“Then tell me how to disable your ship, Governor.”
Tarkin firmed his lips. “There is a weakness. If the thieves can be persuaded to lower the shields, concentrated fire on the spine where the main fuselage meets the aft flare should do the trick. We were never able to resolve the problem of properly safeguarding the hyperdrive generator while the power plant is supplying the ion drives, the deflector shields, and the weapons. It’s not so much a design flaw as an accommodation to the ship’s size in relation to her armament. Even Sienar Fleet was at a loss.”
“I will bear that in mind,” Vader said, though mostly to himself.
“Frankly, Lord Vader, I’m more concerned about what the Carrion Spike’s weapons can do to us while we’re attempting to line up what has to be a very precise laser blast.”
“Leave that to me, Governor.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Abruptly Vader poured on all speed, accelerating away from the system’s outmost planet and taking the crime lord’s ship into the starry space he had indicated earlier. But then only to loose a guttural sound of anger and frustration.
“They’ve jumped to lightspeed!”
Tarkin ground his teeth. The situation was growing worse by the moment. In star systems lacking nearby hyperspace relay stations, a ship’s pilot had to navigate by beacon or buoy, unless the ship was equipped with a sophisticated navicomputer of the sort the Carrion Spike boasted, which could plot jumps well beyond the next beacon, all the way to the Core if necessary. According to the Predator’s inferior device, the Murkhana system had no fewer than a dozen jump egresses, and most of those were into other Outer Rim systems where beacons were still more plentiful than hyperspace relay stations.
Vader broke his protracted silence to say, “They have jumped, but not far.” He stretched out his left hand to enter data into the ship’s navicomputer.
Tarkin was nonplussed. Then it dawned on him: Vader wasn’t tracking the ship; he was tracking the mysterious black sphere he had had transferred to the Carrion Spike!
Even so, his optimism was short-lived, undermined by a memory of something Jova used to say when they had turned the tables on a predator, making it the hunted rather than the hunter.
“Think first when you’re in pursuit: Is your prey trying to escape, or is it going for reinforcements? Is it perhaps looking for a temporary hiding place from which to spring at you, or — still driven by hunger — has it decided to search out a more vulnerable target?”
Soft targets
DARTH SIDIOUS WAS ANNOYED about having been disturbed from his meditations at the shrine. By the time he ascended to the pinnacle of the Palace spire to meet with Mas Amedda, he was ready to take someone’s head off.
“Must I attend to every trivial matter, Vizier?”
“I apologize, my lord. But I believe you will want to attend to this one.”
Sidious eyed him for a moment. “Murkhana,” he said in arrant disgust.
The Chagrian bowed his horned head in acknowledgment. “Just so, my lord.”
Sidious took to his tall-backed chair while Amedda readied the table’s holoprojector, then moved to stand silently by the window-wall. In the hologram that emerged, several members of Military Intelligence and the Imperial Security Bureau were grouped before a positioning grid in one of the ISB’s situation rooms.
“My Lord Emperor,” Harus Ison of ISB began, “I’m sorry—”
“Reserve your apologies for when they are most needed, Deputy Director,” Sidious said.
“Of course, my lord.” Ison swallowed hard and found his voice. “We thought it prudent to appraise you of recent developments on Murkhana.”
“I’m well aware that Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin found and investigated the cache of communications devices.”
“Of course, my lord,” Ison said. “But we have since received a subspace transmission from Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin informing us that the Carrion Spike has been seized.”
Sidious sat straighter in the chair. “Seized?”
“Yes, my lord. From a landing field on Murkhana — by unknown parties.”
Sidious used the chair’s armrest controls to mute the audiovisual feeds and swiveled to Amedda. “Why have I heard nothing of this from Lord Vader?”
“Without the Carrion Spike, neither Lord Vader nor Governor Tarkin has access to the Imperial HoloNet or other suitably encrypted communications devices. The first subspace message originated from the ambassador’s residence in Murkhana City. The second was sent from a starship in the Murkhana system.”
“Lord Vader has procured a replacement ship?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Sidious re-enabled the holofeeds to the situation room. “Proceed with your report, Deputy Director.”
Ison bowed his head once more. “Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin have commandeered the starship of a local crime lord and are in pursuit of the Carrion Spike. In their most recent transmission, they stated that they were jumping the commandeered ship to the Fial system, Coreward of Murkhana, though still far removed from the Perlemian Trade Route.”
“Do we have a military presence in that system?”
Vice Admiral Rancit stepped forward to address it. “No, my lord, we don’t. We do, however, have a presence in the Belderone system, which is nearby.”
“My lord, if I may interrupt briefly,” Ison said.
Sidious motioned with his right hand.
“My lord, most of the star systems in that region of the Tion Cluster lack hyperspace relay stations. Given the likelihood that the ship Lord Vader commandeered has only a standard navicomputer, he and Governor Tarkin will be forced to navigate buoy-to-buoy.”
“Your point?”
“Only that we face a hopeless task in trying to establish a rendezvous while the pursuit is in progress.”
Sidious swiveled the chair slightly. “Vice Admiral Rancit?”
“Military Intelligence is even now calculating and prioritizing possible jump and egress points in those local systems, and on into the Nilgaard sector. Ships can be dispatched accordingly, my lord.”
Sidious muted the feed once more, steepled his fingers, and brought them to his lips. During his meditations he had tried without success to trace a snaking current of the dark side to its source. What had it been trying to communicate to him?
No doubt Vader was tracking the Carrion Spike by focusing his attention on his meditation chamber. But why had he not sensed a disruption in the Force when Tarkin’s ship had been taken? In the private transmission he had sent from Murkhana he had dismissed the communications cache as inconsequential; nothing more than misplaced hardware left over from the war. So did his inattention owe to a lingering sense of frustration about the mission? Perhaps he was at odds with Tarkin. Or had he allowed himself to step willingly into the trap, as Sidious had encouraged him to do?
“Tell me, Deputy Director Ison,” he said when the audio feed was reestablished, “do you suspect any link between the communications devices and the theft of Governor Tarkin’s ship?”
“My lord, we are investigating the recorded evidence and serial numbers in an effort to ascertain the identities of those who gathered the components. At the moment, however, we have no leads.”
“There has to be some link, my lord,” Rancit said. “Those now in possession of the Carrion Spike had to have sliced into the ship’s security systems, and are likely the same assailants who launched the attack on Governor Tarkin’s base. That means they have now added one of the navy’s most sophisticated ships to their arsenal of warship and droid fighters.”