“The remote found nothing untoward?” he asked Crest.
“Nothing, Lord Vader.”
Vader’s breathing filled the corridor. “Something …”
Tarkin watched him closely. Vader’s exceptional instincts had alerted him to a threat of some sort. But what? He began to think through the holotransmissions of the remotes’ dizzying exploration of the confused interior of the building. On every level the surveillance droids had reached dead ends similar to the one he, Vader, and the stormtroopers now faced. Did that mean that the storeroom was several stories high? Perhaps it had been an atrium before it became a storage space. Tarkin thought back to the squad leader’s description of the building: “A medcenter … Housed a deflector shield generator …”
Tarkin couldn’t imagine such an enormous piece of machinery having been assembled in place. Which could mean—
“Lord Vader, this isn’t the primary entrance,” he said.
Vader turned to him.
“Who would be fool enough to haul communications devices through these corridors and up and down these stairways?” Tarkin gestured upward with his chin. “I suspect they were delivered here through a rooftop access. The sliding doors could lead to an ambush of some sort.”
Vader took a moment to consider it, then looked at Crest. “You’ve failed me again, Sergeant.”
“Lord Vader, the remote—”
“The rooftop,” Tarkin interrupted.
Vader glanced at him but said nothing.
They exited the building by the same route they had taken earlier. Once outside, Vader ordered the squad leader to call for the gunship, and all of them scampered up onto the deployment platform. On the building’s flat roof they discovered a well-concealed and functional turbolift shaft, five meters in diameter, transparent, and safe to use. Surveying the vast room while they were descending, Tarkin spotted the remains of a reception counter centered among stacks of metal shipping containers and exposed machines.
“No one touches anything until I’ve had a look,” he told the stormtroopers. “And take care where you walk. The doors may not be alone in being rigged.”
While Vader, Crest, and some of the others moved off to investigate the secondary entrance, Tarkin, feeling as if he were stepping back in time, began to meander through the rows created by the stacked containers and devices.
It had been just nine months after the Battle of Geonosis that Count Dooku’s scientists had succeeded in slicing into the Republic HoloNet by seeding the spaceways with hyperwave transceiver nodes of a novel design. The Separatists could have kept quiet about the infiltration and tasked the nodes to gather intelligence about Republic military operations. Instead, Dooku — as if suddenly intent on winning hearts and minds rather than defeating the Republic with his droid armies — began using the HoloNet to broadcast propaganda Shadowfeeds, providing Separatist accounts of battle wins and disinformation about Republic war crimes, and in the end spreading apprehension among the populations of the Core Worlds that a Separatist victory was imminent.
It was, however, Separatist success in jamming Republic communication relays that had brought Tarkin into play. Together with operatives of the Republic’s fledgling cryptanalysis department and elements of the Twelfth Army, Tarkin had been sent to Murkhana both to spearhead the invasion and to oversee the dismantling of the Shadowfeed operation.
Running his hands now over S-thread jammers, signal eradicators, and HoloNet chafing devices, he recalled being among the first wave of clone trooper platoons to fight their way into the building that was the source of the Shadowfeeds; then, on overpowering the Separatist forces, torturing the captive scientists into revealing the secrets of their jamming and steganographic technology, and putting to death thousands of beings who had contributed to Dooku’s scheme. The mission had constituted the first of Tarkin’s covert operations undertaken for then supreme chancellor Palpatine. Murkhana had kicked off a year of similar successes — though it had ended in Tarkin’s capture, torture, and incarceration in Citadel prison.
With the Emperor’s proclamation of the New Order, some aspects of the HoloNet had come under strict Imperial control, as much to provide the military with exclusive communications networks as to censor unauthorized news feeds.
Tarkin was completing his initial survey of the components when Vader sought him out.
“The sliding doors were engineered to trigger a blast when opened fully,” he said. “Odd that the remote failed to register the explosives.”
Tarkin gestured to the stacks of devices. “Whoever assembled this array found a way to blind the remotes.”
Vader looked around. “Imperial Security’s operative made no mention of a rigged entrance.”
Tarkin pinched his lower lip. “That could mean that the explosives were only recently installed.”
“With the building under constant surveillance?”
“The street entrances, yes,” Tarkin said. “Probably not the roof.”
Vader absorbed that in silence, then said, “Puzzling, even so. All this merely to lure and murder an investigative team?”
“I doubt that the door trap was meant for us, Lord Vader.”
“Intruders of a more ordinary sort? Would-be thieves, black marketeers?” Vader gazed about him in what struck Tarkin as mounting vexation. “Have you found any unfamiliar devices?”
“Not yet,” Tarkin said.
“Then it is all too obvious. These devices were deliberately placed where they could be discovered. This is a stage set.”
“Perhaps,” Tarkin said. “But we’re going to need to investigate every container to be certain there’s nothing new among the devices. This cache may date from the war, but that doesn’t negate that the components appear to be fully functional and capable of interrupting or corrupting HoloNet signals.”
Vader was dismissive. “Technology that has been available for nearly a decade, Governor.”
“The question is, why are these devices here?”
“Someone found them elsewhere and moved them here for safekeeping until their value could be determined.”
“That would explain the rigged doors …,” Tarkin said. “But it’s also possible that whoever originally found the cache made use of some of the components to engineer the false distress call transmitted to Sentinel Base.”
Vader fell silent for a long moment, then said, “I agree. Your proposal, then?”
Tarkin glanced around. “We cam everything and record and transmit to Coruscant any serial numbers or markings we find. Any suspect components should be relocated to the Carrion Spike and also returned to Coruscant for further analysis. The rest should be destroyed.”
Vader nodded in agreement.
Tarkin glanced around again and sighed with purpose. “We have our work cut out for us.”
“The stormtroopers can see to most of it,” Vader said. “There is someone I wish to speak with before we return to the Core.”
Tarkin showed him a questioning look.
“The Imperial Security Bureau asset who first reported the find.”
Fair game
AS THE GUNSHIP SPED back toward the center of the city, Tarkin, gazing on the devastation, thought: This might have been Eriadu had he not warned the planetary leadership that supporting Dooku would have meant inviting cataclysm.
Not every member of the planet’s ruling body had agreed with him, but in the end he’d gotten his way and Eriadu had remained loyal to the Republic. For Tarkin, though, the stewardship of his homeworld had come to an end. When word of his decision not to seek reelection became known, his aging and by then ailing father had summoned him to the family compound for a frank conversation.