Harus Ison was shaking his head. “There’s no proof of that. We don’t have enough information to establish a solid connection.”
Sidious took a moment to consider the options, then said, “Vice Admiral Rancit, instruct your analysts to continue their calculations. You will also inform the Admiralty that their resources in the Belderone system should be prepared to jump to whatever target systems Lord Vader and Governor Tarkin deem significant.” He leaned toward the holocam’s lens. “Deputy Director Ison and the rest of you are to devote yourselves to unraveling the intentions of our new enemy.”
“Imperial Security will not rest until it has done so,” Ison said with a stiff bow of his head.
“We will apprehend them, my lord,” Rancit added. “Even if that requires repositioning half the capital ships in the fleet.”
The Carrion Spike reverted to realspace in the Fial system with the eyes of the six shipjackers focused on the main display of the sensor suite.
“Anything?” Teller asked Cala.
“No sign of the Predator so far.”
Teller waited a long moment, then breathed a guarded sigh of relief and got to his feet. “Time to get down to business.” He turned to Salikk. “Coordinates for Galidraan?”
Salikk watched the navicomputer. “Coming up.”
The words had scarcely left the Gotal’s full-lipped mouth when Cala said, “Teller!”
“I knew it, I knew it,” Hask said, pacing through tight circles while Teller hurried back to the sensor suite.
Cala was sitting stiffly in the chair, staring fixedly at the display. “The Predator!”
“Right on cue,” Artoz said from the far side of the command cabin.
Teller blinked in disbelief.
In a gesture of concern, Cala touched his forehead below the dangling headcloth. “It’s the Predator, and she’s coming for us all speed.”
“Not even Vader could do this,” Teller said. “There’s a tracking device hidden somewhere aboard this ship.”
“Or on the hull or concealed in a landing strut or just about anywhere,” Hask said. “But unless you want to power down and perform a full EVA search you better come up with a revised plan.”
Teller clenched his jaw. “We’re not revising anything. Not now, not anytime.” He glanced around him.
Artoz and Salikk nodded, then Cala and Anora, and finally Hask.
Teller rolled his head through a circle to work the kinks out of his neck and nodded to Hask. “You’ve got the comm board.” As Cala stood up from the chair, Teller added: “Doc, you and Cala better get yourselves positioned.” Then he turned to Salikk to say: “Jump us to Galidraan.”
Seated in the copilot’s chair, Tarkin watched Vader expectantly as the Predator emerged from hyperspace.
“Full ahead,” the Dark Lord said.
Tarkin was glad to oblige, though he saw nothing through the viewports but star-strewn space and nothing on the sensor screens but background noise.
One moment Vader’s gloved hands were clamped tight on the yoke, then they flew to the navigation console. “They’ve jumped to lightspeed again.”
“Just as I would have,” Tarkin said.
Vader fell silent, then lifted his head as if just roused from a nap and swiveled to the navicomputer display, the fingers of his left hand punching the control pad keys.
“Galidraan,” he said at last.
Tarkin gave him a moment to complete the request for jump coordinates. “The chamber,” he said. “That’s how you’re tracking them.”
Vader glanced at him, as unreadable as ever, but said: “Very discerning of you, Governor.”
Tarkin called up a star map of the Galidraan system and began to study it. “An even shorter jump. Two populated planets.” He frowned in uncertainty. “Why not jump farther afield? An error in judgment?”
Vader made no reply.
Tarkin retrieved additional information on the system. “An Imperial space station in fixed orbit at Galidraan Three.” The onscreen image of the station showed it to be an outmoded wheel with numerous space docks radiating from the perimeter.
“There is little point in alerting the station,” Vader said, “as we will arrive long before a subspace transmission.”
“The station won’t be able see the Carrion Spike coming, in any event.”
Vader grunted and reached for the hyperdrive control arm. Beyond the viewports the starfield elongated, and the Predator leapt to lightspeed.
Tarkin sat back in his chair, allowing his vision to adjust to the mottled corridor the ship had entered. No past or future here, he told himself. Time’s blank canvas. And yet he couldn’t keep his thoughts from running wild and in all directions.
Reflecting on Jova’s sage advice, he could recall countless instances of each scenario playing out during his years of training on the plateau. Animals had escaped despite the team’s best efforts to track and hunt them down. Others had hidden and sprung from concealment, on one occasion nearly making a meal of the Rodians had Jova, Tarkin, and Zellit not come to their rescue. Some with braying calls had summoned reinforcements too numerous for the humans and Rodians to compete with, and they had been the ones to go hungry. And yes, there had been numerous instances of hunted animals skulking off to sniff out more vulnerable game, softer targets. In deep space, similar circumstances had transpired. Pirate groups had gone hungry, sounded calls for support, abandoned the Greater Seswenna for less fortified zones, and employed every method of concealment, taking every advantage of the glower of starlight, the glittering tails of comets, iridescent clouds of interstellar gas.
Again Tarkin tried to assemble all the pieces: the counterfeit distress call, the sneak attack on Sentinel, the bait set out on Murkhana, the theft of the ship, and now the flight.
But to where? To what end?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vader prepare the Predator for the transition to sublight. The timeless corridor narrowed and vanished and the starlines compacted to pinpoints of light, skewing slightly as the ship reverted to realspace. No sooner had Vader engaged the ion drives than proximity alarms began to squeal and something large and white caromed off the forward deflector shield.
Tarkin quickly captured an image of the object on one of the display screens. It was the mangled and frosted body of a stormtrooper.
In the middle distance, fiery explosions flared at the edge of Galidraan III’s atmospheric envelope. Plumes of incandescence, like stellar prominences, erupted into space.
Vader firewalled the throttle and the Predator raced deeper into the system, the space station coming into unassisted view, an arc of its silvery rim blown wide open and hemorrhaging gas, flames, objects, and bodies. The source of the destruction was invisible to the naked eye and the Predator’s scanners, making it appear as if green packets of bundled energy were being fired from deep space. Even so, particle-beam weapons emplaced along the station’s curved outer surface were returning fusillades that streamed futilely into the void. Like some sea creature lunging forward to chew flesh and withdraw before it could be counterattacked, the invisible menace continued to advance and retreat, its lasers opening surgical lacerations along the spokes of the wheel as if intent on separating the rim from the hub. Larger explosions blossomed, along with dense clusters of superheated ejecta.
Tarkin bent to the controls, searching for a heat signature, gravitational flux, evidence of propellant glow, anything that might pinpoint the location of the Carrion Spike, all the while well aware that the ship was beyond his efforts to track. She could conceal herself from any sensor, contain her own reflection and heat, accelerate out of danger, maneuver beyond the capacity of any ship her size. But worse still was Tarkin’s realization about her new crew: They weren’t mere shipjackers; they were, as Vader had intuited early on, dissidents. Partisans with a deadly agenda to fulfill.