"The ship known as Slave I, registered to the bounty hunter Boba Fett, was found drifting in orbit above the planet Tatooine-"
"Found by whom?" That was the important part. Kuat was aware that there had recently been a large Imperial Fleet in orbit above the atmosphere of Tatooine; it had apparently been lying in wait for an expected rescue operation from the Rebel Alliance. The Imperial Fleet was no longer in the sector-if it had been, Kuat's own bombing raid on Tatooine's Dune Sea would have had to have been aborted. There was still a possibility, though, that the Imperial Navy might have left a few reconnaissance ships behind.
"Slave I was found by a routine security patrol of the Rebel Alliance." The Kuat Drive Yards security head's memory was enhanced by a loop-recall data-organizing module, controlled by the barely noticeable tensing of his facial muscles." For some time now, the Empire has ceded control of that sector to the Alliance, inasmuch as it has little apparent strategic value. That may change, of course, when we deliver the new additions to the Imperial Fleet."
That was Kuat's own analysis of the situation. Tatooine was at the edge of the galaxy, far from the important and highly developed sectors that formed the core of the Empire. Palpatine could write off the entire zone and it would result in little real loss, either economically or militarily. At least in the short run-but leaving the sector in the hands of the Alliance would certainly give Palpatine's foes a development and staging area for the rest of their campaign against the Empire. Sooner or later, Imperial ships and troops would have to sweep through the sector and reestablish control; the Empire couldn't tolerate this festering-and rapidly expanding-wound in its side.
More than that, Kuat knew, would dictate the eventual offensive, the deadly tools for which were even now being constructed in the Kuat Drive Yards docks. There was also the Emperor's own personality, if that term could be applied to something that had been so utterly consumed by unchecked egomania and the dark powers that he commanded. In some ways, it could be argued-and Kuat had certainly done so, in late-night conversations with his security head-that Emperor Palpatine, as such, had already ceased to exist. Kuat had heard the stories of Palpatine's dedication to what he termed the dark side of the Force; whether such a mysterious energy field, underlying the very fabric of the universe, actually existed or not was of no concern to an engineer and scientist such as himself. But to the self-schooled psychologist that Kuat was, and the political intriguer that he had been forced to become, it mattered a great deal. The Force might only exist in the minds of the Emperor and a few other die-hard believers in the old religion, such as Darth Vader; that made it real enough to demand Kuat's attention. He had had a few face-to-face encounters with the Emperor and the Dark Lord of the Sith, representing his inherited corporation in the business negotiations upon which Kuat Drive Yards depended. At the last such meeting, Kuat of Kuat had received the unsettling impression that the physical body of the Emperor, that hooded and wrinkled form, was no more than a shell, hollowed from the inside by the Force in which Palpatine had placed so much of his own psychic energy. The small eyes buried in their sockets of crepelike tissue had seemed to Kuat like holes poked through a mask worn by a no-longer human entity, something from which all life had been drained, leaving only ravenous hunger and the desire for control over those creatures that still breathed and moved of their own volition. Something still called itself Emperor Palpatine, and spoke with the same wily, mocking tongue-but the words were those of an entity not only dead but embodying Death itself, a Force that consumed the energies of Life as its food.
Kuat remembered something else from his last encounter with the Emperor: a deep sense of being offended, not so much as a living creature but as a businessman, the guiding intelligence of one of the galaxy's largest and most powerful corporations. Where are the customers going to come from? The problem with Palpatine's vision of the future, an Empire where his word and his will were the only ones that mattered, was that it was just not a commercially viable environment. What would be the point of Kuat Drive Yards, or any other of the galaxy's great manufacturing concerns, designing and creating products to be sold on one planet or a thousand, if there was no one on those worlds to buy them? More than anyone, Kuat of Kuat was aware of the destructive capability of the warships that his firm was constructing for the Imperial Navy. For the Emperor to succeed in his ambitions, his mania for universal control-and for him to turn back the threat of the Rebel Alliance-all that would mean the destruction of any number of inoffensive and otherwise prosperous worlds. Potential clients, mused Kuat-if not directly for his corporation's products, then for other companies with whom he had already done business. The Emperor had already shown his disregard for maintaining the galaxy's customer base, by sanctioning the late Governor Tarkin's destruction of the planet Alderaan with the massive firepower of the original Death Star. That had personally rankled Kuat; there had been an outstanding contract with the local government on Alderaan for a utility fleet of perimeter observation scouts and orbital customs stations, all to be furnished at a considerable profit by Kuat Drive Yards. The units had just been about ready to leave the KDY construction docks and head off in a delivery flotilla to Alderaan when the word of their destination being reduced to a few charred ashes drifting in navigable space had reached Kuat of Kuat. A near-total write-down for the corporation, salvageable only in part by breaking up the undelivered vessels and recycling some of their components into the next order for Imperial battle cruisers. For a while, he had considered presenting a bill to Emperor Palpatine, for the losses sustained by Kuat Drive Yards, but had at last decided not to push the issue. Better to leave the red ink on the books, Kuat had figured, than make an enemy out of one's biggest remaining customer. Even with Prince Xizor gone, things were still dangerous enough at Palpatine's court, with all the various levels of intrigue constantly going on, without handing another weapon to the corporation's enemies.
"So the Rebel Alliance has Boba Fett's ship." Kuat brought himself back to the situation at hand. The deeper concerns over which he mulled would have to wait a while longer for their final resolution." And it has been confirmed that this is in fact Slave 7?"
It was a good question. Boba Fett's personal history was studded with occasions in which the bounty hunter had passed off a ringer vehicle as his distinctive ship. For someone whose skills consisted largely of handing out other creatures' deaths, Fett had an unusual talent for faking his own demise. Or perhaps that talent was to be expected-Kuat wasn't sure which. Life and death were the same for a bounty hunter; it was all merchandise, with different values attached, depending upon the marketplace. Boba Fett or any of his colleagues-they were all just as happy to deliver a corpse as well as a living hostage, if the same payoff could be gotten for it. With that kind of attitude, it was no wonder that one's own death became just a matter of strategy and negotiation.
The head of security gave a single nod." Our sources in the Alliance have concluded that there is no deception involved-as least as far as the identity of the intercepted ship is concerned. The subcode numbers on the engines' shield regulator devices have been read out-" He tapped the side of his head, where the cochlear implants were hidden." Those were in the message that was received just now. I forwarded them to our records department; the numbers match up with the original construction manifest for Slave I."
"That settles the issue, then." Kuat of Kuat had personally supervised the design and assembly of Boba Fett's ship; there had been some custom features that still distinguished Slave I as a state-of-the-art job. An ID profile, the signal that was transmitted from one ship to another with the critical name and affiliation data, could be faked-not easily, but with enough determination and technical expertise, it could be done. Unbeknownst to the Empire or any other Kuat Drive Yards customer, every ship that left the construction docks had a trapdoor access routine hardwired into its onboard computers, for just that purpose. For Boba Fett to have overridden Slave I's regulator subcodes, though, would have meant risking a catastrophic core meltdown; there wouldn't be a ship left floating around to be misidentified. Ergo, this ship was Fett's and no other." Did our sources have any other information about the ship? The contents, perhaps?"