Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [42]
“Yes, Lord Durga,” Sulamar said, bowing quickly and stepping back. His face became the color of soggy white cheese, and he glared at Lemelisk as if the engineer had done something wrong.
Lemelisk focused his attention on Durga, who was the most important enemy/ally at the moment. “Tell me, Lord Durga, did you get the Death Star plans?” Lemelisk felt his heart rise to his throat, and he unconsciously rubbed at the rough stubble on his cheeks and chin, scratched the shocks of white hair on his head. He had worked hard on those plans, spending so much of his life first laboring with Qwi Xux inside Maw Installation to develop the concept and the prototype, then spending months with the resources of the Empire to build the first enormous battle station.
Durga’s enormous mouth bent upward like twisted rubber. With a small hand he inserted a data cylinder into a player nestled among the cushions at his side. The projector glowed, sending beams through the pink and blue smoke. A wire-frame diagram of Lemelisk’s first-order blueprints appeared, rotating a three-dimensional sphere that showed layers within layers of deck plans, computer centers, defensive installations, energy storage areas—and the planet-destroying superlaser that ran through its axis.
General Sulamar rubbed his hands together, his face young and boyish again. His grin made him look like a narrow-faced rodent. “Excellent,” Sulamar said. “Work must begin at once.”
Durga scowled at him. “General Sulamar, I am in charge of this project.”
“Of course, Lord Durga,” Sulamar said—but his eyes remained fixed hungrily on the Death Star plans.
Bevel Lemelisk decided to use the awed moment to his advantage. “Lord Durga, if I might ask a question? Exactly what is the Imperial general’s purpose here among us?”
Sulamar straightened his shoulders like a spined puffer bird and turned to Durga. “I bring Imperial prestige to your project. I will use my connections to obtain some of the items you need, the security codes you must possess. And when you begin your Hutt reign of terror across the galaxy”—he grinned—“think of how much more effective you will be if you’re accompanied by the famed and feared General Sulamar, the Scourge of Celdaru, the man who successfully carried out the Massacre of Mendicat without losing a single stormtrooper. I held a hundred worlds in my fist and I squeezed. The entire galaxy learned to tremble at my name.”
Lemelisk shrugged. He didn’t want to press the issue, but he had never heard of Sulamar before. Of course, he had been isolated in Maw Installation for a long time.…
He looked again at the glowing outline of the Death Star. Though he saw only the outer layer of the projection, he knew the depth and intricacies of those plans. His heart pounded, and excitement brought a flush to his skin again. At last, a new project that he could sink his teeth into. He smiled and marveled at the design, remembering the first time he had showed it off.
“Magnificent,” the Emperor had said, cowled in his black hood as he stared at the Death Star plans that Grand Moff Tarkin and Bevel Lemelisk presented to him.
“Yes, a technological terror,” Tarkin said. Lean and cruel-looking, Tarkin stood at attention beside his Emperor, nodding down at the image.
Lemelisk and his naive but brilliant co-worker Qwi Xux had designed a battle station that placed fearsome power in a single commander’s hands. Tarkin had been delighted with the concept and the plans and the proto-type, and so he had brought Lemelisk out of Maw Installation to present the idea to the Emperor personally.
“Explain it to me,” the Emperor said, extending his hands into the glowing simulation. The lines bent and buckled, curling around Palpatine’s clawed fingers. Lemelisk had never seen a hologram react that way before, as if the image itself were trying to cringe from the Emperor’s touch.
Lemelisk rubbed the perspiration from his palms on to his shirt as he spoke quickly, nervous in Palpatine’s presence but even more excited to talk about his brain-child.