Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [130]
It had rocked him to his core, maybe more because of the whole Force thing. But he hadn’t been the only one. Sure, there were always some kill-’em-all types who said they must have deserved it, else it wouldn’t have been done; but there were a lot of people on this battle station who couldn’t accept these actions as things even to be contemplated in a sane and rational universe. It wasn’t supposed to have gone this far. From everything he’d heard it was to be merely the threat of mundicide. Blowing up a planet—killing everything that lived on it—just to make a point?
This was his last tour, Nova decided; he wasn’t going to stay in a military that would commit such atrocities. And if there was anything he could do to help prevent it from happening again, he ought to seriously consider it.
Killing civilian populations on a planetary scale was evil beyond comprehension. Nova could fight a room full of men straight-up, face-to-face, and if he had to kill half of them to survive, he’d do it. But he hadn’t signed on to slaughter children asleep in their beds.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES, DECK 106, DEATH STAR
Atour Riten considered himself a man of the galaxy; he had traveled far and wide and seen much. He had toured the spice mines of Kessel, explored the ruins of Dantooine, and witnessed the death of stars in the Bi-Borran Cluster. Even though most of his working days had been within the walls of libraries and archives, he had also breathed the outside air of scores of worlds in the course of his years. And he had remained apolitical for all those years, going his own way, avoiding commitments to things he didn’t think he could influence yea or nay.
But not anymore. Not after Alderaan.
The destruction of Despayre had been bad enough, as much for what it had portended as for the act itself. But Alderaan had been a peaceful world; its government had sympathized with the Rebels, true enough, but the Empire’s reaction had been overkill in the most horrifyingly literal sense imaginable. The immensity of it overwhelmed him each time his imagination started down that killing road: mothers, babies, grandfathers, pets … all wiped out in a heartbeat.
He could not help but be reminded of the Mrlssi saying: Evil compounds exponentially. It was true. Such horrors inevitably fed upon themselves, mushrooming into the unthinkable in very short order. Atour could not stand to see this happen again. He was old, he had lived a long and full life, and he decided now that whatever days he had left, he would dedicate to defeating an Empire capable of such abominations.
“Persee, initiate a search for weak points in this battle station—those that might be most vulnerable to internal sabotage.”
“That would be unwise, sir. Such a scan would almost certainly be detected, and Imperial intelligence operatives would undoubtedly wish to engage in conversation with the initiator of such a search. It would not be a pleasant conversation.”
“Then I suggest you do it cautiously.”
“Sir, I feel compelled to point out again that the risk of such a venture would be great.”
“And I appreciate your concern,” Atour said. He leaned back in his formfit chair and steepled his fingers. “Do it anyway.”
The droid acknowledged this order and shuffled away to implement it. Atour sighed. He realized that P-RC3 was going to suffer a traumatic memory loss in the near future. That would be a shame—he’d actually become rather fond of the droid—but given the gravity of what the Empire had done and must be made to pay for, the price of a droid’s memory—and one old man’s life, come to think of it—was small enough.
CONFERENCE ROOM, COMMAND CENTER, DEATH STAR
The intercom cheeped, and Tarkin activated it. “Yes?”
The voice from the comm said, “We’ve captured a freighter entering the remains of the Alderaan system. Its markings match those of a ship that blasted its way out of Mos Eisley.”
Tarkin frowned. Mos Eisley was on Tatooine, where the stolen battle station plans had,