Catalyst

by James Luceno

  “What is it?” he said, whirling on the Iktotchi.

  “It’s clear to me who’s behind the research,” Belcoze said. “Galen Erso.”

  Krennic considered refuting it, but instead said: “What if he is?”

  “We need him here, with us.”

  Krennic’s nostrils flared. “He’s busy elsewhere, Doctor. And I suggest you devote yourself to determining where you went wrong rather than focus on Galen Erso’s employment options, so that next time you’ll be able to provide me with the expected results.”

  Belcoze took a step back, as if Krennic’s words alone had propelled him; then he turned and hurried to rejoin the others.

  Oyanta was standing by the shuttle’s viewport.

  “It won’t do for word of this to get out,” he said. “Should we sanitize everything?”

  “Can the destruction be made to look like an attack?”

  “It already does.”

  Krennic gave it thought. He supposed he could blame the reactor, blame the locals; contain the survivors in detention camps. What with the radiation it would be for their own good anyway.

  “Then leave it be,” he told Oyanta finally. “But remove the team.”

  HAS DESCENDED THE FREIGHTER’S LOWERED ramp and walked to the high bank of the estuary. Shielding his eyes, he looked toward the sea. The offshore breeze was warm and constant, and the crystalline waters moved lazily on the tide. Far out where the inlet met the sea the water was deep blue, and much farther out a range of conical mountains poked from the hazy horizon, as if floating on the brume, the summit of the tallest volcano invisible behind a lenticular cloud. In the middle ground were scattered islands of rock, green and yellow vegetation clinging to clefts, and steep sides carved into isolated sandy coves.

  Has turned to the chief of the ground crew that had been on hand to meet him. A short human, she had the look he was becoming more and more accustomed to since having thrown in with Matese: fit, furtive, capable looking, sporting sensibly close-cropped hair. Behind her the five members of her team were helping Has’s crew off-load shipping containers from the freighter’s forward cargo bay. The ground crew had arrived in a couple of airspeeders with a short train of repulsorlift cargo haulers.

  Sparse vegetation sprouted from red clay soil on both sides of the estuary; the sky was as clear as any he had ever seen from below. He knew from coming in that there wasn’t a major population center for thousands of kilometers in any direction.

  “Choice duty,” he said to the crew chief.

  “For short stretches. You’d need to be a hermit to want to stay.”

  “Not much in the way of nightlife.”

  “Good for lantern bugs.” She wiped sweat from her forehead and gestured in a vague way out to sea. “Turlin/Benthic Extraction has a small settlement on the western shore. A rotating mixed-species couple of hundred. Slim pickings as far as company goes, but the drinks are cheap and the food is tolerable.”

  “That’s the extent?”

  “No permanent settlements permitted since a group of environmentalists succeeded in having Wadi declared a Legacy world.”

  Of course, Has told himself. “Turlin/Benthic,” he repeated. “Don’t know of them.”

  “Mining consortium. They have a concession for ocean floor extraction.”

  Has nodded. “I caught a glimpse of their platforms when we came in.”

  “Mostly a droid operation, but a few living pilots as well.”

  “What are they dredging up?”

  “What I learned when I was hired, the sea has some large areas of polymetallic nodules in the active hydrothermal vents. The vents create deposits that contain ores like doonium, meleenium, dolovite, kammris. T/B uses hydraulic pumps to bring ores to the surface to be processed. The tailings are collected and sent to offworld cleansing centers.”

  “They care that much about pollution?”

  “Like I said, they have no choice, Wadi being Legacy.”

  “So Turlin/Benthic’s the end user of our cargo?”

  She stopped what she was doing to smile in a knowing way. “Can’t have too many redundant pipe fittings.”

  “Except they’re not pipe fittings.”

  “Yes, they are,” she said in elaborate seriousness. “It says so right on the manifest.”

  Has forced a laugh that made it appear he was in on the joke.

  Wadi Raffa was Samovar all over again. A choke point commander had provided him with landing coordinates and instructed him to come in as gently as possible, employing the freighter’s retroturbos rather than positioning thrusters.

  He took a moment to monitor the unloading. Everyone seemed relaxed, not worried the way people normally were when arms or spice or other proscribed goods were involved. Because the fix was in. So why couldn’t he be happy as well? Was he supposed to worry about the futures of planets like Samovar and Wadi Raffa? Wasn’t that the Emperor’s job? All Has had to do was follow procedure, take the credits and run, like he always had.

  So why was he feeling dirty? And why did his stomach feel like it was tied in knots?

  He knew the answer, and knew, too, that there was no value in thinking too deeply about Matese’s lies or the Empire’s possible reasons for using subterfuge rather than turbolasers to appropriate planets.

  “You hauling the containers out to sea?” he asked, trying to sound innocent.

  She shook her head. “The platforms are too far out. The cargo’s being picked up.”

  Has searched the sky. “How?”

  She prized a pair of macrobinoculars from a case clipped to her belt and offered them.

  Pressing them to his eyes, he scanned the horizon, seizing on an object he brought into focus, and exhaling in surprise.

  “Is that vessel actually floating on the water?”

  She guffawed. “It’s like something out of a historical holodrama, right? That’s what happens on Legacy worlds. Primitive as it can get.”

  Has handed back the macros. “How are they going to make the case that a company doing seabed mining on a Legacy world would want ion cannons?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, then looked around as if someone might be listening.

  “Protection.”

  Has wasn’t entirely sure if she was in on the plan or not. Maybe she actually worked for the mining company and had no idea that it was all a setup. Or maybe she just didn’t want Has to know that she knew.

  “Someone takes a sudden interest in this place and they’re going to be put off by a boat sporting a couple of Separatist-era ion cannons?”

  She shrugged. “Okay. Then maybe the company’s worried about deep-sea creatures. Monsters from the seabed.”

  This human wasn’t going to play ball. “You know the one about bringing a vibroblade to a blaster fight?” he commented.

  “Is it supposed to be funny?”

  “Not for the one who brings the vibroblade.”

  —

  Lyra was up late transcribing Galen’s personal notes, being careful to observe his precise but complex instructions. The research team’s notes were compiled by others and transmitted to facilities elsewhere on Coruscant, or offworld for all she knew. As project liaison, Orson was privy to all the latter, but not the former.

  Jyn was only meters away in a play area they had created and cordoned off to keep her from wandering too far. Most kids her age would have been asleep hours ago, but Jyn had inherited her father’s nocturnal habits and Lyra had given up trying to interfere with her natural rhythms. Luckily for everyone, Jyn was independent and often able to entertain herself, sometimes for hours at a stretch, singing, playing, pretending, as she was doing now.

  Light from the surrounding superstructures flooded through the office window, but the view was anything but stimulating. There was only the towering expanse of plasteel wall that enclosed the former refuge grounds and the sky-high buildings that rose above it. Someone had planted flowering vines at the base of the wall, but they had yet to
climb more than two meters. Even so, Lyra had made a habit of taking long walks with Jyn on the grounds, usually at night when the area around the facility was more gently lighted, the arcologies and monads notwithstanding—and despite the feeling of walking on the bottom on an enormous, waterless swimming pool.

  She could feel the facility beating and breathing around her, though frigid at the core.

  Galen was surely still up as well, off somewhere doing something. When he wasn’t directing experiments, he could usually be found in his office, writing in the air or doing input at a keyboard. Other times he would resort to entering calculations or notes in his journal, writing longhand in different-colored inks as his thinking shifted from one aspect of problem solving to the next. At the end of such sessions Lyra would collate the notes by color, then return them to him for further refinement.

  Forced to wear several hats, he alternated between distracted scientist and harried husband and father, but in some ways he seemed more content than he had been in years. He could requisition anything he needed—lasers, metals, chemicals, consultants, Jedi datacrons—and the requests would arrive in short order, no questions asked. Additional crystals of all sizes continued to flood in, some of them clearly liberated from temples, as they bore minute traces of adhesive, like gems prized from their bezels.

  She had grown accustomed to periods like these when his mind was on fire, when he was physically present but emotionally distant. Frequently she couldn’t help but feel that her every attempt to engage him interrupted some inner dialogue or discourse he was attending, and the facility somehow magnified that. At times it seemed as if, in attempting to unlock the secrets of the kyber, he was trying to decode something about himself.

  She was willing to accept that the Jedi hadn’t scratched the surface of the crystals’ power, but she held on to her belief that the Order felt that surface wasn’t meant to be scratched. By contrast, what better way to honor the Order’s contribution to more than a millennium of service than to use their sacrosanct kybers to provide inexpensive and safe energy to countless worlds. After all, there was no denying that the galaxy was at peace—except for areas where Separatist holdouts were alleged to be entrenched, possibly unaware that the war had ended. Little news from those areas made it to the HoloNet, but she had heard talk to the effect that some distant worlds were still attempting to acquire weapons, but also that the Empire was moving swiftly to curtail those attempts.

  “We will do whatever is necessary to ensure an enduring reconciliation,” the Emperor had said in a recent and rare public address.

  She could only hope that that strong hand would relax once the threats disappeared. Neither optimistic nor pessimistic, she could do little more than hope that Jyn would grow up in more stable times.

  She glanced at Galen’s multicolored notes and sat back from them, unable to get to the root of her uneasiness. All at once the comm sounded, which was unusual given the late hour. Plus, the display revealed the communication to be from an unknown party and origin point. Thinking back to the message that had found its way to her comlink during the war, she hesitated, but when she accepted the comm, she was delighted to see the face of Galen’s friend and onetime mentor, Reeva Demesne.

  “Lyra,” Reeva said, equally elated, “how lovely to see you.”

  “You, too, Reeva.” Lyra had always been drawn to the Mirialan’s dark complexion and exotic facial tattoos.

  “I apologize for the late hour, but I decided to take the chance.”

  “You didn’t wake us. I’m working on Galen’s notes. But he’s not here. I can tell him to contact you—”

  “Please do. But tell me first how you’ve been.”

  “Good. Everything’s fine.”

  “And Jyn. How is she?”

  “I can show you.” Lyra trained one of the holocams on Jyn, who was using her toy figures to act out some sort of adventure fantasy.

  “Precious. You must both be so proud.”

  “We are.”

  “I’m so glad that Galen found a position that suits him.”

  “It’s been exciting, if somewhat daunting.”

  “I know the feeling, since Galen and I—many of us, in fact—are all serving the same master.”

  Lyra angled her head in surprise. “You’re contributing to Celestial Power?”

  “Yes,” Reeva said without enthusiasm. “Tell me, Lyra, has Galen heard from Dagio Belcoze recently?”

  “Dagio? Why should he? I mean, they made up after their little boxing match, but they were never close friends. As far as I know Galen hasn’t heard from any of his old friends. You’re the first.”

  Reeva looked distressed. “It’s so strange. I’ve been trying to contact many of our mutual colleagues without success. Dagio was working on Malpaz…It’s a bit worrisome actually.”

  “I can see how it would be,” Lyra said. “Where are you, Reeva?”

  “I’m on Hypori. I know you’re a galactic traveler. Have you ever visited here?” Before Lyra could answer in the negative, Reeva said: “Galen is content with his work?”

  Lyra restrained a frown of doubt. “You know him. When the research is going well, he is.”

  “And he’s still working closely with Orson Krennic?”

  Lyra took a moment to answer. “Yes, Reeva. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just that I see Orson from time to time…”

  Lyra waited for more, but Reeva fell silent. “I’ll tell Galen to contact you, Reeva.”

  “He doesn’t have to. Just tell him that I said hello, and that I hope that we’ll have a chance to catch up in person. I’m on Hypori, remember. Hypori.”

  The comm ended abruptly.

  Lyra sat for a long while staring at the empty holofield. Reeva hadn’t said all she had wanted to say. Was she under surveillance in whatever research work she was engaged in?

  Lyra replayed the conversation in her head; then thought:

  She wants us to know where she is.

  —

  Krennic felt like a glorified tour guide as he ordered the shuttle pilot to bring the wide-winged shuttle closer to the battle station’s parabolic dish. They had already completed an equatorial orbit as well as a polar one, pausing now and then to examine specific areas of the curved technoscape designated for shield generators and gun towers. Krennic talked nonstop, but thus far neither Grand Vizier Amedda nor any of his flamboyantly attired advisers had asked a single question.

  The orb was more completely clad, and a few gun emplacements were under construction in the trench—the battle station’s broad equator. Local space was crowded with ships and droids of all classification, with large areas of the hull bathed in light provided by banks of enormous illuminators.

  “Do any of you have an interest in visiting some of the interior modules?” Krennic asked.

  “Not unless you have a weapon to show us,” Amedda said at last.

  “Just now the reactor is our priority.”

  Amedda glowered. “What is the status of the weapon, Lieutenant Commander?”

  “We’re making slow but steady progress.”

  The Chagrian showed scorn. “We can accept steady, but slow is unacceptable. Need we remind you again that this isn’t some public works program for Poggle’s enslaved descendants? The weapon is the priority. The station is nothing without it.”

  “Weaponizing the research is taking more time than anticipated,” Krennic said in a firm voice.

  “Then you need to demand more from your scientists.”

  Krennic made a placating gesture. “We’ve already eliminated a lot of deadweight. I’m winnowing them down to a core group.”

  “That’s not what I’m referring to. Security is of lesser concern to us than progress—of which we have seen very little.” Amedda paused, then added: “We understand that you almost lost your team on Malpaz.”

  Krennic managed to keep from grimacing. He hadn’t known that Amedda had learned of the incident. “A temporary setback. W
e’re reanalyzing the data.”

  “I’m interested to hear your account of what happened.”

  Krennic led with a shrug. “The locals mismanaged their nuclear reactor.”

  “Is that your story?”

  “It’s a story,” Krennic said, refusing to yield.

  Amedda had fire in his eyes. “Either you’re rushing your team headlong into areas they don’t fully understand, or Erso’s data are beyond their ken.”

  Krennic grinned. “You’ve got a gift for delivering mixed messages, Vizier. Demand more from my team, or exercise caution. Which is it?”

  Amedda’s forked tongue flicked. “We’ve given Galen Erso an entire facility. We’re providing him with resources and materials from all over the galaxy. We’re practically at his beck and call, and still you fail to enlist him.” The vizier lowered his horns. “The Emperor is most displeased by these delays. Furthermore, who gave you authority to enlist Imperial forces in the appropriation of mining concerns?”

  Krennic squared his shoulders. “It struck me as the most expeditious way of getting what we need.”

  A low growl escaped Amedda. “You are nothing if not resourceful. But once again you’ve superseded your authority.”

  “In the interest of simplicity,” Krennic said. “The last time we had this discussion, Vizier, I thought we’d agreed that you were going to allow me to do my job.”

  “I don’t recall agreeing to anything of the sort. In any case, you no longer enjoy the privilege of ignoring the chain of command.”

  Krennic stared, awaiting elaboration.

  “We feel that we have overburdened you,” Amedda went on in a falsely offhand way. “You should be attending solely to the weapon, leaving procurement and production to others.”

  Tarkin, Krennic thought, wondering how Amedda would react to learning that the moff had sanctioned the illegal acquisitions. Not that Krennic would be the one to breach Imperial etiquette and loyalty by revealing that. Not openly, at any rate.

  “Until further notice, appropriations operations are suspended,” Amedda was saying. “You’ll have to make do with materials on hand or find legitimate ways to procure them. As it stands we’re going to need to find someone to assume responsibility for what you’ve done.”