Catalyst

by James Luceno

  “I’ve read them. During those sessions you avowed that you provided no information to Vallt, and that you refused their offer to conduct research for the Separatists. You also stated that you have no interest in conducting research for the Republic.”

  “I’m a scientist, not an effective.”

  “No one is asking you to fight on the front lines, Dr. Erso. We have the Grand Army and the Jedi Order for that. What the Republic needs is people willing to support the war effort in other ways.”

  “Again, I’m not interested in supporting the war in any capacity.”

  “You hail from a Republic member world that has been left devastated by the conflict. You were educated—at considerable expense—in an elite program founded by the Republic and at a succession of institutions thereafter.”

  “I don’t recall being under any obligation to repay that debt.”

  “You’re not. But let’s be frank, Dr. Erso. You see how this looks: a brilliant researcher refusing to lift a finger to help his government?”

  “There’s a difference between objecting to the policies of the Republic and being a Separatist sympathizer.”

  “Granted. And yet you feel no allegiance to the Republic?”

  “No allegiance to the Republic war machine. If there’s a place for me in energy enrichment, I’ll accept the opportunity without hesitation.”

  Tarkin took a moment to reply. “Your chief area of expertise is crystals.”

  “Synthetic ones—in place of the ones I’m after.”

  “The kyber,” Tarkin said in a knowing way. “Following up on the original research done by Marsabi?”

  Galen drew his brows together in surprise. “To a degree. I’m more interested in what Cuata was doing on Mygeeto and Christophsis before the war placed them in danger.”

  Tarkin continued to nod. “Zaly had remarkable success in analyzing the internal structure of the kyber. Do you suspect he and other Separatist researchers might be pursuing his findings?”

  “It’s…it’s possible.”

  “Might they have succeeded in weaponizing the research?”

  “If they have, the war will soon be over.”

  “If I recall, Zaly’s theory—”

  “It’s flawed. There is simply no way to contain that kind of power.”

  “Suppose—”

  “You’re beginning to sound more like a weapons specialist than a legal authority,” Galen interrupted.

  Tarkin smiled again. “A passing interest. But make no mistake, Dr. Erso, I’m not trying to recruit you. I’m simply trying to determine if Vallt’s willingness to exchange such a brilliant researcher for two rather ordinary ones wasn’t engineered to place you back on Coruscant as a double agent.”

  Galen sniffed. “Finally we come to the real reason I’m not allowed to leave Coruscant.”

  “What did this Chieftain Gruppe ask of you on Vallt?”

  “She asked about the Grand Army—where it came from and how long it was in the planning stages. She asked about Republic weapons, the size of the fleet, the role of the Jedi.”

  “And you said nothing.”

  “I had nothing to give them, even if I wanted to.”

  “Even with your wife suffering as a result, they didn’t succeed in turning you.”

  Galen looked hard at Tarkin. “She didn’t suffer.”

  “You were prevented from seeing each other.”

  “Lyra is a strong person, with or without me by her side. Perhaps you need to be reminded that it was the Republic that rescued me. If I were a double agent, or whatever you’re accusing me of being, why wouldn’t I be jumping at the chance to work for the military?”

  Tarkin didn’t speak to that; instead he said: “As it happens, I know a bit about being held captive.”

  Galen regarded him with interest.

  “I spent several weeks in a Separatist facility called the Citadel.” He paused to allow it to sink in. “Were you tortured, Dr. Erso?”

  “No, I wasn’t. You were?”

  “Repeatedly.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Fortunately I was rescued before my jailers could do their worst. Had the torture continued, well, who knows? The question is: Suppose you are allowed to leave Coruscant and once more fall into enemy hands?”

  “I’ve even less to give them now than before.”

  Tarkin dismissed it. “Wrong. You have something more valuable than military intelligence, Dr. Erso. You have what’s in your head, and we want that to stay there.”

  Galen returned a despondent nod. “I have a family to support, Commander.”

  “Perhaps Lyra can find employment in the interim.”

  Galen allowed his wretchedness to show. “That’s hardly the point. I need to be able to carry on with my research. I’m at a loss…”

  Tarkin sat back, interlocking his fingers and appraising him. “It can’t have escaped your attention that you have a powerful ally in Orson Krennic.”

  Galen raised his eyes from the carpet. “We were acquaintances in the Futures Program. Years ago.”

  “It’s because of your relationship with him that we have decided not to pursue this matter any further.”

  Galen squinted in uncertainty.

  “There will be no inquest or trial. In fact, I’m going to recommend that we close the case on you. You will have to remain on Coruscant until my higher-ups have signed off on this, but I suspect that the process won’t entail more than a couple of standard months.”

  Galen stared. “Months…” He rubbed his forehead. “Still, I suppose I should thank you.”

  “Thank your acquaintance, Dr. Erso. But one more question before you leave: Did Lieutenant Commander Krennic offer you a position or a project of any sort?”

  “No, nothing. In his own way he simply made the point you’ve been trying to make. That the war will go on and on and every contribution matters.”

  “You don’t mind that the war will go on and on?”

  “Palpatine could have prevented it. Now it’s up to people like you to end it.”

  Tarkin nodded. “And so we shall.”

  THE COMMAND HABITAT ENJOYED THE most all-encompassing view of the construction site: barren Geonosis, the decimated asteroid field and starfields, and the inchoate orb, nurtured and attended to by countless droid and supply ships, its curved superstructure bathed in the rays of the system’s flaring primary.

  After months of traveling back and forth to the surface, Krennic was never so grateful for artificial atmosphere.

  A party in celebration of the completion of the false equator had been held local weeks earlier, although what had been cheered looked more like an antique gyroscope than an actual sphere. Since then a few degrees of the upper hemisphere had been outfitted with latitudinal structural members, and rudimentary layout work had begun on cladding a portion of the curved hull. The construction droids could now devote themselves to fashioning the first interior spaces, which like the equator band would serve as placeholders until such time as actual cabinspaces could be bulkheaded.

  Geonosians would be the first to inhabit those immense life-support modules. In the wake of Poggle the Lesser’s arena announcement, tens of thousands of drones had been transferred to Orbital Foundry 7, the second largest structure in view from the command habitat. Drones there were currently overseeing production of the enormous pie-slice-shaped concavities that, when assembled, would form the battle station’s still somewhat perplexing focusing dish or power well. The drone laborers were lorded over by winged soldiers, but both castes answered to Poggle, for whom had been constructed a separate and lavish suite that was linked by a series of tubular connectors to the foundry. Poggle had also been given a beak-bowed ship of limited range that allowed him to commute to the surface.

  The drones were apparently very unhappy with their situation. They had been promised work on the sphere, and were instead being forced to work only on the components of the dish. Poggle, however, dismissed
their frustration as beneficial to the endgame of production.

  Krennic and the rotund Professor Sahali stood with several members of the Special Weapons Group, watching as one of the wedge-shaped components was being tugged from the foundry’s gaping hangar. Three of the slices had been completed, and another six were in various stages of fabrication.

  Almost since the inception of the Strategic Advisory Cell no one could agree on the ultimate function of the dish, the construction of which was based on a meticulous study of the Geonosian schematic. Early on, everyone involved in the project had been willing to embrace the notion that function was going to have to follow form. Even their new partner, Poggle, had admitted that the Stalgasin hive hadn’t had time to design the weapon before the Battle of Geonosis had curtailed their research.

  The plan, in any case, called for assembling the dish in space and maneuvering it by tug and tractor beam into the gargantuan well that had been framed into the sphere’s upper hemisphere—the dimple, as some referred to it. The parabolic dish also had to be engineered to telescope away from the hull to facilitate the aiming of the composite beam proton superlaser some of the Special Weapons scientists were proposing.

  It continued to puzzle Krennic that Count Dooku hadn’t attempted to launch a preemptory strike on the construction site. How had the fact that the battle station schematics were in Republic hands remained a secret? The thinking was that Dooku was too busy working on his own version to worry about what the Republic was doing. In that sense, the project was less about achieving parity than winning the race and being the first to deploy the weapon.

  Construction, assembly, and installation of the dish should have been shouldered by the project’s structural engineers. But because the dish was considered to be crucial to the station’s principal weapon, oversight had fallen to Krennic, who was still in the midst of trying to make good on his pledge to bring Galen Erso into the mix.

  He had been pleased to learn that the Justice Department had opted to drop the espionage charges he had arranged to be leveled against Galen. What he hadn’t planned on was Galen’s being interviewed by Wilhuff Tarkin, who had subsequently taken a strong interest in Galen’s plight. Krennic didn’t know Tarkin well, though they had met briefly during Tarkin’s stint as governor of Eriadu, Tarkin’s homeworld. The title governor had stuck, even though Tarkin had since served as an officer in the Republic Navy. Everything about the man told Krennic that Tarkin could be trouble. It was no secret that he enjoyed a close relationship with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and that he was fairly worshipped by many of his former comrades in the Judicials. The only reason Tarkin hadn’t been drafted into the cell on day one was that he had been imprisoned in a Separatist facility, from which he had either been rescued or escaped, thus amplifying both his popularity and his cachet. And there were rumors to the effect that Tarkin had been instrumental in convincing Palpatine to move forward with the battle station—even that he had had a similar weapon in mind even before the discovery of the Geonosian schematics. Serving nominally as adjutant general for the navy, he was rapidly being brought up to speed on the status of the battle station, and there was talk among the members of the inner circle that Tarkin was being groomed to assume leadership of the entire project.

  Krennic bristled at the thought of having to report to Tarkin, and reasoned that netting Galen was going to be the only way to avoid that. But having that card up his sleeve was different from knowing precisely when to play it.

  Staring at the pie-shaped piece of dish, Krennic mulled over Poggle’s production philosophy of forcing the drones to perform work that was beneath their skill or caste level as a means of increasing their ultimate output. And an idea came to him.

  —

  Why didn’t Coruscant have more actual staircases than people-movers? Lyra asked herself as she wound through the throngs in the Central District. It was impossible to get a good workout in a place where she could barely raise her heartbeat, let alone break a sweat. Not on a world where the atmosphere and climate were regulated and artificial gravity was provided at the summits of the tallest structures. Despite the trouble she and Galen had found themselves in on Vallt, Coruscant—even with the threat levels, the false alarms, the real possibility of surprise attacks—was simply too safe. She needed wind and rain, cyclones, quakes, and the threat of avalanches. Unpredictability. Natural forces at work.

  She had lost the weight she’d gained with Jyn, but was getting soft after all the months of waiting around for the situation to change. In the months before she and Galen had departed for Vallt, she would often sky-cab to the Jedi Temple grounds and exercise there, basking in the energy of that elegant site, surrounded by a nexus of the Force. Once events leading to the war had begun to ramp up, however, the grounds became heavily patrolled and the atmosphere changed. Now you couldn’t even get near the Temple without having a high security clearance.

  Had the war affected the Jedi’s ability to feel the Force on Coruscant, despite the world’s superabundance of sentient life? Were the battles on remote worlds somehow disrupting the Force?

  The idea was too frightening to contemplate.

  Lyra tried to hurry her pace—exercise was so engrained in her that she needed it as much as nourishment—but there were simply too many beings in her way. Changing course, she ducked into a transit corridor that ended at the southeast corner of Llanter Plaza, where she at last found some breathing space.

  Like Galen she was an only child; unlike him, she still had a mother, alive and making ends meet as a fine artist on Aria Prime. Her mother had had to take out loans to finance Lyra’s education, which Lyra had paid back by wearing a weighty holocam and hiking on worlds where the terrain was too rough for survey droids—or the costs of employing them prohibitive—to provide 3-D video for various HoloNet providers.

  Later she had worked as an environmental impact specialist and a surface verification agent, positions that had eventually led to jobs as a cartographer and a survey team leader. By the time she was twenty-nine she had visited five of the fifty wonders of the Core; six of the thirty wonders of the Mid Rim; and twelve of the twenty-five wonders of the Outer Rim. She had visited several Legacy worlds—environmentally protected worlds—in remote regions, but she had yet to travel through the Inner Core, venture into the Western Reaches, or penetrate more than fifty parsecs into the Unknown Regions.

  So many places to see…

  Marriage had never been part of the plan, to say nothing of a child. But being pregnant with Jyn—especially while in captivity—had made her aware of the Force in a way she imagined the Jedi experienced: a profound connection with life that went beyond mere understanding. And while she supported Galen’s research, she was secretly glad that he was no longer attempting to synthesize or create facsimiles of kyber crystals. One might as well try to clone the Force itself, or turn to magic in an effort to simulate the power.

  She swung a quick turn into an alley and began to jog before being brought up short by a group of yammering droids bent on enticing her into a holotheater.

  As much as she appreciated being out of the apartment, she wasn’t enjoying the freedom as much as she had hoped. It was as if she had forgotten something important—that something being Jyn, who on approaching nineteen months old was beginning to chat up a storm and display an early defiant streak. Lyra thrilled at being able to open Jyn’s mind, but in fact she felt like she was learning as much as she was teaching.

  Maybe the days of feeling entirely on her own were long gone.

  As she ambled through a densely crowded shopping district, she tried to recall the last occasion she’d had free time. That would have been several months earlier, on the night of the Future Program’s reunion when Galen had gotten into that dreadful dustup. Dagio Belcoze had contacted him a few days later to apologize, blaming alcohol, and Galen had forgiven him. But the Iktotchi’s accusations had stung and lingered on in the form of gossip about what had happened on Vallt.

>   Lyra’s support of Galen’s decision to avoid military research remained steadfast, but they were now on the edge of falling into serious debt. Worse, Galen was restless and miserable, though he managed to hide his discontent from Jyn, whom he had nicknamed Stardust. Orson Krennic, among others, had promised to find some sort of position for Galen, but no one had come through. Lyra had proposed going to Aria Prime the moment Galen’s travel ban was lifted. They could live with her mother, and perhaps wait out the war there.

  Meanwhile the conflict was escalating—the worlds of Malastare, Saleucami, and Mon Calamari now in the thick of it—and wherever Lyra ventured on Coruscant she felt as if she was under surveillance. The war had brought tens of millions of refugees to Coruscant, many of whom in the absence of employment opportunities had been forced to live in hopelessly overcrowded relocation centers. Just that morning the HoloNet news had carried a report about a Separatist cell that had been exposed on Coruscant, with several members captured and others killed.

  Then there was the cryptic message that had appeared on the screen of her personal comlink one morning from an unknown sender, reading simply: It’s not too late for him to change his mind. Did the him refer to Galen? Had it been sent by Separatist or even Republic operatives? Had the gossip surrounding Galen given birth to it? Was it perhaps from Adjutant General Tarkin, who had actually befriended him?

  Though the message might have been meant for someone else entirely, it had rattled her.

  She had stopped to look over a window display of hiking shoes and gear when she noticed for a second time the Ryn she had spied earlier while absently appraising a collection of jewelry. The Ryn were a species of itinerant humanoids with white hair and prehensile tails, but it was only the fact that Ryn were such a rarity in the Core that had compelled her to fix on his reflection in the glass. This one was wearing fur boots, a flat cap, and a long red coat. And here he was again, a long distance from when they had first locked eyes.

  Lyra’s danger senses came alive. The Ryn didn’t look threatening, but she didn’t like being followed. Quickening her pace, she blazed a twisting trail through the crowds, catching a turbolift just in time to ride it up three levels and another in time to descend one. Stepping out, she glanced furtively in all directions, certain she had given him the slip…until she spotted him again, approaching her out of nowhere with his long-fingered hands buried inside his coat.