Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [57]
Pellaeon didn’t answer her, not that she expected him to.
“Tarkin arrested the lieutenant,” she said, “placed him in an environment suit with a day’s worth of air in a low orbit. We both ran the calculations and estimated that he would make about twenty orbits before he dropped deep enough into the atmosphere to burn up. Neither of us knew whether his air would run out first, or if he would be incinerated. Either circumstance provided a fine punishment, a gruesome example for Moff Tarkin’s crew to see. It was particularly effective that he left the lieutenant’s comm system open, so that for a full day everyone aboard could hear his words over the ship’s intercom, pleading, cursing, screaming.…”
Daala finished her own drink and placed the empty glass beside Pellaeon’s. “After that time, no one ever suggested I had received my rank only because Tarkin was my lover.”
Pellaeon paled, but made no comment.
“But I’m digressing,” Daala said. “You and I should come to some sort of decision and get back before our respective fleets grow too impatient.”
“Agreed, Admiral. What is it that you wish to accomplish?”
“I want to unify the Empire,” Daala said simply. “I want someone to take the helm as leader—but I don’t intend for it to be me. I have no delusions of political glory. I just want the opportunity to cause as much damage as possible to the Rebels.”
“Why not call a detente council, then?” Pellaeon said. “Perhaps we could get the warlords together, make them sit down and talk. Even if they refuse to be united under a single leader, perhaps they could agree on strategy. Each could strike different targets in the New Republic, using their own tactics and their own methods to bring the Rebels to their knees. Then we can mop up the territory that’s rightfully ours.” His eyes glittered with excitement as the ideas flowed from him.
Daala nodded. “An exceptionally good suggestion, Vice Admiral. Similar to my own ideas. You are perhaps in a better position to make those invitations, though I will do what I can. However,” she said, going to a cyberlocked strongbox beside her personal bureau, “if that doesn’t work, I want you to take this.” She opened the strongbox and withdrew a palm-size breathmask membrane, which she handed to Pellaeon.
“What is it for?” Pellaeon said.
“I hope you never need to use it,” Daala answered. “But if all else fails, you will know.”
CHAPTER 19
Tsoss Beacon transmitted its blind signal into the fiery soup of stars and gases near the heart of the deep core. The automated station had been constructed by droids and suicide crews on a planetoid scoured clean by an endless wash of radioactive storms and solar flares that swept the region. No living thing had visited Tsoss Beacon for fifteen years, and the ionized flux had long since caused most of the maintenance droids to malfunction.
Admiral Daala considered it the perfect place to hold a meeting of Imperial warlords.
The squarish beacon station was a squat citadel with low walls more than a meter thick to block the radiation. Before sending her own Star Destroyer into the hostile region, Daala had dispatched a Gamma assault shuttle crewed by worker droids who set down and began the major overhaul chores, following programming and specifications that Daala herself had developed.
When the worker droids completed the groundwork and installed high-efficiency radiation-shield generators, Daala brought the Firestorm into the ravening system, where hot gas swirled around them and shockwaves from stellar storms scrambled her sensors. It reminded Daala of her hiding place in the Cauldron Nebula when she had been isolated from the Empire, with only a pitifully small fleet to attack the Rebels. If the Imperials could pool their resources now …
Once her ship was in place around