Death Star (44 page)

“That hardly seems wise.”

“No, it seems foolhardy in the extreme. How will they escape if they do find—aha!”

“I am still at a loss, sir.”

“That’s why they’re investigating the tractor beam. They must mean to steal a ship. I’ll wager that the old man—a Jedi, if I’m not mistaken—has gone to disable the device. Clever.” Atour frowned. “Unlikely they will succeed, however.”

The men and the stun-cuffed Wookiee exited the room, leaving the two droids alone in the office.

“I think we’ve seen enough of this,” Atour said. “Where is the Princess being held?”

P-RC3 adjusted a control on the console. “Level Five, Detention Block AA-Twenty-three.”

Atour nodded. He didn’t fancy their chances of success, but he had to give them credit for bravery. He would have helped them, but he didn’t see any way that he could. Detention cells were controlled locally; they couldn’t be overridden by the central computer.

It occurred to him then that they would have to take a lift up to the Detention Level, and they would need the current code to reach that level. Perhaps they already had access to it, but he doubted it.

Well, he couldn’t magically open cell doors for them, but finding the proper protocol for section egress and feeding it to the lift they would be taking was the work of only a few moments.

“Good luck,” Atour said softly, after transmitting the code. “You’ll need it.”

As for himself, what he needed was a drink.

M
emah had asked Rodo to remove the few patrons who were having too much fun, and what was left was a somber crowd; mostly people who kept their conversations to themselves or had conversations with themselves. Either way, they did it quietly.

Rodo and Nova Stihl sat at the bar, with Ratua. It was apparent that the bond he and Nova had formed on the prison planet was stronger than their differences as guard and prisoner. Memah was glad to see that.

There were a couple of Alderaanians in one corner, and they just sat there, not saying much, not drinking much; just staring into some personal distance.

One of the pilots and his companion—an architect, Memah had learned—also sat at the bar, talking quietly but intensely. Apparently the pilot was one of Nova’s martial arts students, a double ace named Vil Dance. The woman was named Teela Kaarz.

An older man entered the cantina—Memah recognized him as having been in before, but she didn’t know who he was. He walked to where Stihl and Rodo and Ratua sat, and was greeted by the sergeant.

For herself, Memah tended the bar, made drinks, and when there was a lull, drifted over to talk to Green-Eyes. It felt like a memorial service, and, in its own way, it was.

A pair of troopers entered and moved to a table near the
Alderaanians. They ordered ales and seemed oblivious to the generally hushed mood in the cantina. Memah was considering having Rodo throw them out, too, when one of the two said something loud enough to carry to the bar:

“Guess the Rebel scum won’t be giving us much trouble after Alderaan, hey?”

Rodo was already up and moving when one of the Alderaanians stood and stepped over to the soldiers’ table.

“Rodo,” Memah said.

He stopped, turned, and looked at her. She held up her hand in a
wait-a-second
gesture.

The soldier glanced up at the man standing next to him and probably wasn’t impressed. The Alderaanian was slightly built, short, and hardly seemed a threat. “What can I—”

That was as far as he got. The smaller man swung a fist that was driven by grief and rage, and the soldier fell out of his chair and hit the deck, hard.

“Go,” Memah said to Rodo.

Rodo was there before the second soldier could do more than get to his feet. He grabbed him by the neck. “Out,” he said.

“The frip you say! Nobody punches a trooper and—”

Rodo tightened his grip on the man’s neck. The trooper suddenly became very quiet.

“Out,” Rodo repeated. “On your own or with my help. Get your buddy and get gone.”

The second soldier was not a fool. He nodded, bent, and helped his dazed friend to his unsteady feet. They headed for the door.

The Alderaanian, fists still clenched in simmering rage, face red, stood there glaring at Rodo. Memah knew that even though he didn’t have a prayer against the big bouncer, he would still swing on him if Rodo tried to evict him.

Rodo knew it also. He glanced at her.

She shook her head:
Leave him be
.

Rodo nodded, said something too soft to hear to the smaller man, and returned to the bar. After a moment, the Alderaanian, as if in a dream-like trance, shuffled back to his seat. His motions were stiff, droid-like, and he sat down heavily.

Rodo returned to the bar, and Memah moved to meet him. “What did you say to him?”

“I told him I was sorry. That his table was comped, and that if anybody else said anything that stupid, to let me handle it—

I could hit harder than he could.”

Next to him, Nova said, “I dunno. That was as good a punch as I’ve ever seen.”

Nobody replied to that.

Nova indicated the older man and said, “This is Commander Riten. He runs the library.”

Memah nodded. “Commander.”

“Call me Atour,” he said. “I don’t much care for the rank or its associations right now.”

Memah nodded. “I hear that.”

She looked at the door and saw Dr. Divini come in. He came straight to the bar, where he was greeted by the group and introduced to the librarian and the young couple.

“Missing all the fun, Doc,” Nova said. “That little Alderaanian in the corner just decked a soldier twice his size.”

Uli nodded as Memah, unasked, put a stein of ale in front of him. “Rodo didn’t throw him out?”

“Our sympathies do not lie with the Imperial military tonight,” Memah said.

Uli nodded again. “Nor mine. I feel tainted just being on this station.”

That got a chorus of agreement.

“There ought to be something we can do about this,” Nova said.

Rodo said, “What’d you have in mind, Sarge? Challenging Darth Vader to a death match?”

“Maybe.”

“That wouldn’t help,” Uli said. “The Imperial machine is too big. Nobody can stand against it. Witness Alderaan.”

“So what does a person with any sense of justice do?” Memah asked. “Shrug it off and go on about his or her business?”

Riten, who had been quietly nursing his drink, shook his head. To Nova, he said, “As a martial arts expert, what do you do if you have an opponent who is bigger, stronger, faster, better trained, and armed—and who has many friends?”

Nova shrugged. “Haul your glutes away, fast.”

“Precisely,” Riten said.

They all turned to look at him.

“At the very least, you don’t have to abet a murderous thug.”

Dance, the TIE pilot, spoke up: “Refusing a direct order gets you sent to the detention cells. How’s that going to do you or anybody else any good?”

“Well,” Riten said, “you might not be part of the solution tucked away in a cell, but at least you won’t be part of the problem.”

“Some choice,” Dance said.

“There are other choices,” Riten said.

“Really? What?”

The archivist regarded his drink as if it were possible to read the future in it. “You could leave.”

Dance laughed, and it was far more bitter than amused. “Yeah. And just how would you pull that off? Nobody leaves the Death Star without the express permission of the powers-that-be. Even pilots like me—you can’t get far in a TIE fighter, unless you have one of the new hyperdrive-equipped x-ones I’ve been hearing about, and there aren’t
but a couple of those on the whole station. We have more weapons than a naval armada—tractor beams, turbolasers, and a bunch of bored, trigger-happy gunners who’d like nothing better than to shoot anything that moves. Leaving isn’t exactly an option.”

“But if it was? What if you could go? Would anybody here exercise that choice?”

There was a moment of silence. “We’re talking hypothetically here, not real conspiracy to treason, right?” Nova said.

“Of course. Just a what-if conversation among friends.”

“I’d go,” Memah said.

They looked at her. “You aren’t in the military,” Ratua said. “You didn’t have anything to do with blowing up Alderaan. You’re a civilian. It’s not like you pulled the lever.”

“Imagine what that must feel like,” Kaarz said.

“But I am here,” Memah said, in answer to Ratua. “And I know what the Death Star can do—what it’s already done. I serve drinks to people like that soldier the little guy knocked down, who not only think it’s okay to kill planets full of innocents but actually take pride in it.” She shook her head hard enough to swing her lekku. “I’d go in a heartbeat.”

Kaarz nodded. “Me, too. Of course, I’m a prisoner, and when it all settles down, I doubt that the Empire will have much use for me.”

“Assuming the Empire wins,” Rodo said.

“Can’t really assume anything else,” Dance said. “We all know what this battle station can do. If they can build one, they can build more—maybe even bigger than this one. The Rebels don’t have a chance.”

“Perhaps,” Riten said. “But wars are not won by technology alone. There’s always a new version of the ultimate weapon being developed, and historically they’ve never been enough to put an end to war.”

“Peace is found neither in hot blood nor in cold sweat,” Nova said.

Riten looked at him in mild surprise. “
The Fallacy of War
, by Codus Romanthus. One doesn’t often encounter a soldier who can quote obscure philosophers.”

Nova drained the last of his ale. “I’m sensitive.” He belched.

“I’d go,” Uli said. “I’d have bailed a hundred times already if there had been any real opportunity.”

“Me, too. What about you, Sarge?” That from Ratua.

“Yeah, count me in. Not just because my head nearly exploded when they burned Alderaan, but because it’s wrong. People get killed in war, but it’s one thing to shoot a guy shooting at you; it’s another to go to his house and burn it down with his wife and kids inside.”

Dance said, “Yeah. One on one against another pilot, I’m good. What the Empire did to Despayre and Alderaan? That’s not right. Next planet might be one of our homeworlds—nobody’s safe, anywhere.”

“All very high-minded of us,” Rodo said, “but we don’t have that choice, do we?”

Riten said, “Maybe we do.”

They all turned to look at him again.

“What are you talking about?” Nova asked.

Riten said, “I’m an archivist. Over the years I’ve learned ways to obtain all kinds of information that isn’t supposed to be accessible.”

“Yeah—so?” Ratua said.

“Knowledge is power,” Riten said. “What if you knew the entry and takeoff codes for an Imperial shuttle that was fueled and ready to fly? What if you had the passcodes that would keep the station’s gunners from firing on you when you left? Or the tractor beams from locking on to you?”

“Big what-ifs,” Rodo said.

“Indeed. But—again, hypothetically and just for the
sake of this discussion—suppose that I could lay hands on this information. Should I bother?”

The group was quiet for what seemed a long time. Finally, it was Nova who broke the silence.

“Yeah,” he said. “Go ahead and bother.”

V
ader stood at just inside the door, the guards flanking him, talking to a frankly incredulous Tarkin.

“He is here,” he said.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi? What makes you think so?”

To anyone with a connection to the Force, the question would not need an answer or an explanation. Even though Vader had thought initially to brush it off—he had, for so many years, hoped to feel that presence that at first he thought he’d imagined it—he knew. He said, “A tremor in the Force. The last time I felt it was in the presence of my old Master.”

Tarkin stood. “Surely he must be dead by now.”

“Don’t underestimate the Force,” Vader said, though he knew it was pointless. The man could not understand.

“The Jedi are extinct. Their fire has gone out of the universe.”