Death Star (19 page)

“You think
that’
s where we’re going?”

“Bet big credits to boiled chork it is.”

Memah stared at the huge, unfinished spheroid, already bristling with armament. Once completed, it would probably be able to blow ships, asteroids, maybe even entire moons, into cosmic gravel. She felt her lekku bristle in nervous anticipation.

Well, she’d hoped for a locale in which to ply her trade that would be safe, hadn’t she?

“Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured. Rodo glanced at her, but said nothing.

The station, already huge, kept growing larger as the transport approached.

Nova had seen the holorecordings, but they didn’t even begin to give you the real scope of the construction site. The blasted thing was
huge
, big as a moon! He’d heard the scut, naturally, the military commvine was hot with it: the Death Star was going to carry an armada of ships, it would have more guns than an Imperial fleet, there were super-secret weapons that could pop Star Destroyers like soap bubbles, burn a continent down to the bedrock, trigger solar flares, and so forth. But he’d figured most of that for jaw-wag that wasn’t worth the air it took to repeat it. Now, however, seeing the place as the shuttle drew nearer, he revised his opinion. No way the Empire would spend this kind of effort and money if this thing didn’t have a big trick it could pull off.

One thing for sure: it promised to be far more exciting than herding prisoners around on a tropical pesthole like Despayre.

It looked like interesting times lay ahead.

C
ommander Atour Riten—a rank that meant less than nothing to him—leaned back in his seat and looked at the viewer inset into the bulkhead next to him.
My
, he thought.
It certainly is … big …

Of course, he had known that. Despite all the secrecy concerning the project, and even though he had not been cleared to top levels by the Empire, he had known that. One did not spend forty years working for the Library Galactica without figuring how to read between the lines.

So yes, this battle station was huge. He had known it, intellectually, but the reality of being able to see it with references that gave one an idea of its size was something else entirely. There were only a dozen or so sections of it finished enough for normal habitation, but even those portions were exceedingly large.

Atour mentally shrugged. It didn’t matter how big the thing was, only that the library inside it was worthwhile. And this one certainly was, if what he had been told was true. It wasn’t as large and encompassing as, say, Imperial Center Main, but it was much more complete than many planetary libraries—or at least it would be when he got done with it.

“Big suckah, idn’t it?” The man sitting next to him was some kind of construction worker, a contractor who specialized
in magnetic containment vessels, a subject that had come perilously close, during the course of the flight up, to breaking Atour’s belief that nothing was boring, provided the person speaking of it understood it properly. Flux, gauss, m-particle and graviton shifts? Even with his not-inconsiderable general knowledge, those technical details were but mildly interesting, at best.

Still, Atour Riten believed firmly that there was no excuse for discourtesy, and so he nodded. “Indeed.” Unfortunately, this was taken as encouragement by his seatmate to launch into an enthusiastic description of the power requirements, in megajoules, that it took to run such a huge station.

Atour let him babble on while he waited for the docking procedure to begin and considered the vagaries of fate that had led him here, so late in life. That the library was a potentially good one had been an unexpected bonus, because he had not been posted here as any sort of reward. He’d been shunted off into this world-forsaken assignment as a way of getting rid of him, at least in a manner of speaking.

It had been, in a sense, his own fault: Atour Riten was, admittedly, not always circumspect when it came to controversial subjects—politics, government, personal relationships—and there were a fair number of people who hated to suffer his opinions as a result. Fortunately for him, those with enough power to have him killed with a snap of their fingers seldom had pristine pasts. Archivists, as a rule, knew how to dig into data banks and find just about anything, including bodies thought safely long buried. And old and smart archivists knew how to rig dead-man switches so that if they themselves suddenly died, no matter how natural it might seem, the locations of those bodies—many, many bodies—would come to light. Sometimes they literally were bodies; mostly they were bits of damaging, often illegal, information that would cause much consternation
in high levels of government should they pop up on the daily holonews.

There were a whole lot of people who did not want that to happen, and some of them were passing smart, smart enough to at least realize that promoting Atour Riten to commander and shuffling him off into the middle of nowhere to run a military library and archive was a lot safer than deleting him. And so it had come to pass.

Truth to tell, he wasn’t that unhappy about the solution they’d found. His glory days of revamping and innovation were behind him. Weeks where he could stay awake and alert for three or four sleep cycles and burn in a work-fever were long past. He could still put together a top-rack system as well as anyone—false modesty aside, better than most—but these years it took longer than once it had. He was much nearer the end of his road than the beginning. And all in all, he had few regrets.

He sighed softly. Long had he been a thorn in the foot of whoever was in power. This latest shift didn’t really matter all that much: Republic, Empire, it was six to one, half a dozen to the other. It meant little to the average person struggling to make a life. Either form of government could make the mag-levs run on time, and both stepped on individual rights far more than they should. As far as Atour was concerned, the best government was that which governed least. Something a step or two above anarchy would be ideal.

Now there was a power-hungry Emperor running things. Both history and personal experience had taught Atour that in as little as a few years, or as much as a few centuries, there would come evolution—or revolution—and this, too, would pass. The new rulers would start out full of promise and hope and good intentions, and gradually settle into mediocrity. A benevolent but inept king was as bad as a despot.

The warning bell chimed, and the pilot’s voxcast said,

“Attention all passengers, docking will be complete in five minutes. Please check and make sure you have all your belongings before debarkation.”

Atour Riten chuckled softly. There was a word you didn’t hear that often.
Debark
, from Old Low Frusoise, meaning “to leave a small sailing ship’s secondary boat.” Who on board knew that, save for himself and perhaps the pilot?

Probably no one. And probably no one cared in the least. When you got to be Atour’s age, you had to take your amusements where you could. Especially with a seatmate nattering on and on about hypermatter reactions.

The
size
of the station was mind-boggling. Memah still couldn’t get her head around it. Her tiny part of it, which was to become a working cantina, was half again as large as the place that had burned to the pavement back in the Underground, and she had been given more or less a free hand to furnish and run it. At least, so far. She’d been assured that, as long as she didn’t go crazy and try to outfit the place with platinum draw taps or the like, the Empire would cover the cost.

If she kept getting news like that, she might just have to revise her opinion of the new regime.

Rodo drifted past the desk where she sat working up an order form for refreshments and intoxicants. If there was a fermented, brewed, or distilled spirit that wasn’t in stock, she had yet to learn of it. There were beers, ales, wines, liquors, malts, brandies … both generic and brand-named. The legally allowed chemicals that could be eaten, inhaled, dermed, or otherwise taken were likewise available across the board. All she had to do was tick it off on the complex Imperial order form and then wait for delivery. It was apparent
that whoever had set this station up had planned ahead for such things.

She looked up from her chore at Rodo. “What?”

“Contractor’s on his way to install the tables and chairs. He says it’s a two-day job, tops.”

“Yeah, right. And the Emperor’s packin’ a lightsaber.”

“Apparently there was a recent visit from the Emperor’s favorite envoy.” He cupped his hands over his mouth and did a creditable impression of Darth Vader’s respirator sound. “Since he left, things have run
very
smoothly. I believe the contractor is sincere.”

The comm on the computer blipped. Memah answered it. “Yes?”

“Memah Roothes, please.”

“Speaking.”

“This is the scheduling droid for Sector Medical. When might it be convenient for you to meet with one of our doctors to complete your physical examination for preadmission to the station?”

“I hate to point this out, but I arrived here some days past. Besides, they gave me the standard once-over before I dusted Despayre.”

The droid politely acknowledged the error, citing short-handness and overscheduling problems; nevertheless, a physical was required SOP. Memah could see that she wasn’t going to get out of it; the droid was firm and nonyielding as only a machine could be. She acquiesced to the following day at eleven hundred hours.

“You are scheduled to see Captain Dr. Divini. Please bring any medical records you have with you. Do you need a reminder call on the morning shift?”

“No, I can remember that far in advance, thank you.”

She shut off the comm and looked at Rodo. He gave her another shrug. “I went yesterday. Apparently I am not a carrier of any transmittable diseases and thus am deemed fit for habitation.”

“Well, if I were Sangi Fever Sal, this would be a day late and a dozen credits short,” Memah said. “I could have infected hundreds of people by now. There’d be bodies dropping like brindlebugs in the hot sun.”

“The Empire grinds slow but fine,” Rodo said. “And they did check everybody before we got on the transport dirtside, like you said, so why do it again? There’s no chance of catching something on the way up.”

“That’s the government—everything and everyone gets shunted through the Department of Redundancy Department.” Memah looked back at the requisition form. “So tomorrow I’ll go get thumped and probed by the medics. See if you can’t get the guy doing the exhaust fans and baffles in here while I’m gone, too, okay?”

Rodo nodded, but somewhat absently; his mind was obviously otherwise occupied. Memah thought about asking him what he was chewing over but decided not to—when he was ready, he’d mention it. In the meantime, she had a choice to make: Corellian ale or Zabrak ferment?

R
atua didn’t have any connection to religion—he didn’t subscribe to any of the doctrines or dogmas, more than a few of which he had been exposed to in his life. However, if there was one that promised a thieves’ paradise, it might not be too different from this battle station.

He’d been afraid at first that he’d have to skulk about the outlying corridors and hallways, staying in the shadows, taking service tubes and stairs to avoid being stopped by station security. But he had walked past guards scores of times, hesitantly at first, then with less worry, and finally with nothing but confidence. As far as he could tell, nobody had even lifted an eyebrow in his direction. Nobody stopped him and asked him what business he was on; nobody asked for identification, as long as he stayed away from corridors and chambers plainly marked off-limits to unauthorized personnel; in short, nobody seemed to notice him at all. The prevailing attitude seemed to be that if you were on the station, then you must belong here, and as long as you weren’t doing something that looked suspicious, you were free to come and go as you liked.