Death Star (28 page)

“So Pojo takes out half the group before any of us can even crank up our guns, using nothing but his sidearm—a blaster modified with a heavy-duty capacitor to fire more charges than your standard model.

“The survivors broke and ran, and we started chasing them. Pojo and I took off after a group of four—three men and a Rodian, I think. Pojo’s grinning like an overfed sand cat; this was what he was born to do.

“The pirates couldn’t shoot for sour whool poop, so they split up. I took off after the first two, and they shot their guns dry, at which time I plinked ’em. Then I circled back to Pojo. He had the last two cornered, they had drained their blasters, and he had holstered his.”

“He holstered his blaster?”

“Yeah, to give them a chance. They were six, eight meters
away. So Pojo says, ‘Okay, boys, here’s the deal: Take off, and if I miss, you’re free.’ ”

Motti shook his head. Un-fripping-believable.

“So the two, figuring they’re dead men anyway, charge him. Pojo pulls that customized blaster faster than you can believe—his hand, the gun, they were just a blur—those guys hadn’t taken two steps. He cooks off a round and shoots the sodder on the left right between the eyes,
zap!
Then he aims at the second pirate, who’s still running at him, and squeezes off another bolt.”

“Let me guess: he missed?”

“Nope. Blaster shorted out.
Hiss, pop, crackle
. The capacitor must have overloaded, and the gun flared. Pojo drops it, goes for his backup—no gunnery loot would carry just the one gun, but by that time, the pirate was in his face. Sodder had a shiv. Just a low-tech blade, not even a vibro, one step above a flint knife.

“By the time I lined up and shot the pirate, he’d buried that knife in Pojo’s throat. The medics couldn’t get there in time.”

Motti smiled. “A multibillion-credit battle station is not exactly a pijer-rigged blaster, Admiral.”

“The more complex a weapon, the more likely it is to have flaws,” Helaw said. “Kan Pojo was the best pistoleer I ever saw, then or since, but he was waxed by what was essentially a whittled rock when his state-of-the-art weapon failed.”

“I’m not too worried about pirates with knives, Jaim.”

“You should be, son,” the grizzled old admiral said. “You should be worried about
everything
.”

Did the old man have a valid point? Motti wondered. It was hard to see how. The Death Star was a true Dread-naught,
a giant among midgets. Of course, just about every fable about giants tended to end with the midgets triumphing somehow. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea, once he was back on board, to order a detailed inspection of the superstructure and the plans. Maintenance would howl, but that didn’t matter. After all, Motti hadn’t gotten to his rank by assuming everything was as it should be. Like as not the old man was just being paranoid. But in situations like these, with the fate of the galaxy literally riding on the outcome, it was hard to be too paranoid …

Motti was still musing about Helaw’s story when the Star Destroyer
Undauntable
suddenly ceased to be the oldest ship of the line in the quadrant behind him.

In a brilliant, silent white-hot blast the
Undauntable
blew apart.

“Y
ou were there,” Tarkin said.

“I didn’t blow it up,” Motti replied.

Tarkin silently counted to ten. Behind him, at a discreet distance, Daala stood, pretending not to hear their conversation.

“What could have happened?”

“It could have been an accident,” Motti said.

“You don’t really think that.”

“No more than you do, sir. Admiral Helaw was as good as any commander in the Imperial Navy and better than most. I cannot imagine an accident of this magnitude would happen on a ship he ran.”

“The
Undauntable
was an old ship.”

“Even so.”

Tarkin nodded. “I’m afraid I agree.” He paused. “It would be better if it
had
been an accident.”

Motti said nothing, but Tarkin knew the man was no fool. He understood.

“Darth Vader’s recent visit was supposed to have eliminated the threat of sabotage,” Tarkin continued.

“So I understand. Apparently it did not.”

“If that is the case, we could, I expect, depend on another visit from Vader in short order. Not the worst thing that could happen to us, but certainly another burden we don’t need, with sprawl construction nearly complete.”

“One would expect such a visit, yes.”

“Whereas if there was an accident, on an old ship—a leaky hypermatter containment valve, perhaps … that would be unfortunate, but understandable, and there would be no need for the Emperor’s representative to come all the way out here again.”

Motti frowned deeper. “It would be a shame, however, for such an ‘accident’ to be laid at the feet of Jaim Helaw, whose memory would forever bear that blot on his otherwise perfect record.”

“It
would
be a shame. However, with Jaim dead, that won’t really bother him, will it? And he had no family.”

Motti said, “The navy was his family.”

“Just so. And Jaim was loyal to the bone. He would not wish his ‘family’ to suffer, would he?”

Motti didn’t like it, that was plain, but Motti was also a loyalist. There was no need for Tarkin to remind him of his duty. The admiral nodded, a crisp, military motion. “So, then: an unfortunate accident, and a single black mark on an otherwise brilliant career.”

“Unfortunate, indeed,” Tarkin replied. “And we all move on.”

After Motti was gone, Daala moved over to stand next to Tarkin. “Isn’t this a bit risky?”

“Not really. Motti is ambitious, and he knows this station is his transport to greatness. He’ll be promoted to Moff as soon as the Rebels are vanquished, and it would be foolish for him to raise a fuss about this. He liked the old man—I was rather fond of him myself—but nothing we can say or do will bring him back, and better that his death serves us rather than gets in our way. So, it was a terrible accident. These things happen.”

She nodded. “But that doesn’t solve the problem entirely, does it?”

He sighed. “You are quite right, Admiral. We still have among us a traitor who somehow managed to vaporize a
Star Destroyer. We need to find the ones responsible, before the Rebels can claim credit for this heinous action. And by
we
, I mean—”

“Me,” she finished. “Do you think that wise? I should be getting back to my duties at the Maw.”

“They will keep. I need you here more than they do there.”

Daala nodded. “Well. I suppose that if it is my duty, what else is to be done?”

She smiled. He returned it.

“I’ll start immediately,” she said.

Tarkin cleared his throat. “Perhaps not immediately. I seem to recall there were some other matters we intended to discuss.”

“In the privacy of your quarters?”

He smiled again. “Just so.”

Teela Kaarz wasn’t much of a drinker. Sure, she’d have a little wine with dinner, a social drink now and then, but she was too happy a drunk, too willing to go along with whatever anybody wanted just for the fun of it, and that had gotten her in trouble more than a couple of times. Better to stay sober than to have to deal with the regrets later—she had enough of those as it was.

But here she was, in this cantina, listening to a young woman on the small stage playing a stringed instrument, something classical and quiet, barely audible over the sounds of people drinking, laughing, and talking. She was here because she had won a bet—one of the other architects had doubted her ability to redesign a dining hall to a specification change suddenly required because somebody had mistranslated a measurement system. Whereas the specs said the room’s floor was to be nine hundred square
meters, whoever had written the blueprint had somehow used the Trogan meter instead of the Imperial standard meter, and the difference could not be made to fit in the available space, since there was a 25 percent variation in the measures.

Back when she had been in school, such an error would have been unthinkable, but the relationship of academe to real construction was that of night to day. It happened all the time. Just last week an automated supply ship had plowed into a warehouse on Despayre, destroying the ship entirely and half the building it hit, because somebody had set the autopilot’s deceleration speed to
centimeters
per second instead of
meters
. If you impact at a hundred times the velocity you’re supposed to, it makes something of a difference.

Vishnare, the architect who had proposed the bet, lifted his cup in salute, as did the other five people from her workgroup, and she raised her own cup in acknowledgment.

A noisy group entered the cantina just then, drowning out whatever toast Vishnare had to offer, along with the music. Teela looked at the new arrivals: half a dozen human males all dressed in pilots’ informals.

She sipped a tiny bit of her drink and put the cup down. The pilots were loud, full of themselves, oozing overconfidence and arrogance. She had dated a former military pilot once who’d left the service and taken a job flying commercial transports on her homeworld, but he hadn’t left the attitude behind.
Look at me
, it said,
I’m so much better than everybody else. I can fly!

That relationship hadn’t lasted long. Being secure in what you did was a good thing, but being obnoxious about it? Not so much.

The pilots took a table, and a droid went over to take their orders.

Teela surreptitiously glanced at her chrono. She had to
stay for a while more just to be polite, but since she wasn’t much for small talk, mostly she’d just sit there and smile and nurse her drink until she could make an excuse and take off. She had some journals she wanted to read, and crowded, noisy rooms had never been her favorite spaces. She needed to go to the refresher, though, and while she preferred to do that in her own cube, when you had to go, you had to go.

She smiled, stood, and worked her way toward the ’fresher.

She was on her way back to her table when a large fellow wearing storage workers’ greens decided he would give her an opportunity to enjoy his company. The man lurched to his feet and blocked her path. “Hey, sweetlook, wha’s y’hurry? Lemme buy you a drink!” He was at least half soused, from the smell of his breath and his unsteady motion.

“Thank you, but I already have a drink. I need to get back to my friends there.” Teela nodded at her table, four meters past where the storageman wavered on unsteady feet.

“Naw, naw, y’ll’v
much
more fun here’t
my
table, ’strue.” He belched, and a rum-tainted miasma drifted past her nostrils.

Teela was aware that she was not altogether unattractive, and over the years since puberty had resculpted her body, she had learned how to deal with unwanted attention well enough. Sometimes you could smile them away, sometimes you put a little steel in your voice, and most times you just flat out told them you weren’t interested. Drunks didn’t always get the subtle hints, so she went for direct: “Sorry. Not interested.”

She moved to go around him. He slid over and kept her route blocked. “Y’don’ know what y’re missin’, sweetlook. I’m
prime
!”

“Good for you. Tell somebody who cares.” She turned,
intending to go back the way she’d come and loop around—

He grabbed her wrist as she started away. “Y’sayin’ no
t’me
?” His tone was definitely less friendly now.

Teela twisted her wrist, trying to pull free, knowing in advance that it would only serve to make the storageman hang on tighter. She was right.

Conversation at the tables immediately surrounding them lagged as the patrons, mostly male and mostly as drunk as or drunker than her aspiring boyfriend, watched in bleary interest. The storageman was as large as he was drunk, which made him quite formidable. Teela stopped struggling, because at this stage that was what her assailant wanted. She had heard that the cantina’s bouncer was fast and reliable. She hoped so, because she knew from past experience how quickly a situation like this could get really ugly …

“Oh, look,” a man’s voice said.

Teela turned. It was one of the pilots. He looked about twenty-five, and he also looked like, if he worked out hard and ate his Flakies every morning, he might someday have a chest as big as the storageman’s neck.

Great
, she thought.
A hero. Where’s the fripping bouncer?

“Your shin hurts,” the flyboy continued, smiling at the big drunk as guilelessly as a freshly decanted clone.

The storageman frowned. “My
what
?”

The pilot kicked, a short, low move, and the inside edge of his boot sole impacted the bigger man’s lower leg, just below the knee. He scraped his foot down the bigger man’s leg and stomped on the storageman’s instep.

“Ow—
feke
—!”