Tarkin

Footprints

IN THE MOST SECLUDED of the Executrix’s several tactical rooms, Tarkin closed myriad programs running on the immense battle analysis holotable, and entered a restricted Imperial code that tasked the projector to interface with the HoloNet. He then submitted himself to a series of biometric scans that allowed him to access a multitude of top-secret Republic and Imperial databases situated on Coruscant. He had already issued orders that he was not to be disturbed, but he double-checked that the door had sealed behind him and that the tactical room’s security cams were offline. He called for the illumination to dim, set himself atop a tall castered stool within easy reach of the table’s complex controls, and allowed his thoughts to unwind.

The Star Destroyer was holding at Obroa-skai, awaiting redeployment orders from Coruscant, now that the Emperor had given Vice Admiral Rancit command of the task force created to capture or destroy the Carrion Spike. Only a few hours earlier the dissidents had attacked an Imperial facility at Nouane, a client-state system in the Inner Rim. To Tarkin, the dissidents’ choice of targets seemed as illogical as would have been their showing up at Obroa-skai. But with major systems becoming so heavily reinforced, perhaps the choice merely reflected the fact that their options were dwindling. At Nouane the rogue ship had been prevented from inflicting serious damage and had nearly become a fatality. The win had gone to Rancit, who through a painstaking process of elimination had predicted where the Carrion Spike would strike and had dispatched a flotilla in advance of the corvette’s arrival. Even stealth had failed to allow the corvette to evade a continuous onslaught of long-range lasers. From what Tarkin had been given to understand, there was good reason to believe that the Carrion Spike had sustained heavy damage before a last-ditch retreat to hyperspace. The rumor mill had it that Rancit’s assignment — some called it a promotion — was an indication of the Emperor’s disappointment with Tarkin, but Vader had assured Tarkin that the Emperor was merely trying to free him from having to wear too many hats. Tarkin was to leave the chase to others for the time being, and devote himself instead to ascertaining the dissidents’ ultimate objective.

And so he was.

When stalking game on the plateau, Jova would tell him that a careful study of prints on a trail could reveal not only the species of animal that had left them, but also the animal’s intentions.

With a flourish of input at the holotable’s keypad, Tarkin created an open field above the table and instructed the computer to render his voice into lines of text and place them in order in the field. Then he turned slightly in the direction of the nearest audio pickup.

“Access to confiscated warship modules, Separatist weapons, and HoloNet interrupters — either through salvagers, crime syndicates, or other sources,” he began. “The ability to make use of purchased or pirated Separatist technology. The ability to transmit real-time holovids through the HoloNet, and the ability to create and transmit counterfeit holovids by accessing public HoloNet archives and other media sources. Knowledge of the existence of Rampart and Sentinel bases. Knowledge of Lieutenant Thon’s assignment to Rampart Base. Knowledge of the existence of the Carrion Spike, and familiarity with her sophisticated systems. A crew of spacers conversant with Imperial procedures and with a knowledge of Imperial facilities. Possible assistance from Imperial assets with high clearance.”

One by one the lines of text appeared in the field and Tarkin studied them for a long moment, his elbow planted on his raised left knee and his chin cupped in his hand.

Vader’s interrogation of the Reticent’s crewmembers hadn’t resulted in anything more than heart failure for the freighter’s Sy Myrthian navigator. However, as a recompense of sorts, the Dark Lord had received a significant piece of information from one of his sources inside the Crymorah. A lieutenant in the crime syndicate claimed to have negotiated a deal with Faazah — the Sugi smuggler on Murkhana — for a supply of custom fuel cells, which had been shipped to the planet shortly before Tarkin and Vader’s arrival. This in itself wasn’t entirely surprising, considering that the Carrion Spike’s stop at the Phindar fuel tanker was evidence enough that the dissidents had added fuel to the ship before absconding with her. What was surprising was that the deal for the fuel cells had been arranged through an agent on Lantillies, whom Tarkin suspected was the same human the captain of the Reticent had named as their broker.

Knotts.

Tarkin instructed the HoloNet database to launch a search for Knotts, and in moments the hologram of a silver-haired human with a deeply lined face was rotating in place above the projector. Knotts had a world-weary look Tarkin associated with veteran soldiers who had seen more than their share of tragedy. Extracting the holoimage, he saved it off to one side of the table and regarded it in silence while machines hummed, chirped, and beeped around him.

What he read in the concise précis accompanying the holoimage supported the fact that Knotts had resided on Lantillies for some fifteen years. Digging a bit deeper, Tarkin was able to retrieve Knotts’s documents of incorporation, his Republic and Imperial tax records, court proceedings of his divorce agreement, even images of the modest apartment he owned on Lantillies. Native to the Core, he had relocated to the Outer Rim and established himself as a middleman, bringing clients in want of goods or services together with groups of freelance spacers who could fulfill those needs. He was something of a dispatcher and an agent, taking what struck Tarkin as a fair credit percentage on each transaction.

The eyes-only Coruscant databases — which Tarkin hadn’t had reason to access since his days as adjutant general of the Republic Navy — provided a more complete and compelling portrait of Knotts. Yes, for fifteen years he had operated a profitable if minor Outer Rim enterprise, but during the Clone Wars he had also functioned as a subcontractor for Republic Intelligence, responsible for the covert transport of arms and other materials to resistance groups operating on Separatist-occupied worlds, one of which happened to figure prominently in Tarkin’s past, as well: the Mid Rim moon Antar 4.

Tarkin sat taller on the stool. The discovery of Knotts’s secret past stirred a memory of the excitement he had felt on the plateau when encountering a sudden, unexpected turn along a game trail. Had his quarry gotten wind of him? Had a different threat presented itself? Was his prey keen on reversing the situation by circling behind to stalk him in his own tracks?

Antar 4 had been a member of the Republic almost from its inception, but the Secessionist Movement that preceded the Clone Wars had created a schism among the moon’s indigenous humanoid Gotals and given rise to terrorist groups aligned with the Separatists. Shored up by the Republic, Gotal loyalists had managed to retain power until shortly after the Battle of Geonosis, when the moon had fallen to Separatist forces and, for a brief period, become a headquarters for Count Dooku. Tens of millions of Gotal refugees had fled to their colony world, Atzerri, replaced on Antar 4 by an influx of Koorivar, Gossams, and other species whose homeworlds had joined the CIS. As a result, the moon became a political imbroglio, and had spawned one of the first resistance groups, made up of loyalist Koorivar and Gotals whom the Republic supported with tactical advisers and secret shipments of arms and matériel. Though the resistance was successful in carrying out hundreds of acts of sabotage, the moon remained in the grip of the Separatists for the length of the war.

Tarkin recalled the Koorivar captain’s words to Vader: Not all of us were Separatists.

With the deaths of Dooku and the Separatist leadership, and the deactivation of the droid army, Antar 4—like many CIS worlds — had soon found itself in the Empire’s crosshairs. More to the point, in the crosshairs of Moff Tarkin, who had been given Imperial orders to make an example of the moon. No attempt was to be made at repatriation, nor was Tarkin to waste time sorting the Separatists from those resistance fighters and intelligence operatives waiting to be exfiltrated to safety.

COMPNOR did its best to cover up the fact that many Koorivar and Gotal loyalists had been swept up in the arrests, executions, and massacres, but the media eventually got hold of the story, and for a while the Antar Atrocity had become a celebrated cause in the Core — this despite the swift disappearances of many beings who had attached themselves to reporting on the story. Instead, the disappearances so fueled the public’s hunger for details that the Emperor decided to remove Tarkin from the controversy by assigning him to pacification operations in the Western Reaches and had ultimately installed him as commander of the bases servicing the deep-space mobile battle station project, replacing Vice Admiral Rancit, who was reassigned to Naval Intelligence.

In thinking back to that period, some four years earlier, Tarkin recalled the case of two Coruscanti journalists who had risen briefly to the forefront among a host of anti-Imperial irritants. A quick search of the HoloNet archives conjured their holograms, which Tarkin placed above the table alongside that of Knotts. In the Coruscant database, Tarkin located intelligence reports detailing their activities.

An attractive, dark-skinned human woman with blue-gray eyes, Anora Fair had been the most vocal and volatile of the Core media correspondents who had fixated on the events at Antar. An ambitious journalist, Fair had already attracted attention for her probing interviews with Imperial officials and her editorials critical of Imperial policy, as well as of the Emperor himself. Her unrelenting reports on the Antar Atrocity had been brought to life with holographic recreations of arrests and executions, produced and directed by a rubicund Zygerrian female named Hask Taff, whom many a pro-Imperial pundit had deemed “a master of HoloNet manipulation.”

It was clear to COMPNOR that the two of them knew more than they could possibly have known without the help of an intelligence community insider, and suspicions at the time had focused on a disaffected former Republic station chief named Berch Teller.

A HoloNet archive search for Teller came up empty, but an access-restricted database search returned a decade-old image of a rangy, dark-haired human with thick eyebrows and a cleft chin. Extracting the hologram, Tarkin placed it alongside those of Anora Fair and Hask Taff, then changed his mind and moved Teller’s hologram to the center, with Knotts — the broker — to one side, and the two media professionals on the other.

Tarkin contemplated the arrangement and was pleased. With each new set of prints, the trail was beginning to surrender its secrets.

Captain Teller’s intelligence network résumé indicated a long and distinguished career. Early in the Clone Wars, Teller had been involved in covert operations on a host of Separatist worlds. That, however, paled in comparison with the fact that Teller had been one of the intelligence officers who had debriefed Tarkin following his rescue and escape from the Citadel, with the plans to a secret hyperspace route into Separatist space.

He and Teller had history.

And there was more.

Assigned to Antar 4 in the war’s final year, Captain Teller had helped train and organize Gotal and Koorivar partisans into well-armed resistance groups, which had carried out raids, destroyed armories and spaceports, and generally made a nuisance of themselves for the governing Separatists. Sensing what was in store for Antar 4 after the war’s abrupt conclusion, Teller had appealed to his superiors in the intelligence agencies to arrange for the extraction of his principal assets before Tarkin could bring the hammer down on the moon. Republic Intelligence had tried to provide aid in the form of documentation and transport, but COMPNOR, by then on the rise in the Imperial hegemony, had refused to intervene, and so many of Teller’s operatives, despite their long-standing loyalty to the Republic, had been arrested and executed.

The Imperial directive to make an example of the moon had made perfect sense to Tarkin at the time. He wasn’t a retributionist; it was simply that separating friend from foe would undoubtedly have allowed many Separatists to flee into hiding. Eliminating them en masse on Antar 4 was preferable to having to hunt them down later, in whatever remote regions they found shelter. His actions had conveyed a message to other former CIS worlds that defeat didn’t grant them absolution for their crimes, or assure them that the Empire was ready to welcome them back into the fold with open arms. The message had to be made clear to Raxus, Kooriva, Murkhana, and the rest: Surrender all former Separatists, or suffer the same fate as the population of the Gotal moon.

Still, Tarkin could see how a Republic officer like Teller might feel betrayed to the point where he would attempt to wage a campaign of revenge against all odds. The military was filled with those who refused to accept that collateral damage was acceptable when it served to further the Imperial cause. In the absence of order, there was only chaos. Did Teller expect an apology from the Emperor? Compensation for the families of those who had been unjustly executed? It was witless thinking. Multiply Teller by one billion or ten billion beings, however, and the Empire could face a serious problem …

He continued to peruse Teller’s résumé, wading through the dense text that scrolled in midair in front of his eyes. By the time Teller had made his appeal to his intelligence chiefs, he had already been reassigned to head up security at—

Tarkin stared at the words: Desolation Station.

The clandestine outpost responsible for overseeing much of the research for the deep-space battle station.

But Teller wasn’t there for long; he had vanished shortly after the events at Antar 4 and hadn’t been seen since. Some in Military Intelligence believed that he had been assassinated by COMPNOR agents, but others were convinced that it was Teller who had not only fed information about Antar 4 to Anora Fair and Hask Taff, but also been instrumental in spiriting the media partners to safety hours before they were to have been disappeared by COMPNOR.

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.”