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Lemelisk had already begun planning how best to use the brawny brutes in the Death Star construction, calculating how many human guards would be needed per group of Wookiee workers, what the optimum size for a Wookiee labor gang would be. Such administrative and construction details always nagged Lemelisk in the middle of difficult projects.

The Wookiees were lashed with force whips, their offspring herded into hostage camps, adult males and females shoved into cargo compartments. One large bull with silver-tipped fur rebelled, knocking stormtroopers right and left. In moments the other Wookiees joined in the fight, but Tarkin didn’t hesitate. He ordered his men to cut down any beast who resisted.

The silver-fringed bull went first, falling off the platform with a smoking hole in his chest. His body crashed through the canopy until it finally came to rest, caught in the thick branches far above ground. Other unruly Wookiees were shot, and the resistance ended quickly. From that point on, all the Wookiees wore binders clamped tightly to their wrists.

Lemelisk wished Tarkin would hurry back to the construction site so they could begin training the new workers. The project did have a deadline, after all, and the Emperor was counting on them. Didn’t these Wookiees understand? Probably not, he thought. They were just dumb animals.

On the trip back and during the interminable days of indoctrination, the Wookiees’ resistance was further broken with sonic negative-stimulation transmitters, drugs in their food, and threats against the hostages Tarkin had abandoned on Kashyyyk.

Once they got started and trained, though, Lemelisk was proud of the progress the Wookiees made. The work crews were strong and competent, so long as they were carefully watched to prevent sabotage attempts.

It was good to see the Death Star moving toward completion again.…

* * *

As far as Bevel Lemelisk could tell, the Darksaber construction was correct, but he had a bad feeling as he watched the Taurill working with such speed. He recalled the difficulties he had experienced with the unwilling Wookiee work crews, and he did a telescopic scan, comparing the lines on the holographic blueprints with what he could see of the durasteel latticework forming the large cylindrical skeleton.

The Taurill were hard workers, amazingly speedy—but their greatest flaw, Lemelisk had found, was that they were distractible. The hive-minded Taurill had thousands of different facets of attention, and when an asteroid soared too close to the construction site or a smuggler’s ship flew within view, the Taurill focused their attention on the new sight. As the Overmind became intrigued with the novelty, more of the multiarmed components turned to look, scrambling for a better view, climbing to new positions, viewing the intriguing event from a new and well-woven perspective.

Unfortunately, this changed the positions of the Taurill bodies, and when the fuzzy creatures returned to their work, many hung at new stations, connecting different girders together, hooking the wrong circuits.

As he studied the lines, Lemelisk felt his heart sink into his paunchy stomach: a large section of the Darksaber outer framework was indeed assembled wrong, girders welded to incorrect counterparts. The computer core receptacle was connected to the waste-heat exhaust. The superlaser anchor points were offset ninety degrees from each other, as wrong as they could possibly be.

Lemelisk immediately stormed out of the peaceful womb of Durga’s observation blister. He had to find one of the Taurill and shout at it, explaining where the construction had gone wrong. It didn’t matter which of the creatures he talked to; they were all the same, and the Overmind would hear him—oh, yes, the Overmind would hear him.

He felt his stomach churning in dread that Durga would find out about the delay and order Lemelisk’s execution after all. Lemelisk didn’t want to be killed again.

He was relieved the Hutt crime lord was gone. Lemelisk