Chapter 10:
A Once and Future Threat
"I do not believe I am reading this," New Republic President Leia Organa-Solo exclaimed aloud as she read the official notice issued by the Imperial Remnant. As her husband, Han, leaned over her shoulder, she continued. "No, I do believe it. I have known it in my gut! As soon as the Empire came out with that bogus Tallaan Shipyards shuttle crash story, we should have known something was awry and we should have acted!"
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Han said as he finished reading the communiqué.
"I think that's an understatement. Look, we need to get moving on this. We need to get some information. I'll get Artoo to pull all the records we have on Tarkin, but we're going to need to take advantage of the inside help we have now. If you'll try to get hold of Rivoche and Qwi, I'll get Ackbar," she said. "And I'll get hold of Luke, too. I want him here as well, and Mara if she's up to it!"
Rivoche Tarkin was the last to join the meeting except for Dr. Qwi Xux, whose shuttle was late. Rivoche was surprised at a request to meet directly with the president, and was somewhat concerned that she might have done something wrong. Leia addressed her as soon as she took her seat. "I suppose you've heard about your uncle?" she asked.
"My uncle?" Rivoche said, sneering the last word through her nose. "That bottom-feeding nerf-herder has been dead for twenty-five years, thank the Maker!"
"Uh-uh," Leia told her, moving her head precisely first to the left, then the right. "According to the latest Imperial communiqué, he's been on ice until about three months ago, and is now apparently well on the mend, with his little lady Admiral friend under wing and your Aunt Typhani already acting like an Empress!"
"No!" Rivoche exclaimed.
"Yes!" Leia and Han insisted at once.
"I should have known. Knowing my Aunt Typi . . . Ice? Do you mean carbonite?" Rivoche asked.
"Yep!" Leia confirmed. "And we all should have known."
"He just won't go away!" Rivoche complained through clenched teeth. "They're going to install him as Emperor, aren't they?"
"Why, certainly," Leia told her, nodding, sharp sarcasm in her voice.
"That's going to be a problem for us," Rivoche assured her.
"We know. We've got archives of data on what to expect, but we've had that since before Ghorman, and we haven't been able to neutralize him. Rivoche, we need more, from the inside. We need an edge, some way we can get at him before he gets at us and starts the war escalating again. I spent about two weeks at your aunt's estate once, but I was too busy trying to get my hands on some of her megonite and get the hell out of there to pay too very much attention to her. We know now, what we didn't know then, that you, Dr. Xux, and Admiral Ackbar have some very direct personal experience that might be helpful to us. Can you help us--help the Republic?" Leia asked, expecting a warm and fully compliant response.
Rivoche folded her arms over her chest. She looked away from Leia. "I'm sorry, President Organa-Solo. I--I just can't think about that part of my life."
Leia should have known. She nodded in what she thought was understanding, suspecting that Rivoche had been horribly abused. "We understand," Leia told her, "and we're very sorry you were brutalized by that monster. But if you change your mind, if you can think of anything--"
Rivoche cut her off, looking at the former president with wide eyes. "Me?" Then she looked at Ackbar. "You never told anyone what happened?"
Ackbar looked kindly at her and gently shook his head. "Of course not, Rivoche. You were only seven years old." he said. "You must make peace with yourself about that time."
Confused, Han, Luke, and Leia looked back and forth from Rivoche to Ackbar. Ackbar reached out toward Rivoche. She looked at Leia. "No, I was the one who did the brutalizing. You would throw me out of the Republic if you knew what I did!"
"As a seven-year-old?" Leia asked gently. "It certainly couldn't be any worse than most of the things your uncle has done."
"Let it go, Rivoche. You have carried this burden for too long. Continuing to harm yourself with this burden will not change what happened," Ackbar encouraged her.
Rivoche's gaze moved around the room, jumping from face to face. She felt compelled to answer them because of their positions and their stares. Her bottom lip quivered, and she drew a shaky breath, staring down into her lap. "What do you want to know?"
"We need to know everything, Rivoche, everything you can remember. Please, for the sake of the galaxy . . ." Leia said.
Rivoche sat in contemplation for a moment, seeming to scroll back through her mind, back and back, until she was only a toddler. "Red!" she said.
"Red?" Han asked.
"Red carpet," Rivoche continued. "My earliest memories of my aunt and uncle were when their old house on Phelarion was still standing. When I was a baby, I used to play in this wide upstairs hall, and it had deep crimson red carpet.
"The next thing I remember, I guess it was the fire. My father woke me up in the middle of the night and told me he had to go to Phelarion right away because there had been a bad fire in Uncle Adrian and Aunt Typhani's house. We were supposed to go there for a holiday, but then we didn't because the place had burned practically to the ground--something about the heating system. I remember asking my father if my aunt and uncle were all right, and he said that they would be. I never heard the exact details."
Han cut in then. "Adrian? Who's Adrian?"
"Oh," Rivoche realized, "Adrian is my uncle's middle name. He and my grandfather had the same name, and so my uncle was raised by his middle name to tell them apart."
"You remember your grandparents?" Leia asked, hoping to get some insight.
"Sure, my father's parents, that is. My Gramma Marganitha--she went by Maggie--had bright red hair--the orange-red kind--and blue eyes. I do remember my grandfather, but not too many details, because he died when I was about two or three. I remember being at the funeral, though."
"Do you remember anything else about them?" Luke asked.
"A little. Gramma Maggie was the quintessential Seswennan socialite, and my grandfather had been a military engineer and tactician all of his life before he became the Chief Military Officer of Eriadu."
"I don't mean to be difficult, Rivoche, but do you remember why your grandparents died? Do you remember--not something your uncle may have told you?"
"Yes, of course. Grampa had a burst blood vessel, in the brain. My uncle was with him when it happened, and he was pretty shaken up over it," Rivoche explained. Rumors had circulated throughout the galaxy for decades that Tarkin had killed his father.
"You don't think your uncle did it?" Leia asked.
"No, I don't. There was no evidence of that, just the rumor mill. Besides, it was so clear-cut in the autopsy results. Anyone who looks at the report should know that. I don't mean to defend my uncle out of turn or anything of the sort, but that is one thing that we know he did not do."
"And what about your grandmother?" Leia asked.
Rivoche looked away, and seemed troubled. "She died in an asylum for alcoholics when I was nine or ten. I was away at school by then," she explained.
"And, it was your uncle who had her committed there, wasn't it?" Leia pressed.
Rivoche seemed a little embarrassed. "You're making me sound like my uncle's devoted defender!" she said, with a slight laugh. "Actually, it was both Aunt Morgana and Uncle Adrian who did it. They had no choice. Gramma was totally out of control after Grampa died. I was really afraid of her by then. She was horrible when she was drunk, and violent. She even showed up at my father's funeral drunk. I remember my uncle yelling at her at the cemetery, something like What kind of mother would show up at her own son's funeral drunk!' They were fighting over me, over who I should go with. I was scared out of my wits that my grandmother would take me back with her, and so I ran to my Aunt Typhani. I remember my grandmother shouting some of the most awful things about her as we were leaving--they never got along."
"Do you think your grandmother might have abused her children when they were young?" Leia asked. Rumors of the "abuse excuse" variety had also circulated concerning the atrocities committed by the most infamous Grand Moff.
"I think they were probably neglected more than abused," Rivoche answered. "My uncle and my Aunt Morgana used to talk about it, about how they really bonded with each other because of it. Of course, there were droids and servants to take care of them, but that's always a poor substitute for parents. I do, however, remember Aunt Morgana telling me once that my grandmother's favorite tactic was that if one of them did something that displeased her, she would punish the other one. My grandfather was very much an absentee parent, and so I think my grandmother took it out on her kids. It's no wonder that my Aunt Morgana started drinking as well. I think my father got the worst of my grandmothers wrath, though. By the time he came along, Uncle Adrian and Aunt Morgana were almost in their teens, and also away quite a bit at military school."
"Your Aunt Morgana--your father's sister--she's an alcoholic, too, isn't she?" Leia asked.
"Yes, at least when I was around her. You know, of all of my memories of her, I don't remember ever once seeing her completely sober, though I hear shes okay now. She and my uncle both hated my father, and my Aunt Morgana was such a smart-mouth! Family lore has it she wanted to have a keg party after my father's funeral."
"But one thing your uncle doesn't have is an alcohol problem," Leia observed.
"No," Rivoche said. "The only thing I've ever known him to drink is this thick, syrupy, heated, red chimbak wine, and usually with dinner. He gets really ill if he drinks too much. I think it's probably psychosomatic. I think he probably protected my Aunt Morgana from a lot of hell when they were young, and that he associates it with alcohol."
"What about your Aunt Typhani?" Leia asked, having had some experience in this area herself. "When did she come along?"
"Come along? She was always there. I don't ever remember her not being around. This is all pretty trivial. It can't be doing you any good," Rivoche speculated.
"No, actually I think you're on to something. Please, go on," Leia said.
Rivoche turned into her thoughts for another moment, and shifted uneasily in her chair. "The next thing I remember really frightened me. My aunt and uncle had already been together for way over a decade, and had been trying to start a family for years, but my Aunt Typhani had some kind of hormone imbalance that had been keeping her from getting pregnant. They finally found and fixed the problem, and one day when I was about four, my father told me that Aunt Typhani was going to have a baby. Then a few days later, he told me that Aunt Typhani was not going to have a baby. I asked why not, and my father, bless him, very carefully in four-year-old terms tried to explain to me that the baby had died. I kept insisting that it couldn't have died because it hadn't been born yet. I couldn't understand how something could be dead before it even had a chance to be alive, and that really scared me. It wasn't a month later that my father got killed." Rivoche choked back tears at the direct mention of her father's death.
"It was Admiral Jirak Worrell. He was close with my uncle and had it out for my father. Aunt Morgana--she was on his bridge when he destroyed the army station at Erhynradd. She just stood there and let it happen! She didn't do anything at all to stop him! Nothing!
"When I got home from school that day, our housekeeper had already packed some of my things. She told me that my father would be away for awhile, and that I was supposed to go stay with my aunt and uncle on Eriadu. They were kind to me and tried to explain my father's death in a way that I could understand and accept, but I just couldn't accept it, so I threw a fit. I threw lots of fits. I even got one of the servant girls killed because I threw a fit.
"Her name was Namir, and on the day this incident happened, she had been helping my aunt get ready for some sort of official event. I think it was a ball or a banquet. We were on Eriadu at the time, and I wanted to go. My aunt told me no, that it was not open to children, and I was stupid enough to throw a tantrum. My uncle was running after me, trying to catch me and get me to settle down, and I ran into my aunt's dressing room where I could hide behind her long gowns. He caught Namir in there taking something out of my aunt's jewelry chest. It was an unmounted stone of some kind. She had so much of that junk that she would have never missed it! But he caught Namir stealing nonetheless. My aunt was even more furious than my uncle was, and they shipped Namir to the labor colony on Phelarion and forced her to become a megonite harvester. I never saw her again, but a couple of years later, I heard that she'd been killed in an accidental detonation. I really liked her. If only I hadn't thrown a fit or ran into that dressing room, it would have never happened! At least that's what my uncle told me." Rivoche took a moment to regain her composure.
"By that point, they were jogging back and forth between the family compound, the Governor's Mansion on Eriadu, and the new house on Phelarion. Oh, the new house! That project went on for years and years! That was another thing about my aunt and uncle; they always had a project between them that they could wrap themselves up in. The problem was that I was never the project. There was always something going on and people around all the time. I know that was to be expected with my uncles position, but I mean all the time. They never slowed down. I don't think they knew how.
"After one of my uncle's promotions, we finally moved into the new house on Phelarion. But every time my uncle would be home for any length of time, it was always gotothelake, gotothelake, gotothelake--their beloved lake house. It was one of those big prefab dwellings that I vaguely remember them living in on Phelarion for a little while before the new house was finished enough to move in. After it was finished, they moved the prefab to some lake property my aunt had about three hours overland from the mine, and they built on to it. It was nice, but even there, the noise and the people--constant activity, I mean con-stant.
"The comm would beep off the wall, and my aunt and uncle would tell people, Sure, come on out, we'll be here for three more days' or whatever. Sometimes there would be fifteen or twenty people in this little prefab house, and the food--well, it was obnoxious! There would be just piles and piles of food, and people would be barbecuing outside, and frying fish and fritters, and you couldn't even get in the kitchen. There was this huge center island, and it would be just piled high, and the adults would stand around it and gorge themselves and be loud and laugh and tell jokes and carry on like a herd of Banthas! Uncle Bevel and Uncle Nasdra would have belching and farting contests, and Uncle Raith and Uncle Rodin would get thoroughly disgusted and start an argument with them, and then Aunt Dwyll and Aunt Elizie would get in the middle of it! Everybody was Aunt this or Uncle that to me, related or not. And they'd play loud music, and outside people would be on ATV's and speeder bikes and get dirty and wet, and be on and off of the party barge out on the lake, and in the lake. And then it would get dark, and they would all start their blasted drinking! Of course, Gramma and Aunt Morgana were always the worst."
Han was grinning. "Hey, sounds like a party, people!" he laughed.
Leia was taking all of this in with an open mouth of surprise. "This certainly doesn't sound very--very Imperial." she observed.
"No, that's just it! The Imperials had lodges and retreats and vacation homes tucked all over the galaxy where they could go and not be seen and act like the true barbarians they are!" Rivoche declared.
Ackbar looked contemplative. He thought back, and smiled an inner smile as he remembered himself and Wilhuff Tarkin careening at full speed along the cool, wet, shore of Lake Phelarion on their ATVs, sprays of water cascading about them, Ackbar with a giggling, squirming, five-year-old Lyscithea strapped in front of him and Lyjéa with her father, the girls calling out to each other and to them, "Again! Again," and their mother, beaming, as she wove in and out between them on her speeder bike, her lush dark hair streaming behind her from under her helmet, all of their bellies full of barbecue and all the fixings . . .
"I must admit I had some very good times at the lake," Ackbar offered with a Calamarian chuckle.
All pretense of civility left Rivoche's face and she shot Ackbar a cold look. "Admiral Ackbar, how can you say that! They enslaved you! How can you possibly say you had good times with them!"
"You had no good times?" Ackbar asked. "Nothing good came from your time with them?"
"Not particularly," Rivoche retorted.
"If we refuse to remember the good times we've had and dwell only on the bad, then parts of our lives become meaningless. I was with your uncle for nine years, far longer than you. I followed him around everywhere, and so I understand what you mean about the constant activity. But I would regret to say that nine years of my life had been meaningless," Ackbar explained, ever able to see the good in even the worst situations.
"Yes, Admiral, but you were also amassing very valuable information for the Alliance," Rivoche reminded him.
"True, but I did not know whether I would ever have the opportunity to use it. So it would have been only detrimental to myself to choose not to enjoy any pleasurable experience that presented itself to me. For example, as the girls grew older, we all went on many wonderful vacations together. I enjoyed those vacations as well. I took as much pleasure and satisfaction--as well as information--from the Tarkins as I could until I was able to make my escape," Ackbar explained. "It was my way of fighting back--of keeping myself strong. And you are slightly incorrect about one point, Rivoche. In your uncles eyes, I was not his slave. I was lower than a slave. I was his pet."
Rivoche scowled. "Well, I didnt enjoy myself at all! They never hit me or anything like that, but something was always happening to push me off to the side. Then when I was six, my cousin Lyjéa was born, and I might as well not have existed at all!
"And then--" She broke away, turned her head aside, and put her hand backwards over her mouth, not wanting to remember, let alone recount to the others, what happened next. "It had been raining that morning. My aunt and uncle always had their breakfast out on a veranda that had a staircase with three sets of stone steps that descended terrace-style into the garden. I remember one alien housekeeper--her name was Raycellna, and she was the only friend I had on the place--who went out to dry off the table and chairs when the rain stopped in time for breakfast. Raycellna always fed Lyjéa and me in the kitchen, and then she'd put Lyjéa in her walker and let her out on the veranda with her parents. That morning, out she went, as fast as she could go, with their two noisy, annoying little six-legged Eriaduan dogs in tow. Of course, my aunt and uncle immediately stopped their conversation and each picked up a dog. I tell you, my uncle could lower his IQ around those dogs--'Oh you're such a sweet little fuzzy doggy, what an adorable little fuzzy doggy!' They paid more attention to their blasted dogs than they did to me!" she smirked in mock imitation. "Lyjéa waddled over to them and started in with her own little rendition of 'fuzzydoggy, fuzzydoggy,' and they fussed all over her for being sooooo cute, and my uncle handed her a piece of the pastry they'd been breaking pieces off of to feed to the dogs! I must have stood there for ten minutes, and they never even noticed me! I know I was stupid and jealous, but I just--I couldn't stand it anymore!" She broke away, near tears. "I ran to Lyjéa's walker and pushed her down the stairs--the walker flipped end over end--"
Leia gasped audibly.
"Of course, my aunt and uncle jumped up and ran after her, but the stairs were wet and they both went down . . . " Rivoche looked toward the ceiling. "I am so ashamed! My little cousin was only eleven months old! I can still hear my aunt screaming and my uncle telling her, don't move her, don't move her!' Lyjéa went blind over the next few days."
"Your uncle didn't come after you?" Leia asked.
"He broke his ankle. Badly. He couldn't get up. If he had been able to, I doubt I'd be sitting here talking to you right now," she said. "Then the security people came running, and one of them shouted at Raycellna to call for help. She pulled me into the house and kept me away from them. It was only a matter of days before they shipped me off to school on Claer. I only saw them on school holidays at official events after that. They didn't want me around my cousins, and, frankly, I didn't want to be around any of them either."
"Would you say that your aunt and uncle were close," Leia asked, seeming to remember something.
"Close?" Rivoche echoed. "That would be a gross understatement. It was as if they were actually connected to each other somehow. Behind closed doors, those two could not keep their hands off of each other, couldn't stand to be more than a meter away from each other. It was downright disgusting sometimes! And, they could communicate without saying a word! It was almost as though there was a--this crackling energy between them. Anyone who spent any amount of time with them noticed it." Luke began to take more of an interest at this point.
"This is news," Leia observed. "Strange habits for two people who traveled so much. From the outside, it always looked to us as if he did his thing and she did hers. What was it like when one of them had to leave?"
Rivoche contemplated for a minute. "Well, you'd think there would be these long, heart-rending, tearing-away goodbyes from the way they usually were, but it wasn't like that at all. Sometimes I think they were so close when they were together was to make up for the time they spent apart. When one of them would leave the other, they would . . .would--the best way I can describe it is that they would stock up on each other's energy. They had their own little--rituals--that they always did when they were going to be apart for any length of time," Rivoche explained, twisting her hands in the air, seeming to have trouble gesticulating her meaning.
"Can you show me?" Luke asked.
"Of course," she said as she rose from her seat. Luke stepped over to join her.
"Okay, I'm trying to remember this," she said. "Just do what I do. It was either this," she said, grasping Luke's wrists as he grasped hers back. "Or this," she said as she put her palms flat against the front of Luke's shoulders, and he mirrored her movements. "I don't mean to be familiar with you, Master Skywalker, but they would be very close to each other with this one. Or, this," she explained as she placed the fingertips of her left hand near the juncture between his throat and chest just atop the notch in the clavicle, and the fingertips of her right hand over his solar plexus. At that point, Luke had to be careful not to knock Rivoche across the room with the Force. "They're not Force-sensitive if that's what you're thinking."
Luke stepped back and looked thoughtfully at Rivoche. "Your aunt and uncle came into their own during a time when being Force-sensitive could get you killed. They may have unknowingly suppressed everything. The suppression could explain some of your uncle's violence."
"Seriously, no. Not those two. No. Uh-uh," Rivoche insisted, shaking her head. Luke nodded, but he was not convinced. In what little archival literature remained of the old Jedi order, he had read of something known as a latent diode, a pair of sensitives, unrelated by sibling or other direct blood kinship, but often in an uncommonly strong pair bond or working relationship, whereby each individual would not necessarily be sensitive or aware of his or her sensitivity (latent), but together (as a diode), when specifically trained to channel their complementary energies through each other in a certain way, one could draw enough power to perform fantastic feats unimaginable and unseen in modern Jedi times. The thought of discovering a true latent diode, and of what could be accomplished with it, fascinated him.
Leia, on the other hand, thought back to the time she had been stranded on Phelarion and Lady Tarkin had gotten hold of her to work as a servant girl in preparation for an upcoming Imperial diplomatic conference.
* * *
She remembered looking at all of the family holoplates as she scrubbed the Tarkins' house from top to bottom. The very normalcy of the family pictures had disturbed Leia. Among them were pictures of Ackbar with the family on vacation, of Vader with the Tarkin children aboard the Death Star, and, most unsettling of all, one of Palpatine, taken in the easily recognizable banquet hall, holding one of the girls as a newborn.
Leia also recalled moving a picture of Tarkin as she worked, then not putting it back in the same place on the table she had just cleaned. That inadvertent act had upset twelve-year-old Lyscithea, and she rushed up to return the holoplate to its correct position. "Be careful, Lerna!" Lyscithea had admonished her by her alias, and held her father's picture close for a long moment before setting it back in place.
For a brief moment, Leia put her hostilities toward the Imperial family aside. "You miss him, don't you?" she had asked Lyscithea, trying to gain some insight into what their home life was like when he was around.
Lyscithea just nodded. Her small chin quivered, and Leia could tell she was near tears. "Mother will be very angry if she catches you not cleaning," Lyscithea warned her.
"Your mom's asleep," Leia told her. "Hey, it's okay. I lost my dad last year, too, around the same time as you." She would not stoop to such a low level as to tell an innocent child that the one had killed the other.
"What happened to your father?" Lyscithea asked.
In perhaps the hardest act of suppression in her life, Leia told the young girl, "He died in the asteroid storm that hit Alderaan."
Leia also remembered Typhani's bitter anger, her intense emotional pain, her utter bereavement, and her obsessive drive to avenge what had happened to her beloved husband. She remembered how, late one night, she had been assisting Manda, Lady Tarkin's personal chambermaid, also Phelarian, and the closest thing she had to a handmaiden, with putting away some of her suits and gowns that had come back from the cleaners, having entered her dressing room through the servants' door in the hallway. The door leading into the bedroom was open just a crack, though, and as Leia neared it, she heard what sounded like muffled sobs coming from inside the main bedchamber. She crept to the door, and saw that Typhani still slept on one side of the bed, but that she grasped the other, empty pillow, and still cried herself to sleep at night nearly a year after losing her husband.
Manda came up behind her. "Oh, no, not again," she sighed sympathetically. She turned first to the sink, where she dampened a face cloth, then retrieved a gilded, large-bristled brush from Typhani's dressing table. "Stay here," Manda warned her. "Only Raycellna and I are allowed in her bedchamber." Leia stayed by the door and watched as Manda caringly soothed her mistress to sleep by sponging away the tears and brushing out her hair. They spoke softly to each other, but Leia could not make out what they were saying, as she did not understand the local Phelarian dialect.
"She's actually better, believe it or not," Manda said as she returned the brush to its tray on the dressing table. "I had only been working here for two weeks when it happened. It was awful for her. She really loved him. If it hadn't been for the girls, well . . . "
"Did you meet him?" Leia asked.
"Oh, yes, none of us ever got this far into the house without doing so."
"Did you come in from the moss caves?"
"No, from the office, actually."
"What did you think of him?"
Manda sighed again. "I really liked him. I thought he was rather nice, congenial, you know. I can't understand why people say such terrible things about him, especially now that I've been here for a year. It's almost as if they're not talking about the same person."
Leia decided at that point to see how far she could press the conversation and her relationship with Manda. "Doesn't he have similar chambers?" she asked, indicating the dressing area and small private office. Leia knew that Tarkin's main study on the lower level had been sealed. She'd already tried the door.
"Yes," Manda revealed, "on the other side of the master suite, off the sitting room. No one's allowed in there, though."
"No, I suppose not," Leia said with as much nonchalance as she could muster.
The following afternoon, with Lady Tarkin at her office and the rest of the servants occupied, Leia snuck back upstairs. Of course, she found the servants' entrance to the other dressing rooms locked. She slipped unnoticed into the master suite, through the sitting room, and into the other chambers through the unlocked inner door. At first, being in the place gave her the chills, and the creeps, being in the intimate space of the man who had ruthlessly destroyed her home planet. But she mustered strength beyond her aversions. If anything was there that could aid the Alliance, Leia vowed she would find it. Lady Tarkin wouldn't be back for hours.
Leia turned on the lights to find herself in the dressing area, face-to-face with a rack full of crisply pressed olive green Imperial uniforms of various classes, from the familiar full-dress variety that she had last seen the Grand Moff in when she faced him on the Death Star, to the more casual jumpsuits commonly reserved for travel and field expeditions. As she turned to her left, she observed another rack of typical Imperial male evening wear, the lavish cloaks and tunics and such that were the custom at official events. As she continued to search the chambers, she ran across the everyday sweaters, trousers, pajamas, slippers, athletic shoes, socks, underwear, and such, all of which seemed somewhat incongruous and yielded nothing of value to her. She switched off the dressing room lights as she slipped into the small anteroom that, just as in his wife's chambers, served as a personal office.
The smaller desk drawers yielded only a few office supplies, a mobile computer adapter, a half-eaten bag of crème wafers, and a large assortment of old-fashioned fountain pens and other such writing implements used for writing by hand, something of late done only as a hobby. The two file drawers were locked, of course, and Leia found no key nearby. Then she opened the center drawer, and looked upon something that intrigued her intensely. She smiled an evil grimace as she prepared to sink into her tormenter's plush leather easy chair and violate him in a most intimate way.
For a long moment, she sat with the black, leather-bound journal in her lap. The gilded initials W.A.T. shone prominently in the lower right corner, and the red silk ribbon bookmark with a silver medallion bearing the Imperial emblem tied to the end of it marked a place about three-fourths of the way through the volume. Then she hesitated. Did she really want to read the personal rantings of one she considered a madman? Was she about to be confronted with the sadistic descriptions of how he had tortured someone, or his latest plans to subjugate an innocent world? Or about how he lusted to use his new superweapon? The Alliance, she reminded herself. She was there for the Alliance.
But there was one small problem. As she opened Tarkin's journal, Leia realized that she couldn't read the native Eriaduan dialect that filled the pages! She studied the writing itself, a steady, precise calligraphy characteristic of its exacting and efficient author. With a bit of effort, she could make out the dates of the entries, a few place names--Eriadu, Horuz, Seswenna, Coruscant--a few personal names that she recognized--Typhani, Lyjéa, Lyscithea, Morgana, Rivoche, Bevel, Ohran, and Nasdra--other names that she did not recognize--Raine, Valdemar, Quentiri, Nolan, and Daala--but the name that appeared most often was Typhani's. Little else made sense, and so she returned the journal to its drawer. She couldn't afford to take it and thus draw attention to herself.
Leia had deduced from all of these circumstances and experiences that the Tarkins had been very close and very passionately in love, even after three decades of marriage, and she remembered asking herself over and over again as she worked, "How could anyone love such a monster so much?"
* * *
Now she had some insight, but no clear answer to another nagging question. She rubbed her right temple and spoke strongly. "What I am trying to figure out here is how a man can destroy so much and commit so many atrocities--literally kill millions of people--then go home and be so overwhelmingly affectionate to his wife, play with his children, and feed pastries to his dogs!"
"Remember, Leia, in everything there must be balance. Consider our own father," Luke reminded her.
Just then, Dr. Qwi Xux slipped into the room and quietly took her seat, careful not to interrupt the others. Leia handed her a copy of the Imperial communiqué that was the subject of their meeting. Qwi shook her head as she read silently.
"Perhaps I can help explain this," Ackbar offered. All gazes turned in his direction. "I observed similar patterns to those Rivoche described. Think of it this way. There are men among us whom we consider to be of utmost character, good, productive, even-tempered men. Then we are shocked to learn that these same good citizens' beat their wives, abuse their children, or are cruel to pets. We would say that these men have a violent streak amidst the overall personality of a gentleman. You see, with Tarkin, it was just the opposite. In his public role, he was certainly a ruthless tyrant. Early on in my time with him, I feared for my very life every day. But I soon learned that to those close to him, when that uniform came off, he became a diametrically different individual indeed. In fact, as the years when by and I became a permanent fixture in the family, gaining the favor of his wife and daughters, I came to know that he would never harm me in the presence of his family. So to put it analogously, Tarkin has a gentle streak amid an overall personality characterized by violence, intimidation, and tyranny. But perhaps we can tap into and exploit that gentle streak."
Rivoche was pointing at Ackbar and nodding assuredly. "You nailed him, Admiral!" she confirmed.
"You know, Ackbar," Han said, "I've always wanted to ask you. You spent nine years with that grimy green glob of Sithspit! Why didn't you try to break away sooner?"
Ackbar contemplated his answer carefully for another moment. "I set some very clear criteria for myself. I decided that I would never strike out at Tarkin in the presence of his family, nor would I strike in a way that would bring any direct harm to them." He paused for a moment. He remembered one time in particular, driving their large sport-utility overland transport to the lake. There were many twists and turns in the road, and many deep, craggy, moss-lined glacial ravines along its sides. He had thought about doing it, taking them careening over the edge into the megonite, even though it would have meant his own end. The SUV was quiet; everyone was asleep, except him. Lyscithea had just become old enough to ride up front without a child safety seat, and she lay curled up in the front seat next to him. Ackbar remembered looking over his shoulder, only to see Lyjéa sleeping quietly between her dozing parents. He couldn't do it. "I have to admit it," he continued. "I loved those little girls. They had done no harm, and I had also developed a great deal of admiration for their mother. Also, I decided to strike only when I had a clear and certain way to return immediately to the Alliance. By that point, I had accumulated such knowledge that I saw no value in destroying myself in any attempt to destroy Tarkin. Actually, I sought not to destroy him. My primary goal was to incapacitate him, to maim him in the same vein as what he had done to my people, such that he could do no more harm, and so that he would have to live with what he had done on what little in any conscience he had, but such that those little girls would not entirely lose the father they loved so dearly. Many times I tried to orchestrate a well-choreographed accident, especially after learning of the Death Star project. Alternately, I sought to bring about his capture and trial for war crimes. It was in this attempt that I made my escape. Unfortunately, I did not know that Tarkin knew how to operate the shuttle's escape pod."
"I saw it once. I had all but forgotten," Qwi offered.
"Saw what, Qwi?" Han asked.
"That gentle streak Ackbar speaks of. And you know, it seems the worse the act of violence that preceded its appearance, the deeper it ran and the longer it lasted.
"You all know that I was the only survivor of the Omwati education sphere incident. Tarkin destroyed nine of my classmates along with their families and whole villages when they failed to meet his expectations. But then, when it was over, and I sat successful before him, everything changed, at least until I got to the Installation." Qwi looked thoughtful for a moment, and seemed to stare into emptiness. Then, she continued. "For four days in the Phelarian ice, I got to be a little girl again . . . "
* * *
The schedules had been disrupted by delays that night, and so they had been on the shuttle for a very long time. Little twelve-year-old Qwi had become so frightened of the man who sat next to her that she pressed herself as much as she could into the far side of her seat away from him, pretending to be asleep most of the time, not pretending at other times. But as the hours passed, he seemed different, working steadily on a mobile computer, glancing over every once in awhile to check on her. She had been genuinely asleep when he gently shook her awake. She realized that the shuttle had at last landed.
"Come on, little one, wake up now," he said, reaching for her coat. "We've got to get you all bundled up. It's late, and it's very bad weather outside."
"Where are we going?" Qwi asked sleepily, rubbing at her deep indigo eyes.
"We're going to my house for a little while," he said, tying the hood of her jacket tightly around her neck. "You'll get to meet my little girls."
His little girls, she thought "Why weren't they at the school?" she asked with wise understanding but mock innocence.
Governor Tarkin looked somewhat annoyed and taken aback by the question, but made a quick recovery. "Well, one of them goes to a different kind of school," he told her, "and the other one isn't old enough yet. She'll go next year," he explained as he zipped up the front of her coat. Qwi knew better. She sat back down and nearly fell back to sleep as her tormenter put on his own wraps and gloves, then picked her up and carried her from the shuttle to an overland transport. It was very cold, she remembered, and an icy rain had started to fall. She opened her eyes again when they stopped behind a large, beautiful, ivory stone house, with big, arching windows and sweeping verandas. Too many strange places, Qwi thought, pretty house or not. Would she ever see her family or her own home again?
Governor Tarkin took her by the hand and led her up the steps as a member of the security detail followed with their bags. They entered through a large back room that had lots of appliances and storage closets and the like in it. "My goodness, what nasty weather," he commented as he now helped Qwi take off her coat and mittens.
Then Qwi heard a deep, rich, woman's voice approaching from somewhere else in the house, "Adrian! I was getting worried!" A big, tall, pretty lady with long, dark hair entered the room, and Qwi was very much surprised by the long and affectionate encounter between the two adults. Then the lady noticed her.
"Well, what have we here! Oh, if you aren't adorable!" she said, stroking Qwi's feathery hair.
"This is our little valedictorian," Governor Tarkin said, smiling down at Qwi.
"What's your name, sweetie," the lady asked her.
"Qwi," she squeaked quietly.
"This is my wife, Lady Typhani," Governor Tarkin explained, and then asked her, "Where are the girls?"
"In bed," she said. "It's a school night."
"Oh, I doubt there'll be much going on tomorrow," he guessed, reaching for his briefbag. "But we'd better get this little one into bed as well."
Qwi soon found herself all alone in a very large bed in a very large guest room. After the horror she had just been through, taken from her home, her family, and tormented to the very limits of her mental capacity in the education sphere, now only to be in this strange house with these strange people, one of whom she feared might kill her in an instant . . .
Realizing that she was finally alone, she at last had the chance to let her tears run free. She lay sobbing into her pillow for a long time as the storm grew worse outside, the wind howling and sprays of ice striking the large, arched windows. Then she felt someone sit down on the bed next to her.
"Oh, you poor little thing! All alone in strange place and a big storm blowing outside," said the kind, strong female voice. "Come on, sweetie, come on in here with us." Typhani took Qwi by the hand and led her down the hall to the master bedroom. There was a big, upholstered bench at the foot of the bed. "See, look here, this will make a perfect little Qwi bed, and then you won't be all by yourself," Typhani said.
"Uh-oh, is someone not sleeping well?" Qwi heard Governor Tarkin say as he came into the room and slid his laptop computer back into its bag. Qwi noticed that he looked far less threatening in his pajamas and slippers than in his uniform and those awful steel-toed combat boots, in which he had mercilessly kicked one of her defenseless classmates to the floor when he failed a math test. Maybe the lady could help her.
"I want to go home," Qwi cried. "I passed my examinations, now I want to go home!"
"Adrian . . . " Typhani began. Qwi looked up at her with wide, hopeful indigo eyes.
"Now, Qwi, listen," Governor Tarkin said as he sat down on the bench next to her and Lady Typhani sat down on the other side, "You are far too smart to go back to that dirty bird cage of a world you came from! You have a wonderful future now. You are going to be one of the leading scientists in the galaxy when you grow up. And you're going to a very special new home." With that, Qwi's head sank, and they blanketed her down on the bench. She started to fall asleep again, but she could still hear the adults talking in their bed behind her.
"Oh, Typhani, you should have seen that place! The utter filth, and the stench--guano everywhere and maggots crawling all over it! That child was living in this filthy, disease-ridden, overcrowded, honeycomb dwelling-of-a-thing! I had to incinerate several of them from orbit because they were so nasty, and the inhabitants were literally mutated from diseases and who-knows-what!"
Her hopes dashed, Qwi finally slept. She didn't wake up until she heard Governor Tarkin's voice again the next morning. "No one is going anywhere," he said as he came back into the room. "We're iced in solid!"
"No school . . . " Typhani yawned. "The girls are going to love that."
Qwi sat up sleepily as two human girls about her age came into the room and bounced up on the big bed with their parents, not even noticing her.
"Ice Day! Ice Day!" they chimed. Qwi turned to look at them. The older girl had dark hair and eyes like her mother, but she seemed to be looking at nothing in particular. The younger one had light brown hair with a tint of red, like an old lady whose picture she had seen downstairs, with bright blue eyes, like her father. Qwi stood up, and the blue-eyed girl finally noticed her.
"Hello," Qwi said tentatively.
"Hello," the blue-eyed girl replied, "What's your name?"
"Qwi," she chirped.
"I'm Scythi, and this is Lyjéa. She can't see you, though," Lyscithea explained. "You have really pretty hair."
The ice lasted for four long and wonderful days during which Qwi and Governor Tarkin's daughters played dolls and video games and watched endless hours of holovision and listened to audiobooks and took long, warm naps and ate wonderful treats. Qwi's favorite activity of those days, though, was playing with all the keyboards in the music room. She also recalled tasting the most delicious substance she had ever put in her mouth--better than any ice cream--a super-cooled concoction called stimufrost, so good, but so cold that she recalled Governor Tarkin sitting next to her and helping her with her glass so that she didn't cold-burn herself.
And then he came bounding down the back stairs into the playroom bundled in a thick wind suit. "Who wants to go on the sleds?" he asked them. Of course, his own daughters sprang to action and to their own outerwear, and Governor Tarkin said, "Scythi, take Qwi with you, and find one of your smaller jumpsuits from last year--a good, warm one--she's not used to the cold."
Phelarian ice sleds were wonderful things, Qwi remembered, large, lens-shaped dishes that glided effortlessly, almost weightlessly, over the thick layer of ice in the plaza behind the house. Once all three girls had been appropriately bundled for warmth, they all four put on cleated boots to grip the ice and proceeded outside. Governor Tarkin strapped the three of them tightly into his daughters' large sled, grabbed the strap, and for the next hour sent them flying gleefully around the plaza, in swoops and circles. Then Lady Typhani came back; in her own cleated boots, she had been able to walk to her office in a large building across the plaza. Then the adults joined in the fun. Qwi remembered that Lady Typhani pushed Governor Tarkin playfully down into another sled, sent him flying, and then grabbed the strap on their sled and sent them after him. "Get him, girls!" she teased. They did, and then it was Lady Typhani's turn in the sled. For another hour, the girls pulled the adults around and vice-versa, until everyone got cold and it came time for more goodies--cups of hot chocolate and gooey warm pastries this time. By the time the ice melted and the spaceport reopened, Qwi was not afraid of Governor Tarkin anymore.
* * *
"I have to admit something as well," Qwi said when she finished relaying her story. "He was a very good father, especially to the older girl, the one who was blind. He always knew instinctively where to be when she needed him. They had a silent bond of sorts, I think. I suppose it was that experience that made me go on willingly to the Installation."
"If I might offer one other comment," Rivoche added, "as bad as this may sound, if there is anyone who can figure out a way to keep the Vong out of this galaxy, it's Wilhuff Tarkin."
Leia sat back with a sigh of very mixed emotions. She knew that Rivoche was right.
Later that night, Rivoche Tarkin lay flat on her back in her bed, unable to sleep, staring upward at the movement of the ceiling fan. The words of Ackbar and Qwi burned in her ears, and ate at her conscience. Rivoche had never allowed herself to remember anything good about her two-and-a-half years with her aunt and uncle, as if to do so would somehow negate her commitment to the Republic. But now, with more of her family intact than she realized, and the war over, she began to entertain the idea of allowing herself just one good memory . . . But then one became two, and the two became four, and a part of her soul began to open up to her that she had long since archived away just as sure as a forgotten volume of historical data at her office.
Yes, she had help with her stimufrost glass too, didn't she? And, she had her own memories of being strapped into an ice sled and taken for wonderful adventures around the plaza. And of being comforted in the night when she cried out for her dead father. And of being held tightly when she finally finished throwing one of her infamous temper tantrums and lay exhausted and sobbing in her uncles protective embrace--held, and often rocked in a big, overstuffed recliner--not spanked, not locked in a closet, not sent to bed. She knew first-hand what Qwi meant about that protectiveness she had seen directed toward her cousins, but particularly toward Lyjéa. She remembered when her aunt had been pregnant with Lyjéa, and how fascinated she was when she could feel her baby cousin kick as she lay curled up next to her aunt in that soft, oversized bed when her uncle was out of town. And even after she had blinded her cousin and injured the two people who had taken her in, given her a home when she had no place to go, and tried and tried again to love her when she would not be loved, even after that, there were no blows, no harsh words directed at her that could never be taken back. She was simply sent away to school early.
Of course, her uncle could not allow her to bring such grievous harm to his own family. She had left him no choice, much as her grandmother had done. And still, even then, although she preferred to stay away, she had always been very well provided for and protected right up until she met Vastin. And, her wishes had always been respected; on school holiday, if her family was on Phelarion, she went to Eriadu, and vice versa. She had their respect after all that had transpired, even as she repeatedly hacked into her uncle's computers and piped file after file to Biggs Darklighter and the Rebel Alliance.
Yes, she disagreed with the way her uncle ran his region, but, she realized, she had never talked to him about it. What if she had? Could she have made a difference? Could she have saved Alderaan? Why didn't she try? After all, she had done far, far worse things to him and to those most dear to him to invite his wrath, only to be rewarded with anything from a hug to an excellent education with her every need met.
"Why am I here?" she asked herself aloud. "Why did I do this?" She fought to remember exactly what it was that caused her to turn her back on her family and on her country in ultimate betrayal. It began to dawn on Rivoche that, as she grew up, it was not her uncle she hated so much. She hated what she had done, and she couldnt deal with it. He was simply an easy scapegoat just because she had always hated herself, and it was so much easier to follow popular opinion in making her uncle into a villain than to face her own past.
Or, perhaps it was just too painful to have so close a link with the greatest loss in her life, her father, and so she took it out on that link, her father's only brother, by association. Or, maybe deep down, perhaps even subconsciously, she cherished that link, a link she knew she would probably lose as well as the war escalated, and indeed she had until only a few hours ago. Maybe she knew as a teen that it would be easier to deal with that inevitable loss if she built up a protective wall of home-grown hatred around herself. Then she could be strong and save face, it being far easier to lose one hated than one loved. Yes, she finally realized, she had forsaken and betrayed her nation, her family, and her uncle simply because she was too afraid of losing him as well.
Rivoche tore herself from her bed, shaking, her sheets and her nightgown damp with perspiration. "What have I done!" she shrieked, grabbing fistfuls of her strawberry blonde hair in her hands.
Luke's wife, Mara, had been ill, and had decided not to join the meeting held the previous day on Coruscant. When her husband returned to their home and base on Yavin IV, she wished she had done so. Mara had known the Tarkins as well, back when she worked for Emperor Palpatine as an assassin of sorts. Luke handed her his copy of the Imperial announcement. "Some news about an old friend of yours," he commented, and waited for her reaction.
"Adrian . . . " she whispered as she read.
"I thought you probably knew him," Luke said. "Leia thinks he's going to make trouble for us again."
"That's very possible . . . " she ventured.
"Were you around him a lot?" Luke asked.
"Oh, yes," Mara told him. "I even spent part of the summer one year with them--him and his wife, their daughters, and his niece. They are very intense, free-spirited frontier people. He worked with me on strategic tactics and computers. I was fourteen."
"Leia wants to know what you think, or if you have any ideas that might help us be prepared for whatever he might throw at us," Luke told her.
Mara sighed. "We could be in some real trouble here. You and I may have to deal with him ourselves, depending on what he does."
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
She stared hard into his eyes. "He's latent."
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