“Getting the hang of it?” Teller asked the Gotal, Salikk.
The twin-horned, flat-faced humanoid nodded without taking his heavy-lidded scarlet eyes from the instrument array. “She flies herself,” he said in accented Basic. A native of the moon Antar 4, he was short and dark-skinned, with tufts of light hair on his cheeks and chin. He wore an old-fashioned but serviceable flight suit that left the clawed digits of his sensitive hands exposed.
“It will fly itself, but we’re going to tell it where to go,” Dr. Artoz told him.
The Mon Cal wore a flight suit whose neck had been altered to accommodate the amphibious humanoid’s high-domed, salmon-colored head, and whose sleeves ended mid-forearm to allow passage for his large webbed hands. Pacing the length of the instruments console, Artoz was pointing out individual controls, his huge eyes swiveling independently of each other to focus simultaneously on Salikk and the ops specialist, Cala.
Teller had known all three of them for years, but what with Salikk’s sweaty scent and the saline smell Artoz emitted, he was grateful for the spaciousness of the Carrion Spike’s command cabin. Then again, from what he’d been told by his nonhuman friends, humans weren’t exactly a picnic when it came to body odor.
“Computer-assisted fire control for the lateral lasers and in-close weapons,” Artoz was saying, indicating one set of instruments after the next. “Full-authority navicomp, stealth system initiator, sublight ions, hyperdrive.”
“State-of-the-art Imperial technology,” Cala said. Jutting from a headcloth that fell past the Koorivar’s shoulders, his spiraling cranial horn was twice the height of Salikk’s conical projections and thicker than both of them combined. He wore pouch-pocketed pants not unlike Teller’s under a roomy tunic that reached his thick thighs. “This corvette will easily exceed a Star Destroyer.”
“Nothing less than what I promised,” Artoz said, though without a hint of self-importance. He gestured to the auxiliary controls. “Sensor suite, rectenna controls, alluvial dampers, reverse triggering acceleration compensator—”
“Which one empties the toilets?” a second human asked as she stepped through the scarred cockpit hatch. Fit and scrappy looking, she had a narrow frame and skin the color of a tropical hardwood. Her short curly hair was naturally black but had been lightened to a mishmash of brown and blond. She wore a white utility suit and ankle-length ship-tread boots. The Zygerrian female who followed her into the command cabin was also slender, though somewhat taller, and distinctly feline in appearance. Pointed, fur-covered ears sprang straight up from the sides of a narrow-nosed, triangular face. Her innate exoticism was enhanced by reddish coloring.
Teller turned to them. “Everything locked down back there?”
The woman, Anora, nodded. “The outer hatch is fully sealed. The air lock, not so much.” She gestured with her pointed chin to the Zygerrian. “Hask’s going to keep working on it — since it was her blaster that did the damage.”
Hask snorted. “When she slammed into me.” She spoke Basic flawlessly, but with a thick accent.
Anora showed her a long-suffering look. “You were supposed to keep the safety on.”
“For the last time,” she said, “I’m not a soldier, and I’ll never be one.”
“Plenty of blame to go around,” Teller said, cutting them off. “The holocams survive?”
Enthusiasm informed Hask’s nod. Her head bore a symmetrical pattern of small spurs. “They’re in the main cabin. I’ll get started slaving them to the HoloNet comm board—”
“As soon as she’s repaired the air lock,” Anora said, blue-gray eyes bright over her smile.
Hask ignored her. “Nice of Tarkin’s stormtroopers to carry some of the storeroom components aboard. I thought we were going to have to sacrifice them.”
“We have Tarkin to thank for a lot of things,” Teller said. He swung forward in time to catch the end of Artoz’s instrument rundown.
“Air lock overrides, blast-tinting for the viewports … What else?”
“Do all the Emperor’s Moffs rate one of these?” Anora asked, running a hand over the console in appreciation.
“Only Tarkin,” Artoz said, “as far as we know.”
“A testament to his friendship with Sienar,” Teller said.
“Sienar Fleet Systems wasn’t the only contributor,” Artoz amended. “The company’s design sense is all over the corvette, but every shipbuilder from Theed Engineering to Cygnus Spaceworks played a part in outfitting it.”
“Not to mention Tarkin himself,” Teller said. “The Moff was designing ships for Eriadu’s Outland Security Force when he was nineteen.”
Hask made a sour face. “More Prefsbelt Academy legends.”
Anora shook her head negatively. “True by all accounts.”
Teller perched on the arm of one of the secondary acceleration chairs. “The way I heard it, Eriadu was losing a lot of its lommite shipments to a pirate group that had fortified the bow of one of their ships to use as a rostrum — a kind of battering ram — after destroying too much cargo with their lasers.”
“The pirates weren’t acquainted with ion cannons?” Salikk said from the pilot’s seat.
Teller glanced at the Gotal. “Seswenna’s ships were too well ray-shielded for that — another Tarkin innovation, I might add. Anyway, he designed a narrow-profile ship with cannons that could swivel on pintles to direct all firepower forward. Confronted the rammer bow-on.”
“Damn the particle beams, full speed ahead,” Hask said, still refusing to buy into the legend.
Teller nodded. “Burned through the pirates’ armor like a knife through butter and blew the ship apart.” He turned to point to toggles on the control console. “Same system here.”
Cala grinned. “Should come in handy.”
“We can hope,” Artoz said, giving the console a final appraisal with his right eye while his left remained fixed on Salikk. “Proximity alarms, hypercomm unit, Imperial HoloNet encryptor …”
“Why is it called the Carrion Spike?” Anora said.
Teller drew his lips in and shook his head. “Not a clue.”
Everyone fell silent for a moment, gazing through the viewports at the Murkhana system’s small outermost planet and the vast starfield beyond.
“I still can’t get over Vader being there,” Hask said finally. “I mean, why would the Emperor send him to escort Tarkin?”
“Vader paid Murkhana a visit just after the war ended,” Cala said. “Executed a Black Sun Twi’lek racketeer, among other acts.”
“Still,” Hask said. “Vader …”
“Stop calling him by name,” Anora said harshly; then softened her tone to add: “He’s a machine. A terrorist.” She looked at Teller. “You took a real risk having him and Tarkin walk right into that sliding door ambush.”
Teller shrugged it off. “We had to make the scenario ring true. Besides, their getting themselves blown up wouldn’t have affected our plans one way or another.”
“The Emperor wouldn’t have been happy losing two of his top henchmen,” Cala pointed out.
“He’s not going to be happy either way,” Teller said.
The console issued a loud tone, and Cala lifted his eyes to the display. “Uh, Teller, we’ve got a starship on our tail.”
Teller’s dark eyebrows quirked together. “Can’t be. You certain you have the stealth system enabled?”
The Koorivar nodded. “Status indicators say so. We should be invisible to scanners.”
Everyone crowded around the sensor suite. “Put the ship on screen,” Teller said.
Cala’s stubby-fingered hands raced across the keypad, and a black ship with forward fangs resolved on the display. “Waiting for a transponder signature …”
“Don’t bother,” Salikk said. “That’s Faazah’s ship. The Parsec Predator.”