Death Star (12 page)

And third, Vil liked flying even more than he liked drinking.

“Gotta be a drill,” somebody said. “Not likely another prison break after that last batch we cooked.”

Vil didn’t speak to that. Somewhat to his surprise, he’d had a couple of uncomfortable nights after that experience. Yes, they had been criminal scum, and it was his job to stop said scum, and they
had
been shooting at him, but even so it hadn’t been a real contest. The
Lambda
hadn’t had a chance. He’d blown that ship out of vac and watched the remnants of the crew whirl through the coldness, freezing in clouds of their own bodily fluids. One tended to think about it as shooting blips, like in the holo sims, not people, but seeing the carnage that had resulted from his weapons had … 
Well, let’s be honest here
, Vil told himself,
since it’s all just between me
. The truth was … he’d had a few dreams.

No, not dreams. Dreams were innocuous fragments of this and that, things like not having studied for a test or flying without a craft or being naked in public. These hadn’t been dreams.

These had been
nightmares
.

Thankfully, he’d forgotten the details almost immediately after waking up, save for one night. That had stayed with him. One of the flash-frozen corpses, drifting through the void about ten meters away from the cockpit of his fighter. Its head and body had been ravaged by shrapnel to such an extent that Vil couldn’t tell if it had been male or female. He’d watched, fascinated, as the lacerated body rotated slowly, bringing its face into view. He’d noticed that, by some miracle of chance, the eyes had been untouched by the sleetstorm of metal …

And then the eyes opened.

Vil suppressed a shudder. That had been the worst. He told himself that it wasn’t unusual, that it was part of the job. That he’d get used to it.

It helped. A little.

As Vil approached the hangar, he saw the assistant to the command officer on deck waving the pilots in.

“Move like you’ve got a purpose, people! A pregnant Pa’lowick could run faster! Let’s
go
!”

“ADO,” Vil said as he approached. “What’s flyin’?”

“You and your squad, among nine others,” the ADO said. He kept waving at the still-approaching pilots, down now to only a handful. “VIP escort for the
Imperial
-class Destroyer
Devastator
.”

Vil blinked. “We got a rainbow-jacket admiral? A Moff?”

“Not exactly. The guy running this ship is more of a monotone,” said the ADO. Noting Vil’s blank look, he added, “All black.”

Vil got it then. “Darth Vader.”

“Friend of yours?”

Vil laughed. They were side by side on the stairs, almost to the flight deck. Vil said, “Never met the man—or whatever he is. Saw him fly once. TIE school, out of Imperial City Naval Base. Against Barvel.”

There was no need to specify that he was talking about Colonel Vindoo “The Shooter” Barvel, one of the most decorated TIE pilots ever. During the Clone Wars, Barvel had taken out more than thirty confirmed enemy craft in ship-to-ship combat, twice that many more probables, and nobody knew how many he hadn’t even bothered to report. Vil knew he himself was a good pilot, a hot-hand even in training, but Barvel, who had been cycled out of combat by jittery brass to make sure the Empire had a live hero to parade around as a recruiter, was the best. Even
though he was only a captain at the time, he’d been put in charge of the pilot school at ICNB. Barvel could power-dive the wings off any other craft and hit a target the size of a pleeky on the way down at top speed, port or starboard cannon, you pick which gun. In training missions he’d flown with the man, Vil had felt like a small child who could barely walk trying to keep up with a champion distance runner.

During maneuvers for the about-to-graduate pilots, Darth Vader had shown up. He didn’t have any military rank per se, but he was the Emperor’s wrist-hawk and everybody knew it. If it came from Vader’s augmented voxbox, it might as well have come from Palpatine’s lips, and you argued with it at your peril, no matter how high your rank.

Vader had watched for a time, then asked for a TIE fighter. He had climbed in, taken off, and joined the mock battle. Within seconds, his electronic guns had painted half a dozen ships, and it had come down to Vader versus Barvel. Vil, whose ship had been hit in a three-on-one early in the pretend fight, had been in a holding pattern waiting for the engagement to finish, and he’d watched it all.

Vader hadn’t exactly flown circles around Barvel, but every time The Shooter jigged or jinked, Vader was half a second ahead of him. Barvel was doing things Vil didn’t think were possible in a TIE, and Vader not only matched him, move for move, he just plain outflew him. It was—no other word for it—astounding. Vil quickly realized that Vader could have taken the flight school commander out at any time—he was only playing with him.

That had been as spooky in its own way as Vil’s nightmare. He’d never seen a human pilot move like that. Damned few alien ones either, for that matter.

After a few passes, and with what had seemed a slow, offhand, lazy series of rolls and loops, Vader came around, nailed Barvel with his training beams, and it was “Game
over.” All the pilots hanging there in space had to reach up and shut their mouths manually.

The ADO looked down the hallway, but no more pilots were inbound. He turned and pointed. “Better get to your ship, Dance.” A short pause, then: “Vader’s good, huh?”

“Better than good. If it was him against me, I’d just overload my engine and blow myself up—that way I’d get to pick my own moment to die.”

What Vil hadn’t mentioned, mostly because he still didn’t believe it himself, was that the mechanic who’d serviced Vader’s borrowed TIE fighter afterward had come out of the bay shaking his head. The nav and targeting comps had been turned off, he’d said. Cockpit recorder showed that Vader had done that
before
he’d left the dock. So if the mechanic was to be believed, not only had Vader beaten the best pilot in the navy as easily as if Barvel had been a crop duster on some backrocket world, he had done so on
manual
.

Which was simply
impossible
.

“Go,” the ADO said. “Hit vac—you don’t want to be late to the party.”

“No, sir.”
Not that Vader needs the escort
, Vil thought.
Nobody here could get in his way
.

Vil hurried onto the deck, his mechanic waving him to his TIE. “Been takin’ a nap, rocketjock? Get in!”

As Vil clamped down his helmet and checked his readings, he had a moment to ponder the purpose of the escort.
Darth Vader, commanding a big Destroyer. Wonder what he’s doing here?

Had to be something big. You could have a headful of hard vac and still suss that out.

The air lock doors opened. Vil lit his engines and was gone.

T
arkin frowned as he waited on the receiving deck for Vader to arrive. It was certainly true that the Emperor could send whomever he liked, whenever he liked, to check on the station’s progress. Tarkin had no reason to be anything but grateful to the Emperor—how many Grand Moffs were there, after all? Who had elevated him to that puissant position and given him command of the most important military project in galactic history?

All that was true. And he
was
grateful—to Palpatine. But one feels differently toward the one holding the leash than toward the one on the leash.

There was something about Vader that set his teeth on edge. It wasn’t just the prosthetic suit with its mask and breather, nor the fact that he couldn’t see the eyes behind those polarized lenses. Vader had power, both personal and as the Emperor’s tool, and Tarkin’s sense of him was that he cared about as much for a human life standing next to him as he did about a mistfly in the far-off swamps of Neimoidia. Standing next to Vader was like standing next to a giant thermal grenade—it might just go off at any moment.

And the man in black had a temper, no doubt about that. Thus far, he had not unleashed it in Tarkin’s direction, but Tarkin had seen it loosed on others, and those who thought to give Vader grief quickly realized that it was a fatal mistake.

No matter how much people decried the Force as being a superstition that hadn’t saved the Jedi from annihilation, it was real enough to enable Vader to stop a man’s heart or keep the breath from his lungs simply by willing it. Not to mention knocking blaster bolts from the air with that lightsaber of his. True, nothing would be able to withstand the force of this battle station’s armament, once it was operational. But it wouldn’t be fully operational for another few months, and anybody who was both strong enough and foolish enough to slay Vader would have to deal with the Emperor’s wrath—and
he
made Vader seem like an Iridonian hugglepup.

The shuttle hatch opened. With most military VIPs, there would be an honor guard of elite stormtroopers or even Imperial Red Guards emerging first. Not so with Vader. He strode through the hatch and down the ramp alone, his cape billowing behind him in the wind of his own passage, fearless, not the least bit worried about any possible danger. He was arrogant, but then he had reason to be.

Tarkin waited, his admirals shifting nervously behind him. Some of them couldn’t stand the very idea of a man like Vader, who existed outside the chain of command and was able to come and go as he pleased, not truly subject to military orders. Well, it was what it was, and there was no help for it.

Vader approached to stand before Tarkin. He always seemed larger and taller than Tarkin remembered, a dark presence, a force, as it were, of nature. “Grand Moff Tarkin,” he said, offering not even the slightest nod of a military bow. Vader bent the knee to no one, save the Emperor, Tarkin knew.

“Lord Vader.” There was no point in offering small talk or pleasantries; Vader had no use for them. “Shall we begin the tour?” Tarkin asked, extending one hand in a gesture that encompassed the entirety of the station.

“Proceed.”

“This way. We’ll take my lighter.”

Vader could sense the hostility of some of the men behind Tarkin, but that was of no importance. Hostile words or actions he could and would deal with, but thoughts of the weak-minded were no threat. Tarkin, oily and smooth as always, was a man who knew where his best interests lay, and as long as his own plans matched those of the Emperor, he was a useful tool. Which was good, because Vader would not hesitate to use that tool.

The Rebels were turning out to be more troublesome than many had expected. The Emperor had known it would be thus, of course; the resistance had not been a surprise to him. The Emperor was completely in concert with the dark side of the Force. He was the most powerful Sith who had ever existed.

As would Vader be, someday.

But that was in the future. Now he had more mundane duties. There were problems with the construction of this station. When Vader left, those problems would be corrected. He would return as necessary to correct more troubles as they appeared, and he would also return at times when things were proceeding smoothly, just to remind Tarkin and his senior officers that the Emperor’s eye was always watching them.

Always.

T
he N-One sector, a huge area equal to one twenty-fourth of a hemisphere, had been partly pressurized and heated, so at least Teela didn’t have to wear a vac suit to work anymore. Thank the stars for that; she was sick to death of ending each day fatigued by the effort of manipulating the stiff joints and servos, the limited vision, and the inability to scratch—to name only a few problems. She’d worn vac suits before on jobs, and those experiences hadn’t been pleasant, but this was by far the worst, because the Empire, no doubt in a cost-saving effort, had mandated the use of outmoded constant-volume suits instead of the newer, elastic one-piece designs.

The suits had been necessary for a time, however. On a project this size there was no way to complete the entire hull, pressurize it all, and then start building the interior—the amount of air necessary would be tremendous. Once the vessel was functional, then the multitude of converters installed in every sector could easily handle the task, but until those were online, air would have to be sucked from a planetary atmosphere and hauled up out of the gravity well by cargo ship—either that, or build a huge conversion plant in space and truck water to that, which would be even harder. A tanker full of water was more unwieldy than one full of air bottles, and without proper heat it just turned into blocks of ice when you unloaded it, which in
turn resulted in problems with increased volume. The sheer magnitude of the project wouldn’t allow a full exterior hull construction first.