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In the Outer Rim, meanwhile, the myriad species of former Separatist worlds find themselves no better off than they were before the civil war. Stripped of weaponry and resources, they have been left to fend for themselves in an Empire that has largely turned its back on them.
The stars know, my feet have logged more kilometers aboard Star Destroyers than during surface deployments, even in a facility of this size.”
Just below each shoulder were narrow pockets designed to accommodate short cylinders that contained coded information about the wearer.
stations, it was difficult enough to hear oneself think, and yet Tarkin was receiving updates through an ear bead as well as communicating continually with Sentinel’s command center through a speck of a microphone adhered to his voice box.
“Sir, is this an unannounced readiness test?” someone asked. “More like a bunch of Separatists who didn’t get the message they lost the war,” another said. Perhaps that was the explanation, Tarkin thought. Imperial forces had destroyed or appropriated most of the capital ships produced for and by the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
The project had reached a point where it had to rely on countless suppliers; and though each was being kept in the dark regarding the final destination of their contributions, millions of beings, perhaps tens of millions of beings galaxywide, were now involved with the battle station in one capacity or another.
The planet was transformed from just another Outer Rim wilderness to a civilized world worth considering for inclusion in the Republic by adventurous pioneers who had been granted permission by Coruscant to procure and settle new territories, either by cutting deals with indigenous populations or simply by overrunning them, and finally to establish trading colonies capable of furnishing the Core with much-needed resources.
They never missed an opportunity to remind their son that life was inequitable, and that only those with an appetite for personal glory could succeed. One needed to be willing to crush underfoot anything or anyone. Discipline and order were the keys, and law was the only unanswerable response to chaos.
“Triumphing over nature means better lives for sentients, but dominance is sustained only by bringing order to chaos and establishing law where none exists. On Eriadu, the goal was always to rid the planet of any creature that hadn’t grown to fear us, so that we could rule supreme. Up the well, outside Eriadu’s envelope, the goal is the same, but with a different caliber of predators. When you’re old enough to be taken there, you’re going to find yourself faced with prey who are every bit as quick thinking, well armed, and determined to succeed as you are. And unless you’ve taken the lessons
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Outland had Q’anah and her crew transferred to one of the stolen containers, whose sublight engines were programmed to send the ship slowly but inexorably toward the system’s sun.
As repulsors eased the ship down through the busy skyways and into the court, Tarkin realized that the Emperor’s current residence had once been the headquarters for the Jedi—though practically all that remained of the Order’s elegant Temple complex was its copse of five skyscraping spires, now the pinnacle of a sprawling amalgam of blockish edifices with sloping façades.
“Cadet Tarkin, I’m Senator Palpatine.” “I know who you are,” Tarkin said, shaking hands with him. “You represent Naboo in the Senate. Your homeworld and mine are practically galactic neighbors.”
These scions of wealthy Core families who thought nothing of journeying across the stars had forgotten or perhaps never known what it meant to stand or sleep beneath them, far from artifical light or sentient contact, in an isolated wilderness on a far-flung world.
TWENTY LEVELS DOWN, in a courtroom not unlike the one in which Tarkin had tried to make a case against Jedi apprentice Ahsoka Tano for murder and sedition during the Clone Wars, stood the Emperor’s second, Darth Vader, gesticulating with his gauntleted right hand as he harangued a score of nonhumans gathered in an area reserved for the accused.
Tarkin had long nursed suspicions about who Vader was beneath the black face mask and helmet, as well as how he had come to be, but he knew better than to give open voice to his thoughts.
Many believed that the Emperor’s willingness to grant so much authority to such a being heralded the shape of things to come, for it was beyond dispute that Vader was the Empire’s first terror weapon.
Vader might very well be Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, whom Tarkin had fought beside during the Clone Wars, and for whom he had developed a grudging appreciation.
Interestingly, the Emperor’s advisers were also a kind of clique, having attached themselves to the Emperor since his early years as an untested senator from Naboo.
ISB functioned under the auspices of COMPNOR, the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order, which itself had arisen from the dregs of the Commission for the Protection of the Republic,
Sidious’s tortured face was a mask. “I wonder if you do … But let us return to Moff Tarkin for a moment. Has it never struck you that all three of us—you and Tarkin and I, the Empire’s architects, if you will—hail from worlds that occupy but a narrow slice of galactic space? Naboo, Tatooine, Eriadu … all within an arc of less than thirty degrees.”
“Valorum didn’t win the election; he was merely allowed to win. The Senate’s special-interest groups require a chancellor who can be easily entangled in bureaucratic doubletalk and arcane procedure. That is how loopholes are maintained and illegalities overlooked.
“You will be Eriadu’s finest leader, Wilhuff.” “Thank you, Sheev,” Tarkin said, with obvious sincerity, and using Palpatine’s given name.
The Force had endowed the Jedi with wondrous powers, but their biggest failing was in not having used the Force in all ways possible to bring the war to a quick end. By remaining faithful to their ethical code, they had allowed the war to drag on and spiral downward into a meaningless bloodbath.
Dooku became the focus of galactic attention, backing coups on Ryloth, meddling in the affairs of Kashyyyk, Sullust, Onderon, and many other worlds, and spurning all opportunities to negotiate with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.
The two of them were in Sidious’s lair, a small rock-walled enclosure beneath the deepest of the Palace’s several sublevels that had once been an ancient Sith shrine. That the Jedi had raised their Temple over the shrine had for a thousand years been one of the most closely guarded secrets of those Sith Lords who had perpetuated and implemented the revenge strategy of the Jedi Order’s founders.
In truth, that power had seeped upward and outward since its entombment, infiltrating the hallways and rooms above, and weakening the Jedi Order much as the Sith Masters themselves had secretly infiltrated the corridors of political power and toppled the Republic.
Darth Plagueis had once remarked that “the Force can strike back.” The death of a star didn’t necessarily curtail its light, and indeed Sidious could see evidence of that sometimes even in Vader—the barest flicker of persistent light. Attacks like the one directed against Tarkin’s moon base and discoveries like the one on Murkhana were distractions to his ultimate goal of making certain that the Force could not strike back, and that whatever faint light of hope remained could be snuffed out for good.
The Goliath could have been carrying a squadron of the new—and seemingly disposable—TIE fighters.
“Palpatine turned a blind eye to what was going on in the Seswenna—the deportations, the purges, the atrocities committed against any who found themselves on the Tarkins’ extermination list.
“You can think of the Carrion Spike as just a ship, but she’s more than that. She’s an expression of who Tarkin is; a small-scale example of the lengths he’s willing to go. Stealth, speed, power … That’s Tarkin, the omniscient, ubiquitous Imperial enforcer.
He turned his attention to the screens as turbolaser beams from the Star Destroyer’s starboard-side turrets found the Lux-400, and it vanished in a short-lived fireball. “The Truant is no longer on the wanted list, sir. Minimal collateral casualties.”
The subsurface Sith shrine wasn’t the sole area in the Palace where the dark side of the Force was strong. Rooms and corridors throughout the lower levels still bore traces of the resentful fury Darth Vader had unleashed in the final days of the Clone Wars.
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.
Rancit snarled. “I won’t beg you, Vader.” “It would not affect the outcome in any case.”
“With permission, Governor Tarkin, we have no way of warning the friendlies in our path.” Tarkin firmed his lips. “They’ll get out of our way or they won’t, Commander.”
“We need to tighten our hold over the Outer Systems,” the Emperor continued. “You will be in charge of that, Moff Tarkin. Or should I say Grand Moff Tarkin.” Tarkin’s gaped in genuine surprise. “Grand Moff?”
The media took to calling it “the Tarkin Doctrine,” and some commentators began to wonder if he wasn’t destined to become the new voice of the Empire.
When after several hours of ragged flight the plateau and surrounding volcanic terrain came into view, he felt as if he had never left; and indeed he hadn’t, because he had carried the place within him wherever he had ventured. He had been accused by lovers and others of being heartless, but it wasn’t true; it was simply that his heart was here, in this pristine part of his homeworld.
“I wanted us to be looking each other in the eye when I killed you.” Tarkin grinned faintly. “Sadly predictable, Captain. And so unnecessary.”
“Need I remind you that we fought on the same side in the Clone Wars?” Tarkin said. “We fought to prevent the galaxy from splintering, and we achieved our goal. But where I’ve put that war behind me, you appear to be still waging it. You’d have the galaxy fracture again?”
