Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [102]
Nova suddenly realized this was all familiar. It was as if he had been here before, seen the events that were now unfolding. He knew, without knowing how, that in the next few seconds a squad of stormtroopers was going to—
“Aaahhhh!” Somebody beyond the bend in the corridor screamed, and a moment later half a dozen troopers barreled around the corner of the hallway intersection, heading toward Nova and his men.
They were being chased by a single man with a blaster, yelling like a berserker as he ran. The man—Nova saw that he was dressed like a down-on-his-luck spacer—stopped, realizing that there were suddenly overwhelming odds in front of him. Then he turned and ran back the other way, putting on a burst of speed as he disappeared around the corner.
“After him! Go!” Nova led the pursuit, followed by his squad and the others. Once around the bend, he saw that the fleeing spacer had been joined by a Wookiee, and both of them were now shooting back at their pursuers as they fled. A blaster bolt took the man next to Nova. He tried to line up on the runners, but was jostled by somebody from behind; his bolt scorched the plating just behind the two escapees. The human zapped another round at them.
Time slowed down. The bolt crawled toward them, impossibly slow. But as slowly as it was moving, Nova found he was moving even slower … the deadly energy burst was going to hit him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The blaster bolt slammed into him, penetrating the chest plate easily. It pierced his chest, burned out his heart, and he fell, dying—
Nova jerked up in bed, his pulse racing, as one of his cubemates hollered, “Hey, Stihl! Wake the frip up, you’re yelling in your sleep again! Some of us are trying to get some milking rest here!”
“Sorry,” Nova gasped. He slowed his breathing, using calming techniques he’d learned over the years. He felt his pulse rate drop, felt himself grow calmer.
But not calm enough. Nova laid back down, staring at the ceiling. So much for the sleeping meds helping things.
COMMAND CENTER, OVERBRIDGE, DEATH STAR
Tarkin looked at the data running up the screen, pleased. The station was nearly operational—at least enough so that they could begin basic maneuvers. The superlaser was only partially functional, true, but it was hot enough to test, and he had some ideas about how to do that.
All in all, things were going very well indeed.
There had been a few glitches. Daala had not been able to find those responsible for the destruction of the Undauntable. She had returned to the Maw, but would be back again, soon. Tarkin looked forward to her next visit.
An intelligence report had just come to his attention. There had been some kind of break-in and theft at an out-of-the-way military base on Danuta. While normally this would have been of little interest to Tarkin, the investigating agents had heard some intel—no more than rumor, really—that one of the files stolen was a set of plans for this battle station. Tarkin frowned. On the face of it, that seemed unlikely—how would the plans have gotten to that backrocket planet in the first place?
Then again, military secrets were notoriously hard to keep, and a file could be transmitted across the entire galaxy, given enough power in the generating signal. Some low-level functionary might have, at some point, come across the plans and decided to copy a set. There could be many reasons for doing so—knowledge was power. How much would the plans be worth to the Rebel Alliance? A fortune, certainly; well worth the small risk of being found out.
And if there was even a remote chance that such a thing had come to pass, if those plans had fallen into the clutches of the Rebels, that could be bad. The station, when fully operational, would be invulnerable from without, of course, but a saboteur who knew exactly where to do the most damage from within could be a real threat.
This needed to be addressed, and Tarkin knew who was best suited for the task. It was galling to have to ask the man for help, but