Catalyst

by James Luceno

  “We thought we had him cornered,” Tarkin said. “But he managed to commandeer a small ship and escape.”

  Krennic took a moment to appreciate the fact that reversals weren’t exclusive to him. “I never would have thought him clever enough to outwit you, Governor. But I’m certain he’ll turn up in one haunt or another. His kind always do.”

  “Then you’re done with him?”

  Krennic frowned. “Of course I am. What would lead you to think otherwise?”

  Tarkin was quiet for a moment. “We intercepted an Imperial-frequency message transmitted from the stolen ship. We haven’t been able to identify the person or persons at the destination end, but it seems that Obitt is en route to Coruscant.”

  “He’s coming here?”

  “We wondered whether he was still in your service as a double-agent and might be meeting with you to receive new orders.”

  “With me?” Krennic’s irritation was genuine. “After what he pulled at Salient I want no part of him.”

  “Have it your way, Commander. The transmission was garbled, but we were able to deduce that he is arranging to meet with unknown parties at some preassigned location.”

  “I’m afraid I’m drawing a blank, Governor. But I will do what I can to locate him.”

  Krennic sat in silence with the information, his thoughts loud enough to drown out the raucous partying in nearby vehicles. On the run from Tarkin, Obitt was racing to a prearranged location on Coruscant. Either he was desperate to connect with cohorts or—

  A sinister feeling took hold of him.

  Could Lyra have reached out to the Dressellian for help? Had Galen and Lyra tricked him? Had the evening been set up simply to satisfy their curiosity, when in fact they had already made up their minds to bolt?

  Krennic rubbed one hand across his mouth while the other went to the comm; then he reconsidered. Ordering the facility into lockdown might tip them off. Plus, if he was rushing to judgment, a lockdown would only give Lyra another reason to distrust him. A better course would be to show up unannounced. He would say that in thinking through the conversation he realized that he hadn’t explained himself adequately. He could apologize again; state that he couldn’t leave things the way they were. In the interest of saving their relationship he would even be willing to violate his security oath…

  That just might do it.

  He tapped the stormtrooper pilot on the shoulder. “Get us out of this jam. We’re returning to the facility.”

  —

  “They’ve gone,” Lyra said as she watched Orson’s airspeeder lift off from the facility landing zone and insert into one of the crowded traffic lanes.

  Galen was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. “All he did was counterattack and talk around everything we brought up. Instead of denying everything, he deflected. Even when he claimed not to know where Reeva and Dagio are.” He looked up at Lyra. “He’s complicit, if not responsible.”

  “I’m sorry, Galen,” she told him. “I know how much this facility means to you. But at least we’re closer to learning the truth.”

  He shook his head. “There is no one truth. We’re both right; we’re both wrong. There are truths and falsehoods on both sides. It’s irrelevant whether he had any part in what happened to our friends or to the facilities. We’re never going to learn the full story. There’s simply too much at stake—” Galen stopped mid-sentence, then added: “What matters is that I can’t do this anymore.”

  “What choice do we have?” Lyra asked carefully.

  “There comes a point where an oath’s not justification enough for silence.” Galen shot to his feet and stormed away from her.

  “Galen,” she said, following him.

  He came to a stop, but kept his back to her. “I’m the one who provided them with what they needed to weaponize the research. I played into their hands.”

  “You? When?”

  “After Malpaz. After I bought into Orson’s lie about anarchists and the Emperor’s dreams for sustainable energy. I agreed to go deeper into the research than I knew was advisable. I trusted Orson when he said that his teams were working on ways to contain the power yield, when in fact they were merely working on ways to channel it into a delivery system. To harness the full force of the kybers’ destructive power for use as a weapon.” He raked his hair back from his face. “The Jedi were right.”

  Lyra felt the blood drain from her face. “Star Destroyers and dreadnoughts aren’t enough for the Empire?”

  “Who knows what order of weapon they’re working on, or who they’re planning to target. Krennic said that the Emperor wants to make an example of one world. Maybe that wasn’t entirely a lie.”

  Lyra forced a weary exhale. “It must have been some sales pitch, Galen, for you to betray your own sense of caution and respect for the crystals.”

  He turned to face her. “I had myself convinced that I was doing it for you and Jyn and to safeguard future generations. Instead I failed as a husband, a father, and a scientist.” He snorted in a sad way, then said: “I can’t do anything about being a failed scientist, but I can correct the rest—if it’s not too late.”

  She smiled in encouragement. “Don’t be an idiot. I didn’t fall in love with your research, Galen. I fell in love with you.”

  He took her into his embrace and held her tightly, saying into her ear: “I love you and Jyn. You’re all that matter to me.”

  He’s back, she thought, resting her head against his chest. “I know I made matters worse with Orson. We may be in more danger than before.”

  “That’s why we’re leaving.”

  She pulled away to regard him.

  “We need to go now while it’s the last thing Orson would expect us to do,” Galen said. “I refuse to live my life under terms dictated by the Empire.”

  She swallowed hard and looked into his eyes. “I wasn’t going to say anything until you’d made up your mind.”

  He let his puzzlement show. “Say anything about what?”

  “We may have a way out.”

  Galen waited for the rest.

  “A friend contacted me. It seems I’m not the only one who’s worried about our safety.”

  “You trust him?”

  “Completely.”

  “He contacted you here? Through the facility comm?”

  “Through my personal comlink.”

  “Then we have to work fast to arrange things,” Galen said. “Where is it?”

  Prizing the comlink from her pant pocket, she handed it to him, and he went immediately to the facility console, where he began inputting data.

  Lyra came to his side to watch him. “Galen, Orson will know if you delete or alter anything.”

  He nodded while he entered commands. “That’s the idea.”

  —

  Even screeching sirens and threats of physical violence weren’t enough to speed their return to the facility. On the landing pad, Krennic ordered the stormtroopers to seal the exits and hurried into the darkened building. Despite the late hour, researchers and droids were still about as he made his way to the turbolifts that accessed the residential area, and from those he went directly to the Ersos’ apartment. His explanations and apologies rehearsed and committed to memory, he straightened his shoulders and tunic and signaled the security cam to announce him. A long moment passed before the door slid aside and a humaniform MV droid appeared in the doorway.

  “Are the Ersos still awake?” he said.

  “They may well be, sir,” the droid told him.

  Krennic stepped into the suite. “Tell Galen that I’m here.”

  “I am unable to, sir, as I am unaware of Galen’s current whereabouts.”

  “And Lyra?”

  “None of the Ersos are here, sir.”

  Krennic activated his wrist comm. “Check with security to see if anyone has left the facility in the past three hours,” he said when one of the stormtroopers answered. “If no one has left, then conduct a search of the g
rounds.”

  He shoved past the droid and began a search of his own. The two bedrooms were empty, but the closets and drawers were filled with clothing and nothing looked disturbed except Jyn’s bed. He returned to the main room and hurried to the communications board. The console had just acknowledged his clearance when his wrist comm chimed.

  “The Ersos left the grounds two hours ago, Commander, by way of the front gate,” the stormtrooper said. “They told the guards that they were going out to join in the celebration.”

  “With a child, at this hour?” Krennic grated.

  “It’s what they told the guards, sir.”

  “Widen your search. Download their images into your comlink and get the local authorities involved. I don’t want them apprehended. Just monitor them and await further orders from me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Krennic was trying to keep from fearing the worst, but his instincts told him that Galen was in flight. Quickly he read through the comm station’s message queue for the previous two standard weeks. The queue listed Orson’s calls to Galen, and multiple calls placed by Lyra: to her mother, to her friend Nari, to other friends, to Hypori—

  Krennic ground his teeth in anger. Then his gaze alighted on a text that had been received a day earlier from an unknown sender. Recalled to a screen, it read: If you’re at all interested in embarking on another tour, I’m at your disposal. If you wish, it can be a family outing this time.

  The log showed that additional messages had been exchanged, but they had been purged from the system—which only Galen had the clearance to do.

  Krennic whirled away from the console and went to the living room, his eyes moving from the couch to the chairs in a replay of the evening’s conversation, all three of them in a time warp of his imagining. Then he thought about Has Obitt and the preassigned location he was bound for.

  He ran through the possibilities. Had Galen and his family left from the local spaceport? Had they hired a private speeder? No sky-cab would have been allowed to land on the grounds or the rooftop landing zones; it would have to have been waiting outside the entrance. All the while he had been bogged down in traffic, the Ersos had been crawling toward the Central District to meet with Obitt.

  Again he activated his wrist comm.

  “The facility is to be placed on full lockdown: no one in or out, and no one is allowed access to any internal or external communications or databases. Alert COMPNOR that we’re going to need a team of expert slicers to extract everything we can from the research computers.”

  “Will we be remaining onsite, Commander?”

  “Negative,” Krennic told the stormtrooper. “We’re heading soonest to the Central District spaceport—in low orbit if we have to. And order the rest of the squad to meet us there.”

  —

  Galen couldn’t recall a time when he had seen more people on the walkways, the rooftops, the balconies and terraces, everyone celebrating without restraint. Lyra had Jyn in her arms, the poor kid still in pajamas and struggling to remain asleep, despite the welter of tongues, the fireworks and general revelry.

  Caught up in the sweep of the crowd, he said: “I guess there’s no fighting it.”

  “That’s Coruscant for you.”

  “We’ll never get there on time.”

  “On time only means getting there without being caught,” Lyra said. “Otherwise he’ll wait for us. That’s the plan.”

  “Just how long have you been working on this?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  “How could you be sure it wasn’t a trap? Something Orson set for you.”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. But he convinced me everything was on the level.”

  “You told me what you and Jyn had to go through when you left for Alpinn. Getting off Coruscant isn’t going to be like walking out of the facility. We might be on a no-fly list. We don’t even have travel permits.”

  “I was told not to worry, and that everything would be arranged—even at a moment’s notice. This isn’t going to be Vallt all over again.”

  Galen absorbed her words as the crowd moved them along. “The bigger mystery is how you knew I’d be willing to go along with it.”

  “I hoped our conversation with Orson would convince you to leave. If that failed, then I was going to try to talk you into it.” She paused, then asked: “Do you think he’ll find the message?”

  “It’s Orson. Of course he will.”

  “And the ones you altered?”

  “Some of them. He’ll bring in forensic specialists to help.”

  “And the kyber research?”

  Galen tapped the side of his head. “That’s in here. And here,” he added, tapping the notebook in the pouch pocket of his trousers.

  “You could have at least made him work to get the current data.”

  “He’s welcome to whatever he finds. I could have sabotaged everything, but I don’t want to give the Empire a reason to hunt us down. We’re simply dropping out—although covertly. Besides, what I left will keep them occupied for a while.”

  “Revenge was never your style.”

  Galen considered it. “Orson may have worked me, but he didn’t force me.”

  They continued to edge through the crowds, Galen employing a program on his comlink to alert them to police activity and fixed and mobile facial-recognition cams.

  “Will they have enough data to build a superweapon?”

  Galen shook his head. “Not without me.”

  “You realize that he’s never going to stop looking for you, Galen. You’re in his blood, crystal research or no. He’s never going to let go of you entirely.”

  Galen took a long moment to digest that. “Then we’ll have to travel far,” he started to say before coming to a sudden halt and frowning at the comlink’s screen. “The program has crashed.”

  “Crashed or—”

  She cut herself off on seeing her and Galen’s faces resolve ten times larger than life on a nearby building’s newsfeed screen.

  Gazing around to get her bearings, she said: “We need to go down three levels, turn right, then left, and turbo up to Republic Plaza. It’ll be easier to mix in there.”

  “You’ve been mapping the territory?” Galen asked as he followed on her heels.

  Lyra hefted Jyn in her arms. “Long walks were the only way I could get her to sleep.”

  Galen kissed Jyn on the forehead. “Don’t ever change, Stardust.”

  The last thing they saw before disappearing into the turbolift was a police speeder spiraling down out of the busy night sky to set down fifty meters away.

  —

  Cleared for landing on Coruscant, Has, flying solo, maneuvered the ship toward a hangar on the outskirts of the Central District spaceport. Traffic was heavy in every direction at every elevation, but the Zerpen-built craft, outfitted with a superb hyperdrive and military-grade deflector shields, was more agile than the one Imperial forces had buried under metric tons of rock on Salient I. As he drew closer to the hangar from which he, Lyra, Jyn, and Nari had embarked for Alpinn so many standard months earlier, he asked himself why, on leaving Salient, he hadn’t simply jumped to the farthest reaches of Tingel Arm instead of returning to the Core. He wanted to believe that the answer had something to do with being true to his word, but it was more a case of being caught between Tarkin and Krennic. Betraying one or the other could lead to imprisonment or worse, so his options were limited indeed.

  Tarkin’s terms of redemption called for Has to talk his way back into Krennic’s good graces and serve as Tarkin’s inside man and listening device, rightly assuming that Has wouldn’t risk double-crossing the moff by lighting out for the Rim. Has, though, had persuaded him to send a message that would make his return to Coruscant appear credible. That much accomplished, he had jumped the Zerpen ship directly for the Core, putting other plans into play while en route.

  Trusting the ship to autopilot, he relaxed into the pilot’s seat, working the kinks out of
his shoulders and running through the next few moves. Thanks to the time he had spent in the bacta tank, he was back to feeling healthy and strong, but he was going to need to be sharper than usual to succeed. Krennic wasn’t just astute; he could see around corners, and there was no telling how he would react to seeing his own stooge again.

  The ship eased through the hangar’s open-irised roof and settled on its landing gear. He waited for the systems to shut down before shrugging out of the harness, then left the cockpit for the boarding ramp, which was already lowering.

  His boots had just hit the hangar’s concrete floor when Krennic appeared from around the stern of the ship, backed by a squad of stormtroopers with BlasTechs raised. Has let his jaw drop as the Imperial officer approached.

  “Clearly you’re surprised to see me, Captain.”

  “You have that right, Commander,” Has managed.

  “Not the passengers you were expecting.”

  Has tilted his head in question. “Passengers? I wasn’t expecting anyone to be waiting. How in the world did you know I was coming?”

  “Governor Tarkin intercepted your transmission.”

  Has cursed under his breath. “And here I thought I’d made a clean getaway.”

  “Of all beings, Obitt, you should know that there’s no escaping the long arm of the Empire.”

  “You’re right, Commander. But I’m awfully glad to see you just the same.”

  Krennic mimicked Has’s earlier head tilt, signaled for his cadre of troopers to lower their weapons, and took a few steps toward the ship’s ramp. “Admit that you’ve come here to assist the Ersos in leaving.”

  “The Ersos?”

  “I know that you’ve been communicating with Lyra.”

  “Lyra? I haven’t exchanged a word with her since the expedition. Why would I?”

  “You’re denying that you offered her assistance?”

  Has shook his head in bafflement. “I wouldn’t know how to find her even if I wanted to.”

  Krennic scrutinized him. “Then why are you here?”

  “To see you, Commander.” When Krennic didn’t respond, he added: “I’m in desperate straits. I need your protection.”