Vader had swung abruptly to Tarkin on the word coincidence, and now the Dark Lord was in motion, pushing crates aside as he stormed about — without actually touching any of them.
“This ship rendezvoused with the Carrion Spike. I’m certain of it.”
Tarkin threw Crest a questioning look.
“If so, Lord Vader,” the stormtrooper said, “there’s no evidence of the ships linking up. No evidence in the comm board showing intership communication, and no evidence in the docking ring’s air lock memory showing that the Reticent was umbilicaled to another ship.”
Vader took a moment to reply, and when he did it was to pose a question to Tarkin. “Why would the dissidents elect to send us a ship, in any case?”
Tarkin smiled faintly, aware that the question was rhetorical. “To throw us off the scent, if I recall your phrase correctly. To give us plenty to deal with while they’re busy making plans to strike elsewhere.”
Vader turned and proceeded to the cargo hold ramp. “Let us see what the captain of this scrap heap has to say for himself.”
“You are not an itinerant merchant, Captain,” Vader said, gesticulating with his right hand. “You are in league with a group of dissidents intent on destroying military installations as a means of undermining the sovereignty of the Empire.”
A Koorivar with a long cranial horn, the Reticent’s naked and shackled captain was suspended a meter overhead, captive of a containment field produced by a device whose prototype had been manufactured on Geonosis long before the war. As far as Tarkin knew, the Executrix was the only capital ship in the Imperial fleet to have such an appliance, which created and maintained the field by means of disk-like generators bolted to the deck and to the ceiling directly above. The detention center’s version of prisoner interdiction, the field required that the detainee wear magnetic cuffs that not only anchored him in place but also monitored life signs: Too powerful a field could stop a being’s heart or cause irreversible brain damage. As well — and as if the field itself weren’t enough — the cuffs could be used as torture devices, capable of unleashing powerful electrical charges. Vader, however, had no need to utilize the cuffs. His dark powers had the captain writhing in pain.
“Lord Vader,” Tarkin said, “we should at least give him an opportunity to respond.”
Reluctantly, Vader lowered his hand, and the Koorivar’s ridged facial features relaxed in cautious relief. “I’m a merchant and nothing more,” he managed to say. “Torture me as you must, but it won’t change the fact that we came to Obroa-skai on business.”
“The business of conspiracy,” Vader said. “The business of sabotage.”
The Koorivar shook his head weakly. “The business of buying and selling. That is what we do, and only what we do.” He paused. “Not all of us were Separatists.”
Tarkin smiled to himself. It was true: Not all Koorivar population centers and worlds had thrown in with Dooku. Nor had all Sy Myrthians, a pair of which made up the rest of the crew.
But why would the captain say that?
“Why do you make a point of stating that fact, Captain?” he asked.
The Koorivar’s bleary eyes found him. “The Empire demands retribution for the war, and so it lumps the innocent with the guilty and holds all of us responsible.”
“Responsible for what, Captain? Do you believe that the Separatists were wrong to secede from the Republic?”
“I move about to keep from having to decide who is right and who is wrong.”
“A being without a homeworld,” Tarkin said. “As your species was once without a planet.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You’re lying,” Vader countered. “Admit that you swore allegiance to the Separatist Alliance, and that you and your current allies are the ones seeking retribution.”
The Koorivar squeezed his eyes closed, anticipating pain Vader opted not to deliver.
“Tell me about the broker who provides you with leads,” Tarkin said.
“Knotts. A human who works out of Lantillies. Contact him. He’ll verify everything I’ve been telling you.”
“He helped you procure the Reticent?”
“He loaned us the credits, yes.”
“And you’ve been in his employ for three years.”
“Not in his employ. We’re freelance. He provides jobs to several crews, and we accept jobs from several brokers.”
“How did you originally find your way to a human broker on Lantillies?”
“An advert of some sort. I don’t recall precisely.”
“This time he instructed you to travel from Taris to Thustra?”
“Yes.”
“A rush job,” Tarkin surmised.
“The medcenter relies on its Sephi flyers for medical evacuations.”
“So, in and out,” Tarkin said. “No interaction with anyone other than the provider.”
“No interaction. Exactly as you say.”
“And no ship-to-ship interaction.”
“There was no need. The supplies were groundside on Thustra.”
Tarkin circled the Koorivar. “In your recent travels, have you seen holovids of attacks launched against Imperial facilities?”
“We try to ignore the media.”
“Clueless, as well as homeless,” Tarkin said, “is that it?”
The captain sneered at him. “Guilty as charged.”
Tarkin traded glances with Vader. “An interesting turn of phrase, Captain,” Tarkin said.
Vader loosed a sound that approximated a growl. “We’re not in some Coruscant courtroom, Governor. Questions of this sort are useless.”
“You’d prefer to break him with pain.”
“If need be. Unless, of course, you object.”
Vader’s menacing tone rolled off Tarkin. “I suspect that our captain will go insane long before he breaks. But I also agree that we’re wasting our time. The longer we spend here, the greater the chance that the Carrion Spike will elude us entirely.” He watched the Koorivar peripherally as he said it.
Vader looked directly at the captain. “Yes, this one is stronger than he looks, and he is not innocent. I want more time with him. For all we know the dissidents abandoned your ship at Thustra and transferred to the YT freighter. He may be one of them.”
“Then someone else must have the Carrion Spike, as there was no sign of her there.” Tarkin glanced at the captain a final time and forced an exhalation. “I’ll leave you to your work, Lord Vader.”
The Koorivar’s anguished screams accompanied him down the long corridor that led to the detention center’s turbolifts.
Teller found Anora in the corvette’s darkened cockpit, swiveling absently in one of the chairs, her bare feet crossed atop the instrument console. Salikk and the others were resting, as was the Carrion Spike, a slave to sundry deep-space gravities.
“We’re almost done,” he said, sinking into an adjacent chair.
Her face fell. “There has to be a more comforting way of saying that.”