Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 03_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [27]
Sivron paced the conference room, puffed with pride and saddled with disappointment. He shook his head, and his two wormlike head appendages slid across his tunic with a tingle of sensory perceptions. He gripped one of the head-tails and wrapped it heavily around his shoulders.
The handful of stormtroopers Daala had left behind served little purpose. Tol Sivron had compiled a full tally of the soldiers: 123. He’d filled out official reports, gathered their service records, compiled information that might someday be useful. It wasn’t clear to him exactly how this information would be useful, but Sivron had based his career on compiling reports and gathering information. Someone, somewhere, would find it worthwhile.
The stormtroopers obeyed his orders—that was what stormtroopers did, after all—but he was no military commander. He didn’t know how to deploy the soldiers if Maw Installation was ever attacked by Rebel invaders.
During the last month he had kept the Maw scientists working harder to come up with better prototypes and functional defenses, writing contingency plans and emergency procedures, outlining scenarios and prescribed responses to every situation. Being prepared is our best weapon, he thought. Tol Sivron would never stop being prepared.
He had requested frequent progress reports from his researchers, insisting that he be kept completely up-to-date. The storage room adjacent to his office was piled high with hardcopy documents and demonstration models of various concepts. He didn’t have time to review them all, of course, but it comforted him just to know they were there.
He heard footsteps approach and saw his four primary division leaders escorted to the morning briefing by their designated stormtrooper bodyguards.
Tol Sivron did not turn to greet them, staring with a thrill of pride at the huge spherical skeleton of the Death Star prototype rising over the cluster of rocks like a framework moon. The Death Star was the Installation’s greatest success. Grand Moff Tarkin had taken one look at the prototype and given him a medal on the spot, along with Bevel Lemelisk, its main designer, and Qwi Xux, his primary assistant.
The four division leaders took their seats around the briefing table, each bringing a hot beverage, each munching on a reconstituted morning pastry. Each carried a hardcopy printout of the morning’s agenda.
Sivron decided he would keep the meeting brief and to the point—no longer than two, possibly three, hours. They didn’t have much to discuss anyway. As the Death Star orbited out of sight overhead, he turned to face his four top managers.
Doxin was a man wider than he was tall, completely bald except for very dark, very narrow eyebrows that looked like thin wires burned into his forehead. His lips were thick enough that he could have balanced a stylus on them when he smiled. Doxin was in charge of high-energy concepts and implementations.
Next to him sat Golanda. Tall and hawkish with an angular face, pointed chin, and aquiline nose that gave her face the general shape of a Star Destroyer, she was about as beautiful as a gundark. Golanda led the artillery innovations and tactical-deployments section. In ten years she had not stopped complaining about how foolish it was to do artillery research in the middle of a black hole cluster where the fluctuating gravity ruined her calculations and made every test a pointless exercise.
The third division leader, Yemm, was a demonic-looking Devaronian who excelled in saying the right thing at the right time. He supervised documentation and legal counsel.
Last of all, seated at the far corner of the table, was Wermyn, a tall, one-armed brute. His skin had a