But Tarkin didn’t speak to those things; instead he said: “Coruscant appears prosperous.”
“Busy, busy,” the Emperor said.
“The Senate is supportive?”
“Now that it serves rather than advises.” The Emperor swiveled slightly in Tarkin’s direction. “Better to surround oneself with fresh loyal allies than treacherous old ones.”
Tarkin smiled. “Someone once said that politics is little more than the systematic organization of hostilities.”
“Very true, in my experience.”
“But do you even need them, my lord?” Tarkin asked in a careful, controlled voice.
“The Senate?” The Emperor could not restrain a faint smile. “Yes, for the time being.” With a dismissive gesture, he added: “We’ve come far, you and I.”
“My lord?”
“Twenty years ago, who would have thought that two men from the Outer Rim would sit at the center of the galaxy.”
“You flatter me, my lord.”
The Emperor studied him openly. “I sometimes wonder, though, if you — born an outsider, as I was — feel that we should be doing more to lift up those worlds we defeated in the war? Especially those in the Outer Rim.”
“Turn the galaxy inside out?” Tarkin said more strongly than he intended. “Quite the opposite, my lord. The populations of those worlds wreaked havoc. They must earn the right to rejoin the galactic community.”
“And the ones that waver or refuse?”
“They should be made to suffer.”
“Sanctions?” the Emperor said, seemingly intrigued by Tarkin’s response. “Embargoes? Ostracism?”
“If they are intractable, then yes. The Empire cannot be destabilized.”
“Obliteration.”
“Whatever you deem necessary, my lord. Force is the only real and unanswerable power. Oftentimes, beings who haven’t been duly punished cannot be reasoned with or edified.”
The Emperor repeated the words to himself, then said, “That has the ring of a parental lesson, Governor Tarkin.”
Tarkin laughed pleasantly. “So it was, my lord — though applied in a more personal manner.”
The Emperor swiveled his chair toward the light, and Tarkin glimpsed his sepulchral visage; the molten skin beneath his eyes, the bulging forehead. After all these years, he was still not accustomed to it. “When one consorts with vipers, one runs the risk of being struck,” the Emperor had told Tarkin following the attack on him by a quartet of Jedi Masters.
There were many stories about what had occurred that day in the chancellor’s office. The official explanation was that members of the Jedi Order had turned up to arrest Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and a ferocious duel had ensued. The matter of precisely how the Jedi had been killed or the Emperor’s face deformed had never been settled to everyone’s satisfaction, and so Tarkin had his private thoughts about the Emperor, as well. That he and Vader were kindred spirits suggested that both of them might be Sith. Tarkin often wondered if that wasn’t the actual reason Palpatine had been targeted for arrest or assassination by the Jedi. It wasn’t so much that the Order wished to take charge of the Republic; it was that the Jedi couldn’t abide the idea of a member of the ancient Order they opposed and abhorred emerging as the hero of the Clone Wars and assuming the mantle of Emperor.
“I thank you for remaining in service to the Empire and not turning your hand to writing,” the Emperor said, “as some of your contemporaries have done.”
“Oh, I still dabble, my lord.”
“Doctrinal writings?” the Emperor said in what seemed genuine interest. “Examinations of history? A memoir perhaps?”
“All those things, my lord.”
“Even with your obligations as sector governor, you find the time.”
“Sentinel Base is remote and mostly tranquil.”
“It suits you, then. Or is it that you are well suited to it?”
“Sentinel isn’t exactly privation, my lord.”
“Even when attacked, Governor?”
Tarkin restrained a smile. He knew when he was being goaded. “Is this the reason you summoned me, my lord?”
The Emperor sat back in the chair. “Yes and no. Though I am familiar with the report you transmitted to the intelligence chiefs. Your actions at Sentinel bespeak a keen intuition, Governor.”
Tarkin adopted an expression of nonchalance. “The important thing is that the mobile battle station remains secure.”
The Emperor imitated Tarkin’s affected indifference. “This isn’t the first time we’ve been forced to deal with malcontents, and it won’t be the last. From both near and far.” He paused. “There is no refuge from deception when adversaries remain.”
“All the more reason to safeguard the supply lines, especially through sectors that aren’t under my personal control.”
The Emperor placed his elbows on the table and steepled his long fingers. “Clearly you have thoughts about how to rectify the situation.”
“I don’t wish to be presumptuous, my lord.”
“Nonsense,” the Emperor said. “Speak your mind, Governor.”
Tarkin compressed his lips, then said: “My lord, it’s nothing we haven’t discussed previously.”
“You are referring to the need for oversector control.”
“I am. Each oversector governor would then be responsible for maintaining control beneath him — if only as a means of policing districts without having to request guidance from Coruscant.”
The Emperor didn’t reply immediately. “And who might assume your position if I were to remove you from Sentinel?”
“General Tagge, perhaps.”
“Not Motti?”
“Or Motti.”
“Anyone else?”
“Nils Tenant is very competent.”
Again the Emperor fell briefly silent. “Are you certain that Sentinel’s unknown assailants managed to override the local HoloNet relay station?”
“I am, my lord.”
“Have you some notion as to how they achieved this?”
Tarkin wet his lips. “Travel to Coruscant prevented me from carrying out a complete investigation. But yes, I have some ideas.”
“Ideas you are willing to share with our advisers and intelligence chiefs?”
“If it will serve your purpose, my lord.”
The Emperor exhaled forcibly. “We will see at length just whose purpose it serves.”
The Emperor's new spies
SIMILAR IN DESIGN to the pinnacle room, the audience chamber on the penultimate level of the central spire was a circular space, but without partitions and featuring a ten-meter-tall podium reserved for the Emperor, who accessed it by private turbolift from his residence. Tarkin arrived by means of the more public turbolift, entering the vast room to find nearly a dozen people waiting, all of whom he knew or recognized, loosely divided into three groups that made up the Empire’s uppermost tiers. First, and positioned closest to the podium, was the Ruling Council, represented just then by Ars Dangor, Sate Pestage, and Janus Greejatus, all three dressed in baggy costumes of riotous color and floppy hats more befitting a night at the Coruscant Opera. More or less on equal footing, the two other groups were made up of members from the Imperial Security Bureau and the more recently created Naval Intelligence Agency, with Harus Ison and Colonel Wullf Yularen speaking for the former, and Vice Admirals Rancit and Screed for the latter. Feeling like the odd man out, Tarkin gravitated to where Mas Amedda and Darth Vader were standing, off to one side of the podium.
Tarkin acknowledged his military comrades with a friendly nod to each. Some he had known since his academy days; others he had served with during the Clone Wars. Interestingly, the Emperor’s advisers were also a kind of clique, having attached themselves to the Emperor since his early years as an untested senator from Naboo. Perhaps their outlandish garb was in some sense a tribute to the sartorial extravagance of Naboo’s nobility. Even those who should have known better tended to dismiss Dangor, Greejatus, and Pestage as sycophants, when in fact members of the Ruling Council oversaw the everyday affairs of the Empire and wielded wide-ranging and sometimes menacing powers. Even the Empire’s twenty Moffs were obligated to answer to the Imperial cadre.