Tarkin Read online

  The gunship touched down and Vader stepped from the deployment platform, all but floating to the buckled street. When his stormtroopers had followed, he turned to Sergeant Crest.

  “Take four of your men and trail the remotes inside. We will monitor the holofeeds from here. Perform a full reconnaissance of the building, but do not enter the room where the devices are said to be located until we follow on your all-clear.”

  Crest saluted and pointed to four of the stormtroopers. By then the spherical remotes had already been tasked and were whirring off toward the building. The squad leader placed a handheld holoprojector on the deployment platform deck plates and enabled it. A moment later the device began receiving transmissions from one of the remotes. While Vader paced, Tarkin watched as illuminated views of narrow hallways and short staircases resolved above the holoprojector. The squad leader shifted feeds from one remote to the next, but the views and sounds remained largely unchanged: puddled hallways, dark stairwells, dripping water, creaking doors, indistinct noises that may have come from still-working machines.

  Almost an hour passed before the voice of Sergeant Crest issued from the comlink of one of his subordinates. “Lord Vader, the building is clear. We’re holding at the head of a corridor leading to the device storage room. I’ve tasked one of the remotes to guide you to our position.”

  Leaving the local stormtroopers to establish a perimeter outside the building, Tarkin, Vader, and the remainder of the Coruscant contingent entered, glow rods in hand as they trailed the tasked remote through some of the corridors and up and down some of the stairways they had been shown earlier. In short order they had rendezvoused with Crest and the others, fifty meters from massive, retrofitted sliding doors that appeared to seal the storeroom.

  Vader gestured for the squad leader to send one of the remotes down the final stretch, then to follow with four of his troopers. Tarkin tracked their wary advance on the sliding doors, which Crest parted just widely enough to allow passage for the remote. When after a long moment the remote exited, Crest signaled for Vader, Tarkin, and the others to proceed.

  First to reach the sliding doors, Vader came to a sudden halt.

  “The remote found nothing untoward?” he asked Crest.

  “Nothing, Lord Vader.”

  Vader’s breathing filled the corridor. “Something …”

  Tarkin watched him closely. Vader’s exceptional instincts had alerted him to a threat of some sort. But what? He began to think through the holotransmissions of the remotes’ dizzying exploration of the confused interior of the building. On every level the surveillance droids had reached dead ends similar to the one he, Vader, and the stormtroopers now faced. Did that mean that the storeroom was several stories high? Perhaps it had been an atrium before it became a storage space. Tarkin thought back to the squad leader’s description of the building: “A medcenter … Housed a deflector shield generator …”

  Tarkin couldn’t imagine such an enormous piece of machinery having been assembled in place. Which could mean—

  “Lord Vader, this isn’t the primary entrance,” he said.

  Vader turned to him.

  “Who would be fool enough to haul communications devices through these corridors and up and down these stairways?” Tarkin gestured upward with his chin. “I suspect they were delivered here through a rooftop access. The sliding doors could lead to an ambush of some sort.”

  Vader took a moment to consider it, then looked at Crest. “You’ve failed me again, Sergeant.”

  “Lord Vader, the remote—”

  “The rooftop,” Tarkin interrupted.

  Vader glanced at him but said nothing.

  They exited the building by the same route they had taken earlier. Once outside, Vader ordered the squad leader to call for the gunship, and all of them scampered up onto the deployment platform. On the building’s flat roof they discovered a well-concealed and functional turbolift shaft, five meters in diameter, transparent, and safe to use. Surveying the vast room while they were descending, Tarkin spotted the remains of a reception counter centered among stacks of metal shipping containers and exposed machines.

  “No one touches anything until I’ve had a look,” he told the stormtroopers. “And take care where you walk. The doors may not be alone in being rigged.”

  While Vader, Crest, and some of the others moved off to investigate the secondary entrance, Tarkin, feeling as if he were stepping back in time, began to meander through the rows created by the stacked containers and devices.

  It had been just nine months after the Battle of Geonosis that Count Dooku’s scientists had succeeded in slicing into the Republic HoloNet by seeding the spaceways with hyperwave transceiver nodes of a novel design. The Separatists could have kept quiet about the infiltration and tasked the nodes to gather intelligence about Republic military operations. Instead, Dooku—as if suddenly intent on winning hearts and minds rather than defeating the Republic with his droid armies—began using the HoloNet to broadcast propaganda Shadowfeeds, providing Separatist accounts of battle wins and disinformation about Republic war crimes, and in the end spreading apprehension among the populations of the Core Worlds that a Separatist victory was imminent.

  It was, however, Separatist success in jamming Republic communication relays that had brought Tarkin into play. Together with operatives of the Republic’s fledgling cryptanalysis department and elements of the Twelfth Army, Tarkin had been sent to Murkhana both to spearhead the invasion and to oversee the dismantling of the Shadowfeed operation.

  Running his hands now over S-thread jammers, signal eradicators, and HoloNet chafing devices, he recalled being among the first wave of clone trooper platoons to fight their way into the building that was the source of the Shadowfeeds; then, on overpowering the Separatist forces, torturing the captive scientists into revealing the secrets of their jamming and steganographic technology, and putting to death thousands of beings who had contributed to Dooku’s scheme. The mission had constituted the first of Tarkin’s covert operations undertaken for then supreme chancellor Palpatine. Murkhana had kicked off a year of similar successes—though it had ended in Tarkin’s capture, torture, and incarceration in Citadel prison.

  With the Emperor’s proclamation of the New Order, some aspects of the HoloNet had come under strict Imperial control, as much to provide the military with exclusive communications networks as to censor unauthorized news feeds.

  Tarkin was completing his initial survey of the components when Vader sought him out.

  “The sliding doors were engineered to trigger a blast when opened fully,” he said. “Odd that the remote failed to register the explosives.”

  Tarkin gestured to the stacks of devices. “Whoever assembled this array found a way to blind the remotes.”

  Vader looked around. “Imperial Security’s operative made no mention of a rigged entrance.”

  Tarkin pinched his lower lip. “That could mean that the explosives were only recently installed.”

  “With the building under constant surveillance?”

  “The street entrances, yes,” Tarkin said. “Probably not the roof.”

  Vader absorbed that in silence, then said, “Puzzling, even so. All this merely to lure and murder an investigative team?”

  “I doubt that the door trap was meant for us, Lord Vader.”

  “Intruders of a more ordinary sort? Would-be thieves, black marketeers?” Vader gazed about him in what struck Tarkin as mounting vexation. “Have you found any unfamiliar devices?”

  “Not yet,” Tarkin said.

  “Then it is all too obvious. These devices were deliberately placed where they could be discovered. This is a stage set.”

  “Perhaps,” Tarkin said. “But we’re going to need to investigate every container to be certain there’s nothing new among the devices. This cache may date from the war, but that doesn’t negate that the components appear to be fully functional and capable of interrupting or corrupting HoloNet signals.”<
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  Vader was dismissive. “Technology that has been available for nearly a decade, Governor.”

  “The question is, why are these devices here?”

  “Someone found them elsewhere and moved them here for safekeeping until their value could be determined.”

  “That would explain the rigged doors …,” Tarkin said. “But it’s also possible that whoever originally found the cache made use of some of the components to engineer the false distress call transmitted to Sentinel Base.”

  Vader fell silent for a long moment, then said, “I agree. Your proposal, then?”

  Tarkin glanced around. “We cam everything and record and transmit to Coruscant any serial numbers or markings we find. Any suspect components should be relocated to the Carrion Spike and also returned to Coruscant for further analysis. The rest should be destroyed.”

  Vader nodded in agreement.

  Tarkin glanced around again and sighed with purpose. “We have our work cut out for us.”

  “The stormtroopers can see to most of it,” Vader said. “There is someone I wish to speak with before we return to the Core.”

  Tarkin showed him a questioning look.

  “The Imperial Security Bureau asset who first reported the find.”

  AS THE GUNSHIP SPED back toward the center of the city, Tarkin, gazing on the devastation, thought: This might have been Eriadu had he not warned the planetary leadership that supporting Dooku would have meant inviting cataclysm.

  Not every member of the planet’s ruling body had agreed with him, but in the end he’d gotten his way and Eriadu had remained loyal to the Republic. For Tarkin, though, the stewardship of his homeworld had come to an end. When word of his decision not to seek reelection became known, his aging and by then ailing father had summoned him to the family compound for a frank conversation.

  “Politics hasn’t been enough of a battleground for you?” his father had asked from the bed to which he was confined, his body punctured by feeding tubes and shunts. The view out the large window took in nearly all of the calm bay.

  “More than enough,” Tarkin said from a chair beside the bed. “But the immigration issues are solved, the economy is back on track, and our world is now thought of as a Core world in the Outer Rim.” The adjoining room of the master suite had been transformed into a kind of intensive care unit, with a bacta tank and a team of medical droids standing by in the event the elder Tarkin should desire resuscitation.

  “Granted,” his father said. “That, however, does not mean that your work is done. A lot of people worked very hard to get you in office.”

  “I’ve done what I set out to accomplish and paid them back in full,” Tarkin said more harshly than he intended. “Some more than they even deserve.” He fell silent for a moment, then added: “I’m exasperated by having to appease so many separate interests and fight to have laws passed and enacted. Politics is worse than a theater of war.”

  His father snorted. “This from someone who has always preached the importance of law and rule by fear.”

  “That hasn’t changed. But it has to be on my terms. What’s more, Eriadu’s internal problems scarcely matter in the present scheme of things. When I met last with Dooku, he made it sound as though galactic war is both inevitable and imminent.”

  “And why wouldn’t he? In his determination to persuade you to throw in with his Separatists, he would make use of enticement, threats, whatever it takes.”

  Tarkin thought back through his recent conversation with the count, and shook his head. “There was something else on his mind, but I couldn’t pry it from him. It was almost as if he was offering me an opportunity to join some secret fraternity of beings who are actually responsible for this mess.”

  His father seemed to consider it. “What will you do, then? Wait for the Republic to instate a military and enlist?” He shook his head in disgust. “You served in Outland, you served in the Judicial Department. Enlistment would be a backward step just when Eriadu needs you most. Especially if this schism leads to war. Who will be able to keep Eriadu safe should it fall to Dooku’s forces?”

  “That’s precisely the point. There’s only so much one can do with words and arguments.”

  “So you’ll race to the light of the lasers. Wasn’t that what you used to exclaim as an Outland commander?” His father managed a rueful laugh. “You may as well adopt it as a personal motto.”

  “Death or renown, Father. I am, after all, your son.”

  “So you are,” his father said, slowly nodding his head. “Has the supreme chancellor remarked on your decision?”

  Tarkin nodded. “Palpatine is in my corner, as it were.”

  “I was afraid of that.” His father regarded him for a long moment. “I urge you think back to the Carrion, Wilhuff. When a pride’s territory is threatened, the dominant beast stands its ground. It doesn’t run off to enlist in a larger cause. You must think of Eriadu itself as the plateau.”

  Tarkin stared out the window, and then turned to face his father. “Jova told me a story that bears on my decision. Long before you were born—long before even Jova was born—a group of developers had designs on the Carrion and all those resource-rich lands the Tarkin family had amassed. Our ancestors initially attempted to resolve the matter peacefully. They attempted to placate the developers with credits. At one point, as Jova tells it, they were even prepared to offer the developers all the lands north of the Orrineswa River clear to Mount Veermok, but their offer was rejected in the strongest terms. For the developers, it was either the entire plateau and all the surrounding territory or none at all.”

  His father smiled weakly. “I know how this story ended.”

  Tarkin smiled back at him. “The Tarkins understood that they weren’t going to keep their adversaries at bay by posting NO TRESPASSING signs or encircling the Carrion with plasma fences. Giving all evidence that they were prepared to capitulate, they lured the leadership of the conglomerate to the bargaining table.”

  “And assassinated them to a man,” his father said.

  “To a man. And that was the end of it.”

  His father took a deep breath and loosed a stuttering exhale. “I understand. But you’re naïve to think that the Republic has the guts to do that with Dooku and the rest. Mark my words, this war will drag on and on until every world pays a price. And I’m glad I won’t be around to see that happen.”

  The ambassador to Murkhana was waiting at the top of the ornate stairway that fronted the principal building of the Imperial compound. A tall, broad-shouldered woman, she was dressed appropriately for Murkhana, Tarkin thought, in that she was sporting stormtrooper armor.

  Seemingly unable to decide whether to salute or bow as he and Vader approached, she simply spread her arms in a welcoming gesture and adopted a cynical smile. Murkhana’s acid rain and soupy air had taken a toll on her hair and complexion, but she appeared otherwise healthy.

  “Welcome, Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin. I was aware that Coruscant was sending an investigative team, but I had no idea—”

  “Has the operative arrived?” Vader interrupted.

  She gestured to the residence with a flick of her head. “Inside. I summoned him as soon as I received your comm.”

  “Show us to him.”

  She spun on her boot heels and made for the reinforced front door, two stormtroopers flanking the entrance stepping aside and saluting Vader and Tarkin as they passed. The entry hall and main room of the residence were sparsely furnished, and the dry air was artificially scented. A Koorivarn male taller than Tarkin and draped in tattered robes stood silently behind a curved couch. His cranial horn was of average size for his species, but his facial ridges were marred by intersecting scars.

  The ambassador gestured for Vader and Tarkin to sit, but they declined.

  “May I at least offer you something to—”

  “Tell me, Ambassador,” Vader interrupted again, “do you ever leave this compound of yours, with its high sensor-stu
dded walls and company of armed sentries?

  “Of course.”

  “Then no doubt you have seen the obscene scrawlings and defacements displayed on every other building between here and this planet’s wretched excuse for a spaceport.”

  She showed him a sardonic look. “My lord, as quickly as I have them expunged, new ones spring up.”

  “And what of the criminal rabble that cluster on every corner?” Tarkin asked.

  She laughed shortly. “They proliferate even more quickly than the defacements, Governor Tarkin. The moment Black Sun moved out, the Crymorah moved in.”

  “The Crymorah,” Vader said.

  “Actually a local affiliate known as the Sugi.”

  Vader seemed to tuck the information away.

  “You need to make an example of them,” Tarkin said.

  The ambassador looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You think I haven’t tried?”

  Tarkin cocked an eyebrow. “Meaning what, exactly?”

  She started to reply, then blew out her breath and began again. “I’ve made appeal after appeal to Moff Therbon for additional stormtroopers, to no avail.”

  “And if we see to it that you have additional resources, you’ll do what must be done?”

  She continued to regard Tarkin with skepticism. “Excuse me, Governor, but I don’t think you understand the situation fully. Officiating here has been like serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit. The stormtroopers have a saying, Better spaced than based on Belderone, and we’re a far cry from Belderone.” She blew out her breath. “Yes, I can leave this compound, but my life is at risk whenever I do. Hence, the white wardrobe.” She glanced between Tarkin and Vader. “Maybe you two haven’t noticed, but Murkhana isn’t Coruscant. The population here hates me. I sometimes think Murkhana hates me. I’m held responsible for every Imperial tax increase and every minor change to the legal system. The smugglers are the only ones who garner respect, because they’re the only ones providing goods—even if at exorbitant rates. As for the crime lords, they’re the only ones powerful enough to provide protection from the thieves and murderers this planet has bred since the war ended.”