Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [119]
Amazing.
“I hope you’re right about this,” Motti said. “Politically, I mean.”
“Of course I am, Admiral. The population of that world consisted of condemned criminals sentenced to life imprisonment. They were never going back to civilization. It was a constant drain on Imperial resources to transport them and to maintain them. Those troops will now be freed up for service. Nobody will mourn the murderers or the filthy planet on which they lived.”
“And where will the Empire send its major criminals now?”
Tarkin turned away from the images of carnage and looked directly at Motti. “Unless I am seriously mistaken, the death penalty will be used more frequently. Imperial justice is about to become swift and sure, Admiral.”
He turned back to watch the image of the dying world.
G-12 BARRACKS, SECTOR N-SEVEN, DEATH STAR
Nova woke up screaming, beset with horror. The other sergeants watched him, but none of them approached. Bad idea to get too close to a martial arts expert coming out of a nightmare.
Nova tried to calm himself, to slow his breathing, but he had never felt anything like this before. It was as if he had heard a million people cry out, all at once, as they were killed.
He stepped from his cot, went to the refresher, and washed his face. He needed to see that doctor again. He was beyond caring what anyone thought. Something was definitely wrong with him, and he couldn’t live like this.
56
SUPERLASER FIRE CONTROL, THETA SECTOR, DEATH STAR
An hour and fifteen minutes after the first beam, Tenn fired the second one.
The planet Despayre, already scorched lifeless and beset with cataclysmic groundquakes and volcanism, began to shake like some tormented creature in its death throes. Massive cracks, thousands of kilometers long and tens of klicks wide, striated the world. Mountains collapsed in one hemisphere as they jutted up and rose in another. It was impossible to see all this directly, of course, because of the cloud cover that had blanketed the surface, but the IR and VSI scopes showed everything all too clearly. The molten core of the globe, already venting through innumerable new volcanoes, oozed to the surface and produced oceans of lava that spread across the land. This was how the planet had been born, and this was how it was dying.
An hour and nineteen minutes later, when Tenn fired the third beam that blew the charred and burned-out cinder apart, shattering it into billions of pieces, it seemed almost pointless. Everybody and everything on it had already been roasted, scalded, or drowned. The system’s gravity twisted as the planetary well ceased to exist. Shield sensors quietly recorded the thousands of fragments, from the size of pebbles to that of mountains, deflected from the station.
Sweet Queen Quinella. A whole planet, destroyed. Just like that.
No matter how tough you thought you were, that was hard to stomach.
Especially when you were the one who had pulled the lever.
ISD DEVASTATOR, APPROACHING DEATH STAR
Vader had felt the fabric of the Force tear even in hyperspace. Some vast and terrible event had taken place. When they’d dropped below lightspeed, it had taken but a few seconds for his sensor crew to determine the cause of that event.
The prison planet of Despayre was no more.
Vader nodded to himself as he looked at the magnified view of planetary debris. That should convince the military that they had developed the ultimate weapon. They were wrong, but they would believe it. They would be full of their pitiful dreams of power and glory, unable to comprehend the truth, certain that they were unbeatable.
That was not his worry. He had his orders, and he would carry them out. He would get the information he sought from the dissident Princess. They would find the Rebels’ main base and destroy it. The war would be over, and Vader would finally be free to resume his studies of the dark side in earnest. He had much to learn and, with the Emperor no longer preoccupied with