by James Luceno
Of greater importance to Krennic was that Wilhuff Tarkin was also known to be aboard the Star Destroyer. Krennic suspected that the reason he himself had been left off the elite passenger list owed to Poggle’s escape—even though the archduke was now apparently dead, along with Count Dooku and the rest of the Separatist leadership. Gone, too, were the Jedi generals in their homespun robes, armed with lightsabers and the Force.
Krennic continued to monitor the approach of the Star Destroyer from a bay inside the command-and-control habitat. If nothing else, he had at least managed to get the focusing dish installed in advance of the Emperor’s visit.
He watched as a shuttle emerged from one of the capital ship’s hangars, hyperspace-capable and as graceful as a long-winged bird of prey.
The war had been won without the battle station; now, however, it was to be put to different use: to eliminate the chance of future conflicts by instilling fear in the hearts of those who would seek to threaten the integrity of the Empire. And yet it still lacked the one special ingredient that would transform it into the weapon it was always meant to be and to elevate Krennic as a result: Galen Erso.
—
Galen had been sorry to learn that Roman Herbane had lost a limb to blasterfire during the final battle on Lokori and that his executive secretary had sustained fatal injuries. Herbane could easily afford a synthskin prosthesis, but Li-Tan would not be so easily replaced. For all the arguments Galen had had with him, Herbane had simply been a victim of his own stubbornness, lack of foresight, and limited intelligence. Even so, Galen sympathized with the grief the man had to be experiencing.
The memory of the confrontation with the battle droids continued to haunt him.
Helical HyperCom had asked him to consider replacing Herbane as chief operating officer of the production facility, but Galen knew that he lacked the skills necessary for administrative work. More, he yearned to return to pure research. By contrast, he and Lyra and Jyn had grown fond of Lokori, and the offer from HH was tempting. Galen told the president of Helical that he needed time to think about it and had asked for a brief sabbatical.
They were on their way to Coruscant to consider plans for a permanent move to Lokori when Krennic commed, asking that they divert briefly to Kanzi, where he promised to rendezvous with them. He assured Galen that the additional travel expenses would be covered by the Empire.
The Empire.
The galaxy was still reeling from the events of the past few months: the war ended, the Jedi Order disbanded—eradicated, by some accounts—a new and expanded military established to reinforce the limited-shelf-life clones who made up the Grand Army, and ex-supreme-chancellor Sheev Palpatine as self-appointed Emperor.
Galen, Lyra, and Jyn were waiting in the atrium of the Orona Hotel on Kanzi when Krennic marched into the majestic space, dressed in a crisp white uniform and command cap, insignia squares shouting his rank from the tunic, a small contingent of Imperial stormtroopers moving in his wake. An alloy case dangled from his left hand, its pulsing light indicating to Galen’s sharp eye that it would open only for Krennic himself.
Once they had exchanged pleasantries, he led them toward a private room he had reserved, pausing briefly in front of a mural three Bith artisans were laser-etching into a wall of polished stone. The hairless, dome-headed, black-eyed humanoids were working from a detailed drawing that recounted the history of the Republic, from inception to Empire, with a cloaked and cowled Palpatine occupying the crown.
Krennic motioned the Ersos in, and the stormtroopers fell into guard formation outside the door. While Jyn roamed about inspecting the room, Krennic placed the case on a table where it could see and read his coded rank insignia. The case emitted an audible click and whir, unlocking itself, but Krennic left it closed, folding his hands atop the lid.
“I understand that Helical HyperCom has offered you a permanent position,” he said to Galen.
“I’m supposed to be thinking it over.”
“I hope you plan to turn them down.”
“It would be a living,” Galen said. “A very good living, in fact.”
Krennic laughed, eyeing Lyra, then Galen. “Since when do you two care about credits?”
Galen didn’t join him in laughing.
“Well, I have something better to offer, in any case.”
Galen and Lyra traded wary looks.
“Let me explain,” Krennic said. “Now that the war is winding down—”
“Winding down,” Lyra cut in. “It’s not over?”
Krennic rocked his head. “Pockets of resistance remain, especially on Umbara. Our forces are engaging in several, shall we say, pacification exercises to bring about a lasting peace. The Emperor has made reparations and reconstruction a priority, and one way he hopes to achieve this is by being able to provide sustainable energy to worlds that have suffered on both sides of the conflict.” He gestured with his chin to Galen. “Even your own Grange.”
Lyra’s brows quirked in a sign of doubt. “This is the same Palpatine who couldn’t get anything done as supreme chancellor?”
Krennic stared at her. “He defeated the Separatists.”
“With a lot of help.”
Krennic dismissed it. “As Emperor he can accomplish what the corrupt prewar Senate wouldn’t permit. Project Celestial Power is his vision—his dream.”
“Just how is he planning to implement…Project Celestial Power?” Galen asked.
“To begin with he has allocated funds for a research facility on Coruscant, which is already under construction in the B’ankor Refuge.”
Lyra let her surprise show. “I thought the refuge had been granted to the B’ankora in perpetuity.”
Krennic smiled thinly. “The B’ankora have been relocated.”
“This research facility is the better offer you mentioned?” Galen said.
“It is. What do you think of the idea?”
Galen exhaled through his nose. “I guess it depends on how I would fit in.”
“Fit in?” Krennic said, laughing again. “Why, the Emperor is hoping that you’ll accept the position of director of research. Galen, it’s precisely the project you approached me with more than a year ago. Your dream as well as the Emperor’s.”
Galen turned to Lyra in complete astonishment.
“Galen!”
“Orson, I, I don’t know what to say…”
“You’ll say yes if you know what’s good for you.” He reached across the table to clap Galen on the shoulder; then, smiling slyly, he rapped his knuckles on the lid of the case. “I’ve something here I suspect will serve as a major incentive.” Lifting the lid, he spun the case so that Galen and Lyra could view the contents.
The objects in the case caught the light of the room and refracted it in shifting colors into their eyes.
Lyra’s hand went to her mouth. “Are those—”
“Kyber crystals,” Galen completed, as if struggling to articulate the words.
“And many, many more where these came from,” Krennic said. “In fact, now that the Jedi have been…disbanded, the Empire has unrestricted access to worlds that for centuries were accessible only to the Order. Not just these small samples, but enormous crystals. Boulder-sized, I’m told. Even larger.”
With care that transcended need, Galen prized one of the translucent crystals from its memory-foam bed and turned it about in his hand. Having hurried over to have a look, Jyn said: “I want one!”
“Maybe someday,” Lyra said, gently restraining her from reaching for the case.
Krennic was about to elaborate when a stormtrooper called him from the room, and he excused himself.
Lyra waited until Krennic was outside to place her hand on Galen’s forearm. In a hushed but serious tone, she said: “Galen, you know where these came from.”
“Mygeeto, perhaps,” Galen said, distracted and still fascinated by the colorless kyber. “Possibly Ilum or Christophsis.”
“Not their source world,” she said
. “The size of them, the shape…”
He finally turned to meet her wide-eyed gaze.
“These could only have come from Jedi lightsabers.”
FINISHED WITH HIS BUSINESS DOWNSIDE, Krennic shuttled back up to the sprawling shipyard he’d had a hand in engineering five standard years earlier, which had since suffered the ravages of war. Pocked and scored by turbolaser fire and traumatized by incendiary missiles, the construction and overhaul facility hung like a ruin over equally devastated Kartoosh, itself orbited by a debris cloud made up of shattered vessels and all they had once contained. Maintenance and repair droid ships were at work everywhere, cutting, welding, and grinding, and hundreds of tugs and shuttles were coming and going. In those docks that were still intact, Venator-class Star Destroyers and other now superseded ships of the line, many of them designed and built by the Separatists, were being dismantled or retrofitted to serve whatever new purposes they had been assigned. Elsewhere vast arrays of war matériel and arsenals of weapons and munitions were being moved into the cargo holds of transports bound for Imperial depots in faraway systems.
The ship that had carried him to Kartoosh was berthed at the distal end of one of the yard’s longest docking arms, but instead of returning to it Krennic had ordered the shuttle pilot to deliver him to an Imperial Star Destroyer undergoing repairs closer to the hub. Fresh wounds and areas of carbon scoring left by recent engagements with Separatist holdouts in the Western Reaches marred the ship’s immense triangular underbelly.
When a tractor beam had eased the shuttle through a magnetic containment field and into the vast hangar beyond, Krennic gave a sharp downward tug to his tunic and led his cadre of borrowed stormtroopers down the boarding ramp, where the first sight to greet his eyes was tall and cadaverously thin Wilhuff Tarkin, wearing dress grays and buffed black knee boots, standing with legs slightly spread and hands clasped behind his back against a backdrop of several hundred stormtroopers arrayed in strict formation. A subtle sideways nod from clean-shaven Tarkin, and the officer standing to his right turned and dismissed the small army of white-clad soldiers, who fell out as if on a parade ground.
Krennic smiled lightly as he approached Tarkin, as if to minimize the show of force the admiral had taken the trouble to organize. Tarkin would know that Krennic’s stormtroopers weren’t his to command, but Krennic treated them like they were. Even so, the salute he offered Tarkin was nothing short of faultless.
“Must be nice being a legend in your own time,” Krennic said.
Tarkin vouchsafed a tight smile. “It’s not a position one simply applies for, Lieutenant Commander.”
Krennic returned the look. “I’ll bear that in mind. Thank you for making time to meet with me.”
“Laid up for repairs as we are, I appreciate every opportunity to relieve the monotony.”
Krennic glanced around the enormous hangar. “Odd, it’s almost intimate compared with what I’ve grown used to. Still impressive, though.”
The sarcasm wasn’t lost on Tarkin. “Of course. Your big ball in the sky. Forward motion suits me more than immobility just now.”
Krennic pretended seriousness. “Essential when one is still fighting the good fight.”
“Better to be productive, in any case, than mired in complications.”
Krennic’s eyebrow elevated. “Is that the news that’s reached you about the project?”
“Is there other news?”
Krennic firmed his lips. “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”
“This way,” Tarkin said, gesturing gallantly for Krennic to precede him.
Leaving the hangar for a broad central corridor, Krennic slackened his pace so that his elder would have no choice but to walk alongside him.
“Apparently I’ve been misinformed about the state of things at Geonosis,” Tarkin commented.
“In fact, we’ve just entered phase three, with work commencing on the hypermatter reactor and the shield generators.”
“And your labor force?”
“With Poggle dead, the hive queen has appointed a new archduke to oversee the soldiers and drones, but the process is nothing more than conciliatory. In effect, the Geonosians now belong to the Empire.”
“Then congratulations are in order,” Tarkin said, with what struck Krennic as false cheer.
“Success, however, brings new challenges.”
“How often the case.”
They stopped at a massive viewport to observe at a new capital ship—a dreadnought—being inaugurated for launch from its bay.
“Completed in less than a standard year,” Tarkin said, as if he had built it himself.
“And yet already obsolete?” Krennic said.
Tarkin glanced at him. “A placeholder. I’m certain, however, that it will do until the battle station is deployed.”
The two officers had begun to circle each other as they spoke.
“Our main weapon will have more firepower than ten vessels that size,” Krennic said.
Tarkin looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Should it ever reach completion.”
They set off once more, arriving ultimately at what Krennic took to be Tarkin’s secondary office. When the hatch slid open, Tarkin motioned him across the threshold into a cool and tastefully furnished cabin. Krennic waited for Tarkin to sit, then took a chair.
“Excuse me for asking, but are you now addressed as admiral, governor, or moff?”
Tarkin had been promoted to admiral before the end of the war, but moff was a new order of rank, conferred by the Emperor on a dozen or so of his most highly valued officers and regional commanders.
“Governor remains my preference.”
“Then governor it shall be,” Krennic said.
Tarkin regarded him for a long moment, then said: “About these challenges that have brought you here from Geonosis…”
“As I said, we’re entering a new phase—one that increases the need for raw materials and resources.”
“Run out of asteroids, have you?”
Krennic ignored the remark. “It’s felt that research sites and mining operations of the size and sort required are best kept concealed from prying eyes, so we’ve been looking to less populated sectors.”
“The Western Reaches, I assume.”
Krennic nodded. “After a careful survey, I’ve selected several worlds suitable for our purposes.”
“You’ve selected,” Tarkin said.
“For the project, yes. Even so, procurement will have to be handled…delicately.”
“Not the word you would have chosen?”
Krennic shrugged. “The word Vizier Amedda used. He wishes to avoid blowback of any sort that could rile the Senate or stir the spread of anti-Imperial propaganda.”
“A reasonable caution, since we certainly don’t want anyone looking too closely into what you’re up to.”
Krennic didn’t reply.
“Many of the mining companies that were in league with the Separatists have concessions on dozens of worlds. Why not simply commandeer them?”
“That’s essentially what we want to do—with appropriate justification.”
Tarkin touched his chin in thought. “The battle station will be the most powerful weapon ever developed.”
“Capable of taking on and defeating all comers,” Krennic interjected.
“As such,” Tarkin went on, “it could become a target for every disenfranchised group between here and Scipio. Thus, great care must be taken to maintain this ruse of yours.”
Krennic appraised Tarkin’s guarded posture. “If you’ll permit an observation, Governor, you seem skeptical.”
“I do have reservations,” Tarkin said, looking Krennic in the eye. “I’m willing, however, to set aside my doubts for the time being.”
“Then I can count on your help?”
“We serve at the pleasure of the Emperor, do we not?”
“We most certainly do.”
“Tell me, though, is the Em
peror aware of this plan to fabricate justification for appropriating planets?”
“Not yet.”
Tarkin snorted again. “Then I’ll be certain to inform him.”
—
Safeguarded by thorny space–time anomalies but still close enough to a couple of major hyperspace lanes to permit effortless jumps to lightspeed, arid Rajtiri was said to have birthed and fostered more smugglers than anywhere outside of Hutt Space, and the ancient city of Jibuto had prospered as a result. Some indigenous families could trace their smuggling enterprises back twenty generations, and a good deal of the profits accumulated in far-off regions of space had been sent home. Studded with stately spires and parapets and chockablock with colossal domes and pavilions, the city was also known for its profusion of elaborate mausoleums, constructed in honor of the fathers and mothers, sons and daughters who had died in the line of unlawful duty and were hailed as heroes. Large as mansions, the lavish tombs featured towers and tiled cupolas, steeples and belfries, battlements and crenellations, as well as holopresences of the dead and continuously running 3-D epitaphs that were as costly and well produced as mainstream entertainments. The sarcophagi housed inside the ossuaries were never without offerings of fresh flowers or bowls of food and drink supplied by the living.
Owing to the never-ending traffic, Jibuto had hotels, cantinas, and casinos galore, but Has Obitt always eschewed the fancier places for a hole-in-the-wall cantina near the city center known as the Wanton Wellspring. In many ways it was no different from a thousand other cantinas on a thousand other worlds, and Has didn’t find it any nastier than the Malicious Moondog on Suba or any more inspiring than the Contented Krayt on Tatooine, but the drinks were strong, the wait staff attractive, and the company generally discreet.
He was seated with two humans and a green-complected Nautolan named Ranos Yalli at a table close to the crowded semicircular bar but far enough from the Twi’lek band so that the four of them could converse without shouting. Has had an iced drink in front of him and suspected he was already on his way to a nasty hangover.