“Get him up here,” Durga shouted.
“But, he asked not to be disturbed, sir,” the Devaronian said.
Durga gurgled in rage at the comment and punched a control button on his repulsorsled. Suddenly, the Devaronian technician’s chair erupted with electrical fire, deadly voltage arcing across the victim’s hands and arms, crawling up his spinal column and skittering around inside his skull. The alien’s skin blackened and burned. He opened his fanged mouth to scream, but only blue lightning came out.
In seconds the Devaronian slumped down, a skeletal corpse that steamed as flakes of ash fell onto the floor of the expeditionary ship.
“Now, would someone else like to get Bevel Lemelisk for me?” Durga boomed. “Before it’s too late?”
One of the human technicians leaped off his chair and ran to the turbolift.
General Sulamar snapped his fingers, and two Gamorrean guards came forward to remove the charred Devaronian body. Lightly tapping the singed skin to make sure that all of the electrical current had gone away, they whisked the crumbling body out of sight.
Despite his outburst, Durga knew they could never rouse the weapons engineer fast enough to do any good. With outrage and horror, he watched as the two gargantuan machines came together, considering each other to be prime sources of metallic wealth. Unthinking, they followed identical programming: (1) grapple target, (2) dismantle with laser cutters, and (3) process all raw materials.
The giant machines were mindlessly murderous, blasting each other’s hull plates, ripping metal arms and stuffing them into processing maws—an unconscionable disaster unfolding before Durga’s eyes.
The Mineral Exploiters were very efficient. It took less than ten standard minutes for them to rip each other to nonfunctional shreds, drifting hulks of torn-apart components and half-slagged molten ingots. The metal debris drifted apart, taking its own place in the asteroid field.
Durga felt fury boiling inside him, and he hammered his fists on the control panels. He looked around at his technicians, seeking someone worthless to blame—but all of them had leaped out of their booby-trapped seats and stood at attention beside their panels, safely away from their chairs.
CHAPTER 5
Bevel Lemelisk scowled as he trudged along the corridors of the Orko SkyMine ship, huffing with the effort and with his own annoyance at Durga’s constant demands. He stepped into the turbolift for the bridge deck, muttering to himself … things he would never dare say in front of the bloated Hutt crime lord. Durga always wanted the impossible and wanted it now.
The turbolift lurched, yanking Lemelisk upward. He stumbled against the wall, grabbed the railing, and frowned at the controls as if they had intentionally made him lose his balance.
Lemelisk patted his rounded paunch as his stomach growled. He had forgotten to eat midday meal again. He kept losing track of things. He brushed his cheeks, feeling the prickle of long, pale stubble, and realized he hadn’t shaved in two days cither. He sighed, chastising himself. He usually remembered to take care of personal hygiene before he appeared in front of Durga, but the insistent Gamorrean guard hadn’t given him a chance to collect his thoughts. Lemelisk ran a hand through his spiky white hair, making sure it stood up in straight shocks, just the way he preferred it—though he doubted the fat slug boss would ever notice a human’s appearance.
The turbolift stopped with a sudden jolt, but this time Lemelisk braced himself. Before the doors opened, he worked up his indignation. He hated to be disturbed while he was concentrating. He had left specific orders that no one was to barge into his chambers; but the rude guard had done just that, lumbering in when Lemelisk was completing final touches on a difficult three-dimensional crystal-lattice puzzle. All of Lemelisk’s plans had shimmered and dissolved, plunging him back to square zero.
This time, Bevel Lemelisk vowed he wouldn’t be meek and groveling. He strode onto the command deck, drawing in a deep breath so that his chest temporarily looked larger than his belly. “Durga, what is the meaning of this?” he said, letting contempt fill his voice.
The command deck personnel whirled at his words and cowered as if they had just been browbeaten. Lemelisk noticed that not a single one of them remained seated at their stations. He smelled singed meat in the air like badly cooked morning sausages; his empty stomach rumbled again.
General Sulamar hunched forward as he strode toward Lemelisk. The glittering medals and badges on his chest jangled with a dizzying flash of color. Lemelisk ignored him. The Imperial General—with all his blustering talk of military exploits such as the Massacre of Mendicat, the Subjugation of Sinton, and the Rout of Rustibar—was all hot air. Lemelisk himself had, after all, overseen the construction of the Death Star battle station. How could mere military exploits compare to that?
Seeing the weapons engineer, Durga issued a wordless roar of outrage and annoyance that sounded like a cross between a belch and a boiler explosion. Lemelisk stalled in his confident stride. He had never heard such anger in the Hutt’s voice before.
Lemelisk blinked his pale eyes, and his attention flickered to the bridge windows. He saw the spiraling orbits of rocky debris in the asteroid belt. Then he noticed the sputtering remnants of the two automated Mineral Exploiters that had torn each other apart. His throat felt as if it had been filled with quick-drying duracrete. “Uh-oh,” he said.
Durga eased his repulsorsled closer to Lemelisk, who stood transfixed, trying to think up an excuse faster than the Hutt could do anything that Lemelisk might regret.
“I am most displeased with your performance, Lemelisk,” Durga growled, his birthmark throbbing dark and threatening.
Lemelisk shuddered violently, wincing as the clear and painful memories flooded back to him. The Emperor had said exactly those words just before he had executed Bevel Lemelisk for the first time.…
Shortly after the Death Star was expected to crush the Rebel base on Yavin 4, Bevel Lemelisk had been summoned to meet personally with Emperor Palpatine deep within the Imperial palace.
Lemelisk had been flanked by red-armored Imperial bodyguards as they whisked him off on a high-speed shuttle across the skylanes of the planetwide city. The millions of illuminated windows winked like corusca gems. Each point of light seemed to be another torch celebrating his triumph.
Lemelisk rubbed his jowls, pleased that he had remembered to shave this time. The red Imperial guards were a silent lot, standing at attention like statues. Lemelisk hummed and grabbed his jutting knees as the shuttle approached the enormous pyramid of the Imperial palace.
The guards rushed him down the hall so quickly that their flowing scarlet cloaks billowed around them. When the group reached the door to the Emperor’s private chambers, the guards stood at attention, their force pikes raised, their smooth plasteel helmets obscuring any expression.
Lemelisk jaunted happily into the vaulted room, pleased to see the black-cowled Emperor waiting for him. Palpatine hunched in his chair, reptilian yellow eyes glowing through the oily shadows cast by his hood. The Emperor appeared to be falling into ill health: His skin was blistered and folded in upon itself like a pasty drapery over his bones, as if decay had set in well before the advent of death.
But Lemelisk couldn’t be troubled by unpleasant thoughts right now. He stood on the polished stone floor and made a cursory bow of obeisance. “My Emperor,” he said. “I trust you have received word by now that our Death Star has destroyed the secret Rebel base.”
“I have received word,” Palpatine said and gestured with one long-clawed finger. Lemelisk glanced up at a clattering sound and saw a flexible wire cage released from the vaulted ceiling above. He ducked, but the cage fell squarely down over him, seating itself to the floor as if Palpatine were directing it with invisible powers. The cage was made of fine mesh, the grid barely large enough to stick his smallest finger through.
“Excuse me, Emperor?” Lemelisk said. “Is there something further you wish to discuss with me? Another project perhaps? Anythi
ng else I can do for you?” Lemelisk swallowed again.
“Yes, my servant,” Palpatine said. “You may die for me.”
“Uh—” Lemelisk could think of nothing else to say. “I was hoping for something else, actually,” he said stupidly.
Palpatine glowered at him. “I just received word that your Death Star was destroyed at Yavin. A puny band of Rebels with outdated fighters found a weakness in your design—a thermal exhaust port that allowed a single X-wing pilot to strike a fatal blow. One pilot obliterated an entire battle station!”
Lemelisk pursed his lips. “Thermal exhaust port, eh? I knew I must have forgotten something. I’ll have to fix that in the next design.”
“Yes, you will,” Palpatine said with an icy voice. “But first, you will die for me.”
Lemelisk blinked his watery blue eyes and reached out to touch the fine, tough wires of his cage. He looked around, and nervousness raged like a whirlwind around him. Though he had shaved, his neck itched fiercely.
The Emperor sat completely still, yet he must have manipulated a set of controls because with a sharp snick at Lemelisk’s feet tiny openings appeared in the polished stone floor, orifices that led down to a black unknown. He heard clicking sounds, the scrabbling of sharp, hard feet.
“I am most displeased with your performance, Lemelisk,” the Emperor said.
Bevel Lemelisk shuffled aside as something small but iridescent poked out of the opening: a beetle of some kind. The eight-legged, hard-shelled insect shone a deep blue as it clambered into the light and paused to probe the air with waving antennae. From other openings five identical beetles emerged. They fluttered their wing cases, then took flight, buzzing around the enclosed space. Lemelisk swatted at one, but the blue beetle detected the motion and swooped toward him, sinking mandibles with serrated razor edges into the thick flesh of his palm.
“Oww!” Lemelisk flailed his hand until the beetle lost its hold. He stomped on it, cracking its carapace. But the scent of blood attracted the other beetles to him. He watched in horrified fascination as a dozen more of the insects emerged from the floor holes, fluttering their wing cases and buzzing toward him.
“Those are piranha beetles,” the Emperor said, lounging back in his swiveling black chair. “They are native to Yavin 4, and I considered them too precious for extinction when your Death Star was expected to destroy the moon. So I rescued them.”
The beetles swarmed over Lemelisk now. He slapped at them, shouting, paying little attention to Palpatine’s words. “Stop this!” he yelled.
“Not yet,” the Emperor said.
The beetles sliced through his clothing to the skin on Lemelisk’s arms, his thighs, his chest, his cheeks. Blood flowed around him, drenching his shredded clothes. He could not keep up with the new injuries. Hundreds more beetles swarmed out, battering themselves against the cage mesh.
“These fine insects are not in danger of becoming extinct after all, though,” Palpatine said, “since your Death Star did not work! You have failed me, Bevel Lemelisk,” he said, slowing his words. His wrinkled, rubbery lips bent upward in a fiendish grin.
“And now, I’m going to watch these beetles devour you, bit by bit. They are very hungry, you see, and don’t get satisfied easily. But if they gorge themselves and begin to slow down, don’t worry—I have plenty more.” The Emperor let out a glacial laugh, but Lemelisk could no longer hear.
The beetles buzzed in his ears, tearing at his flesh, his hair, his clothes. He struck at himself, throwing his body against the cage mesh. In the process, some of the beetles were stunned, and their own companions fell upon them, cracking through the iridescent shells and chewing to the soft organs within.
Lemelisk screamed and begged—to no avail. The agony went beyond his comprehension, beyond his imagination. His vision turned black after the piranha beetles devoured his eyes—but the pain continued for a long time afterward.…
Later, Lemelisk had awakened, blinking his restored eyes, and was completely disoriented. He found himself in the same vaulted chamber, wrapped in a clean, white uniform. His body felt young and strong, without the paunch and the flab from spending too much time working on projects in his mind and too little effort maintaining his health.
Lemelisk bent his arms and looked at his hands, blinking in astonishment. Hearing a small buzz and clatter, he glanced over to find the wire-mesh cage still filled with buzzing, clacking piranha beetles that scampered up and down the walls, snapping their mandibles. Spattered patterns of fresh blood made arcs along the walls of the cage. Inside, he saw a carcass that had been stripped down to gnawed bones and shreds of clothing—the clothing he himself had worn only moments ago.
“You’ll grow accustomed to your clone in a moment,” the Emperor said, rubbing his knobby fingers over a strange ancient-looking artifact. “I trust that all of your memories have been transferred properly? It is an uncertain skill at best, and the Jedi I stole the technique from was reluctant to give me thorough instruction. But it seems to work.”
Lemelisk nodded weakly, wanting to faint but knowing he didn’t dare.
“Now don’t fail me again, Lemelisk,” the Emperor said. “I’d hate to have to think of an even worse execution for next time.”
Now, as he faced Durga the Hutt and Imperial General Sulamar, Lemelisk sought some reservoir of strength within himself. The Mineral Exploiters had destroyed each other in a horribly embarrassing debacle.
“We can recover from this,” he said quickly. “Yes, I believe I can alter our plans so that our schedule will remain unaffected in the long run.”
Durga lurched backward, blinking his large copper red eyes. “What?”
“You have the two other automated Mineral Exploiters nearly completed. This is a tragic loss,” Lemelisk said, gesturing toward the window, “but we have to expect a few setbacks. This was poor planning, I admit, but I can program the other machines so that such a failure will not occur again.”
General Sulamar squared his shoulders and glared at Lemelisk. “You are absolutely correct,” he said. “This will not happen again!”
Lemelisk dismissed him with a wave of his hand, trying to display more self-assurance than he felt. “Consider those two to be test prototypes, Alpha and Beta. Expendable. We know the error now.”
But Lemelisk mentally kicked himself for letting such a stupid lack of foresight nearly cost him his life. He began to tremble and clamped down on his muscles, forcing himself to stand firm. He had no wish to be executed again—that had happened enough times already—though he was convinced Durga the Hutt could never be a match for Palpatine’s cruelty.
“I promise to rectify the problem, Lord Durga,” Lemelisk said with a bow. “But while I’m doing that, you must focus on our main goal. Even before we worry about construction resources, the primary item on our agenda must be to get those plans from the Imperial Information Center.”
Durga growled, a low gurgling sound.
General Sulamar said, “It is not your place to dictate—”
Durga smacked the stuffed-shirt Imperial across the chest with one fat-fingered hand. “I have already scheduled an expedition to Coruscant, Lemelisk,” he said. “I will have your precious plans shortly.”
CORUSCANT
CHAPTER 6
In the plush chambers of the New Republic’s Chief of State, Leia Organa Solo hurried to make herself presentable. Beside her, Han Solo fiddled with his shirt fasteners and cursed the tiny glittering insignia he tried to apply to his diplomatic finery.
“I hate this, Leia,” he said. “I love you enough to do this—but I don’t enjoy getting dressed up even to meet people I like.” He finally buttoned the insignia then brushed down his shirt front. “And I don’t exactly count those overgrown mud worms among the people I like.”
Leia placed her hand on his shoulder. “Do you think I like it any more than you do?” Vividly, she recalled her imprisonment by the vile Jabba the Hutt, when he had forced her to wear a humiliating costu
me and sit chained in front of him so he could caress her with his enormous rubbery tongue. “The Hurts had a death warrant out on both of us not long ago, but this Durga is making some new kind of overture. It’s a diplomatic necessity that we receive the fat slug and hear what he has to say.”
“Diplomatic necessity,” Han scoffed. “I wouldn’t trust one of those blobs of slime farther than I could roll him. Keep a blaster hidden in your robes.”
Leia checked herself in the surround mirror. She looked cool and perfect in her best raiments, impressive and regal. “I will, Han, don’t worry.”
Threepio entered, quiet hums emanating from his servomotors. “Excuse me, Mistress Leia,” he said. “I believe I am prepared for this important meeting of state. I have polished all of my body plates and oiled my gears and brushed up on my programming for protocol and etiquette.”
“Great,” Han said. “You can take my place. Okay?”
“Sir,” Threepio exclaimed, “I hardly believe that would be wise. Why—”
“He’s joking, Threepio,” Leia said, glaring at Han.
“Sure, Threepio. Just joking,” Han agreed a little too quickly.
“The children wish to say good night to you,” Threepio said. “Mistress Winter is already here and has made preparations to tell them bedtime stories.” The droid held his golden arms out as if in a mechanical shrug. “Somehow, the children don’t enjoy it when I tell them stories. I’m simply at a loss to explain it.”
Leia paid little attention to the litany of the droid’s complaints. “Children are just difficult sometimes,” she said.
The twins, Jacen and Jaina, were three years old now and beginning to get into everything imaginable. Baby Anakin, now nearly two, remained quiet and withdrawn, sleeping a lot, barely attempting to talk. The dark-haired boy with the large ice-blue eyes lived in his own world most of the time, while the twins insisted on making themselves the center of attention.
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