“What do we have parked at R/M, Colonel?”
“Several CR-ninety corvettes, two Carrack-class light cruisers, a couple of Victories, and a Venator-class destroyer — the Liberator.”
“Stand by, Colonel.” Tarkin muted the audio feed and swiveled toward Vader. “Are you reasonably certain that our particle beams wounded them?”
Vader nodded.
“If the hyperdrive is damaged, they might opt to lie low to effect repairs,” Tarkin said.
Vader nodded again. “Or go in search of replacement parts.”
“And if they’re not wounded?”
“Continue their mission,” Vader said with finality.
Tarkin fell silent for a long moment. Never having had an opportunity to put the Carrion Spike through her paces, the recent engagement had left him with an even more profound appreciation for the ship. “Why didn’t they kill us when they had the chance? Could it be they believe they were being pursued by the Sugi crime lord?”
“No,” Vader said sharply. “They know that we are here.”
“Then perhaps they didn’t kill us because they have a rendezvous or a schedule to keep?”
“Perhaps,” Vader said.
Tarkin swiveled in place. “Belderone?”
“Too heavily fortified — even for your corvette.”
“Felucia, then — in reprisal for the way the Republic left it.”
“Of no significance.”
“Rhen Var is merely an outpost … So: Nam Chorios?”
Vader took a moment to respond. “Instruct Belderone to send the Liberator there.”
Tarkin activated the headset microphone. “Colonel, we need to contact Belderone and Coruscant,” he started to say, then cut himself off on hearing Vader growl.
“What is it?”
“Whoever they are, they are resourceful.” The Dark Lord turned slowly from the viewports. “They have jettisoned the meditation chamber.”
The voice of the starfighter squadron commander issued from the enunciator. “Lord Vader, our scanners have detected an object—”
“Commander, order your pilots to open fire along that vector — lasers and proton torpedoes if they have them.”
“Lord Vader, we have a detonation,” the commander said a moment later.
Tarkin leapt from the chair to stand alongside Vader. “Did they hit the Carrion Spike?”
The answer was slow to arrive. “Lord Vader,” the commander said, “the enemy has taken out the system hyperspace buoy. Our sensors are also picking up wake rotation readings.”
“They have jumped to lightspeed,” Vader said.
Tarkin ran a hand over his high forehead. “Then they’ve managed to make themselves untraceable, as well as invisible.”
A case of Do or Die
ITS TIERED ROOF a canopy of scanner, sensor, and communications arrays, Naval Intelligence headquarters heaved from Coruscant’s metallic crust as if thrust up by tectonic forces from the depths of the planet. Along with the Palace and the byzantine COMPNOR arcology — which housed the Imperial Security Bureau, the Ubiqtorate, and other ambiguous organizations — Naval Intelligence was the third point of the Federal District’s supreme triangle. The fact that the shielded, hardened, near-windowless complex more resembled a prison than a fortress had given rise to speculation that its sheer walls were designed as much to keep the agency’s staff of tens of thousands of military officers inside as to keep ordinary Coruscanti out.
Constructed soon after the end of the war atop monads that had once made up the Republic’s strategic center, Naval Intelligence was a nexus for gathering and analyzing transmissions that poured in from across the ecumenopolis and from all sectors of the expanding Empire. And yet its operations were not conducted in complete secrecy. During the construction phase, micro-holocams had been installed in every nook and cranny so that the actions and conversations of every staffer could be monitored at any hour of the day or night; not by the members of the Senate’s various oversight committees, however, but by the Emperor and the most trusted members of the Ruling Council. Everyone involved with Naval Intelligence knew that the cams were there and had gradually grown accustomed to their presence. While the officers and others no longer played to the spy eyes as they had early on, they went about their business well aware that at any given moment they might be on stage.
Just now the Joint Chiefs of the Empire’s military were gathered — Admiral Antonio Motti, General Cassio Tagge, Rear Admirals Ozzel, Jerjerrod, and others — along with several top officers from COMPNOR, including Director Armand Isard, ISB deputy director Harus Ison, and Colonel Wullf Yularen. Naval Intelligence was represented by Vice Admirals Rancit and Screed, who had requested the meeting.
With the bright light of late afternoon pouring through the tall windows of the Palace spire’s pinnacle room, Sidious studied their holograms from his chair, using controls in the armrest to choose from among several cams and to provide alternative vantages. The droid, 11-4D, stood by him, one of its appendages plugged into an interface socket that routed holofeeds to the summit from what had been a Jedi communications suite in the base of the spire.
“Tint the windows,” Sidious said without taking his gaze from the projected holograms.
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
With the daylight dimmed, the cyan-hued holograms acquired more detail. The intelligence officers had asked for an audience in the Palace, but Sidious had turned them down. Similarly he had declined to attend their meeting virtually. As nettlesome as it was to have learned that the dissidents in possession of Tarkin’s starship had embarked on a killing spree in the Outer Rim, Sidious found the cachet-driven spitefulness of the intelligence chiefs to be even more tedious. So he had dispatched Mas Amedda and Ars Dangor in his stead.
“I accept the dissidents have managed to wreak havoc in an isolated star system,” Ison was saying, “but the fact remains that they brought only one ship to bear on our facility.”
“One ship capable of hiding itself from scanners,” Rancit said, “outmaneuvering our starfighters, outracing a Star Destroyer …”
“Permit me to amend my statement, then,” Ison continued as Rancit allowed his words to trail off. “One fast and powerful ship. Still, they used it to launch an attack on an unimportant outpost.”
“The start of a campaign of destruction,” Screed interjected.
The officers were grouped around a large circular table, with Mas Amedda and Ars Dangor occupying prominent seats. Above the center of the table floated 3-D star maps, wire-frame displays, and plotting panels, some showing the locations of Outer Rim bases and installations, others the disposition of ships of the fleet, with symbols denoting Star Destroyers, Dreadnoughts, corvettes, and frigates, on down to pickets and gunboats.
“We’ve no proof that the shipjackers are on a campaign,” Ison said, taking up the challenge. “Targeting the space station may have been their way of evading capture by Governor Tarkin and Lord Vader.”
“As a diversion, in other words?” Screed said in elaborate disbelief, his ocular implant glinting in the light from the holograms. “Governor Tarkin came close to losing his life to his own ship. Given his experience and expertise, we have to assume that the Carrion Spike is in the hands of a very competent and dangerous group.”
“I’ve known Governor Tarkin for over twenty years,” Rancit said in reinforcement, “and I can assure you that if he considers the group to pose a serious threat to the Empire, then they are nothing less.”