23

Hunched in his dark robes, Tol Sivron came to visit Qwi Xux in her research room. He drew in a long, hissing breath, and his head-tails twitched with uneasiness as he stared at her setup. The Twi’lek administrator gave the impression of never having set foot inside an actual laboratory before—which seemed odd to Qwi, since he was in charge of the entire installation.

Qwi stopped her musical calculation with an atonal squawk. “Director Sivron! What can I do for you?”

Tol Sivron demanded regular written reports, feasibility studies, and progress summaries; he hosted a weekly meeting among the scientists to share their ideas and their work in a frank and stimulating exchange.

But Tol Sivron did not make a habit of visiting.

He shuffled around the room, poking at things, kneading his knuckles, and looking at the standard equipment as if deeply interested. He brushed his clawed fingertips over the calibration gauge of a weld-stress analyzer, muttering, “Mmm hmmm, good work!” as if Qwi herself had invented the common instrument.

“I just came to commend you for your consistently fine efforts, Dr. Xux.” Sivron stroked one of the vermiform head-tails draped around his neck; then his voice grew stern. “But I hope you are about finished with your endless iterations on the Sun Crusher project. We’re past Grand Moff Tarkin’s target date, you know, and we must move soon. I insist you write your final report and get all the documentation in order. Submit it to my office as soon as possible.”

Qwi blinked at him in annoyance. She had submitted five separate “final” reports already, but each time Sivron had asked her to rerun a particular simulation or to retest the structural welds in the Sun Crusher’s quantum armor. He never gave any reasons, and Qwi got the impression that he never read the reports anyway. If it had been up to her, the Sun Crusher would have been ready for deployment two years ago. She was getting bored with it, wanting to move on to a new design she could start from scratch and get back to the enjoyable, imaginative work again.

“You’ll have the report by this evening, Director Sivron!” She would just send a repeat of the last one.

“Good, good,” Sivron said, stroking his head-tail again. “I just wanted to make sure everything is in order.”

For what? Qwi thought. We’re not going anywhere. She hated it when the administrators and the military types kept sticking their noses in her work. Without another word Tol Sivron left.

Qwi stared after him, then activated the rarely used privacy lock on her door. Returning to her imaging terminal, she continued trying to crack the wall of passwords in front of her. She did like challenges, after all.

Qwi could not stop thinking about what Han Solo had told her. At first it was a new puzzle to solve, but then she finally began paying attention. To her all the prototypes she developed were abstract concepts turned into reality through mathematical music and brilliant intuitions. She kept telling herself that she did not know, or care, what her inventions were used for. She could certainly guess, but she tried not to. She didn’t want to know! She blocked those thoughts before they could surface. But Qwi Xux wasn’t stupid.

The Death Star was supposed to be used to break apart depleted, dead planets to provide access to raw materials deep in the core. Right! Had she thought up that excuse afterward? The World Devastators were supposed to be immense wandering factories taking useless rubble and fabricating scores of valuable industrial components. Right! Tarkin had been with her during the immense pressure of her original training. She knew what the man was capable of.

And the new Sun Crusher was—“What?” Han had said, raising his voice so that it hurt her fragile ears. “What in all the galaxy could the Sun Crusher be used for other than to completely wipe out all life in systems the Imperials don’t like? You don’t even have a bogus excuse like rubble mining. The Sun Crusher has one purpose only: to bring death to countless innocent people. Nothing more.”

But Qwi could not possibly have the responsibility for lives on her hands. That wasn’t part of her job. She just drew up blueprints, toyed with designs, solved equations. It exhilarated her to discover something previously considered impossible.

On the other hand, she was perfectly aware of what she was doing … though feigned naïveté provided such a nice excuse, such a perfect shield against her own conscience.

In the Maw databanks Qwi had discovered the complete “debriefing” of Han Solo—protected by a password she had easily broken—full video instead of just a transcription. Sivron and Daala had indeed kept much of it from her—but why?

As Qwi watched the entire torture session, she could not believe her eyes. She had never suspected the information had been taken from him in that manner! The words on paper seemed so cool and cooperative.

But on a deeper, professional level she was outraged at Admiral Daala. Access to data was supposedly open to all Maw scientists. She had never been denied a single information request in twelve years inside the black hole cluster! But this was even worse. She hadn’t just been denied access to the full report—she had been deceived into thinking Han’s debriefing held no more data.

But information is meant to be shared! Qwi thought. How can I do my work if I don’t have the pertinent data?

Qwi had little trouble breaking through the various passwords. Apparently, no one had expected her to bother looking. She read the full report with sickened astonishment: the destruction of Alderaan, the attack on Yavin 4, the ambush of the Rebel fleet over Endor, the huge hospital ship and personnel carriers blown into micrometeoroids by the second Death Star’s superlaser.

“What did you think they were going to be used for?” Han had said. Qwi closed her eyes to the thought.

Focus on the problem. It had been a mantra of her childhood. Be distracted by nothing else. Solving the problem was the only important thing. Solving the problem meant survival itself.…

As a child she remembered spending two years in the sterile, silent environment of the orbital education sphere above her homeworld of Omwat. Qwi had been ten standard years old, the same age as her other nine companions, each selected from different Omwati honeycomb settlements. From orbit the orange and green continents looked surreal, blurred by clouds and dimpled with canyons, blemished by upthrust mountains—nothing like the clean maps she had seen before.

But beside Qwi’s educational sphere orbited Moff Tarkin’s personal Star Destroyer. It had been a mere Victory class ship, but powerful enough to rain death and ruin down on Omwat if the students should fail.

For two years life for Qwi had been an endless succession of training, testing, training, testing, with no other purpose than to cram the total knowledge of engineering disciplines into pliable young Omwati minds—or to burst their brains in the process. Tarkin’s research had shown that Omwati children were capable of amazing mental feats, if pushed properly and sufficiently. Most of the young minds would collapse under the pressure, but some emerged like precious jewels, brilliant and creative. Moff Tarkin had wanted to test that possibility.

The gaunt, steel-hard man had stood in his dress uniform during important examinations, staring at the surviving Omwati children as they wrestled with problems that had stymied the Empire’s best designers. Qwi remembered how alarmed they had been when one of her classmates, a young male named Pillik, suddenly fell to the floor in some kind of secure, grasping his head and screaming. He managed to climb to his knees, weeping, before the guards grabbed him. He still grasped for his examination paper as they hauled him away, yelling that he wanted to finish his work.

In silence Qwi and her three surviving classmates went to the window of the educational sphere so they could watch as turbolasers from the Victory-class Star Destroyer obliterated Pillik’s honeycomb settlement in punishment for his failure.

Qwi could not be distracted by consequences. If her concentration faltered, everyone would die. She had to lock away all caring. Problems were pure, and safe, to be solved for their own sake. She could not allow herself to think beyond the abstract challenge at hand.

In the end Qwi had been the only one of her group who made it through the training. She received no instruction in biological sciences, saving her memory space for more physics, mathematics, and engineering. Tarkin had whisked her off to the new Maw Installation and placed her under the tutelage of the great engineer Bevel Lemelisk. Qwi had been in the Maw ever since.

Problems had to be solved for their own sake. If she allowed herself to be distracted by feelings, terrible things would happen. She remembered images of burning Omwati cities winking like faraway campfires from orbit, the laser-ignited wildfires that swept across the savannas of her world—but she had too many calculations to finish, too many designs to modify.

Qwi had salved her conscience by laying the responsibility on others. But the truth was, she created devices that had directly caused the deaths of entire civilizations, the destruction of whole worlds. With the Sun Crusher she could wipe out solar systems with the push of a button.

Qwi Xux had a lot of thinking to do, but she didn’t know how to go about this kind of pondering. This was an entirely new and different type of problem to solve.

Chewbacca stood like a statue, refusing to move and daring the keeper to use his power-lash again.

The keeper did.

Chewbacca roared at the pain lancing across his skin; his nerves writhed in the aftermath of the charge. He raised his hairy arms, seething with the desire to rip the fat, placid man’s limbs from his spherical torso.

Fourteen stormtroopers leveled their blasters at him.

“Are you going back to work, Wookiee, or do I have to nudge the power setting up a couple more notches?” The keeper tapped the handle of the power-lash against his palm, gazing at Chewbacca with a bland expression. His complexion was dusty-looking and bloodless, as if no hint of life had ever passed beneath the skin.

“Any other time I might have enjoyed the challenge of breaking you, Wookiee. I’ve been here fourteen standard years with an entire crew of Wookiee slaves. We lost a few during the process, but I cracked them all, and now they follow orders and do their work. But Admiral Daala insists that everything be in top-notch condition for mobilization by tomorrow.”

He flicked the sizzling green tip of the lash in the air in front of Chewbacca’s face, singeing some of the fur. Chewbacca peeled back his black lips and growled.

“I don’t have time to play games right now,” the keeper said. “If I have to waste any more time disciplining you, I’m going to dump you out into space. Do you understand?”

Chewbacca considered roaring in his face, but the keeper looked serious. At the very least Chewbacca had to survive long enough to find out what had happened to Han. A long time ago Han had rescued Chewbacca from other enslavers, and he still owed the man a life debt. He gave a low grunt of acquiescence.

“Good, now get back to that assault shuttle!”

Chewbacca wore gray work coveralls with pockets to hold engine diagnostic tools and hydrospanners. None of the tools could be used as a weapon; Chewbacca had already checked that much out.

The gamma-class assault shuttle took up a good portion of the Gorgon’s lower hangar bay. Chewbacca had a small databoard listing the configurations for the tractor-beam projector and the deflector-shield generators. He had worked on other ships before, and he knew the Falcon inside out thanks to the many on-the-spot repairs he and Han had been forced to make. With the specs on the databoard he could easily service decades-old Imperial technology.

On the rear of the assault shuttle Chewbacca checked the exhaust nozzles of the thrust reactors and grudgingly tested the blaster-cannon mountings. In the front of the vessel a convenient boarding hatch allowed access for the command crew, but Chewbacca opted for the more rigorous method of popping open and climbing through one of the foldaway launch doors used to disgorge zero-G stormtroopers during a space assault.

Inside, he had access to the engineering level, where he tinkered with the power modulators and the life-support systems. He restrained his urge to rip out circuits and damage the equipment—the keeper would execute him immediately, and such a minor sabotage would accomplish nothing. Even subtle damage was likely to be discovered in the initial checkout procedure.

The assault shuttle’s spartan passenger section held only benches for its complement of spacetroopers, as well as power-coupled storage compartments for their bulky zero-G armor. Up front Chewbacca powered up and checked out the command console, did a test run of the twin-tandem flight computers … and thought about uprooting the chairs on which the five members of the command crew would sit.

Outside in the Gorgon’s hangar bay the fat keeper shouted and lashed at the air. Chewbacca felt a surge of anger upon hearing cries of agony from the other cowed Wookiee slaves. He knew nothing about his fellow captives; he had been held in a separate cell, and they were not allowed to speak to each other. Chewbacca wondered how long it had been since these exhausted slaves had touched the branches of their home trees.

“Get working!” the keeper yelled. “We have a lot that needs to be done today! Three hundred ships on the Gorgon alone!” And Chewbacca knew the three other star destroyers had an equal number of TIE fighters, blastboats, and assault shuttles.

Chewbacca clenched his fist around an upraised storage lid, bending it noticeably. He wanted to know why Admiral Daala insisted on such desperate speed.

Qwi Xux did not like to be muscled around by stormtroopers. In her years at the Maw Installation, she had learned to ignore the rigid troopers marching around the corridors in white armor, in endless robotic training and formations that made no sense at all. Did they all have faulty memories, or what? Once she learned something, she didn’t need to keep drilling, drilling, drilling. Qwi paid little attention to them anymore—until a squad marched into her laboratory and insisted that she follow them.

Only moments earlier Qwi had shut down her illicit database searches, and she had disengaged the privacy lock on her lab’s entryway. She had no reason to think the stormtroopers suspected anything, but she still felt unreasoning terror.

The troopers folded around her in a protective bubble as they marched her along the tiled corridors. “Where are you taking me?” Qwi finally managed to ask.

“Admiral Daala wishes to see you,” the captain said through the filtered speaker on his helmet.

“Oh. Why?”

“She’ll have to tell you that herself.”

Qwi swallowed a cold lump in her throat and put a haughty tone in her voice. “Why couldn’t she come to me herself?”

“Because Admiral Daala is a busy person.”

“I’m a busy person, too.”

“She is our commanding officer. You aren’t.”

Qwi asked no further questions but followed in silence as they took her across an access tube to another asteroid in the main conglomeration, then aboard a small shuttle in the landing bay.

When they arrived aboard the Star Destroyer Gorgon, Qwi could not keep herself from staring in wide-eyed fascination. Though the enormous ships had hung in the sky above Maw Installation for as long as she could remember, Qwi rarely had an opportunity to board them. Her stormtrooper escorts took her directly to the Gorgon’s bridge.

The trapezoidal command tower rose high above the arrowhead-shaped main body, giving a panoramic view overlooking the vast landscape of the ship. Qwi stood and stared out the front viewport toward the cobbled-together collection of rocks that made up Maw Installation. For a moment she remembered watching from the orbiting educational sphere as Moff Tarkin obliterated Omwati cities far below.…

Command crew bustled about their stations, intent on their work as if in the middle of an important drill. In the corridors stormtroopers marched by at a brisk pace. Overlapping intercom messages peppered the air. Qwi wondered how the troops could be so busy after a decade of doing nothing.

Admiral Daala stood by her command console, staring at the deadly swirling gases that blocked her from the outside. Qwi saw her trim, perfect figure masked by an aurora of chestnut hair that flowed like a living blanket down her back. When Daala turned to face her, some of the hair remained where it hung, wrapping around her waist while other strands arced behind her.

“You wanted to see me?” Qwi asked. Her reedy voice quavered despite her efforts to control her nervousness.

Daala looked at her for a moment, and Qwi had the impression of being placed under a magnifying lens in preparation for dissection. Then Daala suddenly seemed to recognize her. “Ah! You are Qwi Xux, in charge of the Sun Crusher project?”

“Yes, Admiral.” She paused a moment, then blurted, “Have I done something wrong?”

“I don’t know. Have you?” Daala answered, then turned back to the broad window, staring out at her other ships. “I can’t get any straight information out of Tol Sivron, so I’ll tell you directly. If you have any further work to do on your Sun Crusher, finish it now. We are mobilizing the fleet.”

Daala misinterpreted Qwi’s shocked silence. “Don’t worry—I’ll authorize whatever assistance you need, but everything must be done within a day. You’ve had two years longer than Grand Moff Tarkin gave you. It is time to put the Sun Crusher to use.”

Qwi took a deep breath, trying to keep her thoughts from spinning. “But why now? Why such a rush?”

Daala whirled back at her, wearing a sour expression. “We have received new information. The Empire lies wounded and vulnerable on the outside, and we can’t just sit here and wait. We have four Star Destroyers, a full fleet the Rebellion knows nothing about. Since the Death Star prototype is not capable of hyperspace travel, it is useless to us in this operation—but we will have the Sun Crusher. Your beautiful Sun Crusher.” The lights of the fiery gases outside glimmered in Daala’s eyes. “With it we can destroy the New Republic, system by system.”

All of Han’s warnings echoed as loud as screams in Qwi’s head. He had been right about everything.

Daala dismissed her, and Qwi stumbled as the stormtroopers escorted her back toward the waiting shuttle. Qwi would have to make her decision sooner than she had expected.