworlds. Krennic knew some of the scientists as associates on the War Production Board, others merely by reputation.

  As the room began to quiet, he leaned slightly to one side to gaze between two ruddy, small-horned heads at the thin-limbed alien scientist who was speaking from the front row.

  “Vice Chancellor Amedda and esteemed colleagues, I am pleased to announce that phase one of the project has been completed.”

  A male Parwan, Dr. Gubacher was a specialist in artificial intelligence who worked closely with the Jedi in designing surveillance and espionage droids. Pressed to the apparent voice box of Gubacher’s dome-shaped head was a device that rendered his sibilant utterings in fluent Basic.

  “If you’ll direct your attention to the holoprojector…”

  Most did; others enabled small devices built into the armrests of many of the chairs that replicated the 3-D data issuing from the massive center stage unit. Personal comlinks were not permitted in the amphitheater, and even the projectors were quarantined from the HoloNet.

  A gleaming metallic ring hung above the stage, motionless against a backdrop of stars.

  Gubacher raised himself on tentacle legs to regard the ring for a moment, then twirled to face the control booth in the amphitheater’s uppermost tier. “Please provide the alternative view.” He waited for the ring to become vertical in the field. “Ah, that’s better. Now please expand the field so that the ring can be viewed in context.”

  As the ring diminished in size, warships, construction vessels, asteroids, and the starlit rim of a desolate-looking planet began to appear in the field.

  Gubacher gestured to the ring. “One hundred and twenty kilometers from pole to pole. In itself, an incredible achievement.”

  Applause erupted in the amphitheater, and even Mas Amedda proffered a gratified smile. Having spent time at the construction site, Krennic felt that the holovid didn’t do justice to the work in progress above the planet Geonosis. But the holo would have to suffice, since few members in the amphitheater had been allowed to visit the project. The wedge-shaped Venator-class Star Destroyers on view, as well as many others scattered through the Geonosian system, were there to deny entry to any unauthorized visitors.

  “What you see is the product of countless hours of construction work undertaken by machines,” Gubacher continued, “most of which are newly designed, and some of which are controlled by sentient operators stationed in our orbital command habitats, as can be seen”—he indicated three bright specks in the holofield—“here, here, and here.” Turning to the control booth, he said: “Please project aspect two.”

>   Murmurings and their analogs in a variety of languages issued from the audience while the field disappeared. In its place resolved a panorama of the red planet’s asteroid belt, replete with construction vessels of all classifications—miners, transports, tenders, tugs—coming and going like a swarm of vespids building a nest.

  “Our quarry, if you will,” the Parwan said, “supplying us with metals, organic materials, even supplies of water. Similarly viable asteroids have been towed and tractor-beamed to the site from throughout the field, and in some instances from fields surrounding the star system’s gas giants.”

  The holovid shifted again to display a view of massive orbital platforms, busy with ship traffic.

  “Once the ores are mined,” Gubacher went on, “they are hauled to foundries in synchronous orbit for the production of durasteel and other structural metals. By cannibalizing the battle droid factories Baktoid Armor built on the surface, we were able to have the foundries up and running soon after the start of asteroid mining.” Once more he signaled the control booth. “Please project the original schematic.”

  A sphere with a massive northern hemisphere concavity appeared above the holoprojector.

  “Our goal,” Gubacher said, “the mobile battle station.”

  It was Supreme Chancellor Palpatine himself who had presented the schematic to the Strategic Advisory Cell at the second briefing. But in fact the battle station wasn’t a product of Republic research and development; it had originated with the Separatists. The captive Geonosian leader, Poggle the Lesser, maintained that Count Dooku had provided Poggle’s hive with the basic plans, and that the Geonosians had merely refined them. To the best of Poggle’s knowledge, the Separatists had no project of their own in the works. However, most cell members had refused to take the Geonosian at his word. Intelligence had high confidence that Dooku’s forces, in league with various corporations allied to the Confederacy, were in the process of constructing a battle station somewhere in the galaxy, and an extensive search was under way to locate and destroy that secret site. Krennic considered the evidence specious, but rejecting the possibility out of hand would have jeopardized Republic funding for the project, regardless of the authority that had been ceded to Palpatine by the Emergency Powers Act. If the battle station was as potentially potent as scientists had determined it to be, then it was vital that the Republic get theirs built first.