“Should I ask her?”
“Go ahead. I’ll give you odds she says no.”
Anora laughed shortly. “I think you’re right.” She fell silent, then said: “Are we going to win, Teller?”
He reached out to clap her gently on the shoulder. “We’re winning so far, aren’t we?”
The subsurface Sith shrine wasn’t the sole area in the Palace where the dark side of the Force was strong. Rooms and corridors throughout the lower levels still bore traces of the resentful fury Darth Vader had unleashed in the final days of the Clone Wars. In one such room a human and a Koorivar knelt in separate pools of ruthless light trained on them from hidden sources in the vaulted ceiling. To Darth Sidious, however, they were not so much living beings as whirlpools in the befuddled waters he had been negotiating since the cache of communications gear found on Murkhana had been brought to his attention; obstacles he needed to maneuver past in order to reach an untroubled stretch of current.
Sidious occupied a simple chair well removed from the twin pools of light, the droid 11-4D off to one side and, slightly behind him, Vizier Mas Amedda close at hand as well. Opposite him across the barren room, a pair of Royal Guards flanked the carved stone doorway.
The Koorivar — Bracchia — was an Imperial intelligence asset assigned to Murkhana; the human — Stellan — the Koorivar’s Security Bureau case officer stationed on Coruscant. Sidious already knew all he needed to about their separate backgrounds and records of service. He sought nothing more than to observe them through the Force, and to evaluate their responses to a few simple questions.
“Koorivar,” he said from the chair, “you served the Republic during the war, and more recently you provided some assistance to Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin on Murkhana.”
Light reflected off the Koorivar’s spiral horn as he lifted his head a bit. “I helped them rid Murkhana of arms smugglers, my lord.”
“So it seems. But tell us what you told them at the time about your initial survey of the HoloNet jamming devices.”
“My lord, I stated that I did not chance upon the devices on my own, nor was I cognizant of any rumors indicating that such a cache existed in Murkhana City. I was merely executing a directive I received from Coruscant.”
Viewing him through the Force, Sidious saw the eddying waters began to relax and surrender themselves to the current.
“Case officer,” he said to Stellan, “by ‘Coruscant’ he means you, does he not?”
“Yes, my lord. The investigation was carried out at my request.” A thickset human man of indeterminate age, he had brown wavy hair and large ears set low on a blockish head.
“Then tell us how you came to learn of this cache.”
The man lifted his nondescript face to the light, squinting and blinking in puzzlement. “My lord, forgive me. I assumed you were aware that the information was provided to ISB by Military Intelligence.”
Sidious’s pulse quickened. Instead of smoothing out, the hydraulic tightened on itself and began to spin more rapidly, as if summoning Sidious to follow the swirling funnel beneath the surface to whatever irregularity below had given rise to it.
It may as well have been the dark side that rasped: “Explain this.”
Humbling himself, the case officer lowered his head. “My lord, Military Intelligence was in the process of conducting an inventory of caches of armaments, vehicles, and supplies that had been left abandoned during the war on a host of contested worlds, from Raxus all the way to Utapau. In the case of the HoloNet jamming devices, MI wasn’t certain if the cache had been on Murkhana for several years, or if it was of more recent origin, and worthy therefore of further investigation. Given that an investigation of that sort fell outside its purview, MI relayed the matter to Imperial Security.”
“To you,” Sidious said.
“Yes, my lord, I received a crude holovid that showed the devices.”
“A holovid? Cammed by someone in Military Intelligence?”
“That was my assumption, my lord. I didn’t see the need to pursue the matter, nor did the deputy director. We simply instructed … Bracchia to conduct a survey.”
Sidious thought back to the initial briefing that had taken place in the audience chamber. Defending ISB’s apprehensions that the jammers could be used to spread anti-Imperial propaganda, Deputy Director Ison had wondered aloud why Naval Intelligence was suddenly so troubled by the cache when on first learning of it they had expressed no such concerns. None of the admirals — not Rancit, Screed, nor any of the others — had replied to Ison’s question.
Without taking his eyes from the case officer, Sidious said in a low voice, “Droid, locate this holovid sent by Military Intelligence to ISB.”
OneOne-FourDee extended its interface arm into an access port behind Sidious’s chair. After a long silence, the droid said: “Your Majesty, I find no record of the holovid.”
“As I suspected,” Sidious said. “But you will find it in ISB’s archives.”
Another moment passed before 11-4D said, “Yes, Your Majesty. The holovid is archived.”
And when projected, Sidious thought, it would show corruption of a telltale sort. Because the holovid was counterfeit; faked by someone with access to Imperial codes and to devices capable of subverting the HoloNet.
Deep beneath the surface he had found the irregularities responsible for the turbulence above. And it was apparent now that they were closer at hand than even he had realized.
Footprints
IN THE MOST SECLUDED of the Executrix’s several tactical rooms, Tarkin closed myriad programs running on the immense battle analysis holotable, and entered a restricted Imperial code that tasked the projector to interface with the HoloNet. He then submitted himself to a series of biometric scans that allowed him to access a multitude of top-secret Republic and Imperial databases situated on Coruscant. He had already issued orders that he was not to be disturbed, but he double-checked that the door had sealed behind him and that the tactical room’s security cams were offline. He called for the illumination to dim, set himself atop a tall castered stool within easy reach of the table’s complex controls, and allowed his thoughts to unwind.
The Star Destroyer was holding at Obroa-skai, awaiting redeployment orders from Coruscant, now that the Emperor had given Vice Admiral Rancit command of the task force created to capture or destroy the Carrion Spike. Only a few hours earlier the dissidents had attacked an Imperial facility at Nouane, a client-state system in the Inner Rim. To Tarkin, the dissidents’ choice of targets seemed as illogical as would have been their showing up at Obroa-skai. But with major systems becoming so heavily reinforced, perhaps the choice merely reflected the fact that their options were dwindling. At Nouane the rogue ship had been prevented from inflicting serious damage and had nearly become a fatality. The win had gone to Rancit, who through a painstaking process of elimination had predicted where the Carrion Spike would strike and had dispatched a flotilla in advance of the corvette’s arrival. Even stealth had failed to allow the corvette to evade a continuous onslaught of long-range lasers. From what Tarkin had been given to understand, there was good reason to believe that the Carrion Spike had sustained heavy damage before a last-ditch retreat to hyperspace. The rumor mill had it that Rancit’s assignment — some called it a promotion — was an indication of the Emperor’s disappointment with Tarkin, but Vader had assured Tarkin that the Emperor was merely trying to free him from having to wear too many hats. Tarkin was to leave the chase to others for the time being, and devote himself instead to ascertaining the dissidents’ ultimate objective.