THE HORROR OF YAVIN
Yesterday's unbridled exuberance had finally subsided as operations began to get back to normal in the central offices of Tarkin Megonite Corporation on Phelarion, one of the most prosperous and powerful companies in the Outer Rim. The company provided the Empire with its primary source of the heat-sensitive and highly explosive megonite moss, a substance that could be used as a fuel source or fabricated into various munitions ordinates. The corporation, and its nearby estate and production facilities, were the birthright of Lady Typhani Tarkin, a member of Phelarion's influential Motti lineage. In her own right, she ranked as one of the wealthiest noblewomen in the galaxy and one of its shrewdest businesswomen. A strong, tall, well-built, dark-eyed presence with a huge mane of long, jet-black tresses that were beginning to streak with gray, Lady Tarkin ran her company and the local labor colonies that supported it much like her husband, Grand Moff Wilhuff Adrian Tarkin, ruthlessly ran his region of the galaxy. It was said that Lady Tarkin had but one weakness--her husband. Although he was called everything from "butcher" to "demon" throughout the galaxy, in her eyes he could do no wrong.
Yesterday, work and meetings and contracts and such had been overshadowed by cheers and excitement. Lady Tarkin had even let her employees wheel the big holovision out of the executive conference room into the main office area so everyone could watch the news reports on the obliteration of Alderaan--the primary seat of Rebel scum! Everyone knew about Lady Tarkin's unconditional devotion to her husband, who was at the time not only the Grand Moff of Imperial Oversector Outer, but also the commander of the Empire's new Death Star battle station, his brainchild, and the instrument that he had used to eliminate Alderaan. A crackling energy seemed to emanate from Lady Tarkin as she shared, albeit from a safe distance, in her husband's triumph.
That fateful morning, Typhani had been behind closed doors doing performance evaluations when she heard a commotion outside her office. "What's going on out here?" she snapped as she jerked the office door open.
Instant silence.
Someone finally spoke up. "Oh, Lady Tarkin! There's been a terrible explosion!"
"What?!" she yelped as she ran over to the wall-sized map of her mining areas, "Which sector? Why didnt you get me sooner? Have the emergency crews been called in? Has the affected area been sealed?"
More silence.
Again, a meek voice from within the group of office workers, "No, ma'am, not the mine. It's the Death Star! The Rebels, they--they--"
"Again? Already? They must have found the Rebel Base!" Typhani chirped excitedly as she darted into her executive conference room and switched on the holovision. No one dared follow her. None of the mine employees had ever seen her emote anything other than anger or perhaps a little sarcasm, and so they knew not what to expect as they crowded into the conference room doorway. Lady Tarkin's back was to them, and for a long moment she just stood rigid, staring into the news hologram that was reporting that the Rebel Alliance had just completely destroyed the Death Star during a battle in the Yavin System, presumably killing everyone on board.
At first, only a few small but agonized squeaks rose from deep within her throat. Then it came--the horrible, heart-wrenching scream of a newly-made widow crying out after her husband into eternity.
"Adrian!"
She sank to the floor in uncontrollable half-sobs, half-screams. A couple of her more familiar staff members made some tentative steps toward her. One lady stooped down and put a hand on Typhani's shoulder just as Imperial security troops rushed into the mine offices. They burst into the conference room, asking the employees to step aside, telling them, "We need to get her home."
Typhani was utterly shocked and inconsolable. The guards could not get her to stand up, and eventually had to carry her from the building. "She'll be all right," her personal bodyguard, Nardo, assured the staff on the way out.
As they approached the main house, Nardo tried to get Typhani to calm down. Just getting her to breathe was a start. "Lady Tarkin, please listen to me! You've got to get hold of yourself! Your girls are going to need you!" That had some effect. They were able to get her on her feet, and she walked into the house on her own.
Imperial security forces swarmed all over the house and the grounds. Just as she entered the main foyer, a higher-ranking officer approached them and addressed Typhani directly. She swallowed hard, expecting confirmation of her worst nightmare. "Lady Tarkin, we have spotted a handful of small craft, though badly damaged, coming out of the Yavin System. An Imperial command shuttle just crash-landed at the Tallaan Shipyards. From its markings, we think there's a possibility--"
She broke away at that and bolted up the stairs. She looked back over her shoulder at the officers from the top of the central marble staircase. "Where are my daughters? Have they been told anything?" she demanded.
Raycellna, a female Toydarian who was her most beloved and loyal housekeeper, gently took her arm. "They're in the upstairs reception room. I herded them away from the holovision. We haven't told them anything, but I think they know."
Typhani finally regained her composure as she gripped the doorhandle. "Mom!" eleven-year-old Lyscithea cried, and ran into her mother's arms.
"What's happening?" thirteen-year-old Lyjéa demanded. "Someone please tell me what's going on!" Lyjéa reached forward in her mother's direction as her seeing-eye droid led the way, its lead strap wrapped securely around her small wrist.
Typhani sat down between her daughters and put an arm around each of them. "There's been a problem on the new battle station, girls, and there was a big explosion. Now I have to go to Tallaan to meet your father, so I want you to behave and listen to Raycellna, all right?"
"Is Dad all right?" Lyscithea demanded.
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out."
Then Raycellna called Typhani to the comm, and stood with a hand on her shoulder, listening to her side of the conversation. "We don't know anything for sure yet, Rivoche," Typhani explained to her rather upset nineteen-year-old niece. "No, no, stay on campus! Stay in your dorm room, and make sure your security detail stays close. No, don't try to get back to Eriadu right now. It's not safe to travel. We'll let you know as soon as we have something definitive."
* * *
Safe or not, Typhani quickly set out for Tallaan. The trip seemed far, far too long. During the flight, other harsh realizations came to her mind. In addition to her husband, her first cousin--who had been more of a brother to her than a cousin--and several friends had also been involved with Project Death Star. And then the horror that awaited her when she reached the shipyards . . . She saw the utterly obliterated wreckage herself when her own shuttle put down. "Even if he was in there . . . " she thought as a well-formed squadron of Imperial stormtroopers surrounded her and escorted her from the landing pad. The regular duty officers would not tell her anything; they just hustled her into an overland transport, and didn't tell her where they were taking her. Starchy Imperial secrecy hung in the air on Tallaan that night. Yet her spirits lifted immensely when the military transport vehicle came to a stop and she was allowed to get out, and she realized that she had been taken to a large medcenter. But painful caution followed her elation--medcenter have morgues.
Strangely, there was very little commotion inside, odd for a medcenter that had just taken the casualties of a crashed Imperial command shuttle. At that realization, the dread started to swell inside of her again. What if no one had survived to be treated? Finally, she at last saw a friendly, familiar face. "Kendal!"
Admiral Kendal Ozzel had stepped into the corridor from a small waiting room. "Please come on in here with me," he said gently but respectfully, placing a guiding hand on Typhani's right shoulder. He closed the door behind them.
Typhani was almost breathless. "Is--" she began her question. He cut in to save her the agony.
"Yes, Typhani. At last word, he was hanging on. That was about thirty minutes ago."
"Where! I have to go to him!" she cried, reaching for the door.
He grabbed her by the shoulders. "No, no, not right now. You can't, not yet," he insisted, guiding her over to a chair. With his firm pressure on her shoulders, she finally sat down.
She stared at Admiral Ozzel wide-eyed for a few seconds, her mouth open and dry. The words would not come easily, but finally they did, "How . . .bad?"
Ozzel averted his gaze into his lap. "I have to be honest with you. It's not good. We've got Chief Medical Officer Viorska and some of his best on the way, but . . . Since hes allergic to the bacta, theres really not much they can do," he said as he shook his head.
Typhani forced herself to her feet again. "Where is he? You don't understand, Kendal, we have this--this--I don't know--some uncanny ability to heal each other! I have to--"
He took her by the wrist and gently pulled her back down into the chair. "Not this, Typhani. A cold or the flu, maybe, but not this," he said softly, yet so painfully matter-of-fact. Ozzel reached into his tunic pocket then, and withdrew several small metallic objects. "Here," he said, taking her hand and placing into it her husband's insignias, the four small cylindrical clips and the larger emblem of a Grand Moff--the Empire's very first Grand Moff--a gleaming arrangement of six blue rectangles above three red and three gold. But now, two deep and jagged gouges ran through the emblem, cutting deep into the enamel. Typhani very delicately ran her trembling fingertips over them. At that, she slumped over in the chair in full, hard sobs. "What happened?" she cried.
"We don't know for sure yet," Ozzel began, "but we think they--the Rebels--torpedoed a thermal exhaust port that set off a chain reaction in the main reactor. We're still debriefing; there have been three other ships put down, but the people left alive on them are still pretty rattled.
"Kendal, was there anyone else on this shuttle who can talk to me, tell me what happened?" Typhani asked hopefully.
Ozzel shook his head.
"So Adrian was the only one alive on that shuttle? Was he flying it? Did he get hurt on the station or in the shuttle?"
"Initially, on the station, we know that much for sure. No, he wasn't flying the shuttle. It took a lot of damage coming out of the station, and the cabin lost its atmosphere inflight, probably due to a hull crack. Someone had set autocourse for Tallaan, but everyone else was dead before that shuttle ever hit the ground. It would have come down smooth except the nav computer fried in the middle of the landing sequence and the landing gear apparently got sheared off as they came out of what was left of the Death Star."
"But then how--how did--" Typhani began, but couldn't finish.
"Someone had already applied several emergency medpacks, and he was wrapped in a thermal blanket, strapped in, and on oxygen. That's how we know he first became injured on the Death Star itself, but of course the seats broke loose on impact, and he was thrown into the front canopy. The overhead instrument bank came down and--"
"No more!" Typhani screamed, her hands going to her ears. In her own anguish, she had momentarily forgotten the others. "Kendal,." she asked, "Do you know who else was on that shuttle?"
Ozzel let out a sigh of grief at that point. "Yeah," he said. "The flight crew, Commander Romodi, General Tagge, Charlie Bast . . . And, at last report, there was one more body. They can't get it out."
"Oh, no!" Typhani cried at the loss of so many close friends and associates--their wives, friends of hers, they would all be widows now.
"Charlie was hurt pretty bad, too. From the condition of his body, we think he died before the cabin depressurized. He didnt suffocate like the others," Ozzel added. Typhani thought of Charlie, her husband's tactical aide and personal bodyguard, who had also pulled a four-year-old Lyjéa from the deep end of the swimming pool at their compound on Eriadu after she had left her guide droid behind and stumbled into it. But still one name was missing.
"Have you heard from Raolf?" she asked with trepidation concerning her cousin.
"No," Ozzel said quietly. For the moment, he withheld the information that the remaining body in the shuttle was an officer, and that Typhani's cousin, Admiral Raolf Motti, was as yet unaccounted for.
"Kendal, where's Lord Vader?" she asked.
"We don't know," he said matter-of-fact. He poured Typhani a glass of ice water from the pitcher on the table, and she downed it in huge gulps. A soft knock came at the door then, and Typhani jumped, dropping the glass and spilling the remaining water down the front of her ivory business suit. A nurse in purple scrubs with soft brown eyes poked her head in the door.
"Lady Tarkin, can we get you anything? Would you like to lie down?" the nurse asked gently.
"I would like to see my husband!" Typhani demanded.
The nurse stepped fully into the room then, and sat down to the other side of Typhani. "I know," she said, " but he's still in surgery. We'll come get you as soon as possible."
"You really should lie down," Admiral Ozzel advised her.
Typhani suddenly acknowledged her body's exhaustion. She simply nodded in compliance. "Come this way," the nurse said, and led her to another room down the hall.
Typhani lay down in her clothes on the cool, crisp, sterile white sheets, but did not entirely sleep, starting at the sound of any footsteps approaching the door. "Darth's fighter has a hyperdrive," she reminded herself. "And surely, if there was a battle, Raolf was on one of the Destroyers." For the next several hours, she drifted in and out of a half-delirium, half-sleep, then she at last heard the familiar rhythmic breath sounds and heavy footfalls that would reassure her. A low light came on automatically as he slipped into her room.
"Oh, Darth!" she cried, rising to embrace him. She buried her face in the folds of his cape. "We have to catch the Rebel scum that's done this!"
"And we will," he assured her. An Imperial cruiser had picked him up, and he came straight to Tallaan when he heard about the command shuttle. In perhaps his first act of tenderness since turning to the Dark Side, Vader pulled his cape around Typhani and held her close. In fact, as he was spinning out of control away from the exploding Death Star, he had thought to himself, "Typhani is going to be difficult."
"Darth, they won't let me see him!" she cried.
"We can go now," he told her, and led her out of the room. "Chief Medical Officer Viorska and his team will be arriving within the hour," he reassured her.
There actually wasn't much that could be seen--a devastated, almost lifeless figure, unrecognizable, encased in bandages, and surrounded by so many medical droids and other machines that Typhani could not even get close to him. She began to tremble, badly, and her knees weakened. Her hands went to her face to cover her eyes. "No!" she cried, and started to sink to the floor all over again. Another nurse, this one in a sterile white uniform, quickly threw an arm around her and pulled her stumbling from the room.
"Lady Tarkin, I know you're upset, but if you can't stay calm, then you can't be in there. He may be able to hear you," the nurse admonished her. Typhani looked to Vader for confirmation. He nodded at her and held out his hand. "Come," he said gently, "We'll try this again later." Then to the nurse, "Inform me at once when Viorska's team arrives."
"Yes, Lord Vader," she responded promptly.
Vader had waited to deliver more bad news until after Typhani had been able to see her husband and be assured that he was alive. Her cousin was not so fortunate. Vader closed the door behind them and sat down on the edge of the bed with her. By his actions, she could tell that something else was terribly wrong. He spoke in an uncharacteristically calm, low voice. "They've extracted the final casualty from the shuttle, Typhani. It's Raolf. He didn't make it."
She flinched hard as every muscle and tendon in her body railed against the news. Her stomach seemed to turn in on itself, and her head felt as if it had been struck a terrible blow. "No!" she wailed, reaching out for Vader. "Oh, no, not Raolf! Not him!" Vader held her and allowed her to grieve openly, knowing too well that more tragedy would likely soon follow.
The events of the past day had been utterly overwhelming for him as well, even despite the Dark Side shields he had worked so hard to build up around his emotions--no! He stopped himself mid-thought. Those were Anakin Skywalker's emotions, not his. Yet they persisted, scraping at the inside of his helmet. And so, in that private moment, he allowed them. At last, he had killed Obi-Wan Kenobi, only to have second thoughts almost immediately thereafter, and then to have that victory sullied by the loss of the Death Star.
Instinctively, one armored, black-gloved hand moved from Typhani's shoulder to the back of her head, gently grasping the braided twists of her hair. Almost two decades had passed since he had given comfort to another, he noted, as he realized his action. It seemed to awaken something within him, something buried deep down, long ago. That Typhani Tarkin was the object of his rare benevolence did not seem strange to him. As his other arm closed around her, he allowed himself to recall how she and Adrian had hovered over him day after day, night after night, as he slowly, arduously recovered from what Kenobi had done to him. Since that time, they had been the only people, other than Palpatine, that he had ever allowed to touch him, to help him with his mask, helmet, and other life-support equipment, relying upon droids in their absence. For those two decades, he had stood by and watched the Tarkins have what he had been denied--what he had ultimately denied himself--a family, and, even in the face of public perceptions to the contrary, a loving relationship. He dared not allow himself to remember what that felt like. And yet, he had always been mindful of how very easily what had happened to him and his chance at happiness could have happened to them instead, to the two people who for nearly twenty years had been more family than he had ever known before, who didn't seek to criticize and correct his every motive as his Jedi masters had done, and who never ridiculed or disclosed his humble roots as a Tatooine slave boy. And so, he had used his newfound position and powers to protect them fiercely, as much at his own behest as that of his master. He hadn't intended to kill Raolf Motti, either, but merely to allow him to black out before releasing him. He could not bring himself to undermine Adrian's chain of command or hurt Typhani like that, not after all they'd done for him.
Having exhausted herself, Typhani finally lay back down while Vader went upstairs to meet with Viorska. The first thing that Vader noticed was that the room was empty. "We've had to rush him back to surgery. We can't keep him stable, and without being able to use bacta, our hands are virtually tied. We get one internal system stable, and then another shuts down. We're dealing with major crush damage, massive internal injuries caused by the shuttle impact, and severe head trauma. This facility is not equipped--but then I doubt that any would be--"
Vader cut him off. "What do you need?" he asked.
"Lord Vader, to he perfectly honest with you, sir, we are either going to need a coffin--or a carbonite chamber."
"I understand," Vader told Viorska. Then under his breath to himself, "Typhani is going to be very difficult."
Vader took her back up to see her husband again a couple of hours later. Now past the initial shock, Typhani managed to hold herself together. She had always been so afraid of something like this happening. There had been so many close calls before, so many other battles, assassination attempts, narrow escapes in lifepods, and now this. The medcenter staff had rearranged things such that she could finally get in close to him, only to face the full realization of how utterly devastated he was. And yet, he was still there, for the moment. She leaned close and grasped his hand as she spoke softly to him. "Don't leave us, Adrian. The girls and I, we love you and we need you! You've got to hang on . . ."
After two more close calls, one that afternoon and one later that night in which they nearly lost their precarious hold on the Regional Governor, Vader secretly called for the carbonite chamber. Many on the hospital staff suspected that Vader was performing some kind of Sith magic to keep Tarkin alive. Of course he was, but he couldn't do it forever, and Vader knew all too well the long-term degenerative effects of such an approach. Emperor Palpatine had already begun to suffer. No one knew it at the time, but Palpatine was already using his clones, and so Vader did not even bother to suggest cloning the Grand Moff from some of his healthy tissue. Not being Force-sensitive, Tarkin could not transport his spirit to a clone anyway, and Vader was unsure of his ability to "snare" him and carry out the transfer himself. So for the possible future good of the Empire, he ordered that a failsafe carbonite chamber be tested on a Rebel prisoner and then delivered secretly to Tallaan at once. Now to convince Typhani.
A fate worse than death. That was her immediate thought. "Typhani, other than bacta, which we can't use, we don't have the technology right now to reverse the magnitude of injuries he's sustained, but sometime in the future, we might. It may only be for a short while, until we can transport him to a more advanced facility." Vader knew that a short-term encapsulation wasn't likely, but he also knew that as long as there was a chance to preserve the technical and tactical expertise Tarkin possessed, Palpatine would demand the carbonite, whether Typhani liked it or not. However, everyone's life, including Vader's, would be much easier if she would agree to it voluntarily.
"I don't know," she cried, shredding a damp, wadded facial tissue in her hands. "I--I have to wait for Morgana."
When Tarkin's sister Morgana finally arrived, she was adamant. "I already buried one of my brothers," she said, "and as long as there's the slightest chance, I'm not ready to bury the other one."
Typhani leaned close to her sister-in-law. "Morgana, Adrian told me that they sometimes use carbonite encapsulation to torture Rebels. He said they don't like it because they're aware of everything--aware that they're trapped."
Viorska had walked in behind them. "Yes, Lady Tarkin, that is true, but only when the subject is encapsulated while fully conscious. With a general anesthetic, your husband will be aware of nothing during his encapsulation, no sensory perception, no dreams, nothing. It's essentially suspended animation."
Typhani dabbed at her red, puffy eyes with another shredded tissue. "Morgana, I just don't know if we're doing the right thing or not? What do you think he'd want us to do?" she asked her sister-in-law.
Morgana looked around, specifically to make sure Vader was not afoot nearby. She leaned close to Typhani and whispered her answer in a native Eriaduan dialect such that Viorska could not understand her. "I think we both know what he wants more than anything else in the universe, and he certainly can't accomplish that fertilizing the family cemetery with Gideon!" Typhani had to agree that her husband would want the chance to succeed Palpatine, or perhaps Vader, at some point in the future.
Viorska interceded, "Ladies, I truly understand how difficult this is for you, but we have to move quickly. His condition is deteriorating, and there isn't much time."
"All right then," Typhani whispered, nodding to Viorska.
Viorska quickly arranged for all of them to transfer to the waiting Imperial Star Destroyer Avenger, where a new carbonite chamber had been concealed, per Vader's orders, in a critical care cell in the ships sick bay. The ruse would be a transfer to the primary Imperial military medical facility on Coruscant.
On Tallaan, medcenter staff put up a mild resistance to Viorska about the transfer, arguing that Governor Tarkin would not likely survive it, but did not press beyond Viorska's insistence because they felt that only a matter of hours remained anyway, and they knew that he certainly would not survive at their facility.
Aboard the Avenger, Lady Tarkin cried out openly as she watched Viorska activate the controls to the carbonite chamber. Tears welled up in Morgana's eyes as well as she watched her only remaining sibling slowly being lowered into the carbonite on the very brink of death. "Damn this war! Damn the Rebels!" she cried as she turned and rushed out of the room. She stood with her back against the wall opposite the door. "Why?" she asked, looking toward the ceiling. The two guards flanking the door eyed her intensely, unaware of the procedure taking place inside. She met their gazes, moistened her lips, and swallowed hard. "He's gone," she told them, and turned to walk away. No one else could know the truth.
As wisps of vapor rose from the carbonite chamber, Typhani suddenly ran toward it. Vader quickly reached around her from behind, catching her by both wrists, fearing she was about to throw herself over the rim and into the chamber. When all of the droids and machines had been pulled away, she and Morgana had been given a brief moment with him, but for Typhani, it was not enough, would never be enough. Only eternity would do. She choked on her own sobs and screams as Vader led her from the room. If any doubt was left in onlookers' minds after Morgana's exit, Lady Tarkin's certainly put them to rest.
Vader led Typhani to another nearby room in the Avenger's sick bay. She sank face down on the cot, half burying her face in the pillow, still hysterical, pounding the mattress with her fists. She felt a small but painful prick on the side of her neck as a medic droid hovered over her. Within moments, her shrieks subsided into soft sighs as her eyelids fluttered closed over her tears.
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