The chance to show just what he was made of came on the pebbled shore of a wide, clear, swift-flowing river. Off and on for some hours, the team had been moving parallel to the river, and Tarkin had been studying the current, making parallax observations of objects on the bottom and observing the shadows cast by Halcyon’s bashful suns. Hours earlier, downstream of a waterfall, they had passed a stretch they would have been able to ford without incident, but Tarkin had held his tongue. Now, while the commander and some of the team members stood arguing about how deep the water might be, Tarkin simply waded directly into the current and trudged to the middle of the river, where wavelets lapped at his shoulders. Then, cupping his hands to his mouth, he yelled back to the team: “It’s this deep!”
After that, the commander kept him by his side, and eventually surrendered point to him. Navigating by the rise and set of Halcyon’s twin suns, and sometimes in the sparing illumination of the planet’s array of tiny moons, Tarkin led them on a tortuous forest course that took them through the hills and into more open forest on the far side. Along the way he showed them how to use their blasters to kill game without burning gaping holes in the most edible parts. For fun, he felled a large rodent with a hand-fashioned wooden lance and entertained the team by dressing and cooking it over a fire he conjured with a sparkstone from a pile of kindling. He got his fellow plebes used to sleeping on the ground, under the stars, amid a cacophony of sounds and songs.
At a time when the Clone Wars were still a decade off, it became clear to his commander and peers that Wilhuff Tarkin had already tasted blood.
When they had walked for three more days and Tarkin estimated that they were within five kilometers of the usurper’s fortress, he fell back to allow the commander to lead them in. The Jedi were astounded. They had only just put an end to the insurrection — somehow without losing a single eminent hostage — and they had all but given up on finding any members of the Judicial team alive. Search parties had been dispatched, but none had managed to pick up the team’s trail. Relieved to be back on firm ground, the cadets were at first reserved about revealing the details of their ordeal, but in due course the stories began to be told, and in the end Tarkin was credited with having saved their lives.
For those Judicials who knew little of the galaxy beyond the Core, it came as a shock that a world like Eriadu could produce not only essential goods, but also natural champions. A clique of congenial cadets began to form around Tarkin, as much to bask in the reflected glow of his sudden popularity as to be taught by him, or even to be the butt of his jokes. In him they found someone who could be as hard on himself as he could be on others, even when those others happened to be superiors who shirked their responsibilities or made what to him were bad decisions. They had already witnessed how well he could fight, scale mountains, pilot a gunboat, and succeed on a sports field, and — as crises like the one at Halcyon grew more common — they grew to realize that he had a mind for tactics, as well; more important, that Tarkin was a born leader, an inspiration for others to overcome their fears and to surpass their own expectations.
Not all were enamored of him. Where to some he was meticulous, coolheaded, and fearless, to others he was calculating, ruthless, and fanatical. But no matter to which camp his peers subscribed, the stories that emerged about Tarkin in the waning days of the Judicial Department were legendary — and they only grew with the telling. Few then knew the details of his unusual upbringing, for he had a habit of speaking only when he had something important to add, but he had no need to brag, since the tales that spread went beyond anything he could have confirmed or fabricated. That he had bested a Wookiee in hand-to-hand combat; that he had piloted a starfighter through an asteroid field without once consulting his instruments; that he had single-handedly defended his homeworld against a pirate queen; that he had made a solo voyage through the Unknown Regions …
His strategy of flying boldly into the face of adversity was studied and taught, and during the Clone Wars would come to be known as “the Tarkin Rush,” when it was also said of him that his officers and crew would willingly follow him to hell and beyond. He might have remained a Judicial were it not for a growing schism that began to eat away at the department’s long-held and nonpartisan mandate to keep the galaxy free of conflict. On the one side stood Tarkin and others who were committed to enforcing the law and safeguarding the Republic; on the other, a growing number of dissidents who had come to view the Republic as a galactic disease. They detested the influence peddling, the complacency of the Senate, and the proliferation of corporate criminality. They saw the Jedi Order as antiquated and ineffectual, and they yearned for a more equitable system of government — or none at all.
As the clashes between Republic and Separatist interests escalated in frequency and intensity, Tarkin would find himself pitted against many of the Judicials with whom he had previously served. The galaxy was fast becoming an arena for ideologues and industrialists, with the Judicials being used to settle trade disputes or to further corporate agendas. He feared that the Seswenna sector would be dragged into the rising tide of disgruntlement, without anyone to keep Eriadu and its brethren worlds free of the coming fray. He began to think of his homeworld as a ship that needed to be steered into calmer waters, and of himself as the one who should assume command of that perilous voyage. The time had come to accept Palpatine’s invitation to join him on Coruscant, for his promised crash course in galactic politics.
Entering one of a bank of turbolifts that accessed the centermost of the Palace’s quincunx of spires, Tarkin was surprised when Mas Amedda charged the car to descend.
“I would have expected the Emperor to reside closer to the top,” Tarkin said.
“He does,” the vizier allowed. “But we’re not proceeding directly to the Emperor. We’re going to meet first with Lord Vader.”
Masters of War
TWENTY LEVELS DOWN, in a courtroom not unlike the one in which Tarkin had tried to make a case against Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano for murder and sedition during the Clone Wars, stood the Emperor’s second, Darth Vader, gesticulating with his gauntleted right hand as he harangued a score of nonhumans gathered in an area reserved for the accused.
“Was this where the Jedi Order held court?” Tarkin asked Amedda.
In a voice as hard and cold as his pale-blue eyes, the vizier said, “We no longer speak of the Jedi, Governor.”
Tarkin took the remark in stride, turning his attention instead to Vader and his apparently captive audience. Flanking the Dark Lord was the deputy director of the Imperial Security Bureau, Harus Ison — a brawny, white-haired, old-guard loyalist with a perpetually flushed face — and a thin, red-head-tailed Twi’lek male Tarkin didn’t recognize. Bolstering the commanding trio were four Imperial stormtroopers with blaster rifles slung, and an officer wearing a black uniform and cap, hands clasped behind his back and legs slightly spread.