Chapter 3:
The Longing and the Dread
"Girls, Morgana, I don't mean to be antisocial, but I think I really need to be alone for a little while right now," Lady Typhani told her companions when they reached the luxurious quarters that Regent Viorska had prepared for them.
"Sure, Mom, go ahead," Lyscithea said supportively.
"I'm going to go take a look at Viorska's data on all this," Lyjéa said skeptically. She turned to leave and depressed the Reverse Course button on the top panel of her guide droid.
Lyscithea and Morgana sat down on the sofa as Typhani retreated into one of the suite's bedrooms and closed the door behind her. A wry smile crept across Morgana's face, and she chuckled that little Tarkin chuckle that indicated someone was in some serious trouble of the family kind. "What?" Lyscithea asked, staring curiously at her aunt. "What could possibly be funny right now? What are you thinking about?"
Morgana looked sideways at her niece, ducking her chin a bit. "Oh, no one in particular, just Retired Admiral You-Know-Who!"
Lyscithea threw her arms in the air, flopped against the back of the sofa, crossed her legs, and kicked off her shoes. "Oh, boy!" she said. "I forgot about Admiral You-Know-Who!"
"Oh, I am quite certain that your mother will have a very lengthy and explicitly detailed discussion with your father about Admiral You-Know-Who, just as soon as he's healthy enough to withstand the interrogation!" Morgana assured. "She, um, might even have the doctors remove some things to prevent further infractions!"
"Aunt Morgana!" Lyscithea exclaimed, slapping her aunt playfully on the arm. Then there was silence between them. They both realized that the small talk was not going to take their minds off the situation at hand and the difficult decisions to be made.
In one of the suite's plush sleeping chambers, Lady Tarkin took off her shoes, loosened her belt, and eased back into the overstuffed lounge chair just inside the bedroom door. She put her head back, and began to drift back in her mind, back twenty-five years, almost to the day . . .
* * *
That fateful morning, she 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 itself now a blur in her memory, the one detail that still remained was that it seemed far, far too long. During the flight, other harsh realizations had come 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.
"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.
Having exhausted herself, Typhani finally lay back down while Vader went upstairs to meet with Viorska. She painfully recalled the events Vader later relayed to her.
The first thing that Vader said he noticed was that the room was empty, and then Viorska's explanation. "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.
The first few weeks after the destruction of the first Death Star had been tense and hectic ones for Typhani, and she recalled spending most of them in a daze, attending memorial service after memorial service, including one for her cousin and three for her husband. To hide the truth, Palpatine issued a formal disclosure stating that Grand Moff Wilhuff Adrian Tarkin of Imperial Oversector Outer had been a victim of a shuttle accident at the Tallaan Shipyards while in transit to take command of the Death Star prior to the Battle of Yavin. This, of course, also served to "sugar-coat" the entire Death Star incident, and to protect the Tarkin family from any suggestions of indiscretion or a lapse of judgment on the part of the Grand Moff. The Empire explained away the other three ships as having been in the area to rendezvous with the battle station, and that they had been damaged by the explosion. As such, the Rebels took the communiqué as pure propaganda, certain that they had blown Tarkin to atoms above the Fourth Moon of Yavin. Those who knew otherwise were extremely few: Typhani, Morgana, Viorska, Vader, Palpatine, and eventually Lyjéa and Lyscithea, and then Lyscitheas husband. Typhani had insisted on telling her daughters the truth, but in light of their ages, she had waited several months so that their emotions would appear genuine during all of the memorials.
The girls had also been instrumental in designing a memorial for their father to be erected on their estate on Phelarion, a towering solid black marble obelisk. As far as they knew, their father's body lay inside his coffin in a spacious stone chamber beneath the obelisk. Typhani thought back again to the night about eight months after the explosion when she took her daughters out to the memorial, unlocked the door at its base with the only key, and led them, both trembling with fear, down the narrow stone steps. She did not speak to them right away. She knew she would have to show them or they would never believe her. She simply walked over to the casket, gripped the lid with both hands, and heaved up.
"Mom!" Lyscithea gasped. Then her mouth dropped open in silence and disbelief.
"What! What!" Lyjéa demanded.
"Come here, Lyjéa, this way," Typhani directed her. She took her oldest daughter's hands and placed them into the coffin. Lyjéa ran her hands over the interior.
"It's empty!" she exclaimed.
Lyscithea was wise twelve-year-old after all she'd been through, and she scowled at her mother, hands on her hips. "Where, not the Rebel Base, but my father?!" she demanded.
"In a carbonite containment cylinder safely hidden near Uncle Darth's house on Vjun," Typhani revealed. She sat down with her daughters on the low marble bench opposite the empty casket and explained everything to them. They, like her, had never abandoned hope, but they, being young and resilient, had assimilated the realization well as they grew up.
But for Typhani, the forlorn longing had never left her. She spent a couple of years in grief counseling for anger management and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder after she had nearly worked her employees to death in an attempt to harvest and process enough megonite moss to annihilate the entire Rebel Alliance, then played right into their hands when, in her rage, she unwittingly conscripted a Rebel woman, whose ship Vader had shot down and who had been posing as a common miner, to scrub every toilet, fixture, and floor in her multi-story mansion with a sponge--not a brush, not a mop--a sponge, no gloves--in preparation for a high-level Imperial conference she was about to host. In addition to her assigned chores, the Rebel slipped into Typhani's office, accessed her subspace transponder, and used it to make some very well-placed calls to smugglers to come route her, two co-conspirators--and a sizable load of megonite--straight back to the Rebel Alliance. The escapade resulted in two major detonations, one of which had nearly demolished the mine offices when Nardo shot at the Rebel, hitting the megonite display, which was in Typhani's office at the time, instead. He died instantly in the line of duty.
Vader had picked up the transmissions, and assumed the worst of Typhani. He arrived just prior to the diplomatic banquet, and together they chased the Rebel all over the grounds. Vader immediately recognized her. As it turned out, this common miner turned house maid who called herself "Lerna" was actually none other than Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, one of the Rebellion's top leaders! The Rebel and her cohorts finally ended up trapped on the landing pad on top of the main production building. Vader warned Typhani that she would be considered responsible if the renegades escaped, which they promptly did, when a smuggler's freighter put down on the landing pad and the three fugitives scrambled aboard. Vader and General Shea Hublin immediately set out after them, but not before Vader told Typhani to get back to her estate and stay there until he returned.
Typhani feared at that point that she would lose her own life, if not the rest of her family as well. She made it back to the mine offices just as the escaping freighter began to strafe the entire complex with laser fire. Locating a mobile transmitter, she had frantically gotten through to Bharina, telling her, "Go into my bedroom--I know I've never allowed you in there, but go--there's a key inside a small box covered with blue and silver shells on my night table. Get the key, take the girls, and get beneath the obelisk--Scythi knows how to open it. Stay down there until I come for you or--or until it gets quiet!" Then she scrambled to find a way out of the burning office building, finally breaking a window and pulling herself to safety. She then ran hard across the plaza, unprotected, nearly falling several times as she tried to make her way in her high-heeled evening shoes, her bejeweled, royal blue, crushed velvet ball gown now torn and stained, her face and hands covered with soot, and her hair half down.
Vader had been furious with her. When he returned to confront her about the incident, he accused her of allowing megonite to be smuggled to the Rebel Alliance on the black market, and blamed her for the Rebels escape. For a brief moment, she feared he might hurt her--or worse. And well he may have, if the girls had not overheard and come running into the room.
"You need to leave the war to the warriors, Typhani," he had admonished her, after asking the girls to excuse them, assuring them that he would not harm their mother. "I know you're still upset about Adrian--"
She cut him off, "Darth, I will always be upset about Adrian, and those Rebels are still out there!"
"That Rebel you had in this house is one of the most dangerous, Typhani, and from the outside it certainly looked as though she was your guest, not your servant. You and your girls were in grave danger, Typhani!"
"I told you, Darth, I had no idea who she was or where she'd come from! I thought she'd come in through the labor pool like the others!" Typhani defended herself.
"But you didn't bother to pull her background information, did you? And so in the process you gave the Rebels exactly what they wanted and provided a means for their escape," he scolded.
"Everything was in such a rush--for the Conclave! I didn't have time! She appeared to be nothing more than a normal-looking convict girl to me! How could I have possibly known! Besides, I told you months ago I was afraid the Rebels might come after me and the girls! If you shot her ship down, why didn't you follow through to make sure there were no escape pods!"
"Why did you breach your own procedures, Typhani? If you were that concerned . . . And then had you found out? Well, as I recall, you're rather handy with a blaster yourself," Vader pointed out, but had to admit to himself that he should have scanned for pods, though he doubted they would have detected the gossamer glider the Rebel had used in her escape.
Typhani was disgusted with herself. "You're right, you're right," she conceded, thinking about how it would have taken only a few minutes to pull "Lerna's" rap sheet off of the penal colony computer system. There would have been no "Lerna," of course, and Typhani could have ended the problem--and possibly the Rebellion--right then and there with her own hand.
In a move that both surprised and touched her, several of the mine harvesters and two of the foremen had come forward to Vader and Hublin and explained the conspiracy of two of their co-workers to escape with a load of stolen megonite, and confirmed that the arrival of the Rebel woman had been a complete coincidence. None of them, they said, ever suspected that she was a Rebel of rank. To protect their jobs, if not their lives, they had somehow managed to convince the Imperial high commanders that Typhani knew of none of it. She was simply guilty of letting her guard down a bit too much amidst all the preparations for the convention--and of overproduction.
Vader thought it wise to deal with the latter issue as well. "You have a valuable resource here, Typhani, and you're a good businesswoman. That is what the Empire needs from you. Don't destroy yourself or your resources here, and don't dabble with Rebels. Leave that to me."
And so that is what she had done with the rest of her working life, as she had done before. She went to the mine offices every working day, clad in smart designer business suits, making demands and giving commands with stern and precise resolve, making her employees fear what she might do if they failed to comply. Indeed, she had made memorable examples out of a few slackers, ruthlessly incorporating the Tarkin Doctrine into her management style.
The business of the mine and other Imperial pursuits filled her days, but that persistent longing filled her nights. For a quarter century, she had fantasized about this day, and about that fateful yet fantastic evening at some undetermined point in the future when she and her husband would once again enjoy their wafers and tea in the sitting room off their master bedroom (a strict evening ritual that had been), and then draw close to each other, sinking into the thick, warm down of their overstuffed bed that sequestered them from the cold, damp Phelarian nights.
Now it could be, or soon, she thought, but she dared not let herself completely believe it. Something could go terribly wrong, or only partially right, and there were so many other things to consider, so much that had happened, so much that had changed. Indeed, it was a far different galaxy from the one that had existed when the carbonite vapors had torn her husband from her side.
* * *
Morgana knocked softly on the door. "Typhani, are you all right? Lyjéa is back, and they've just brought us some dinner." For a moment, Typhani thought she perceived the faint taste of deliciously sweet Eriaduan crème wafers.
Lyjéa reported her findings as the four of them ate dinner. "Of course, all the data and specs look good on paper, it's just a matter of how well he responds. That's the variable."
"But Lyjéa, don't you think his ability to bounce back from this is compromised now that he's so much older? Have they considered that?" Lyscithea asked.
"Older?" Lyjéa queried.
"Lyjéa, Dad's eighty-one years old now," her sister reminded her.
"But he's been suspended in the carbonite," Lyjéa replied, groping around her plate for her askew roll.
"So when they bring him out, will he be eighty-one or fifty-six?" Lyscithea rephrased her question.
"Fifty-six," Lyjéa said matter-of-fact. All eyes went to Typhani. Another worry to consider. Typhani put down her fork. She dropped her hands into her lap and stared down at them.
"Mom, how do you feel about that?" Lyscithea asked.
Typhani looked up, and in what almost appeared to be good spirits said, "Well, let's just say I'm glad I'm Phelarian." She took a sip from her glass, then added, "I do suppose I'll need to dye all this hair back black, and perhaps have a little nip-and-tuck surgery myself." Everyone chuckled at that.
Lyscithea appeared to be doing some math on her fingers. "Blast it!" she thought. "Dad and Daala are almost the same age now!"
"Lyjéa, did you notice any additional risk factors," Typhani asked.
"Well, we already established inability to stabilize, and the stuff could simply not work. Or, one could work and the other not work. If the cell regenerator works and the neurobooster doesn't, who knows. He could be no better off than he is right now, as I said earlier," she reminded them.
"But he wasn't brain-dead, right Mom?" Lyscithea asked.
"No. They were getting some impulses, but he'd gone headlong into the front canopy of that shuttle," Typhani explained.
Lyjéa continued, "Then he could end up with any level of ability along a very large sliding scale. On the other hand, if the neurobooster works and the cell regenerator doesn't, then we have that mind of his back in a body wracked with health problems that won't allow him to fulfill his ambitions after all. I don't know whether he'd want to exist like that, or that we would want him to."
"Oh, I don't know," Lyscithea ventured.
"And, just like anyone who's ill, he could get an infection, pneumonia, any number of things," Lyjéa continued.
"But what if this ordeal has, I don't know, changed his personality or something?" Typhani speculated.
"We won't know that until he comes around, and even then, such changes could show up weeks or months later," Lyjéa explained.
Typhani put down her napkin and sat back in her chair. "You know, I have longed for this day for twenty-five years, but I have dreaded it as well," she said, her throat growing tight.
"What, Mom?" Lyscithea asked.
"All the changes since . . . I mean, so much of what he cared about is gone--the station, the lab, Carida, the old Academy, your Uncle Darth, Raolf, Emperor Palpatine, and we're sharing the galaxy with the Rebel-scum New Republic! I just--I'm afraid of bringing him out into a universe that no longer holds any meaning for him."
"True, but we also have to think about what is still here for him, like us, Nolan, Raine and Valdemar, Uncle Bevel, Raith, Rodin, Gilad, so many familiar places like Villa Galaxia, our lofts on Eriadu, Seswenna Hall, our house, the lake house, his study--just like the morning he left it," Lyjéa offered.
"Mom," Lyscithea said to get her mother's attention. She leaned over the table toward her mother and whispered, "Grandkids!"
"Oh, Scythi, you are right there," Typhani said with a soft smile.
"You know," Lyjéa said, "I think they're going to try this with us or without us, and for his sake, I think it better be with us. We'll have to be the ones to help him--to put up with him--while he deals with all those changes Mom's worried about."
"I'm trying to think of who's still alive," Lyscithea said. "Mom, can you remember anybody who would know everything, or who would have the most information, you know, before the station, the lab, after the station. all the warlords fighting with each other, the New Republic, Getelles and the mess in the Meridian Sector, Disra and his antics, Ardus, Ravic, Bel Iblis' stunts right before the peace accord? What was the last thing Dad was working on? Wasn't it the cruisers with the gravity wells?"
"Yes, but the approach he was exploring is totally outmoded now and theyre using something else," Typhani replied. "It's that sort of thing that troubles me."
"What about Gilad? He's been through it all," Morgana suggested.
"Of course he'll be invaluable, but he knew nothing about the work at the Installation," Typhani said.
"He's going to take the lab the hardest," Lyscithea said, looking down at her plate.
"Even over Rebel scum crawling all over Coruscant now?" Morgana asked.
"Oh, yes," Typhani said.
"Mom, how come we never knew about the lab?" Lyscithea asked. "Miss Priss Admiral You-Know-Who I can understand, but why not the lab itself?"
"Your father's mind worked in very complex ways, Scythi." Typhani reminded her daughter. She would take the night to make another painful and difficult decision.
Typhani lay awake that night, dwelling not upon the possible long-awaited reunion with her soul mate, but on another, on one who had endured the worst cruelty, the most heinous and deceitful exploitation she and her husband could possibly inflict upon another living being, one who had suffered terribly for it, to the point of being utterly broken, and who didn't even know how grievously she'd been harmed--or why. And yet now Typhani needed that someone's help. She would have to face her nemesis--and one of her own orchestrations of atrocity--to help her husband, perhaps only to lose him again . . . The morning came too soon.
"We would like to get started in about ten days," Regent Viorska told the Tarkin women the following morning. "We'll have an elite security squadron retrieve the cylinder from Vjun. Will that allow you sufficient time to prepare? You'll need to plan for an initial stay of several weeks, most likely, before he'll be well enough for transport to Phelarion." Typhani and Morgana nodded. Between them, they had already discussed working out a schedule, but everyone knew that Typhani would never leave her husband's side.
Viorska continued, "The veil of secrecy has been kept well shut over this matter now for better than two decades. However, is there anyone else, any other family members or other associates, whom you feel could be of help to us?"
Typhani took a deep breath. "Yes, Paleb, I . . . because of the scope of events which have transpired, I think it would be wise if Retired Admiral Daala were involved with us as well, and I would prefer to speak with her about this myself."
Viorska raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Mmmmother!" Lyscithea exclaimed, leaning sharply toward her mother with her hands on her hips.
Typhani put her hand up to silence her daughter. "Lyscithea, there are things you don't know. There are lots of things Daala most likely does not know. And . . . there are some things I don't know."
"But--" Lyscithea continued to protest.
Typhani cut her off, standing firm. "She, like everyone else, will find out soon enough, and, for reasons I will discuss with you later, I think it is in your father's best interest that she be here."
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