Catalyst

by James Luceno

  Tarkin considered it briefly. “Are any of the Venators within range?”

  The adjutant kept his eyes fixed on the pad’s display screen. “Admiral Utu’s ship is the closest in that hemisphere.”

  “Then why waste time with strafing runs? Relay my request that she use her turbolasers to bring the entire cliff down on them.” Tarkin grinned faintly. “Though we could say that the smugglers brought it down on themselves.”

  —

  Sitting hunched on the couch in their residence in the facility, Galen looked up from his notebook in recognition of the fact that he and Jyn were actually occupying the same room—an infrequent event in the wake of renewed tension between him and Lyra. She had her sketch screen in her lap and was working furiously on creating an image of some sort, speaking quietly but animatedly to herself while she worked the controls and drew her forefinger across the screen.

  Galen had his own small notebook in hand and was working on an equation he had been struggling with for weeks. Now that he’d found a way to alter the internal structure of the crystals, the kybers seemed in turn to have found a way to alter his. Despite not having heard from Orson, a new sense of urgency had crept into the research, as if someone or something were whispering to him to hurry, hurry…

  Ever since he had transmitted the faceting data to Orson and his team, he’d felt as if he’d been running a low-grade fever, with some part of his mind fixed on solving a calculation that was veiled from consciousness. That it regarded the kybers he had no doubt, but the actual nature of the problem had yet to reveal itself. Plagued nonetheless, he had documented his dreams in the notebook. He had long ago mapped the landscape of his subconscious and could usually decipher what his dreams were telling him, but his recent ones seemed to be taking place off the map, set in unknown regions of his mind. The dream journal ran for several pages, with many of its entries written in the middle of the night or immediately following a nap, and broken here and there by sketches that rambled into calculations, stray thoughts, microscopically jotted notes he could barely untangle even now.

  He raked his hair away from his face with his fingers and turned his attention from the notebook to watch Jyn, still so completely absorbed in what she was doing she might have been in a world of her own. When she finally paused and sat back to evaluate her drawing, Galen rose from his seat and went over to her.

  “Can I see what you’ve been working on, Stardust?”

  Looking up at him in surprise, she nodded. “It’s for you.”

  Galen motioned to himself. “For me?”

  She nodded again. “It’s a picture of Brin trying to get home.”

  Brin was the hero of her current favorite bedtime holo, The Octave Stairway. On the screen was her depiction of the stairway spiraling down through eight levels to a concave area at the base where Brin received the magic powers that would enable him to return to his home.

  Galen had heard the story so many times he could recite the passage from memory.

  When at last they came to the castle, they walked under the big gate and went inside. In front of them they saw the stairway leading down into the ground. It was the fabled Octave Stairway that Brin and his friends had been searching for. They went to the top stair and looked down. “Eight levels,” Brin said. “And on each we need to find a different piece of magic.” Deep down at the bottom of the stairway Brin could see the Golden Bowl. Whoever was able to reach the Golden Bowl would have the power to fly straight up through all eight levels of the stairway, and clear through the ceiling of the castle into the sky beyond, all the way home.

  Around the drawing of the stairway, adorning the edges of the device’s rectangular screen, were strange signs and figures Galen immediately identified as versions of some of the mathematical symbols and talismanic doodles he would often leave about.

  He looked closer at the drawing of the long-haired and somewhat disheveled Brin, wondering all at once if it was really meant to represent Brin or if Jyn had actually tried to draw him.

  “Brin looks a little like me,” he said.

  She squinted at the drawing. “You can be Brin if you want.”

  Gazing down at her, Galen felt a sudden warmth well in his chest, and an outpouring of love that was as heartbreaking as it was joyous. He recalled the first time he had looked into her eyes in Lyra’s bedroom chamber in the Keep, and how Jyn’s flecked eyes had captivated him all over again on the day of his release from Tambolor prison. He thought of the many times she and Lyra had given him the strength to survive the cold lonely hours in his cell; the countless promises he had made to himself to provide them with wonderful and wondrous lives. His perfect daughter…How had he allowed himself to so imprison himself in his research that Jyn scarcely knew him any longer? How had he allowed himself to put the kybers first? His work was supposed to have been for them, and yet it seemed now to have been solely for him. All for the rapture of pure discovery.

  Jyn almost jumped out of her skin when he pulled her into an embrace.

  “I love you, Stardust,” he whispered, using the heel of his hand to wipe tears from his eye. “I’m sorry for being so busy that I’ve forgotten to tell you how much you mean to me.”

  She nodded in his arms. “It’s okay, Papa. Can we follow Brin home now?”

  —

  Krennic returned from Hypori to the orbital command habitat at Geonosis.

  With increased funding, an army of improved labor droids, and advanced alloys arriving from appropriated mining concerns and foundries throughout the Western Reaches, the cladding of the battle station was increasing apace. Work had commenced on the hypermatter reactor and the sublight drives. Shield projectors were under construction near the northern hemisphere focusing dish, and the orb’s equatorial trench was being readied for turbolaser batteries and tractor beam generators. Even the Geonosian slave details had been spurred to accelerate the interior finish work.

  The successful test-fire had been impetus for all of it.

  At times Krennic could almost forget that he was constructing an exceptional weapon, for it seemed more the case that he was creating a world he would one day govern. A world of his own, replete with a power to rival that of the Emperor and Darth Vader; that of the Imperial Navy itself.

  The challenge facing him now was the superlaser. As large as they were, even the orbital foundries at Geonosis were incapable of fabricating collimating shafts eight kilometers long. An appropriate remote site would have to be found; resources would have to be redirected; the results conveyed in secret to the battle station.

  Then there were the kybers.

  Krennic had expected more from Galen following the test-firing, and he wondered if the scientist’s silence had anything to do with Lyra. Then he had learned that Galen—probably spurred by Lyra’s suspicions—had been looking into the whereabouts of shipments of ore mined from appropriated worlds.

  He had learned, too, that Lyra had tried to contact Reeva Demesne.

  Had he erred in cautioning her to keep her nose out of Galen’s affairs? People responded in different ways to threats. Most were cowed, but she hadn’t been. A threat wasn’t effective unless one was prepared to carry through with it, and Lyra presented complications—not out of any fondness he felt for her but because of what her disappearance would do to Galen. His research could suffer more harm as a result of Krennic’s action than it might due to her aggravating intrusiveness.

  Was Galen to become the prize in a contest between them? Well, hadn’t he always been that?

  Could he safely assume that Lyra hadn’t told Galen about the implied threats?

  The only way to know was to enter the arena and deal with it. He had an explanation prepared for why he had spoken to Lyra. He would say that he had done so out of concern that Lyra’s continued harping might have caused Galen to break his security oath and thus subject him to arrest by COMPNOR. He had been trying to protect Galen—and Lyra as well—but at the same time hadn’t been able to reveal the
full truth to her.

  Krennic merely had to turn the tables on her.

  And if Lyra hadn’t told him about the threats; and if Galen had abided by his oath and avoided any mention of the lies Krennic had fed him about the Emperor’s expanded plan…

  Whatever the case, it was time to pay another call on the Ersos, and, if necessary, to close the lid on them.

  —

  “I’ve finished transcribing everything,” Lyra said as soon as Galen entered the facility residence. She rose from the desk near the comm station and met him halfway. “But I think you should take a look at what I’ve done.”

  Galen regarded her in confusion. He hadn’t asked her to transcribe any notes; nor had she volunteered to do so.

  “Just take a look at the early notes,” she said, forcing a datapad into his hands that wasn’t even the one they normally used.

  At the top of the screen, she had written: Tell me the notes are fine, then ask me to take a walk with you outside. He had scarcely lifted his eyes from the screen when she said: “I can include more detail once you’ve had a chance to review everything.”

  Her eyes urged him to go along with the charade, and so he did. “How about if I review everything later on. Right now I think I could use some fresh air.”

  She forced a laugh. “You? Since when?”

  “Just a quick walk.”

  “That’s always fine with me.”

  Galen turned slowly and headed for the turbolift, then stopped. “Jyn—”

  “She’s fast asleep,” Lyra said. “It took six bedtime stories, but Mac-Vee is with her now. I tasked him to comm us if she wakes up.”

  Galen directed a glance toward Jyn’s bedroom, then nodded. Engaging in small talk, they took the turbolift to the ground floor, exited the facility through one of the side doors, and began to follow one of the secondary paths that wound through the grounds.

  “What’s all this about?” Galen asked quietly when they were some distance from the main building.

  “I didn’t want to risk talking to you inside,” she said as they pretended to stroll.

  “Risk?”

  “I think we’re under surveillance, Galen. That maybe we have been from the beginning.”

  He didn’t try to hide his disbelief. “By whom?”

  “Orson, for one.”

  “Why would he spy on us? We have nothing to hide from him.”

  “That might be true, but I’m convinced he’s been hiding things from us.” She linked arms with him so that she could snuggle against his shoulder and lower her voice. “I’m worried we’re in danger.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes, right here in this deluxe prison Orson engineered for you.” She took a steadying breath, then said: “A couple of weeks back your Imperial benefactor paid Jyn and me an unannounced visit at the playground in the Central District. He warned me that I needed to be careful about undermining your work.”

  Galen whipped his head toward her. “He threatened you?”

  “Not in so many words. But he implied that I was going to be held responsible if you failed to live up to the Empire’s expectations. He said some things that made me suspect the Empire’s been keeping close tabs on us.”

  Galen wrestled with it. “He couldn’t have meant it like that. Not after all he’s done for us.”

  “Oh, he meant it all right. And it gets worse. I think the Empire might be disappearing researchers working for Celestial Power.”

  Galen had to force himself to keep moving. “First it was Imperial ecocide, now it’s disappearances?”

  “You need to let me finish,” she said in a way that brooked no argument. “You remember I told you that Reeva had promised to stay in touch with us from Hypori? Well, her name has been erased from the personnel database, just like Dagio Belcoze’s, and Hypori is no longer responding to comms. Could the Empire be keeping researchers locked away to eliminate the possibility of information leaks?”

  “That can’t be the case. Anarchists are the threat.”

  “Refuse to believe it if you want, but you said yourself that security is a huge issue. Look at this place. Look where we have to have this conversation out of fear of being overheard.”

  “Your fear of being overheard,” he said, though in a controlled way. “Maybe you’re looking for problems where none exist. Hypori might have been phased out, and for all we know Reeva left the program.”

  “I tried to convince myself of that, but I couldn’t, so I asked Nari to go to Malpaz and Hypori and report on what she finds.”

  Galen fell silent. She kept waiting for him to accuse her of having lost her mind, take her to task for using the facility comm, come to the Empire’s defense, sing Orson’s praises for having helped them time and again. Instead, he seemed to be listening without judgment, his coolheadedness almost worrisome in its own right.

  “How soon can we expect to hear from her?” he said at last.

  Lyra glanced at him in surprised relief. “She needs to find a way to justify the trips. Would you at least be willing to evaluate whatever data she sends—even if it’s just to reassure me?”

  “We need to get to the bottom of it,” he mumbled in reply.

  “The bottom?” She brought them to a halt, so she could turn to him fully. “Galen, after everything we’ve been through the past couple of months, I…I guess I expected you to be resistant to all this. What happened?”

  In the light of the distant buildings, his eyes narrowed slightly. “I have suspicions of my own.”

  HAS CAME SLOWLY TO CONSCIOUSNESS, his head throbbing and his vision blurred.

  “Enjoy your soak?” a male voice asked.

  With effort he focused on the tall, gaunt Imperial officer who was standing a few meters away.

  “Where am I?” Has asked weakly.

  “In the prisoners’ medbay of the Executrix,” the officer said, “currently in stationary orbit above Salient One.” The human closed on the foot of Has’s cot. “You’ve spent a week in a bacta tank, and here you are, nearly as good as new.”

  Has realized that he was in red prisoner’s garb, his hands and feet secured in electrocuffs.

  His still-bleary eyes went to the blue-and-red rank insignia squares affixed to the officer’s gray tunic. “You’re Moff Tarkin,” he said.

  A brief look of surprise tweaked Tarkin’s severe features. “I’m encouraged to learn that your brain remains in working order.”

  “What’s left of it,” Has managed. “No thanks to you.”

  Tarkin studied him openly. “Admiral Utu’s strike on the valley wall was very precise. Her turbolasers stitched a line of destructive energy along the eastern escapement that brought the roof down on all of you who had been sheltering beneath it. Initially I wasn’t concerned with possible survivors, but in the interest of seeing what we caught I ordered Utu’s rummager droids to have a look around. You were discovered in a cavity that had formed in the rubble and carried out to the valley floor, where of course you were promptly airlifted and taken into custody.”

  Has had no memory of any of it. “Why did you bother going to so much cost?” he asked, motioning with his chin to the bacta treatment ward.

  “In the interest of speaking with you before you begin what will undoubtedly be a lengthy prison term.”

  Has was too weak to care. “In that case, prepare yourself for a one-sided conversation.”

  Tarkin shrugged. “Noted. But let’s see how we do. I’m curious to know if the actions you took at Salient—for all they accomplished—were at the behest of Commander Krennic.”

  Has regarded the moff for a long moment, wondering just how much he knew.

  “Sudden amnesia?” Tarkin asked.

  “Weighing my options,” Has said carefully.

  “That suggests to me that you may still be under Krennic’s orders.”

  “I’m not under anyone’s orders.”

  Tarkin frowned. “All those back-and-forth supply runs undertaken selflessly? Fo
r a system that now belongs to the Empire?”

  “Good luck with your detoxification and reseeding efforts.”

  Tarkin allowed a grin. “If nothing else, Salient will serve as a jumping-off point for further strikes into the sector.”

  Has felt his strength returning. “The Empire won’t stop until it reaches the edge of the galaxy, is that it?”

  “Why stop there?” Tarkin asked. He paced away from the cot, then turned. “The rest of your little band of mercenaries managed to escape, but we’ll eventually root them out.”

  “Don’t be too sure. They’re very good at what they do.”

  Tarkin’s smile straightened. “Assuming you’re being honest regarding Commander Krennic, I’d be interested to know what swayed you to join the other side after what you helped bring about at Samovar and Wadi.”

  Has winced. So Krennic and Tarkin had been in league from the start. “What difference does it make?”

  “Did Commander Krennic betray you? Or is it that you fell out of favor with him?”

  Has’s laugh became a harsh cough. “There’s a way of looking at it where he’s responsible for my change of heart,” he said when he could. “But since you’re so curious, what changed me was a trip I took with a couple of human women.”

  Tarkin came to a full stop a meter from the foot of the cot. “Now I am intrigued. These two women somehow helped open your eyes, your heart, what part of you?”

  Has decided not to deny it. “To the effect the Empire’s actions are having on the lives of people who still care.”

  Disappointment pulled down the corners of Tarkin’s mouth. “Please, Captain. Let’s try to refrain from naïveté. Where did you and your human companions venture on this life-altering voyage?”

  Has began to wonder if Tarkin had drugged him with truth serum. Even if not, there was a chance, however slim, that honest answers could buy him leniency. “We started at Alpinn.”

  “I’m familiar with Alpinn.”

  Has wasn’t surprised; Tarkin seemed to have a handle on everything. “The women did some surveying and mapping. They expressed an interest in visiting a few Legacy worlds, so I took them to Samovar and Wadi Raffa.”