Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [42]
He sighed. Well, it wasn’t his business. He was a surgeon. Genetics, esoteric mind-over-matter control, connections with the infinite … those weren’t his concerns. He just went where he was told, cut where he was ordered to cut, and hoped that his forced servitude would end someday, preferably with him still in one piece. Initially he’d thought that the only good thing about being assigned to a battle station the size and power of this one was not having to worry about being blown up. That was before the first influx of wounded workers from the bombed section had come under his knife. Nothing was safe, not even this monstrous Death Star.
Uli turned away. There should be time to grab a bite at the commissary, and a few hours’ sleep, before his next shift. Unless there was more sabotage, of course.
He wished he could remember the name of that droid back on Drongar. He knew it was going to bug him all day.
17
CONSTRUCTION SITE BETA-NINE, DEATH STAR
The man dressed in black with the respirator helmet felt to Teela like something out of a long-forgotten nightmare. She could almost sense evil radiating from him in pulsing waves; just being near him made her queasy, set her stomach roiling.
And for all that, she was not even his focus, merely one of the retinue of architects and builders standing in the background as Grand Moff Tarkin arrived with the tour to show off this part of the station. She had not spoken to Vader, nor he to her, but still she felt the way she imagined an insect under a magnifying lens might feel if it looked up and saw a giant eye staring down at it. Vader had his back to her, and yet she could feel his attention as a kind of dark pressure, as if a cold hand had been laid on her shoulder.
It made her want to walk away. No, it made her want to run away, to get as far from here as she could, as quickly as she could. She’d never felt such a heavy sense of foreboding. The opposite side of the battle station wouldn’t be far enough to run. But to attempt such a thing would be a bad career move for anybody, and more so for a criminal paroled as a trustee.
Tarkin was droning on about something to do with firepower, pointing at turbolaser emplacements, and Vader seemed to be listening. But Teela knew, somehow, that his focus was not on the Moff’s speech. He was probing the minds of those around them, examining them, and finding them … lacking something.
Abruptly she became aware that his full attention had arrived at her. Of a moment, she felt as if she had been stripped naked, both her mind and body, and that Vader, like the imagined scientist examining the insect pinned under his lens, beheld her in all her being—the good, the bad, the flaws, the strengths … everything that made her who she was.
Instinctively, she threw up a mental wall, a shield to prevent the intrusion, as though slamming a blast door shut. She did it by envisioning just that: a heavy durasteel portal closing, the shaft locks sliding into their collars, the perimeter flange sealing. She’d always had a vivid imagination—a big reason why she was successful in her chosen field—and she could see, in her mind’s eye, every seam and seal, every weld and rivet on the hatch, could hear the solid, echoing boom! it made as it shut, could even feel the vibration. Just before it closed, she thought she felt a small hint of something from Vader’s thoughts: surprise.
And … curiosity.
But—that was impossible. How could she feel someone else’s thoughts?
It had to have been her imagination, Teela thought. But a moment later the tall figure turned and looked directly