by James Luceno
Glad now that she had left Jyn in Galen’s care, she turned and raced deeper into the crowd, then darted into an alley—only to find him coming toward her from the far end. Spinning on her heel she started back the way she had come, and was amazed to see him in front of her. A swift look over her shoulder confirmed her suspicions: There were two of them, identically dressed and now closing on her from front and rear.
Whirling again, she searched for something she could use as a weapon, as a call for help in that area wasn’t likely to draw much more than a passing glance. Were they after valuables they wrongly assumed she carried, or was she facing an abduction or worse?
Were they agents of whoever had left the inscrutable comlink message?
As the pair of Ryn converged, she steeled herself to do what damage she could with her fingernails and feet.
“There’s no getting away from us,” the one in front said in tone-perfect Basic.
“We’ll make it easy for you,” said the one behind.
Both of them had their hands hidden, and when they were a meter away they opened their long coats to reveal cleverly designed displays of rings and necklaces, earrings and bracelets.
Lyra stared in openmouthed surprise—and relief—as one of them held up a scintillating pendant, saying with a sudden quiet sibilance:
“Pretty lady, this one has your name on it.”
—
Galen had just finished reorganizing his research notes and was about to check on napping Jyn—a rarity in the Erso household—when the apartment comlink chimed and, when he took the call, a quarter-scale holopresence of Orson genied from the projector.
The signal was shaky and noisy, and Galen began to fiddle with the controls in an attempt to stabilize the vid feed. Orson appeared to be doing the same at his end of the transmission, and ultimately Galen had to downsize the projection to one-eighth scale. As the comm had obviously been routed through an incalculable number of relay stations, the source code was impossible to determine.
“Where in the galaxy are you?” Galen asked after a long moment of adjustments.
“Far from Coruscant.”
“Clearly. An engineering project?”
“Massive,” Orson said. He was in uniform and standing in front of a ship’s viewport. “On an unprecedented scale.”
“Military?”
“What do you think, Galen?”
Galen’s curiosity was piqued. “An orbital facility or in deep space?”
“A bit of both.”
Galen sensed that that was as much as he was going to get by way of explanation. “I’m glad to hear that someone is gainfully employed.”
“And how have you been spending your time?”
Galen combed his long hair back with his fingers. “Going stir-crazy.”
“Lyra and the child?”
“As good as can be expected under the circumstances. You heard what happened with the Justice Department?”
“I’ve been briefed.”
“It seems I have you to thank again for my not being imprisoned.”
“The entire case was without merit,” Orson said. “Baseless accusations. I tried to make that clear to Adjutant General Tarkin, but he insisted on launching an investigation.”
“Actually, he’s been very sympathetic. His hands are tied in terms of rescinding the travel ban, but he’s helping in other ways.”
“I wouldn’t put much stock in what he promises.”
“I won’t. But he’s my only hope right now.”
“As it happens, he’s not. That’s why I’m contacting you. I may have found a position for you.”
Galen could scarcely believe what he was hearing.
“It’s not much,” Orson went on, “but it could end your deadlock.”
“Not military—”
“Nothing of the sort. You’ve heard of Helical HyperCom?”
Galen tugged on his lower lip. “They manufacture personal comm devices.”
“HH has a large production facility on Lokori. Right now they’re attempting to produce a crystal array to better serve remote areas where communications relays have fallen prey to the war. The Republic is contributing to the research production, as the devices will benefit many struggling member worlds.”
Multitasking, Galen called up a galactic map while he listened. “Lokori is near Ryloth.”
“Not the most secure destination just now, but well fortified.”
“This is unexpected, Orson,” Galen said. “Of course I’d have to review the current research and production.”
“Director Herbane can send you whatever data you need—assuming you’re interested.”
“Director—?
“Roman Herbane. COO or some such title. You’ll answer chiefly to him.”
Galen fell silent.
“I realize that it must seem like a backward step for someone of your accomplishments,” Orson went on, “but isn’t there some phrase about sometimes having to take one step back to take two steps forward?”
Galen found his voice. “It’s just that I’ve grown accustomed to supervising my own research and being my own boss…”
“I don’t want to put you in a situation you’ll regret, Galen—”
“You’re not, you’re not.”
“HH will probably leave you to your own devices, in any case,” Orson said. “Besides, you can consider the position temporary until something more aligned to your talents and interests comes along.”
Galen thought about it. “I’ll need to discuss this with Lyra. She’s been suggesting we relocate to Aria Prime once the travel restrictions are lifted. Her mother’s health is failing.”
“Whatever you think best, of course,” Orson said.
Galen looked at the map. “Lokori…”
“By all accounts a very interesting world—with a much more agreeable climate than Vallt.”
“When does Helical need a decision from me?”
“The sooner the better.”
Galen blew out his breath. “I’ve never been good with spontaneity, Orson. Do you have an opinion?”
“My opinion is that you accept the offer. I’ll use my influence to make certain you’re allowed to leave Coruscant and return to work—even work of a sort that’s beneath your station.”
Galen nodded for the comlink holocam. “You’re placing me further and further in your debt. I don’t know how or when I’ll be able to repay you.”
Orson smiled. “At some point I’ll show you the plans for what I’m working on, and you can tell me what you think.”
LYRA HADN’T RESEARCHED LOKORI. ON Coruscant she had mentioned the planet to a few friends but had stopped listening when they went into detail. She wanted to be surprised, to be put off her guard. She wanted to be intrigued.
She had showed Jyn a couple of images of where they were headed, but aside from having spent those few months on Vallt, the entire galaxy was new to her.
Even with Krennic’s influence and some assistance and encouragement from Wilhuff Tarkin, another three standard months passed before Galen had been able to extricate himself fully from bureaucratic red tape. Then all at once they were done—oaths and contracts had been signed, affidavits delivered, permission to travel granted, apartment sublet—and the next thing they knew they were aboard a passenger ship bound for the Outer Rim, their fares paid for by Helical HyperCom, Galen’s new employer. He hadn’t told her much about the new position, but Lyra had checked into the company and found it to be aboveboard, with a good record of contributing to worthwhile causes.
The passenger ship shuttle was descending now, and she had her face pressed to the cool transparisteel viewport. The capital city of Fucallpa looked like an enormous flower bed, riotous with colors and shapes. Her gaze took in basketlike structures and spiked domes like outsized succulents; buildings climbing in off-kilter segments with stairways wrapped around them like clinging vines; residential areas that might as well have been horticultural farms, laid out lik
e lobed or pointed leaves.
The indigenous species—also called Lokori—were stalklike insectoids, with stemmed eyes, vestigial wings, and elongated hindquarters from which at one time had extended a second pair of reverse-articulated legs. What struck her from the start, at spaceport immigration and customs, was the Lokori’s intrinsic graciousness, evidenced by a to-and-fro motion of the head based on a religious ritual that signaled greeting and gentle acceptance. The locals were immediately enamored of Jyn, whose powerful legs were now carrying her far and wide and whose vocabulary had tripled. A Lokori representative of Helical HyperCom met them outside of customs and showed them to a company landspeeder large enough to accommodate everyone and their few pieces of luggage.
Galen had been quieter than usual during the journey from Coruscant, and as Lyra observed him she knew instinctively that he felt out of his element and unsure. But when he turned to her, perhaps sensing her sideways scrutiny, he smiled.
“What do you think so far?”
“If it’s all like this, I’m good,” she said. “Better than good.”
“What about you, Stardust? Are you having fun so far?”
Jyn nodded, then began to bounce up and down on the speeder’s bench seat in a show of enthusiasm. Or maybe she was just picking up on Lyra’s obvious hopefulness. In either case, Galen looked at her lovingly and reached behind him to take her hand.
The landspeeder meandered through well-tended streets, coils and curlicues, spirals, arcs, and circles—no grid for Fucallpa—arriving finally at Helical HyperCom’s headquarters, which was lackluster and industrial looking by comparison. No effort had been made to mimic the local organic architecture, plus it was surrounded by walls interrupted only by security-post entrances. Inside the cubical main building, Lokori graciousness was replaced by unsettling servitude and a grim sense of duty and obligation.
They were left to wait in a stark room with uncomfortable furniture and bland art adorning the walls. At long last a human woman entered, introducing herself as Roman Herbane’s executive secretary. Her long hair was pulled back severely from her high-cheekboned face and tailed halfway down her back. She wore a shimmersilk sheath tailored to accentuate a shapely figure and stylish boots that added centimeters to her height. The smile she forced at Jyn made it seem as if a human child was something new to her. She led the three of them into an expansive office whose windows overlooked a range of thickly forested hills limned against a teal sky.
Herbane was seated behind a large desk, and it seemed to Lyra that he stood only when it occurred to him that he probably should. His expensive suit and sharp-featured face gave him a patrician look. Lyra sensed that Herbane and his secretary had more than a workplace relationship. Galen introduced himself, then Lyra and Jyn.
Herbane’s handshake was cool and curt. When he eyed Jyn with what almost seemed suspicion, she picked up on it and decided to hide behind Lyra’s legs.
“I hope the journey was pleasant enough,” he said, adopting the same smile his secretary used. “I hate connecting through the Dibbik Hub. Such despicable beings, the Toydarians.”
Lyra started to say that she found them to be very friendly, but she thought better of it.
“The trip was fine,” Galen said. “Uneventful.”
“Uneventful is very good these days.” Herbane glanced around. “I should offer you a beverage.”
Galen waved off the rote proposal, and everyone sat down, except for Jyn.
“Well, then, I assume you’ve had a chance to review the literature. It would be helpful if you could hit the ground running.”
“I did,” Galen told him. “You never said if you’d had a chance to look over the notes I sent.”
Herbane fidgeted. “Yes, those. To be honest, Dr. Erso, I couldn’t make sense of most of it.”
“I’d be glad to go over them in detail.”
Herbane gawked at him. “You would, would you? Look, let’s get something straight from the start, shall we? I’m well aware of who you are and of your various accomplishments in your field. But I’ve no interest in hearing your theories or engaging in experimentation. We’re not reinventing the rocket here. We have a job to do and that’s all there is to it.”
Galen’s expression was quizzical. “Even if that job can be done more efficiently or accomplished at a reduced cost?”
“Just as I expected,” Herbane said, putting his hands flat on the desk. “To be blunt, I was against hiring you for this very reason. I expressed as much to my superiors, but you obviously have some very influential friends who convinced them to ignore my concerns and ordered me to accept you. I’ve put long years into this work and I don’t want any trouble. I’m certainly not going to engage you in a battle of wits or intelligence, but for all your scientific papers, degrees, and patents, you’re the one sitting there, and I’m the one sitting here.”
Galen merely shrugged. “Normalcy has taken leave of the galaxy.”
Herbane’s jaw dropped a bit and he looked at Lyra. “Is your husband always so confrontational?”
“He speaks his mind,” Lyra said.
Herbane turned back to Galen. “We’re embarking on a dangerous course, Dr. Erso.”
“I don’t think so. I just wanted to say that Helical is wasting money using pontite crystals when synthesized relacite would do. Production costs could be halved and bandwidth doubled.”
Herbane continued to stare at him. “You’re actually going to argue with me your first day on the job?”
“I’m not arguing with you,” Galen tried to make clear. “I’m speaking as one colleague to another.”
Herbane’s face flushed with anger. “I’m not your colleague, Dr. Erso. I’m your boss! Helical HyperCom is not Zerpen Industries. We’re not researchers; we’re providers, and I need you in quality assurance. Unless you feel you can confine your theorizing and speculations to your personal time, I suggest that you save us both a lot of headaches and return to the Core. I’ll ask you just this once, Dr. Erso: Can you be a good soldier or not.”
“Soldier,” Galen said, closing his eyes.
“Worker, employee, however you need to frame it,” Herbane continued. “It’s a simple question.”
From the frying pan to the fire, Lyra told herself.
She restrained an impulse to touch Galen or send him any kind of reassuring message. The job was his choice and she was determined to stay out of it. Jyn was squirming behind her, exhausted. Lyra only realized that she was holding her breath when Galen let his out.
“Tell me what you want done.”
—
Time passed slowly at Geonosis. The only way to relieve the tedium was to shuttle down to the surface, which in fact offered no relief whatsoever. An hour in the heat and stink and the orbital facilities felt heaven-sent.
Krennic had had weeks when he was just trying to get through it.
The last of the pie-slice dish modules had been fabricated, but the dish itself was not yet fully assembled and the upper hemisphere well was still undergoing finishing touches. Droid work on fashioning cabinspaces in the pole region had also gone much more slowly than anticipated, although a few were fully sealed and habitable, providing work for at least some of the thousands of Geonosian drones who had been ferried upside.
Galen, in the meantime, was ensconced on Lokori, where Krennic suspected—and hoped—that he was even more unhappy and frustrated than he had been on Coruscant. But Krennic viewed the dead-end job with Helical HyperCom as guidance of a sort, a means of directing Galen to his destiny. He had wanted to have Has Obitt transport the Ersos to the Outer Rim—both to keep the Dressellian on the leash and to have him serve as a listening device—but Obitt was suddenly nowhere to be found, and in the end Krennic decided it was best for the family to travel by passenger ship, as normal nobodies would.
He was preparing to contact Galen when his young aide barged into the officers’ mess. Lieutenant Oyanta was a tall, pale human, with coal-black hair and eyes with epican
thic folds.
“We’ve got a problem in the level-one first-stage enclosures,” he began. “The drones are dying by the dozens.”
Krennic wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up. “Did engineering run pressurization and atmospheric checks?”
“All systems are good.”
Krennic shook his head in perplexity. “Then what’s the issue?”
“Seems there’s not enough work for all of them.”
“Not enough…First Poggle frustrates them by ordering them to perform grunt work, now he pits them against one another for what work there is?”
“Poggle claims to know what he’s doing.”
Krennic worked his jaw. “It was Poggle who insisted on bringing them up the well before we had work for all of them. How serious is this?”
“Security is warning that the situation could get explosive. There have already been several incidents.”
“What sort of incidents?”
“Marines had to draw down on a bunch of drones who refused to follow orders. The enclosures are a mess of blood and guts.” Oyanta showed his datapad. “I have video.”
“Save it, I just ate.” Krennic gestured to his empty plate. “Why aren’t Poggle’s soldiers overseeing them?”
Oyanta’s shoulders heaved in a shrug. “They’re standing down.”
Krennic grew angrier as he spoke. “This is a security matter. Why am I being dragged into it?”
“Apparently, sir, you’re the only one who can reason with the archduke.”
“The only one willing to talk to him, you mean.”
“And more or less the reverse.”
“All right,” Krennic said, resigned. “I suppose I’d better make the call.”
The two of them exited the mess and set out for the habitat’s communications room. When at last they had succeeded in raising Poggle aboard his shuttle, Krennic positioned himself on the holoprojector pad and faced the cam.