Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [12]
Emtrey made no attempt to stop me in the antechamber to Tycho’s office. I shot in past him, then snapped to attention and gave Tycho as crisp a salute as I could manage. “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”
Standing at his desk, with a big transparisteel viewport framing a view of the Imperial Palace behind him, Tycho looked every bit the recruiting hologram image of a pilot. Steel-spined straight, wasp-waisted, with his light brown hair cut short and just beginning to show some white at the temples, he returned my salute sharply. Sympathy softened his blue eyes. “Emtrey told me about your problem, though he didn’t give me much detail.”
“I didn’t have much to give him. I’m sorry.”
Tycho shook his head and pointed me to a chair in front of his desk. “Not your fault, I think.” He glanced back at the doorway. “That’s why I asked General Cracken to join us.”
I turned back and saw Airen Cracken enter the office. Though an older man, he had not thickened around the middle with age. White predominated in his hair, but tinges of the red hair he’d passed on to his son Pash still lingered around the sides and back. His eyes were green, like mine, but more of a sea-green, which did not make them lack for intensity. He waited for both of us to salute, which we did, and he returned it sharply.
Tycho waited for General Cracken to take the other chair and sit before he sat himself. “General Cracken was my appointment anyway, and one I could not postpone.”
“No, sir,” I said, as I sat. I had first met General Cracken on Coruscant, when I showed up at Tycho’s treason and murder trial. My arrival seemed to surprise the general, but that was the first and last time I’d seen him taken unawares by anything. He’d asked me to help him negotiate with Booster Terrik for possession of an Imperial Star Destroyer, and I had failed in that mission rather dismally. The infrequent times we had met since then had been more satisfactory, but his presence here did nothing to put me at ease.
Cracken smiled carefully. “I wanted to discuss with Colonel Celchu the intelligence we obtained from Phan Riizolo, the Booty Full’s captain. From him, really, we learned very little that will help us deal with the Invidious and solving the mystery of its location.”
I frowned. “I’d really rather talk about my wife.…”
“I know, but this is germane, believe me, Captain Horn.”
He leaned forward and plugged a cable from the datapad he carried into the holoprojector pad on the corner of Tycho’s desk. An image of an Imperial Star Destroyer hovered there as if in orbit around the crystalline model of Alderaan centered on the near edge of the desk. “This is the Invidious, represented in old Imperial holo-images because we have no current ones of any reliable quality. At the time of the Emperor’s death, it was part of a task force commanded by High Admiral Teradoc and served as part of the fleet with which he secured his holdings as the Empire crumbled. That was a good seven years ago. Then, approximately six years ago, Leonia Tavira appears to have obtained it.”
Cracken hit a key on his datapad and the image shifted to that of a very young woman in an Imperial Naval uniform, with the rank insignia of an admiral. I’d seen enough of those rank badges on self-styled warlords to make me imagine the Empire had given them away as party favors at the Emperor’s funeral, but I’d never seen them on someone so young. Her black hair had been cut to the line of her jaw, emphasizing her youth, but an ancient hunger played through her violet eyes.
I looked at Cracken. “She’s a child.”
“Was.” Cracken sat back in his chair. “We think she was sixteen standard years old when she began an affair with the Moff on Eiattu 4, the homeworld of a former pilot in Rogue Squadron.