Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [116]
Suddenly, with a miracle of good luck, space around the Eriadu System rippled and an Imperial Star Destroyer stabbed out of hyperspace. He learned later that it was Admiral Motti’s flagship; Motti had come to escort Tarkin, though the Grand Moff had not asked for it.
The Star Destroyer locked onto the distress signal and came toward the would-be Rebel assassins, its turbolasers ripping through the darkness with spears of disintegrating light.
Lemelisk looked up and saw the three attacking Y-wings fire again at the Lambda shuttle, this time destroying it utterly. As it exploded, the Y-wings split off in three different directions and vanished into the cloaking distance of space.…
As they spun around, dizzy inside the careening lifepod, Lemelisk felt as if he were about to be spacesick. The engineer’s part of his mind wondered distantly just how much of a mess he would make if he vomited into the confined atmosphere of the craft as it whirled around like a child’s toy.
“Very strange,” Lemelisk commented. “It appeared as if those Rebel ships wanted to rescue your Calamarian slave.”
Tarkin was incredulous. “Rescue Ackbar? Why should they bother with an animal?”
Lemelisk shrugged as Admiral Motti’s Star Destroyer followed the distress beacon and approached them for rescue. “I’ve never understood the Rebel mind,” he said.…
Later, they recovered in the Death Star’s infirmary rooms. Lemelisk nursed a broken nose, and Tarkin lay bandaged from sprains and superficial burns. They received the grim news that the assassination attempt on Tarkin had been only part of the Rebel treachery. A group of commandos had succeeded in stealing a copied set of the full Death Star blueprints, the technical readouts that specified every system, each component, all the weaponry capabilities of the great battle station, and smuggled them to the Toprawa Relay Station, from which point they had vanished.
A young corporal with spit-polished boots, clean uniform, and neatly trimmed hair stood nervously as he delivered his message, afraid that Tarkin might fly into a rage and order the young man’s execution. “Darth Vader is even now tracking down the Toprawan Rebels, sir. He anticipates capturing them before they can deliver their stolen plans.”
Lemelisk watched Tarkin and was amazed by the Grand Moff’s seeming lack of concern. He gave a mysterious thin smile while his hard eyes flashed. “Seeing the full details may even increase their fear of this battle station,” Tarkin said. “They won’t find a flaw.” He looked over at Lemelisk, who felt foolish with the cumbersome bandage across his nose. “My Death Star is invincible.”
Lemelisk leaned back on the infirmary bed and hoped Tarkin was right.
Now, as he cruised in the inspection scooter over the outer hull of the Darksaber, Lemelisk didn’t have such confidence in the new Hutt superweapon. He would have to chastise the Taurill for their shoddy work once again, and the little creatures would scramble to perform the necessary reparations … until the next screwup.
But the Taurill weren’t the only problem.
Sulamar’s antique computer cores kept crashing, no matter how carefully Lemelisk reprogrammed them and backed them up. The devices must have been defective from the time of manufacture, and now they were so outdated few people remembered how to fix them.
Some of the thick metal sheeting purchased from low-bid contractors was found to have millions of micro holes—bad enough for structural material, but this had been intended for the engine shielding! This entire Darksaber project was one misery after another.
The front-end girders of the kilometers-long cylinder didn’t exactly match up with the aft girders in the final assembly, and if the superlaser was not perfectly aligned when Durga fired the weapon, the deadly beam could vaporize the Darksaber rather than its intended target.
And there was more.…
His groan echoed inside the inspection scooter. He had overseen repairs to each of these problems, but finding so many