Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [156]
By choosing targets of minimal military value he could stir up the populace to demand the military do something. If the public’s ire focused on one official or another, he could target that person, giving the public some power. He would let their displeasure choose his victims, just as his choices would give direction to their fear. Theirs would be a virulent and symbiotic relationship. He would be nightmare and benefactor, they would be victims and supporters. He would become a faceless evil they sought to direct while fearing any attention they drew to themselves.
Having once been on the side attempting to stop an anti-government force, he could well appreciate the difficulties the New Republic would have in dealing with him. The fact that the Rebellion had never resorted to outright terrorism did not concern him. Their goal had been to build a new government; his was merely to destroy what they had created. He wanted things to degenerate into an anarchy that would prompt an outcry for leadership and authority. When that call went out, his mission would be accomplished and the Empire would return.
He again took up the remote control and returned to the window. Down at the memorial he could see small pinpricks of color that marked passersby on their way to and from other places. He glanced at the holograms striding across his holotable and saw that none of the people were of consequence. He followed the course of one woman, allowing her to clear the blast radius, then pressed the button.
A staccato series of explosions went off sequentially around the memorial. To the south the grandstands teetered forward and started to somersault their way into the depths of Imperial Center. A half-dozen people who had been seated on them fell like colorful confetti. One actually grabbed the edge of the platform next to the barrow and hauled himself up to safety, but a subsequent blast tossed him back into the pit from which he had narrowly escaped.
Other explosions twisted metal and shattered transparisteel windows in the surrounding buildings. Grandstands clung to the sides of buildings like mutilated metal insects with bleeding, moaning people clutched in their limbs. Dust and smoke cleared to show the central ferrocrete ring around the memorial had been nibbled away, with a huge chunk of it dangling perilously by a reinforcement bar or two.
Loor finally felt the blast’s shockwave send a tremor through his tower. The hawk-bats flapped black wings to steady themselves, then dropped away from their perches. Wings snapped open, sending the creatures soaring into a slow spiral that would take them down to the blast site. Loor knew enough of them to know the hawk-bats would first look to see if the holes in the buildings revealed previously hidden granite slugs, but when deprived of their favorite prey, they would settle for the gobbets of flesh left behind by the victims.
“Good hunting,” he wished them, “eat your fill. Before I am done there will be more, much more for you to consume. I shall let you feast on my enemies, and together, here on a world they call their own, we shall both thrive.”
THE OLD REPUBLIC
(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)
Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries