Tarkin

by James Luceno

  Tarkin eased off the castered stool and began to pace the length of the massive table, all the while regarding the four projected holoimages. Was it possible that some or all of them were involved in the pirating of the Carrion Spike? He stopped to mull it over, and shook his head. The odds were good that Teller and Knotts knew each other, in that they had answered to the same case officer at Republic Intelligence; also that Teller had approached the journalists with his story. But none of the four was a starship pilot, much less an engineer capable of managing the corvette’s sophisticated instruments and systems.

  Returning to the stool, Tarkin re-summoned the lengthy file devoted to Antar 4.

  The Republic databases were difficult to navigate, as much of the information had been deleted or redacted, or was in the process of being altered and “reinterpreted.” Once he had successfully wormed his way into the appropriate archives, however, he was able to narrow the parameters of his search for Republic assets associated with the resistance. Ultimately the distant computers provided the names of several of Teller’s partisan subordinates who had escaped execution on the moon and were at least worthy of consideration. There was, for example, a Gotal starship pilot, identified in the archives only as “Salikk,” and a Koorivar munitions and surveillance expert listed only as “Cala.”

  Tarkin extracted holoimages of the twin-horned humanoid and the single-horned near-human and placed them on the far side of the holograms of Fair and Taff; then, changing his mind, he moved them to float between those of Teller and Knotts.

  A tremor of excitement coursed through him.

  He propelled the castered stool to the HoloNet array and contacted the escort carrier, Goliath, ordering the specialist he eventually spoke with to forward from the ship’s database a record of his transmission with the Phindian administrator of the fuel tanker. When the recording arrived, he extracted the image of the scar-faced, red-haired human who had requisitioned fuel cells and ordered the computer to compare the hologram of Teller to the bogus Imperial commander with the ocular implant.

  In short order, text flashed above the holotable between the two holograms:

  MATCH: 99.9%

  Tarkin’s jaw fell open in wonder as he stared at the man who had stolen his ship.

  Shifting his gaze between his dictated text and the holograms of the suspects, he began to think through everything from scratch.

  Yes, Teller could have learned about the Carrion Spike during his short tenure at Desolation Station. And it would have been easy enough for him to persuade “Salikk” and “Cala” to join him, since he had probably been responsible for exfiltrating them from Antar 4—just as he’d been responsible for saving the lives of Fair and Taff by whisking them from Coruscant. At that point, Teller would have had a pilot, an operations and munitions specialist, and two HoloNet experts.

  Tarkin ran a hand down over his mouth and took hold of his chin.

  Something was missing; someone was missing.

  He reentered the top-secret database to scan the few reports he could access relating to Desolation Station.

  Teller wasn’t the only being who had disappeared from the secret facility. Motivated by grievances against the Empire, many had fled and become fugitives. The count was so high, in fact, that COMPNOR had compiled a most-wanted list of missing scientists and technicians who had held high-priority security clearances. The disappearances were often offered up as an explanation for harassment attacks against Imperial bases and installations.

  Tarkin scrolled through the list several times, returning after each read-through to a Mon Cal starship systems engineer named Artoz, who had gone missing shortly after Teller. “Dr. Artoz,” as he was apparently affectionately known, was a former member of the Mon Cal Knights, a group that had fought against his planet’s Separatist-aligned Quarren. Artoz certainly would have known about the Carrion Spike, as parts for the corvette’s stygian crystal stealth system had been manufactured at Mon Cal shipyards after the concept-design team had given up on attempts to utilize hibridium.

  Tarkin blinked, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the midair holograms.

  What about Bracchia, the Koorivar asset on Murkhana? Was he involved in the plot, despite the part he had played in procuring a replacement starship?

  Were the Crymorah crime families involved?

  What about the crew of the freighter Reticent? Had they perhaps been aboard the cobbled-together warship that had attacked Sentinel Base?

  Then there was the matter of the warship itself. Who had funded the purchase of the modules, droids, and starfighters? Where and by whom had the ship been assembled? Just how wide reaching was the conspiracy? Did it involve only former Republic Intelligence operatives, or did it penetrate Imperial agencies, as well?

  Sentients, like animals, have their fussy behaviors, Jova would say. Learn the particulars of one, and you begin to understand the entire species.

  If Tarkin’s hypothesis about Antar 4 being the nexus of the conspiracy was correct, could the involvement of the Reticent’s crew owe to something as simple as having lost friends or relatives to the mass executions? Relatives who were perhaps affiliated with Teller’s partisans?

  Tarkin continued to scan the 3-D images.

  If he was right and he was actually looking at those who had stolen his ship and discovered how to replicate the Clone Wars Shadowfeeds, then as it happened they were not former Separatists nursing a grudge against the Empire, but rather former Republican loyalists with a vendetta.

  Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s onetime allies had become the Emperor’s new foes.

  Saving his research to an encrypted file, Tarkin thought: The trail continues beyond where you lose it.

  Were the dissidents leading him on a chase calculated to disguise their actual objective?

  The thread that had begun to unspool at Sentinel Base could end at only one point.

  The Carrion Spike stumbled out of hyperspace to an interstellar reversion point ten parsecs from Nouane. The near miss in the autonomous region had left the corvette so rattled that, for a long while, the damaged navicomputer couldn’t even establish where the ship was. It was easier now to list the instruments that were still functioning than those that were damaged beyond repair.

  “We have two forward laser cannons and one starboard battery,” Cala reported to the others in the corvette’s main cabin, where Artoz was tending to Salikk’s facial injuries. “Shields are down to nothing. Hull armor’s the only thing protecting us from a collision with space dust. Hyperdrive motivator is marginal, but probably good for one, possibly two more jumps—”

  “One is all we need,” Teller said, while the ship groaned like a wounded animal and Salikk’s shed fur wafted in all directions.

  “Stealth systems and sublight drives are hit or miss,” the Koorivar continued. “Same with communications and the HoloNet.”

  Hask gave her pert-eared head a woeful shake. “We don’t come off very well in the vids the Empire released of the Nouane engagement.”

  “There go our ratings,” Artoz said.

  Anora scowled at him and threw Teller a peeved look. “So much for trusting your ally to hold up his end of the bargain.”

  “I said I trusted him up to a point,” Teller shot back. “If I trusted him entirely, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  The remark was not an exaggeration. Had the Carrion Spike decanted in the Nouane system at the anticipated reversion point, she would have been instantly annihilated by Imperial fire. Instead, Teller had had Salikk decant the ship deeper in system, as far from the capital ships as was feasible. Regardless, they had been forced to make a run for it without firing a beam at the star system’s Imperial facility, its inconsequence notwithstanding. Boxed in and pounded by laserfire, they had jumped to lightspeed with a maneuver that in itself had been no mean feat.

  “Besides,” Teller went on, “he had to make it look real.”

  Anora loosed a bitter laugh. “They weren’
t just making it look real, Teller. Face facts: We’ve been betrayed.”

  Teller snorted a bitter laugh. “Probably. But in the end it won’t matter.” He looked at Salikk, then Artoz. “Is he going to be all right, Doc?”

  “I’ll live,” Salikk said for himself. “At least for long enough to finish this.”

  “The autopilot also survived,” Cala said.

  Teller blew out his breath and nodded. “Then we’re good to go on that score. Plus, we’ve been assured of clear skies.”

  “As long as he’s still convinced we’re on our way,” Anora said.

  Teller nodded. “The Carrion Spike will arrive on schedule.”

  “You realize that the Empire won’t rest until we’re found and dealt with,” Artoz said.

  Hask glanced around. “Assuming anyone’s figured out who we are.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past Tarkin and Vader—not with the Reticent crew in hand.” Teller compressed his lips. “Even if not, we’ll be given up at some point.”

  Cala grinned. “Fortunately, we’ve all grown accustomed to looking over our shoulders.”

  ON THE COMMAND WALKWAY of the Executrix, Tarkin waited for Vader to conclude a private holocommunication with the Emperor.

  “Vice Admiral Rancit is convinced that the dissidents intend to attack the Imperial academy at Carida, martyring themselves in the process,” Vader said when he emerged from one of the data pits. “The vice admiral has been given permission to redeploy as many vessels as he sees fit, and he himself will be commanding all elements of the task force.”

  Tarkin scoffed. “The dissidents’ last stand?”

  “Someone’s last stand,” Vader said. “The Emperor has given careful thought to your premise that his onetime allies have now become his foes.”

  “I’m relieved to hear that, Lord Vader. Then we three are in agreement?”

  Vader nodded solemnly. “We are.”

  Tarkin smiled in a self-satisfied way. “A shuttle is waiting to take you to the frigate.”

  Vader nodded again and started to move off, only to stop and turn back to Tarkin. “Tell me, Governor Tarkin, why did you choose to name the corvette the Carrion Spike?”

  Tarkin allowed his surprise to show. “The ship is named for a unique geographic feature on Eriadu, Lord Vader.” When he realized that Vader was waiting for a more complete explanation, he said, “Allow me to accompany you to the shuttle bay.”

  As they set off side by side, Tarkin began to tell Vader about his annual visits to the Carrion Plateau as a teenager, about the tests he had endured there, and about the training he had undergone at the hands of his wilderness-experienced elder relatives and various guides. Vader paid close attention, interrupting him several times to ask for clarification or additional detail. As Tarkin obliged, one part of him took note of how strange it felt to be having an actual dialogue with the Dark Lord. In the recent days they had spent together, their exchanges had been limited to a few sentences, and more typically had been one-sided. Vader’s mask was responsible for some of that, complicating the process of conversation. But just now Vader’s frequent downward glances suggested that he was actually listening; so Tarkin went on talking, opening up about his experiences on the plateau while they continued down the Executrix’s broad central corridor toward the waiting shuttle.

  “By the time I was sixteen, I had come to know the plateau almost as well as I knew the grounds of my parents’ home in Eriadu City,” Tarkin said. “There was one area that we avoided, however—a vast stretch of savanna interrupted by stands of thick forest. It wasn’t precisely off limits. In fact, on several occasions I understood that my uncle was taking us well out of the way simply so I could get a glimpse of the territory. Each time he did so he would explain that we were not alone in being the plateau’s reigning predators. And while there was no denying that our blasters were capable of eliminating all competitors, an act of that nature would have flown in the face of keeping the plateau pristine. One goal of the training was to help me understand how to place myself at the top of the food chain through fear rather than force, and how best to maintain my position. The territory we always seemed to skirt was there to provide me with another lesson, as it was ruled over by our chief competitors on the plateau, a one-hundred-strong troop of especially vicious primates.”

  He paused to glance up at Vader. “Are you familiar with the veermok?”

  Vader nodded. “I’ve had some experience with the species, Governor.”

  Tarkin waited for more, but Vader said nothing. “Well, then, you know how ferocious they can be on their own, let alone in a group. There’s scarcely a creature they can’t outwit or outfight when they set their minds to it. But the species on Eriadu is probably not the one you are familiar with. The Eriadu veermok stands a meter high, but is sleek-skinned rather than woolly, is social rather than solitary, and is ardently territorial. It has adapted to the dry conditions of the plateau, rather than to swamps and moist woodlands. Like the more ordinary species, it has razor-sharp claws, equally sharp teeth in its canine muzzle, and the strength of ten humans. Its powerful arms and upper torso appear made for climbing, but the Eriadu veermok is generally not arboreal. Like all its brethren, however, it is a swift and voracious carnivore.

  “At the center of the terrain the troop controlled stands a one-hundred-meter-tall hill that more resembles a rock fortress. Crowning it is a four-sided spire of black volcanic glass, some twenty meters high and flat at the top. A time-eroded shaft of quickly cooled magma, to be sure, as are the boulders that support it.”

  Vader looked at him. “The Carrion Spike?”

  “Just so,” Tarkin said. “Without Jova having to say as much, I began to grasp that the Spike was to be the site of my final test.”

  Vader interrupted his rhythmic breathing to make a sound of acknowledgment. “Your trial.”

  Tarkin nodded. “I was in the midst of my second season on the plateau when Jova first pointed the Spike out to me, but my … trial, as you say, wouldn’t take place for four years to come. When that time arrived, he explained what was expected of me: I merely had to spend an entire day at the Spike, on my own. I would have neither food nor water, but I would be allowed to carry a vibro-lance of the sort we used in some of our hunts.”

  “A vibro-lance,” Vader said.

  “An electroshock weapon longer and lighter than the force pike. It has the same vibro-edged head but is balanced in such a way that it can also be hurled like a spear. Mine would be primed with a limited number of charges, though Jova didn’t specify how many. In any case, if I could accomplish that—spend a single day at the Spike—my final test would be behind me, and I would no longer be compelled to visit the Carrion Plateau, unless of course it was my desire to do so.”

  “You must have thought it a simple task,” Vader said.

  “Initially, indeed,” Tarkin said. “Until Jova allowed me to observe the hill and the spire through macrobinoculars.”

  “Your eyes were opened.”

  “Jova said that I could take as much time as I needed to assess the situation and decide on a course of action, and I spent the better part of my sixth season on the plateau doing just that. The first order of business was to get to know my enemy, which I did over the course of the first couple of weeks. I would conceal myself in areas of forest or in the tall savanna grass and observe the routines of the veermoks, which rarely varied from day to day—or perhaps it’s better to say night to night, since that was when they would emerge from their hill caves and set out on communal hunts. The feasting that resulted from their hunts would continue for most of the night, sometimes at the site of their kills or sometimes back at the caves, where the females fed their gray-skinned young. With the return of the light and the heat, the males would ascend to the top of the hill and sprawl on the rocks at the foot of the Spike, which I was never able to get a good look at, even through the macrobinoculars, as the hill was the tallest feature for kilometers around in every di
rection. Midafternoon, the veermoks would make their descent, gathering at a watering hole to drink before repeating the entire routine.

  “The water hole became my preferred place for observing them, and it was there where I began to get to know some members of the troop individually. Their dominant member was a dark-striped male, large and battle-scarred, to whom I gave the name Lord. During my weeks of stealthy observation, I saw him challenged at regular intervals. Sometimes the fights would be to the death, but more often Lord would allow challengers to limp away in shame but remain part of the troop. Since it was impossible to defeat him, there was much competition among his subordinates to get close to him. In some sense, the fights were as much about training as they were displays of supremacy. Lord was teaching the weaker males, aware that he would eventually have to yield his position for the sake of the troop. The rest understood this and as a result followed his lead in all matters. I don’t think the species is capable of abstract thought, much less truly sentient, but they do communicate with one another through a complex language of displays and vocalizations.

  “There was a second male that caught my attention—a younger and smaller veermok who always seemed to be in Lord’s shadow, so that was how I began to think of him. Shadow would tag behind and watch Lord from a respectful distance. Sometimes Lord wouldn’t abide the scrutiny and would run Shadow off; at other times he tolerated the younger veermok’s attempts to learn from him. What interested me most, however, was that Shadow had a following of his own, a subgroup of some eight young males who accompanied him wherever he went. Lord tolerated them as well, so long as they kept their distance, which they always did, retreating if he so much as turned in their direction.