And so he was.
When stalking game on the plateau, Jova would tell him that a careful study of prints on a trail could reveal not only the species of animal that had left them, but also the animal’s intentions.
With a flourish of input at the holotable’s keypad, Tarkin created an open field above the table and instructed the computer to render his voice into lines of text and place them in order in the field. Then he turned slightly in the direction of the nearest audio pickup.
“Access to confiscated warship modules, Separatist weapons, and HoloNet interrupters — either through salvagers, crime syndicates, or other sources,” he began. “The ability to make use of purchased or pirated Separatist technology. The ability to transmit real-time holovids through the HoloNet, and the ability to create and transmit counterfeit holovids by accessing public HoloNet archives and other media sources. Knowledge of the existence of Rampart and Sentinel bases. Knowledge of Lieutenant Thon’s assignment to Rampart Base. Knowledge of the existence of the Carrion Spike, and familiarity with her sophisticated systems. A crew of spacers conversant with Imperial procedures and with a knowledge of Imperial facilities. Possible assistance from Imperial assets with high clearance.”
One by one the lines of text appeared in the field and Tarkin studied them for a long moment, his elbow planted on his raised left knee and his chin cupped in his hand.
Vader’s interrogation of the Reticent’s crewmembers hadn’t resulted in anything more than heart failure for the freighter’s Sy Myrthian navigator. However, as a recompense of sorts, the Dark Lord had received a significant piece of information from one of his sources inside the Crymorah. A lieutenant in the crime syndicate claimed to have negotiated a deal with Faazah — the Sugi smuggler on Murkhana — for a supply of custom fuel cells, which had been shipped to the planet shortly before Tarkin and Vader’s arrival. This in itself wasn’t entirely surprising, considering that the Carrion Spike’s stop at the Phindar fuel tanker was evidence enough that the dissidents had added fuel to the ship before absconding with her. What was surprising was that the deal for the fuel cells had been arranged through an agent on Lantillies, whom Tarkin suspected was the same human the captain of the Reticent had named as their broker.
Knotts.
Tarkin instructed the HoloNet database to launch a search for Knotts, and in moments the hologram of a silver-haired human with a deeply lined face was rotating in place above the projector. Knotts had a world-weary look Tarkin associated with veteran soldiers who had seen more than their share of tragedy. Extracting the holoimage, he saved it off to one side of the table and regarded it in silence while machines hummed, chirped, and beeped around him.
What he read in the concise précis accompanying the holoimage supported the fact that Knotts had resided on Lantillies for some fifteen years. Digging a bit deeper, Tarkin was able to retrieve Knotts’s documents of incorporation, his Republic and Imperial tax records, court proceedings of his divorce agreement, even images of the modest apartment he owned on Lantillies. Native to the Core, he had relocated to the Outer Rim and established himself as a middleman, bringing clients in want of goods or services together with groups of freelance spacers who could fulfill those needs. He was something of a dispatcher and an agent, taking what struck Tarkin as a fair credit percentage on each transaction.
The eyes-only Coruscant databases — which Tarkin hadn’t had reason to access since his days as adjutant general of the Republic Navy — provided a more complete and compelling portrait of Knotts. Yes, for fifteen years he had operated a profitable if minor Outer Rim enterprise, but during the Clone Wars he had also functioned as a subcontractor for Republic Intelligence, responsible for the covert transport of arms and other materials to resistance groups operating on Separatist-occupied worlds, one of which happened to figure prominently in Tarkin’s past, as welclass="underline" the Mid Rim moon Antar 4.
Tarkin sat taller on the stool. The discovery of Knotts’s secret past stirred a memory of the excitement he had felt on the plateau when encountering a sudden, unexpected turn along a game trail. Had his quarry gotten wind of him? Had a different threat presented itself? Was his prey keen on reversing the situation by circling behind to stalk him in his own tracks?
Antar 4 had been a member of the Republic almost from its inception, but the Secessionist Movement that preceded the Clone Wars had created a schism among the moon’s indigenous humanoid Gotals and given rise to terrorist groups aligned with the Separatists. Shored up by the Republic, Gotal loyalists had managed to retain power until shortly after the Battle of Geonosis, when the moon had fallen to Separatist forces and, for a brief period, become a headquarters for Count Dooku. Tens of millions of Gotal refugees had fled to their colony world, Atzerri, replaced on Antar 4 by an influx of Koorivar, Gossams, and other species whose homeworlds had joined the CIS. As a result, the moon became a political imbroglio, and had spawned one of the first resistance groups, made up of loyalist Koorivar and Gotals whom the Republic supported with tactical advisers and secret shipments of arms and matériel. Though the resistance was successful in carrying out hundreds of acts of sabotage, the moon remained in the grip of the Separatists for the length of the war.
Tarkin recalled the Koorivar captain’s words to Vader: Not all of us were Separatists.
With the deaths of Dooku and the Separatist leadership, and the deactivation of the droid army, Antar 4—like many CIS worlds — had soon found itself in the Empire’s crosshairs. More to the point, in the crosshairs of Moff Tarkin, who had been given Imperial orders to make an example of the moon. No attempt was to be made at repatriation, nor was Tarkin to waste time sorting the Separatists from those resistance fighters and intelligence operatives waiting to be exfiltrated to safety.
COMPNOR did its best to cover up the fact that many Koorivar and Gotal loyalists had been swept up in the arrests, executions, and massacres, but the media eventually got hold of the story, and for a while the Antar Atrocity had become a celebrated cause in the Core — this despite the swift disappearances of many beings who had attached themselves to reporting on the story. Instead, the disappearances so fueled the public’s hunger for details that the Emperor decided to remove Tarkin from the controversy by assigning him to pacification operations in the Western Reaches and had ultimately installed him as commander of the bases servicing the deep-space mobile battle station project, replacing Vice Admiral Rancit, who was reassigned to Naval Intelligence.
In thinking back to that period, some four years earlier, Tarkin recalled the case of two Coruscanti journalists who had risen briefly to the forefront among a host of anti-Imperial irritants. A quick search of the HoloNet archives conjured their holograms, which Tarkin placed above the table alongside that of Knotts. In the Coruscant database, Tarkin located intelligence reports detailing their activities.
An attractive, dark-skinned human woman with blue-gray eyes, Anora Fair had been the most vocal and volatile of the Core media correspondents who had fixated on the events at Antar. An ambitious journalist, Fair had already attracted attention for her probing interviews with Imperial officials and her editorials critical of Imperial policy, as well as of the Emperor himself. Her unrelenting reports on the Antar Atrocity had been brought to life with holographic recreations of arrests and executions, produced and directed by a rubicund Zygerrian female named Hask Taff, whom many a pro-Imperial pundit had deemed “a master of HoloNet manipulation.”