The clandestine outpost responsible for overseeing much of the research for the deep-space battle station.
But Teller wasn’t there for long; he had vanished shortly after the events at Antar 4 and hadn’t been seen since. Some in Military Intelligence believed that he had been assassinated by COMPNOR agents, but others were convinced that it was Teller who had not only fed information about Antar 4 to Anora Fair and Hask Taff, but also been instrumental in spiriting the media partners to safety hours before they were to have been disappeared by COMPNOR.
Tarkin eased off the castered stool and began to pace the length of the massive table, all the while regarding the four projected holoimages. Was it possible that some or all of them were involved in the pirating of the Carrion Spike? He stopped to mull it over, and shook his head. The odds were good that Teller and Knotts knew each other, in that they had answered to the same case officer at Republic Intelligence; also that Teller had approached the journalists with his story. But none of the four was a starship pilot, much less an engineer capable of managing the corvette’s sophisticated instruments and systems.
Returning to the stool, Tarkin re-summoned the lengthy file devoted to Antar 4.
The Republic databases were difficult to navigate, as much of the information had been deleted or redacted, or was in the process of being altered and “reinterpreted.” Once he had successfully wormed his way into the appropriate archives, however, he was able to narrow the parameters of his search for Republic assets associated with the resistance. Ultimately the distant computers provided the names of several of Teller’s partisan subordinates who had escaped execution on the moon and were at least worthy of consideration. There was, for example, a Gotal starship pilot, identified in the archives only as “Salikk,” and a Koorivar munitions and surveillance expert listed only as “Cala.”
Tarkin extracted holoimages of the twin-horned humanoid and the single-horned near-human and placed them on the far side of the holograms of Fair and Taff; then, changing his mind, he moved them to float between those of Teller and Knotts.
A tremor of excitement coursed through him.
He propelled the castered stool to the HoloNet array and contacted the escort carrier, Goliath, ordering the specialist he eventually spoke with to forward from the ship’s database a record of his transmission with the Phindian administrator of the fuel tanker. When the recording arrived, he extracted the image of the scar-faced, red-haired human who had requisitioned fuel cells and ordered the computer to compare the hologram of Teller to the bogus Imperial commander with the ocular implant.
In short order, text flashed above the holotable between the two holograms:
MATCH: 99.9 %
Tarkin’s jaw fell open in wonder as he stared at the man who had stolen his ship.
Shifting his gaze between his dictated text and the holograms of the suspects, he began to think through everything from scratch.
Yes, Teller could have learned about the Carrion Spike during his short tenure at Desolation Station. And it would have been easy enough for him to persuade “Salikk” and “Cala” to join him, since he had probably been responsible for exfiltrating them from Antar 4—just as he’d been responsible for saving the lives of Fair and Taff by whisking them from Coruscant. At that point, Teller would have had a pilot, an operations and munitions specialist, and two HoloNet experts.
Tarkin ran a hand down over his mouth and took hold of his chin.
Something was missing; someone was missing.
He reentered the top-secret database to scan the few reports he could access relating to Desolation Station.
Teller wasn’t the only being who had disappeared from the secret facility. Motivated by grievances against the Empire, many had fled and become fugitives. The count was so high, in fact, that COMPNOR had compiled a most-wanted list of missing scientists and technicians who had held high-priority security clearances. The disappearances were often offered up as an explanation for harassment attacks against Imperial bases and installations.
Tarkin scrolled through the list several times, returning after each read-through to a Mon Cal starship systems engineer named Artoz, who had gone missing shortly after Teller. “Dr. Artoz,” as he was apparently affectionately known, was a former member of the Mon Cal Knights, a group that had fought against his planet’s Separatist-aligned Quarren. Artoz certainly would have known about the Carrion Spike, as parts for the corvette’s stygian crystal stealth system had been manufactured at Mon Cal shipyards after the concept-design team had given up on attempts to utilize hibridium.
Tarkin blinked, rubbed his eyes, and stared at the midair holograms.
What about Bracchia, the Koorivar asset on Murkhana? Was he involved in the plot, despite the part he had played in procuring a replacement starship?
Were the Crymorah crime families involved?
What about the crew of the freighter Reticent? Had they perhaps been aboard the cobbled-together warship that had attacked Sentinel Base?
Then there was the matter of the warship itself. Who had funded the purchase of the modules, droids, and starfighters? Where and by whom had the ship been assembled? Just how wide reaching was the conspiracy? Did it involve only former Republic Intelligence operatives, or did it penetrate Imperial agencies, as well?
Sentients, like animals, have their fussy behaviors, Jova would say. Learn the particulars of one, and you begin to understand the entire species.
If Tarkin’s hypothesis about Antar 4 being the nexus of the conspiracy was correct, could the involvement of the Reticent’s crew owe to something as simple as having lost friends or relatives to the mass executions? Relatives who were perhaps affiliated with Teller’s partisans?
Tarkin continued to scan the 3-D images.
If he was right and he was actually looking at those who had stolen his ship and discovered how to replicate the Clone Wars Shadowfeeds, then as it happened they were not former Separatists nursing a grudge against the Empire, but rather former Republican loyalists with a vendetta.
Supreme Chancellor Palpatine’s onetime allies had become the Emperor’s new foes.
Saving his research to an encrypted file, Tarkin thought: The trail continues beyond where you lose it.
Were the dissidents leading him on a chase calculated to disguise their actual objective?
The thread that had begun to unspool at Sentinel Base could end at only one point.
The Carrion Spike stumbled out of hyperspace to an interstellar reversion point ten parsecs from Nouane. The near miss in the autonomous region had left the corvette so rattled that, for a long while, the damaged navicomputer couldn’t even establish where the ship was. It was easier now to list the instruments that were still functioning than those that were damaged beyond repair.
“We have two forward laser cannons and one starboard battery,” Cala reported to the others in the corvette’s main cabin, where Artoz was tending to Salikk’s facial injuries. “Shields are down to nothing. Hull armor’s the only thing protecting us from a collision with space dust. Hyperdrive motivator is marginal, but probably good for one, possibly two more jumps—”
“One is all we need,” Teller said, while the ship groaned like a wounded animal and Salikk’s shed fur wafted in all directions.
“Stealth systems and sublight drives are hit or miss,” the Koorivar continued. “Same with communications and the HoloNet.”