Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [73]
She gave him a military nod, and they moved off past the honor guard. As they walked, she stared about the hangar, impressed. “I knew it would be huge, but the reality of it hadn’t quite come home.”
“Save your awe for when it’s finished and operational. Which will be quite soon now.”
“The Rebel Alliance won’t know what hit them.”
“Oh, they’ll know, my dear. Everyone will know. That’s the point.”
She had cut her hair shorter than when last they had been together. It was flattering on her, but then, he’d never seen her with a hairstyle that wasn’t flattering. There weren’t really any regulations about how female admirals should dress or groom themselves—Daala was the only one, after all, and who would dare to tell her?
She had risen on merit alone, but certainly her ascent to the command ranks had caused some speculation about her relationship with Tarkin and how that might have smoothed the way. Nobody speculated about it in earshot of him, of course. Not anymore, because those foolish few who’d done so had had their ashes scattered to the four solar winds. Tarkin had not reached the unique rank he held by allowing his enemies any quarter whatsoever. Yes, Daala had been his protégée, and yes, he had opened doors for her a bit sooner than she might have managed on her own, but she had made flag command without his help. There were plenty of male admirals unfit to polish her boots.
They soon reached the door to her quarters. “Shall we go inside and discuss this further?” he murmured to her.
“By all means, Grand Moff Tarkin.”
Before the door had slid completely shut behind them, she was in his arms.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES, DECK 106, SECTOR N-ONE, DEATH STAR
The library aboard the battle station wasn’t the biggest Atour had ever seen by any means. He had done his apprenticeship in the Baobab Archives on Manda, although these days he didn’t deem it exactly prudent to highlight that fact on his résumé. And from there he had gone on to be the archivist of such repositories as the Dorismus Athenaeum on Corellia and the Holorepository on the wheelworld Arkam 13. The latter was known for having the largest collection of lore on the Old Republic outside the Temple.
It wasn’t the most exciting of lives, that of an archivist, but it was one that suited him well. He had not, as many supposed, always been introspective and scholarly; as a young man he’d fought for the Janissariad in the Balduran Civil War. The experience had left a foul taste in his mouth for any and all forms of centralized government. Disgusted with politics, Atour Riten had retreated, in soul if not body, into the misty past. It was a decision he’d never regretted.
The Death Star Library—as his mind insisted on naming it—was supposed to eschew the use of holobooks, tapes, and ’crons and rely instead on phononic lattice storage. This would allow storage of a huge amount of information in a very small space. Part of Atour’s brief in this new job was to supervise the droids scanning information from other media into lattice form. Even on something the size of the Death Star, space was at a premium—at least for such things as data storage.
Though he’d seen bigger and better, the amount of data accrued was impressive nonetheless. The files were extensive, the retrieval systems were thick with memory to speed up downloads, and the broadcast-to-reader circuitry was top-notch. It was a pity that most people didn’t actually go to libraries anymore, not when they could sit in the comfort of their own quarters and access files electronically.
Want to read the new hot interstellar caper novel, or the latest issue of Beings holozine? Input the name, touch a control, and zip—it’s in your datapad. Need to study the history of winged intelligent species? No more difficult than inputting search parameters, then scanning the bibliographic references and choosing a place to begin.
There were, of course, old-fashioned beings who would still actually trundle down to where the files were. On some worlds the most ancient libraries