Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [103]
He moved to the holoplate and activated it. It was a priority-one communication, and the connection was made almost immediately.
The shimmering image of Darth Vader appeared before Tarkin, life-sized, as if he were standing in the same room.
“Grand Moff Tarkin. Why have you called?”
“I understand there is a remote possibility that a set of plans for this battle station may have been stolen by Alliance agents.”
“Yes.”
Tarkin clamped his teeth tight enough to make his jaw mucles ache. “You knew this?”
“I have my own agents.”
The black helmet had no way to change expression, of course, but Tarkin could hear the amusement in the Dark Lord’s voice. “I see,” he said, his tone carefully neutral. Now was not the time to be at odds with the Emperor’s lackey.
“I will find out if it is true, and if so, I will deal with it.” The black helmet inclined questioningly. “That is why you called me, isn’t it?”
Tarkin nodded. Vader might be many things, but fainthearted he was not. Once he began a task, he seldom swerved from finishing it. Odds were that the story was no more than a baseless rumor, but if not, no one was better equipped to determine the facts and eliminate the problem than Darth Vader. A useful, if dangerous, tool—no matter how Tarkin might feel about him personally.
“Keep me advised,” he said.
“Of course.” The image of Vader vanished.
ISD DEVASTATOR, NEAR TOPRAWA, KALAMITH SECTOR, NORTH QUADRANT
Vader broke the comm connection with Tarkin. How had the man found out about the stolen plans so quickly? There must be a leak somewhere. There were always leaks. The only way to prevent them was to keep everything to yourself, and that was not always possible.
Vader, of course, knew much more about the situation than he had told Tarkin. It was true: a set of plans had been stolen from a military base, and those plans were, indeed, now in Rebel hands. They had been smuggled to Dark-knell, and then to Toprawa. There a band of Rebels had seized an Imperial communications tower and transmitted the plans to a blockade-runner orbiting the planet.
The blockade-runner, he had learned, was the Tantive IV.
Princess Leia Organa’s vessel.
Bail Organa and his daughter had been among those in the reconstituted Imperial Senate who had cast their lot with the Rebels. The proof was not there yet, but Vader knew. He did not even need the Force to assure him of this. He knew it.
Doubtless her ship was on its way to deliver those plans to some secret Rebel base. Vader had to find and capture the craft before it arrived at its destination. Even though he would have preferred to follow the vessel to its destination and destroy the base, the destruction of another nest of Rebels was not as important as safeguarding his Master’s prized battle station.
Thus the Devastator was bound for Tatooine, where his agents had predicted the Tantive IV was headed. A secret base there made little sense, as the planet was mostly desert and of little military or commercial value. The world was far enough out of the main lanes so that the Rebels might have had a base there once, but that possibility had already been checked thoroughly by Imperial operatives, who had reported that no such place now existed.
It made little sense. The planet was all sand and dunes, sparsely populated by colonists, both humans and other species, and the indigenous Tuskens. Vader knew just how inhospitable the place was. After all, he had spent his early years there—
No. Anakin Skywalker had been raised in the hot, dry wasteland, but who he was now had been forged on a world that made Tatooine look like Hoth. He had been annealed in the molten rivers of Mustafar. Mustafar was his birthworld, not Tatooine.
In any event, why the Princess was going there was unimportant. Perhaps she was just taking a roundabout route to throw off possible pursuit. What was important was that she had the plans for the Death Star, and that in itself was sufficient reason to detain her. The Empire would recover the plans and in so doing rid itself of her meddlesome