Tarkin Read online

  Just coming into his own as a lieutenant in Outland’s anti-piracy task force, Wilhuff refused to accept the disheartening analysis and devoted himself to a detailed study of the raids in which Q’anah had participated—failures and successes both—in the hope of deciphering her method for choosing containers. Her attacks weren’t at all like the hunts he had witnessed on the Carrion Plateau, where solitary predators or prides would select the stragglers, the young, or the weakest of the herd animals, and for some time it indeed appeared that her choices had neither rhyme nor reason. But Wilhuff remained convinced that a pattern existed—even if Q’anah herself wasn’t consciously aware of having created one.

  The scheme that ultimately emerged was so deceptively simple, he was surprised no one had unraveled it. Q’anah turned out not to be the pirate’s original name, but rather one she had adopted after her father had relocated the family to Asmeru. In the ancient language of that mountainous world, the word referred to an ages-old festival that always fell on the same day of the planet’s complex calendar: the 234th day of the local-year, in the 16th month. Q’anah had assigned each of the five numbers to a letter of her name, and had used that sequence as her basis for choosing targets. Thus on her initial attack on an Eriadu Mining convoy, she had targeted the second container ship counting back from the lead ship; then the third from that one, then the fourth from that one, and so on, until she had grabbed five containers. On subsequent attacks the sequence might commence substituting the last targeted container for the lead vessel. Sometimes she would reverse the sequence, or move forward in the line rather than toward the rear. Occasionally a pattern would begin in one convoy but wouldn’t conclude until the next convoy or even the one after that. The numeric sequence itself, however, never changed. Q’anah was essentially spelling out her sobriquet over and over, as if leaving her mark on every convoy she attacked.

  Once Wilhuff had grasped the pattern and persuaded Outland’s commanders that his months of obsession hadn’t driven him completely mad, Eriadu Mining agreed to sacrifice several container ships to the pirates as a means of confirming the theory. Emboldened by the results, the company urged Outland to stock the predicted convoy targets with soldiers, but Wilhuff’s paternal cousin, Ranulph Tarkin, proposed an alternative method for exacting revenge by secreting a computer virus in the containers’ hyperdrive motivators. One of Outland’s most respected commanders, Ranulph—who so resembled Wilhuff’s father they could have passed for twins—had designed the ploy years earlier, but Eriadu Mining had balked, based on the cost of having to outfit countless containers with the virused computers. With a lead on which containers Q’anah would target, however, the company agreed to finance the measure, even though the strategy entailed dispatching only one convoy at a time and often operating at a loss.

  To make matters worse, the attacks suddenly ceased. It was almost as if the pirates had learned of the ploy, and with increasing pressure from Core buyers for added shipments and wasting funds on attempts to ferret out spies in their midst, Eriadu Mining was on the brink of financial ruin when the Marauders finally struck, targeting precisely those containers Wilhuff had predicted. No sooner did the pirates slave the containers to their frigate than the virus wormed its way into the ship’s navicomputer, overriding the requested jump coordinates and delivering it to a realspace destination where Outland warships were lying in wait. Once the frigate had been crippled and boarded, and Q’anah and her crew rounded up and shackled, Ranulph—always the gentleman—insisted on introducing the pirate queen to her eighteen-year-old “captor.”

  Her sneering expression ridiculed the very idea of it. “Barely a whisker on his chin, but luck enough for a professional sabacc player.”

  “It was your vanity that turned out to be a laudable substitute for luck,” Wilhuff told her. “Your need to leave your signature all over Eriadu’s convoys.”

  Her real eye opened wide and she quirked a grin that told him she understood what he had accomplished, but she followed up the begrudging grin with a snort of contempt. “There isn’t a prison that can contain me, boy—even on Eriadu.”

  Wilhuff offered the sly smile that would later become a kind of signature. “You’re confusing Eriadu with worlds that have noble houses and trials by jury, Q’anah.”

  She searched his youthful face. “Execution on the spot, is it?”

  “Nothing so straightforward.”

  She continued to appraise him openly and defiantly. “There’s hardly a part of me that hasn’t been replaced, boy. But take my word: I’m not the last of my kind, and your convoys will continue to suffer.”

  He allowed a nod. “Only if we fail to discourage your followers.”

  Outland had Q’anah and her crew transferred to one of the stolen containers, whose sublight engines were programmed to send the ship slowly but inexorably toward the system’s sun. The plight of the captives was broadcast over the pirates’ own communications network, and several of Q’anah’s cohorts succeeded in determining the point of origin of the transmission and hastening to her rescue. Their ships were destroyed on sight by Outland forces. The rest were wise enough to go into hiding.

  Wilhuff demanded that the container ship’s audio and video feeds be kept enabled to the very end, so that Outland’s forces and any others who might have been listening could either savor or lament the agonized wails of the pirates as they were slowly roasted to death. In the end, even the notorious Q’anah succumbed to the torture and wailed openly.

  “Your task is to teach them the meaning of law and order,” Jova would hector his nephew. “Then to punish them so that they remember the lesson. In the end, you’ll have driven the fear of you so deeply into them that fear alone will have them cowering at your feet.”

  BRIGHT-SIDE CORUSCANT air-traffic control directed the Carrion Spike to the Imperial Palace, and there into a courtyard landing field that was large enough to accommodate Victory- and Venator-class Star Destroyers. As repulsors eased the ship down through the busy skyways and into the court, Tarkin realized that the Emperor’s current residence had once been the headquarters for the Jedi—though practically all that remained of the Order’s elegant Temple complex was its copse of five skyscraping spires, now the pinnacle of a sprawling amalgam of blockish edifaces with sloping façades.

  At the edge of the landing courtyard, centered among a detail of red-robed Imperial Guards armed with gleaming force pikes, stood Mas Amedda, dressed in voluminous shoulder-padded robes and carrying a staff that was taller than him, its head ornamented by a lustrous humaniform figure.

  “How charitable of you to make time for us, Governor,” the Chagrian said as Tarkin approached from the corvette’s lowered boarding ramp.

  Tarkin played along. “And for you to welcome me personally, Vizier.”

  “We all do our part for the Empire.”

  With crisp turns, Amedda and the face-shielded guards led him through elaborate doors into the Palace. Tarkin was familiar with the interior, but the expansive, soaring corridors he walked years earlier had contained a rare solemnity. Now they teemed with civilians and functionaries of many species, and the walls and plinths were left unadorned by art or statuary.

  Tarkin felt curiously out of step, perhaps because of the increased gravity, the pace, the crowds, or a combination of all those things. For three years the only non- or near-humans he had seen or had direct contact with had been slaves or recruited laborers at outlying bases or at the battle station’s construction site. He had heard that one needn’t have been absent from Coruscant for years to be startled by the changes, in that each day saw buildings raised, demolished, incorporated into ever larger and taller monstrosities, or merely stripped of Republic-era ornamentation and renovated in accordance with a more severe aesthetic. Curved lines were yielding to harsh angles; sophistication to declaration. Fashions had changed along similar lines, with few outside the Imperial court affecting cloaks, headcloths, or garish robes. By most accounts, though, Coruscanti were
satisfied, especially those who lived and worked in the upper tiers of the fathomless cityscape; content if for no other reason than to have the brutal war behind them.

  Tarkin’s most carefree years had been spent on Coruscant and neighboring Core Worlds before he had been elected governor of Eriadu, with some help from family members and influential contacts. He had a sudden desire to sneak outside the Palace and explore the precincts he had roamed as an adventurous young adult. But perhaps it was enough to know that law and order had finally triumphed over corruption and indulgence, which had been the hallmarks of the Republic.

  Someone called his name as he and Amedda were moving down a colonnaded walkway, and Tarkin turned, recognizing the face of a man he had known since his academy years.

  “Nils Tenant,” he said in genuine surprise, separating himself from the Chagrian’s retinue to shake Tenant’s proffered hand. Fair-skinned, with a prominent nose and a downturning full-lipped mouth, Tenant had commanded a Star Destroyer during the Clone Wars, and displayed on his uniform tunic the rank insignia plaque of a rear admiral.

  “Wonderful to see you, Wilhuff,” Tenant said, pumping Tarkin’s hand. “I came as soon as I learned you were coming.”

  Tarkin affected a frown. “And here I thought my arrival would be a well-kept secret.”

  Tenant sniffed in faint amusement. “Only some secrets are well kept on Coruscant.”

  Clearly bothered by the delay, Mas Amedda tapped the base of his staff on the polished floor and waited until the two had joined the retinue before moving deeper into the Palace.

  “Is that the new uniform?” Tenant asked as they walked.

  Tarkin pinched the sleeve of the tunic. “What, this old thing?” then asked before Tenant could respond: “So who let it be known that I was coming? Was it Yularen? Tagge? Motti?”

  Tenant was dismissive. “You know, you hear things.” He moved with purposeful slowness. “You’ve been in the Western Reaches, Wilhuff?”

  Tarkin nodded. “Still hunting down General Grievous’s former allies. And you?”

  “Pacification,” Tenant said in a distracted way. “Brought back to attend a Joint Chiefs meeting.” Abruptly he clamped his hand on Tarkin’s upper arm, bringing him to a halt and encouraging him to fall back from Amedda and the guards. When they seemed to be out of earshot of Amedda, Tenant said: “Wilhuff, are the rumors true?”

  Tarkin adopted a questioning look. “What rumors? And why are you whispering?”

  Tenant glanced around before answering. “About a mobile battle station. A weapon that will—”

  Tarkin stopped him before he could say more, glancing at Amedda in the hope that he and Tenant were, in fact, out of the Chagrian’s range.

  “This is hardly the place for discussions of that sort,” he said firmly.

  Tenant looked chastised. “Of course. It’s just that … You hear so many rumors. People are here one day, gone the next. And no one has laid eyes on the Emperor in months. Amedda, Dangor, and the rest of the Ruling Council have taken to dispatching processions of Imperial skylimos simply to maintain an illusion that the Emperor moves about in public.” He fell briefly silent. “You know they commissioned an enormous statue of the Emperor for Senate—I mean, Imperial Plaza? So far, though, the thing looks more terrifying than majestic.”

  Tarkin raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that the idea, Nils?”

  Tenant nodded in a distracted way. “You’re right, of course.” Again he regarded the nearby columns with wariness. “The scuttlebutt is that you’re scheduled to meet with him.”

  Tarkin shrugged noncommittally. “If that’s his pleasure.”

  Tenant compressed his lips. “Put in a word for me, Wilhuff—for old times’ sake. A great change is coming—everyone senses it—and I want to be back in the action.”

  It struck Tarkin as an odd request, even a trifle audacious. But in considering it, he supposed he could understand wanting to be in the Emperor’s good graces, as he was certainly grateful to be there.

  He clapped his fellow officer on the shoulder. “If the occasion arises, Nils.”

  Tenant smiled weakly. “You’re a good man, Wilhuff,” he said, falling back and vanishing as Tarkin hurried to catch up with Amedda and the retinue turned a corner in the hallway.

  Tarkin attracted a good deal of attention as the group climbed a broad stairway and debouched into a vast atrium. Figures of all stripe and station—officials, advisers, soldiers—stopped in their tracks, even while trying not to make an obvious display of staring at him. Subjugator of pirates; former governor of Eriadu; graduate of Prefsbelt; naval officer during the Clone Wars, decorated at the Battle of Kamino and promoted to admiral after a daring escape from the Citadel prison; adjutant general by the war’s end, and named by the Emperor one of twenty Imperial Moffs … After years of absence from the Imperial capital, was Tarkin here to be forgiven, rewarded, or punished with another mission that would send him chasing Separatist recidivists through the Western Reaches, the Corporate Sector, the Tion Hegemony?

  He sometimes wondered where fate might have taken him if he hadn’t entered the academy system after his years with Outland, when a move to civilian instruction had seemed the best strategy for introducing himself to the wider galaxy. Perhaps he would still be in pursuit of Outer Rim pirates or mercenaries, or slaved to a desk in some planetary capital city. No matter what, it was unlikely that he would ever have crossed paths with the Emperor—when he was still known as Palpatine.

  It was while Tarkin was attending the Sullust Sector Spacefarers Academy that they met—or rather that Palpatine had sought him out. Tarkin had just returned to the academy’s orbital facility from long hours of starship maneuvers in an Incom T-95 Trainer when someone called his name as he was crossing the flight deck. Turning to the voice, he was astonished to find the Republic senator walking toward him. Tarkin knew that Palpatine was part of Supreme Chancellor Kalpana’s party, which included his administrator Finis Valorum and several other senators, all of whom were on station to attend the academy’s commencement and commissioning day ceremonies. Most of the graduates would be moving on to positions in commercial piloting, local system navies, or the Judicial Department. Dressed in fashionable blue robes, the red-haired aesthete politician flashed a welcoming smile and extended a hand in greeting.

  “Cadet Tarkin, I’m Senator Palpatine.”

  “I know who you are,” Tarkin said, shaking hands with him. “You represent Naboo in the Senate. Your homeworld and mine are practically galactic neighbors.”

  “So we are.”

  “I want to thank you personally for the position you took in the Senate on the bill that will encourage policing of the free trade zones.”

  Palpatine gestured in dismissal. “Our hope is to bring stability to the Outer Rim worlds.” His eyes narrarowed. “The Jedi haven’t provided any support in dealing with the pirates that continue to plague the Seswenna?”

  Tarkin shook his head. “They’ve ignored our requests for intervention. Apparently the Seswenna doesn’t rate highly enough on their list of priorities.”

  Palpatine sniffed. “Well, I might be able to offer some help in that regard—not with the Jedi, of course. With the Judicials, I mean.”

  “Eriadu would be grateful for any help. Stability in the Seswenna could ease tensions all along the Hydian Way.”

  Palpatine’s eyebrows lifted in delighted surprise. “A cadet who is not only a very skilled pilot, but who also has an awareness of politics. What are the chances?”

  “I might ask the same. What are the chances of a Republic senator knowing me on sight?”

  “As a matter of fact, your name came up in a discussion I was having with a group of like-minded friends on Coruscant.”

  “My name?” Tarkin said in disbelief as they began to amble toward the pilots’ ready rooms.

  “We are always on the lookout for those who demonstrate remarkable skills in science, technology, and other fields.” Palpatine allowed his
words to trail off, then said: “Tell me, Cadet Tarkin, what are your plans following graduation from this institution?”

  “I still have another two years of training. But I’m hoping to be accepted to the Judicial Academy.”

  Palpatine waved in dismissal. “Easily done. I happen to be personal friends with the provost of the academy. I would be glad to advocate on your behalf, if you wish.”

  “I’d be honored,” Tarkin managed. “I don’t know what to say, Senator. If there’s anything I can do—”

  “There is.” Palpatine came to an abrupt halt on the flight deck and turned to face Tarkin directly. “I want to propose an alternative course for you. Politics.”

  Tarkin repressed a laugh. “I’m not sure, Senator …”

  “I know what you must be thinking. But politics was a noble enough choice for some of your relatives. Or are you cut from so different a cloth?” Palpatine continued before Tarkin could reply. “If I may speak candidly for a moment, Cadet, we feel—my friends and I—that you’d be wasting your talents in the Judicial Department. With your piloting skills, I’m certain you would be an excellent addition to their forces, but you’re already much more than a mere pilot.”

  Tarkin shook his head in bewilderment. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

  “And why should you? Politics, however, is my area of expertise.” Palpatine’s relaxed expression became serious. “I understand what it’s like to be a young man of action and obvious ambition who feels that he has been marginalized by the circumstances of his birth. Even here, I can imagine that you’ve been ostracized by the spoiled progeny of the influential. It has little to do with wealth—your family could buy and sell most of the brats here—and everything to do with fortune: the fact that you weren’t born closer to the Core. And so you are forced to defend against their petty prejudices: that you lack refinement, culture, a sense of propriety.” He stopped to allow a smile to take shape. “I’m well aware that you’ve been able to make a name for yourself in spite of this. That alone, young Tarkin, shows that you weren’t born to follow.”