Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [118]
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. Celot Ratua Dil was a bad boy, true enough, but he was so disarmingly honest about his dishonesty.
“Check it out,” he said, obviously relieved at her laughter. He produced a device the size of his fist and set in on her desk, then activated it. The three-dimensional hologram of the station’s entertainment net appeared over the ’projector.
“Aside from the regular channels, this particular unit can tap into the external cam feeds. Watch.”
He touched the device, dialed up the magnification, and the image of a planet shimmered into view, about the size of a crashball.
“My old stomping grounds,” he said. “Despayre. A terrible place to visit, and in fact you couldn’t anyway, ’cause once you’re there, you’re there. But it looks nice from this far away.” He cocked his head in consideration of the green-and-blue image. “No, actually, it still looks awful.”
Memah glanced at the chron inset into the ’proj. Almost eleven hundred. The maintenance droids should be finishing the filters pretty soon, which was good, because she wanted to be open again by midshift, and it would take at least another hour to—
A flash of pale green glimmered briefly from the holo.
The room shook, vibrating enough to rattle the chairs. She felt her viscera become momentarily buoyant, and realized that the ship’s gravity field had flickered.
“What is that?” Memah stood, fighting sudden, inexplicable panic. After all, what could possibly pose a danger to—
Ratua held up a hand to quiet her. Those green eyes watched the ’proj. “Wait a second,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
The image of the planet Despayre seemed to shiver as a thin beam of emerald green—nearly the same color as Ratua’s eyes, she thought—from off the edge of the ’proj lanced into the center of the single huge continent.
They both watched disbelievingly as an orange spot blossomed on the image of the planet. It seemed no bigger than Memah’s thumbnail at first, but it grew rapidly, spreading in an expanding circle. The center of the orange turned black.
“Kark,” Ratua said. He sounded stunned.
“What? What is it?”
“They—they’re firing at the planet. With the superlaser.”
The orange and black spread in irregular waves now, continuing outward from the center. The blue of the ocean didn’t even slow it down.
“The atmosphere’s on fire,” Ratua said. Calmly, as if he were discussing the weather. Going to be a warm day today, temperature around five thousand degrees …
She felt a horrifying urge to laugh. It didn’t seem real—it couldn’t be real. Ratua must’ve tuned in to some future-fic holo by mistake. It wasn’t a real planet she was watching burn. No. Things like that just didn’t happen.
Memah stared at the image. She could not look away.
SUPERLASER FIRE CONTROL, THETA SECTOR, DEATH STAR
Tenn looked at the images from the targeting cam. He still had his hand on the firing lever. He released it and stared, watching as the very air on the prison world caught fire in a runaway planetary holocaust. Seismographic sensors showed that massive groundquakes had begun, rumbling down into the bowels of the planet. Giant waves in the ocean, generated by the shifting of tectonic plates, rushed for the shores of the big continent. Volcanoes spewed lava. Clouds of steam and volcanic ash began to rapidly obscure the surface from view—but not fast enough.
He had just killed everything on the planet Despayre. If all life wasn’t dead already, it would be soon.
The CO moved to look over his shoulder. He didn’t congratulate Tenn on the shot; he just stood there.
“Stang,” Tenn said.
The CO nodded. “Yeah.”
COMMAND CENTER, OVERBRIDGE, DEATH STAR
Motti said, “Engineering says the capacitors will be recharged in an hour and thirteen minutes.”
Tarkin watched the projection as the effects of the beam manifested on the planet. By the time the second pulse was ready for discharge, there wouldn’t be anything alive on the world below them to care. The chain reaction