Death Star (21 page)

T
arkin found himself wishing once again that Daala were here. It surprised him how much he missed her company. She had military responsibilities at the Maw Installation, of course, but the truth was that the nature of that area of space, in which a congeries of black holes orbited one another in an elegant, complicated dance, made casual passersby unlikely in the extreme. And if that weren’t enough, the four Star Destroyers on duty there were more than capable of discouraging any errant ships, Rebel or otherwise.

And now that the station was being constructed here in the Horuz system, the importance of the work at the Maw was somewhat less than it had been. It was true that Qwi Xux’s other projects—the Sun Crusher, the World Devastators, and other potent superweapons—were still in development there, as well as the installation being full of valuable scientists and technicians, but if Daala were to leave for a week or two, there would be no problem whatsoever with her captains maintaining security in her absence.

Of course, Daala had officially been given express orders to maintain her post until relieved, since there had to be a ranking admiral in charge. But there were orders and then there were orders, and since both sets came from Tarkin, he could alter them as he deemed necessary. As the galaxy’s
only Grand Moff, he had extensive leeway in how he ran his portion of the navy. Nobody could question him, save the Emperor—and as long as he got the job done, the Emperor wouldn’t care what he did to accomplish it.

Tarkin stared out the viewport at the partly assembled battle station, and thought about it.

The standing protocols at the Maw Installation were not open to interpretation. If a non-Imperial ship happened by and managed to avoid being swallowed by one of the many singularities surrounding it, the ship was to be captured and the crew interrogated as to how and why they were there. Failing the ability to capture it, there was but one other option—the vessel was to be blown to atoms. There were no exceptions, and any deck monkey with a rudimentary brain could follow those protocols. There was no need for Daala to be standing over the gunners repeating what they all already knew.

Abruptly, Tarkin made his decision. He went to his quarters and engaged his personal communications holo-unit, then sat back and waited for the connection. It was not long in coming.

“Wilhuff! How good to see you!”

The image of Daala over the holoplate was life-sized, and the resolution very sharp—it wasn’t the same as her being here, but the holo did capture her facial expressions, as well as her cold and haughty beauty, well enough. Like him, she sat in a command chair.

She was happy to see him, he could tell, and that pleased him.

“And you, Daala. How are things at the Installation?”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Less than exciting. You have news?”

Due to the secret nature of the experiments being done at the Maw, outside communications were, for the most part, forbidden. With the exception of this circuit, Daala and her crew were cut off from the rest of the galaxy save for the
Emperor himself, and perhaps Darth Vader. Tarkin could justify this contact for reasons of security—and, if you couldn’t trust a Grand Moff, then who was trustworthy?

“Nothing that concerns your command,” he said. “We are winning the war.”

“Of course,” she said with a knowing smile.

He smiled in return. “We have had some small problems here. But they’ve been rectified, fortunately, with the help of a certain Imperial representative of whom you are no doubt aware.”

Daala nodded. She certainly knew to whom he was referring, though she would not speak Vader’s name aloud, either. This was supposed to be a secure circuit, the signal encoded and encrypted on both ends, but neither Tarkin nor Daala trusted that. Vader had ears everywhere, and what one technician could hide, another could uncover.

“However,” Tarkin continued, “I need to give you a … personal briefing, and to that end, I would have you pay us a visit.”

“Really? When?”

“Whenever your duties make it convenient.”

Both of them smiled at that one. They both knew that, at this point, her “duties” were about as exciting as a dish of curdled droat milk. The crews could do disaster and battle station drills in their sleep.

“Well,” she said, “I expect I can get away starting … what time is it now?”

He chuckled. Daala was the only person in the galaxy who could make him laugh. Aside from her beauty, ambition, and brains, it was one of her most endearing characteristics.

“Let me know when you depart. I look forward to seeing you, Admiral Daala.”

“And I you, Grand Moff Tarkin.”

After he disconnected, Tarkin felt something surge in his breast. Happiness? To be sure. But something more as well,
something he could not quite put a finger on. Daala was an exciting woman in many ways, not the least of which was her physical attractiveness. But her ruthlessness also called to him. She was the highest-ranking female in the Imperial Navy—due in large part to his machinations, of course, but Tarkin did not doubt that she would have eventually risen on her own. When people did not know she was female and judged her on performance scores alone, she could contend with almost any male officer in the service—and had done so.

Perhaps she would not have gone so far, so quickly, without his aid, but without any doubt a woman of her skill and talent would not be held back. He would not have been attracted to any woman less capable. If a man could not have an equal as a mate, at least it was good to find one who could run with him.

He looked around his quarters. Was it a bit dusty in here? He’d have the cleaning droids come in and put it in sparkling order straightaway. Daala was coming, after all. Things must be perfect or he would know the reason why.

He smiled. They called him old behind his back, but he had fire left in him. He was sure his subordinates would be surprised if they knew just how hot that fire burned.

T
eela had come to the conclusion that her boss liked throwing problems at her, just to see her initial reaction. This one was easier than some, harder than others, and overall another chore she could have as well done without.

Stinex looked at her expectantly. “What do you think?”

“I think you must get some kind of perverse pleasure out of bedeviling me.”

He laughed. “The older one gets, the harder it is to find fun things to do. Your solution?”

“Tee-my. Either that, or you-buh.”

Stinex laughed again, louder.
Tee-my
came from TMAI, which was the acronym for Throw Money At It;
you-buh
was from UABH—Use A Bigger Hammer. Both were terms that builders and mechanics liked to toss around. A whole lot of problems could be solved if one but had enough credits to buy whatever was needed to fix them. And brute force had its place, too. Neither was workable here and she knew it, but she did like making the Old Man laugh.

“Seriously,” he said.

Teela stood and walked to the holo of the sleep-space proposal. Closed, it looked like nothing so much as a coffin, and she knew that she wasn’t the only one on whom it would leave such an impression. She gestured, and a line of glowing stats and dimensions appeared.

“Come on, boss,” she said. “You know the stats as well as I do. If we try to stuff five hundred civilians who haven’t had the training or the acclimation to phobespace dimensions into things like this, the minders will have them coming out their ears. We overload the med section, the civilians don’t do the work … there is no upside.”

He nodded. “Yet we have to figure out a way, and since I am in charge, I’m making it your task.”

Teela muttered a particularly vile curse word.

The difficulty was that they had X amount of space within which to house Y numbers of living beings. It was well known by builders throughout galactic space that many species would, without sufficient living space, become claustrophobic, often violently so. Humans were particularly susceptible to this, which was a problem, as something like 95 percent of the Death Star’s projected crew were human or genetically very similar. There were ways of training human troops—combinations of hypnosis, drugs, and periods of acclimation—to offset this so that the problem would not be epidemic among the military contingent, but the civilians generally had no such training. Put folks into a sleep space the size of a coffin, and a great number of them would quickly develop psychological problems. Some nonhuman species, such as Gamorreans and Trandoshans, could not be made to enter such places voluntarily no matter what.

You didn’t want someone welding a critical joint at a crucial juncture of an air-supply line to be half crazed from sleep deprivation because her fear of tight places had kept her awake for several cycles.

You’d think that on a station this large, the last problem they’d have would be living space. And yet some idiot who’d created the initial plans years before had thought that a chamber measuring a meter by a meter by two was sufficient room for somebody human-sized if all she or he was going to be doing in it was sleeping. Which is all one
could possibly do in it; there wasn’t room to do anything else. You had to crawl into the slot and, once inside, you couldn’t sit up or even turn around. If you went in feetfirst, you came out headfirst, and vice versa.

So the question here was: How to give the tenants more room? At the very least, one needed a two-meter-square box, so that most of the occupants could stand erect without smacking their heads into the ceiling, or stretch out their arms without hitting the walls—and even that was marginal. You needed four times the room currently allotted. The problem was, where was it to come from? The available space in the civilian sectors had already been designated for other uses.

Stinex knew this as well as she did. And he most likely had an answer in mind. But it was always a test with him. It wasn’t as if he wanted her to fail; she didn’t think that at all. But she knew he took delight when she came up with solutions, and the more novel, the better.

This one, however, wasn’t going to roll off the top of her head anytime soon. She’d have to think about it.

She said as much. He nodded. He was of the measure-twice-cut-once philosophy, and knew that it was better she considered the problem with due gravitas rather than just blurting out whatever came to mind.

“You have until tomorrow,” he said. “Zero eight hundred.”

Nova ducked a wild swing, caught the attacking guard’s arm, and spun him into the trooper behind him. Both men fell, but he had no time to rejoice—there were others coming for him, lots of others. He waded into a pair of guards and hit both at the same instant with a double punch,
smashing their noses, then dropped and swept, upending another one, and before that one hit the deck he was up again firing a side kick into the belly of yet another—

He was aware that someone was fighting at his side, a human like himself, but huge, and just as good a fighter as he was. His nameless ally grabbed a guard by his front, lifted him off his feet and head-butted the man, knocking his helmet off, then dropped him, whirled, and took out two more with a spin kick.

“We’re having fun now, aren’t we?” the big man said. He laughed.

Nova had no idea where he was or why he was here, fighting an entire phalanx of stormtroopers. He didn’t know who his mysterious ally was, either. He only knew that they were going to lose. They’d taken out a goodly number of guards, but there were still seven or eight of them standing, and the only reason Nova and the big man hadn’t been roasted yet was because the fighting had been too close for the guards to use their blasters. That was about to change, however. The guards were backing away, going for their weapons. The game was about to be over.

Nova felt fear welling inside him. Not for himself; he knew he was a dead man fighting. Two against fifteen, the latter armed with blasters? A win was never in those cards. But it was vitally important that he prolong the fight as long as he could, to give the others—

To give them what? To give
who
what?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that this would be his last dance, and he wanted it to be the best he could manage. Going up against impossible odds, going down swinging, using what he knew.

There were a lot worse ways to check out.

He saw the trooper draw down on him, saw the blaster’s muzzle aimed at his head, knew he could never reach it in time—

Nova awoke, sitting up soaked in sweat, his heart hammering.

Blast!

The glow of the life-support monitors bathed the small room in dim blue and green lights, enough to see that Mantologo, the other NCO who was also off-shift, was sleeping like the dead, snoring lightly. It was just the two of them; the other two sergeants who shared the room were working.

Nova sat up on the edge of his rack, then slid off onto the cold floor plates. He padded into the refresher, a small unit that held a sink, a toilet, and a tight sonic shower pad. He splashed tepid water onto his face, toweled it off, looked at himself in the small mirror over the sink.