Chapter 14:
Of Restorations and Discoveries
When Daala stirred again, she sensed that someone had taken Typhani's place at her side, and it wasn't Lyscithea or Morgana. With the lingering anesthetic, it was still difficult to open her eyes, and everything was still blurry when she did. "Stroma?"
"Daala, why in the universe didn't you tell me! I opened those so- called sealed instructions you left me," she said, moving closer to her best friend.
"I didn't want you to worry," Daala defended.
"Not until I came into your house one day and found you dead on the bathroom floor or something of the like? Why didn't you go for help before Typhani came?" she asked, almost accusingly.
"There was no reason before she came," Daala told her blandly.
"No reason?" Stroma echoed. "Daala, I knew it was bad, but . . . I mean, after everything you've been through, all the times you nearly went on us in a supernova of glory--to go like this, when you could still fight?"
"It doesn't matter now," Daala told her. "I'll be all right."
"Yeah," Stroma acknowledged. "And at last you're back where you belong."
Daala realized something then, and raised her head off her pillow a bit. "It doesn't burn!" she said with elated relief as she took another deep breath. "For the first time in twelve years, it doesn't burn!"
"That's wonderful," Stroma acknowledged. She'd taken Daala in as a favor to her late husband's close friend, Gilad Pellaeon, grown close to her, and watched her struggle with the recurrent breathing problem for over a decade. Stroma was glad that relief had come at last, and that the relief had ended in life instead of death. Just for once, Stroma reflected as she took her hand and squeezed it tightly in friendship, just for once in her life, Daala deserved to belong, and be happy.
As Daala recovered, Lyjéa returned to Lumin to give her vision one last try. Fortunately for her, the process would not be nearly as lengthy or involved as it had been for her father. The doctors administered the cell regeneration formula at regular intervals directly into the arteries that fed her occipital lobe. And they waited . . .
Although it would be months before Daala would regain her strength (she would never completely regain it), her recovery went fairly well. She would still need ample bedrest and close monitoring through follow-ups, but the Andromeda Center staff let the Tarkins take her home to Phelarion after only two and a half weeks, to coincide with the completion of Lyjéa's treatment. Daala made the trip well, as Adrian had before her, and she seemed to put down roots as they blanketed her into her bed.
Lyjéa, on the other hand, accepted her situation once more, and returned to Eriadu in defeat and disappointment. Never again, she vowed. Like Daala, she had endured enough.
Adrian had not been home to Eriadu since he woke up, and so, after settling Daala in, he and Typhani made the trip, concerned that Lyjéa had retreated there instead of coming home with her family for support. Her answer was simple enough. "I just needed to be reminded of what I have accomplished--of what I can still do," she said, caressing her tactile holoplate reader as she uploaded the syllabus for the coming term's classes. "I have lesson plans to make." Like her father, Lyjéa's way of dealing with personal adversity was to cast herself fully into her work. Still, she agreed to accompany her parents on her father's first visit back to Villa Galaxia, the family estate that had been in his control before Yavin.
After Yavin, control of House Tarkin and Villa Galaxia passed first to Adrian's cousin, Nolan, and then to Nolan's son, the very competent and highly domineering Valdemar. Whether it would now pass back remained to be seen. Valdemar had orchestrated a very successful military career, having been a favorite of his older second cousin, the first Grand Moff. At twenty- four, Valdemar had just attained the rank of Commander when the Empire lost the first Death Star. Three years later, Valdemar's fleet was among the first to arrive at the assault on the Rebel base at Hoth. After the Rebels evacuated, the other Imperial officers allowed Valdemar and his flagship, the Retaliator, the "honor" of destroying the Rebel facilities.
At Endor, Valdemar took out several Rebel ships, pulling back with Pellaeon and the Chimaera just in time as the Executor became disabled and plunged into the second Death Star. He prudently retired after Endor, not wanting to draw Rebel fire to Eriadu, and took up the restoration of Villa Galaxia. He had supported Sate Pestage, Ysanne Isard, Thrawn, and Gilad Pellaeon over the years, those who would defend the Empire and strive to bring back the New Order, those who would defend his family's legacy. For nearly a year after his divorce, he had secretly admired another with such purpose, following with intense interest the attacks on Dantooine, Mon Calamari, and Yavin IV. He had been on the verge of extending his support, and perhaps more, to the renegade female admiral when shameful rumors erupted across the galaxy. Now those nasty rumors had been laid to rest, but not the lady admiral . . .
Adrian found coming home to Villa Galaxia quite pleasant, although tainted by his daughter's disappointment. Nolan, his wife Shayla Paige- Tarkin, and their children, Valdemar and his older sister, Raine, had indeed turned the place from a musty, gaudily overdone family compound, back into the tasteful and lavish exclusive resort it had been over two hundred years ago, having added numerous small guest houses and the now galactically famous spa to the grounds.
As they made their way inside, Chantir rushed toward them, her small, black shoes making a clipping sound as she ran across the polished stone floor of the colonnade. "Adrian! You're all right! Is Admiral Daala all right, too? Daddy said--he said she might not--um . . . "
"Yes, Chantir, she's going to be fine now. She's resting back at our house on Phelarion," Adrian assured his little cousin.
"She has been so worried," a young woman who bore slight resemblance to Chantir commented as she came up to join the group.
"I couldn't help it, Paige!" Chantir defended herself to her older sister. "Morgana wouldn't let me come with her."
Adrian put the name to the face he had seen in the many holoplates he'd been shown of the extended family that grew in his absence. "Ah! The political science major. Following in your grandmother's footsteps, no?"
"No, in fact not! I certainly want nothing to do with a seat in the Rebel senate!" Paige quipped with a smile. "It is so wonderful to finally meet you," she continued. "After all the years of stories and holograms--no one ever told us you were alive! Weldan and Gaston were just overwhelmed, and they can't wait to get leave so they can meet you as well."
"They're both nerds!" Chantir interceded.
"Chantir! Do not insult our brothers in front of our elders! Didn't you learn anything in those deportment classes Mom sent you to last year?"
Chantir's head dropped.
"That's better," Paige coached.
"And how is your mother?" Adrian asked. Valdemar and Quentiri had married right out of prep school four years before Yavin, and then divorced fifteen years later after having four children together.
"She's fine, thank you," Paige commented diplomatically. Adrian sensed that little love was lost between the girls and their estranged mother. She came from Muunilinst, and worshipped money and material objects to an unhealthy excess. The tabvids once rumored that Quentiri Tarkin possessed over 4,000 pairs of shoes and over 10,000 pairs of earrings. It was not Valdemar's ability to satiate her that drove them apart. Instead, Valdemar found Quentiri's excesses for the sake of excess wasteful, tiresome, and pointless, and, coming from a military family background, he found such traits against his grain. When the divorce came, Valdemar, a Tarkin to the core if ever there was one, somehow prevented Quentiri from gutting his family's fortune. No one quite knew the details of how he did it, but he and his ex wife had not spoken since. Valdemar retained residential custody of the children, yet he allowed Quentiri to see them, and them to see their mother, any time they wished.
As Paige and Chantir both sought Lyjéa's tutoring on some writing assignments, Adrian and Typhani made their way upstairs and down the long, back hall through the family's private quarters. Despite the many changes at Villa Galaxia, their own apartments, those that had been Adrian's as he grew up there, remained largely untouched and unchanged, although Typhani had used them from time to time over the years.
"I think it was nearly three years before I was able to come back here," Typhani commented as the sitting room door closed behind them.
"Nolan kept you away?" Adrian asked urgently.
"No, no, in fact, he and Shayla kept trying to coax me here. It was . . . the memories, you know." Typhani thought back to her very first visit to the sprawling and luxurious estate. Adrian had brought her home to introduce her to the rest of his family--whether they liked it or not, she mused. Over the years, the memories accumulated, watching holovids in the sitting room, planning the future of the Empire at the table by the bedroom window, making love on the balcony . . .
"Yes." Adrian acknowledged. "We've shared much amidst these walls." He, too, recollected the first time he had escorted his soul mate into his "inner sanctum," and how he had almost proposed to her after their first intimate encounter on that balcony, but then thought better of it, opting for the mutual territory of their apartment on Coruscant instead.
"Do you remember . . . " he continued, gazing out the glass paneled doors into the warm Eriaduan evening.
"All too well," she mused, and drew close to her husband as they made their way onto the balcony.
Villa Galaxia indeed held many pleasant and cherished memories for both of them. Nolan and his children had done well to preserve them and to maintain the family estate. All were in agreement that, in light of his efforts and accomplishments, Valdemar would continue to maintain Villa Galaxia, at least for the foreseeable future. However, everyone also knew who now controlled House Tarkin, and the distinction between the two.
The Governor's Mansion on the other side of Eriadu City was another matter concerning its maintenance, or lack thereof. Of course, Typhani had emptied it of their personal belongings shortly after Yavin to make way for Ardus Kaine, but he rarely used the house. After his death, it had been used from time to time for overflow Seswenna Sector government offices and such, but had not been inhabited in years. Hence, the place would have to be completely redone. Another project for them, they knew, as they looked at the boarded-up structure from the overgrown front garden.
After locating the plans for the Governor's Mansion and enjoying a final evening with family, Adrian and Typhani prepared to return to Phelarion. When they arrived, they found the security perimeter completely locked down, and guards flanked all of the exterior doors to the house.
"Oh, no, now what?" Adrian snapped as more security detail on speeder bikes closed in around their transport. A tight formation of stormtroopers surrounded them as they made their way inside, where their bodyguard unit security chief approached them.
"Your Excellencies, we have a problem, in the main reception room."
They all turned their attention in that direction, and one of the two guards flanking the door opened it. Adrian and Typhani froze, and reached for each other's hands, stunned at the site of the middle-aged woman who sat bound to a chair in the center of the room, another guard standing beside her with a blaster to her head. She did not look up at them. The security chief continued. "We picked up her trail at the border and intercepted her at the spaceport. She didn't even bother to try to hide her identity. What do you want done with her? I can have a firing squad assembled shortly." Adrian waved him off and hovered into the room, Typhani close behind him.
"Take this away, and leave us in private, please," Typhani told the guard with the blaster. She then reached down to release the binders that held the woman's hands behind her back. She still did not look up, but merely drew her arms around in front of her, rubbing her aching wrists. Typhani put a hand on her shoulder, and Adrian finally addressed her.
"Rivoche?"
Rivoche Tarkin raised her head to face her uncle then, her eyes filled with both shame and uncertainty. She didn't know what he would do with her, but, nonetheless, it was time to face her past.
Adrian reached out and took his niece's trembling hand. "Why, Rivoche? Why the Rebels?"
She looked directly at him then. "Because it was easier to hate you and leave you than to love you and lose you!" She looked away, fighting back her tears.
The three of them looked up as the door to the reception room opened again. Kormath and Lyscithea had arrived, after dropping the boys off at their other grandparents' house for the evening, and Lyscithea came into the room to see what the problem was. She took about three steps, then also froze. Her face grew deep red, and she drew her fists up at her sides. "Get away from him!" she shrieked, and lunged at Rivoche.
Her mother put an arm out to stop her. "It's all right, Scythi," she assured her.
"It is not all right, Mother! She should be executed! Now!"
"Let's go," Typhani insisted, leading her daughter out of the room, and leaving Adrian alone with his niece.
"Don't leave him alone with her! Are you out of your mind, Mother! You guards get in there! Now!" Lyscithea screamed, half-hysterical. "How did she get here! How did she get through the perimeter! How did she get in the house!"
"Scythi, calm down!" her mother demanded.
"What's the problem?" Kormath asked as he joined them in the hallway outside the reception room.
"Rivoche just came home," Typhani told him.
"What! Are you okay?"
"Yes, Kormath, we're fine. She's come home . . . at last, she's come home."
"Just like that!" Lyscithea continued heatedly. "Mother, you are far too forgiving! You've gotten weak, you know. I'd rather have you the way you were during the Conclave than this! After all the damage she did, and she's come home? First Daala and now this! Why don't we all just declare open marriages and move to Coruscant!"
"Hey, that's enough, Scythi. That's your mother you're talking to," her husband reminded her.
"I know who I'm talking to, Kormath! The next thing you know, the blasted Solos will be here for dinner! You know what Rivoche did to Lyjéa! Mother, how could you!"
By that point, Aerom Flennic and Ysanne Isard had just returned from Bastion, and heard the commotion in the hallway outside the reception room.
"Is there a problem?" Aerom asked.
"There certainly is!" Lyscithea snapped. "My father is alone in the reception room with a Rebel infiltrator!"
Aerom snapped to attention and started to march a couple of steps forward, but Typhani caught him as well. "It's all right, Aerom. It's just our niece. Apparently, she's gotten her fill of Coruscant."
"Well, maybe then that girl has some brains after all!" Ysanne commented. "She certainly didn't get them from her father!"
Then the door to the reception room opened again. "Why don't we all go into the main living room and calm down," Adrian suggested as he dismissed the guards and moved in that direction with Rivoche following close behind.
Lyscithea let out an exasperated sigh. "Aren't we leaving somebody out of this little equation? What is Lyjéa going to think of this?"
"We shall have to call Lyjéa and let her know. Then we can ask her," Typhani assured her, and led her toward the living room. Lyscithea's stomach knotted in nausea and fear as she saw Rivoche sit down next to her father.
"Look, I think I better get some air first," she insisted.
"All right then," her mother agreed. "You may join us in a few minutes."
Lyscithea turned on her heel and made her way out the kitchen door. She knew Kormath's briefbag was still in the back of the van. She retrieved what she needed, then went back into the house. The others had just begun a conversation when Lyscithea returned to find her rogue cousin now sitting between her parents. That was entirely too much for her.
"Get away from them, Rivoche, now!" she snarled. Lyscithea then raised Kormath's blaster and pointed it in her cousin's direction. Nobody moved.
"Now, Rebel!" Lyscithea demanded.
Rivoche shakily forced herself to her feet, arms out at her sides, and slowly moved a safe distance away from Adrian and Typhani.
"I always told that if you ever showed yourself around here again I'd kill you for what you did to my sister!" Lyscithea reminded her.
The memories of that wet spring morning flooded back, and Rivoche broke down. "Get it over with, Scythi! I deserve it!" she shrieked, her knees trembling.
Lyscithea aimed her husband's blaster squarely at Rivoche's chest. "That's right, Rebel scum! You more than deserve it!"
"Scythi, put the gun down," Kormath said, trying to maintain a calm tone. Aerom and Ysanne rose and cautiously approached her from behind in a precise military disarming maneuver they had been well trained to execute back on Carida. Adrian immediately recognized what they were doing, and joined Kormath in trying to distract his daughter.
"We don't destroy our own, Scythi," he said sternly.
"Oh, no?" Lyscithea retorted, glancing quickly over at her father. "Maybe you'd better have Aunt Morgana explain that concept to Uncle Gideon! We destroyed the rest of this pathetic branch of the family! When part of a tree is diseased, you cut it off!"
At that point, Aerom reached around and seized Lyscithea's wrist, raising the blaster safely into the air, as Ysanne grabbed her about the legs and midsection to immobilize her.
Rivoche sank to the floor in sobs, and Typhani went to her. "It's all right now," she assured her niece. "You're home now." She led Rivoche back over to the sofa as Kormath worked his blaster from his wife's tenacious grip and led her out of the house.
Outside, Lyscithea stood with her back to the wall, breathing hard. "I can't let this happen, Kormath!"
"Let your father handle it," he advised her calmly.
"He can't handle it!" she cried. "He can't even walk and can barely sit up by himself!"
"Then how is he going to handle the Empire? Or the Vong?"
Lyscithea looked away, rubbing her head. Kormath took her home.
Meanwhile, inside, Typhani and Rivoche glanced up toward the top of the main staircase when they saw something move. Rivoche didn't recognize the woman leaning against the upstairs wall and holding on to the railing for support, looking pale and weak, with long, red hair and wrapped in a deep jewel green velvet house robe with white trim and gold slippers.
Ysanne moved to take care of the situation. She spoke as she ascended the stairs. "Daala, you shouldn't be up. Everything's all right now. Come on, back into bed with you."
Rivoche looked at her aunt. She had heard fact, rumor, myth, and legend about the infamous Imperial officer. "That's Admiral Daala? What's wrong with her?"
Typhani leaned a bit closer to her niece. "Yes. She's not well. She just had a double lung transplant."
Rivoche glanced over her shoulder at her uncle, then turned back to her aunt, lowering her voice. "Aunt Typi, what is she doing here?"
"It's not what everybody thinks, Rivoche. You were away at school, and so you didn't know. She was going to be a surrogate for us. Yavin interrupted those plans, unfortunately. And then, of course, everything got twisted way out of proportion."
"Rivoche, I have a question for you," Aerom interceded. Rivoche looked up at him. "How do we know you're not going to cut our throats in the middle of the night?"
"Aerom!" Typhani admonished him.
"No, it's a good question," Adrian defended his chief military advisor.
Rivoche looked down into her lap. "I--I don't have a good answer for that," she replied softly. Then she looked up at her uncle. "I was going to say that I can't blame you if you never trust me again, because I don't deserve it. But you've never trusted anybody anyway." Then she looked at Aerom. "And how do I know, for that matter, that you won't kill me in the night?"
"That's enough talk about hurting one another. If there is to be any killing done, then let it be Rebels, Vong, and Jedi," Typhani declared. She rose from her chair. "It's getting late, and we've had a long day. I am going to take Rivoche up to her room now, check on Daala, and then retire for the evening."
"My . . . room?" Rivoche queried.
Her uncle addressed that. "We never gave up on you, Rivoche." But then he turned to Aerom after his wife and niece disappeared at the top of the stairs. "Post security in the upstairs hall tonight, just in case." Rivoche was right. He didn't trust anyone, and hadn't since he was a child. His mother's drinking and his father's empty promises cost him that innocence at a very early age.
"I've heard and read so much about you," Rivoche said to Daala after Typhani introduced them.
"All bad, I presume," Daala said with a half-smile.
"Well," Rivoche smiled back, "General Bel Iblis can be crass at times, but General Solo actually had some good things to say about you."
"That's because that piece of Rebel scum can't wipe his butt without help, permission, or both," Daala observed, and cracked a wider smile. Typhani and Rivoche both laughed at her.
"Doesn't he have a Wookiee to do that for him?" Typhani asked.
"Not anymore," Rivoche answered. She and her aunt then left Daala to rest and proceeded down the hall to her room.
Rivoche stepped tentatively into the room that she had not seen since she was twenty-two years old, and that was twenty-two years ago. Yet everything was exactly as she had remembered leaving it. She walked slowly around the room as her aunt stood in the doorway, running her hand over her comforter, her own faux fur throw, her dresser, her vanity. On her vanity sat a fitted wooden box that contained several small drawers and compartments. Rivoche opened a small door and reached inside to remove a dragon figurine that her aunt had given her when she was a child. The dragon also had a small compartment, a little safe of sorts, inside it. Rivoche opened the dragon and reached inside the small interior compartment to find her prep school class ring, identical to her aunt's except for the year, exactly where she used to keep it. She put it on, then pushed up her sleeve to reveal the bracelet she was wearing, a dainty chain of blue and silver beads and shells that Typhani had made for her on her sixteenth birthday. She had been wearing it when the Rebels rescued her, and so it was the only keepsake she'd had of her former life. Typhani stepped over to her, and took her hand to look at the bracelet. Then they hugged each other tightly, and Rivoche thought back to the day they buried her father, another day when she had run for safety and comfort into her aunt's arms.
Typhani held her niece out at arm's length, looking her over once more to make sure she was really there. "I just can't believe you're home!"
"I almost didn't come back. I almost just went to a neutral sector. I didn't know if you wanted me, or would have me back."
Typhani shuddered a bit. So much had come and gone. So much was different, yet still the same. She recalled her first visit to Daala as she formulated her next question to her niece. "Rivoche, can I tell you something that I've never told you before?"
Rivoche seemed a bit taken aback. "Of course, Aunt Typi. What?"
Typhani stared into her niece's eyes. "I wanted you from the day you were born."
It was just the way she said it that made Rivoche understand. She stared back at her aunt for a long time.
"You . . . you pushed my mother over the balcony, didn't you?"
"No, Rivoche, I didn't push her. But I didn't stop her, either. She'd begged me to take care of you that afternoon, made me promise that I would, for some reason. The servants were there, of course, but she insisted, and naturally I was more than willing. She seemed ill . . . upset. I didn't know what was wrong with her, so when she didn't come for you, I went to check on her. I had you in my arms, and I didn't want to give you back. I know it sounds awful, but I stood by and watched as she threw herself over the balustrade and onto the rocks. And then you were half mine, you see."
"Just like Aunt Morgana didn't stop Admiral Worrell!"
"Yes, Rivoche."
Another long silence. "You--both--wanted me that badly?"
"Yes. We both did. But as it turned out, you didn't want us. I suppose we got what we deserved." Typhani looked away.
"No!" Rivoche cried. "By the stars, no, Aunt Typi! You didn't deserve to be betrayed in the way I betrayed you, and Lyjéa certainly didn't deserve--" She broke away.
Typhani put her arm around her niece again. "I know. There's been so much pain, so much grief . . . "
Downstairs, Adrian had proceeded into his study to catch up on some work. He sat typing busily at one of his computer terminals when the comm beeped--the direct, private line that only the family used. Thinking himself the only one still up, he got it.
Lyjéa was near tears, and that concerned her father deeply. "Don't question me on this, but I need to get a message to Rivoche! Urgently!"
Startled, Adrian spun around in his chair. "I don't believe this! Lyjéa, Rivoche just came home! She's upstairs, sleeping in her own bed! We were going to wait until the morning to call you."
"I'm on my way!"
"What! Lyjéa, wait a minute! It's the middle of the night there! Lyjéa!" It was too late. She had deactivated her comm.
"What in the Empire . . . " Adrian muttered to himself as he turned back to his computer. "Now I shall have to wait up for her. Serves me right, I suppose. I missed their teenage years."
When Lyjéa arrived in the wee hours of the morning, she insisted that they wake her mother and Rivoche. "All right, Lyjéa," her father conceded as they got into the lift together. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what's the matter."
"Just wake them!" she insisted.
Rivoche sat up with a start at word that Lyjéa actually wanted to see her. She grabbed her robe, stepped into the upstairs hall, and stood dumbfounded before her cousin.
"You didn't do it, Rivoche! You didn't do it!" Lyjéa cried.
"I didn't do what?" Rivoche asked.
Lyjéa turned to her parents. "I just got the results back from Lumin. The cell regeneration treatment didn't restore my vision because it operates at the root of the genetic code. My genetic code is wrong, at least where my vision is concerned!" She thrust a piece of flemsiplast toward them that her father took from her hand. Then she turned back in Rivoche's direction. "I went blind because of a bad Eri-Phelari genetic recombinant! It wasn't anybody's fault! It was just a coincidence that you pushed me down the stairs!" she explained.
Rivoche could hardly believe what she had just heard. Forty years of guilt and shame had just been lifted off of her, and the two women could at long last be cousins--if not friends. Adrian and Typhani beheld a sight they never thought they'd see as the two cousins--adopted sisters--embraced each other tightly.
Rivoche was home.
Daala's child was not with them, but, better than that, Daala was.
They had just doubled the size of their family. Four girls! And three grandsons! At long last, they had the large family they had always wanted. For the rest of that wonderful night, all was well with the universe.
Yet still not whole.
Rivoche Tarkin had a mission in mind as she approached her uncle in his study a few evenings later. She needed to avert what she perceived to be a serious problem for the Imperial Remnant.
"Can't you get off that scooter at all?" she asked her uncle directly. "Can you stand or walk, even for a short while?"
He looked away. "No."
"But I've seen you move. You're not paralyzed."
"Oh, no, it's nothing like that. The weakness is from the length of my encapsulation. I have no muscle tone left, not after a quarter century of non-use."
"But can't you rebuild your strength? Haven't you had physical therapy?" Rivoche was not going to let him off easy, and she had good reason.
He took a moment to answer her, neither understanding nor liking her line of questioning. "It didn't work."
"It didn't work, or you didn't give it a chance?"
"Every day for eight weeks. Nothing--except a lot of discomfort."
"You gave up? Grand Moff Never-Give-Up gave up!?"
He just stared at her. "No, the hospital staff made that decision for me. They thought it was in my best interest not to continue."
"Ha!" Rivoche exclaimed, throwing back her head. "Since when do you let others make decisions for you, especially where your own health is concerned? You've ordered these people's executions, right?"
"Well . . . no. They were the experts on the matter, and they were only trying to help. I wasn't exactly in a position to . . . " He trailed away, growing a bit nervous. He had almost just admitted that he had been vulnerable.
"You weren't in a position to what? You're the blasted Emperor, Uncle Adrian! Isn't that what you've always wanted?"
"Yes, of course it is, but what does that have to do with . . . " He looked down at his useless lower body and the base of his hoverscooter.
Rivoche did not relent. "Uncle Adrian, you've got to get off of this thing," she insisted, lightly kicking the bottom of his scooter.
"I'm afraid that's wishful thinking, Rivoche."
She took a couple of steps back from him, leaned back on one heel, and folded her arms across her chest. "You're afraid! For once in your life, you are afraid! You're afraid of trying and failing!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Rivoche!"
"Do you think the New Republic or the Yuuzhan Vong will take pity on you and leave the Imperial Remnant alone just because of this? Is this a ploy to keep them at bay? Is that it? It won't work. They don't care. I know. I was there. I was approached left and right, called into meetings-- they've been looking for a weak spot since the day it was announced that you were alive! See, they have a score to settle, something about a place called Alderaan. I'm afraid the station wasn't enough for them." She leaned forward and took him by the shoulders. He winced, and shrank from her, but she didn't let him go. "Do you know what they'll say?" she continued. "They'll say that the Imperial Remnant is just as crippled and broken as its leader! They'll point the Vong in this direction--easy pickins, they'll say! The Vong hate weakness, you know. You, Uncle Adrian, are an insult to their gods! You're going to look awfully weak in front of the entire galaxy, and that scares you more than anything else in the universe, doesn't it?"
"Of course not," he snapped, "and so I'd rather not discuss--"
She shook him slightly at that. "No! You need this. Let yourself feel for once! You have used fear all of your life as a tool to intimidate and control others, and so just once you need to experience it for yourself! You need to find out first-hand what you have espoused all these years!"
"Rivoche, I am not afraid of the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong, or of this," he insisted, now trying very hard to keep his defenses up.
"You're trembling," Rivoche observed.
He looked away.
With that, Rivoche slid her arms under his and forcibly pulled him up off the scooter. "I didn't give up my life on Coruscant and come home and watch you capitulate like this. Hang on to me. Trust me!"
"There's no such thing, Rivoche."
"You have no choice but to trust me. I've got you. I'm not going to let you fall. See, you're all right."
As he slowly calmed down, Adrian thought back to the fragile little four-year-old girl he had once held tightly in the night, and marveled at the strength and resolve in the woman she had become. She had grown up to be a Tarkin after all, he thought as he held fast to her and tried to gain some footing on his own. And this time, he noticed, for some reason it wasn't quiet so painful anymore.
"Good! That's a start. You can do this! You might need some braces for awhile, but you can do this!" she encouraged him.
Yes. Perhaps he could.
Typhani walked in then, and nearly choked on her own breath when she saw them. "Adrian! Rivoche, you'll hurt him!"
"I will not!" Rivoche insisted. "You're letting him off too easy, Aunt Typi! If he was paralyzed, that's one thing, but this is just-- carbonitis! He can do this. He has to! You won't like the New Republic's reaction if he doesn't! Now I want the physical therapy people back in here, every day, and I'm going to oversee his progress myself!" She helped her uncle back onto his scooter, but continued to rant at him.
"Do you know what else I am going to do to you? When you are doing your exercises and you get frustrated because you can't do one, or when it hurts like hell, I am going to put a great big picture of my friend Luke Skywalker in front of you! He's the one who dropped those proton torpedoes on you, you know. So are you just going to lie there on the mat and let him defeat you after all, O Mighty Exalted Mister Emperor! Well, are you?"
Adrian smiled up at his niece. "No. Certainly not!"
"Look out, Coruscant! The Tarkins are teaming up!" Typhani mused.
Back on Coruscant, the search continued for the whereabouts of Historical Bureau Associate Director Rivoche Tarkin. She'd been missing for a week now, and everyone feared the worst, that somehow agents of the former Empire, or of her own family, for that matter, had finally captured her--or worse.
Admiral Ackbar sat down at his computer terminal to check the latest feed on the search for Rivoche, and to check his own holonet messages. He was most shocked to see a message from an Imperial Remnant domain. When Ackbar opened the message, it read simply, "I'm home. I won't be back. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm all right. Rivoche." Such would not be the case for the friends and colleagues she had left behind on Coruscant.
Three days later, Rivoche made good on a threat as she and a physical therapy droid hovered over her uncle and glared down at him as he once again lay flat of his back on an exercise mat with weights strapped around his ankles. The main task that day was to raise each leg into the air and hold it there to the count of ten. "I said again!" Rivoche insisted. "Do you remember when you were teaching me to ride my first speeder bike, and I kept falling off? 'Never give up, Rivoche! Never give up!' Remember that? Good words, Uncle Adrian! Now . . . eat 'em!"
It hurt like hell. He could only make it to a count of six or seven.
"Rebel scum! Jedi vermin!" Rivoche chanted, holding up the promised picture of the Jedi Master. "Don't you remember how hard you and Uncle Bevel worked on that battle station, brand new it was, just for this little snot-nosed Jedi farm boy from Tatooine to blow it to oblivion and knock you on your Imperial butt for twenty-five years! Dammit, Uncle Adrian! He killed five of your closest friends! Put that anger of yours to good use this time! Again!"
Rivoche made him fight, and his strength began to return. Typhani stayed upstairs. She couldn't bear it. Not until a few weeks later when Rivoche unexpectedly let go of him, much as the droids had done bacon on Lumin. This time, though, he did not fall. Instead, he remembered to take a moment to orient himself, then at last took the few steps necessary to reach his wife. Rivoche broke into tears of joy. Typhani just held him, elated. He would only be able to take a few steps at a time for now, or stand for just a few moments, but it would be enough for appearances--for his coronation--and he would continue to improve.
"All right, where is this Skywalker? I'm ready for him!" Adrian declared.
"One problem, Uncle Adrian. There's a great big peace treaty with Gilad's handwriting all over it between you and him," Rivoche reminded him.
"Now when did I ever let a mere document stop me?"
"All right, back on your scooter!" Rivoche teased. By that point, she knew that the plan was to simply let as much civilization fall off of the New Republic as would come of its own accord, then wait for the rest to fall apart or be overrun. Then they would deal with the Vong. Based on her experience, though, Rivoche knew that wasn't going to happen. Still, if she was going to be home, if she was going to honor her heritage, she wanted strength, though no more violence. The Vong would provide enough of that, she knew. The Imperial Remnant and the New Republic need not inflict any more on each other. Daala and her uncle were living proof of that, and several orders of magnitude more proof lay dead throughout the galaxy.
Adrian did get back on his scooter, and back to work. He indicated for Typhani to follow him into his study. "I'd like to show you something," he said. "I need your opinion." She put her arms around her husband and leaned over his shoulder to look at the image of a partially destroyed/dismantled Imperial class star destroyer on his computer screen. "It's the Gorgon," he explained. "It's salvageable, though quite involved. This will make a fine ceremonial ship for us all, don't you think? We definitely need one, and I want something from the height of the New Order. After all, we certainly can't take the Chimaera from Gilad."
"Daala will be absolutely thrilled!"
"I know, so don't tell her. This shall be a surprise."
"Are you going to leave it at Kuat?"
"No. The Vong will no doubt take Kuat soon. Naturally, I shall enlist Sienar Fleet Systems for this retrofit."
"Ah! Quite a project for Kormath, no?" She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Adrian, you really need to go see Raith."
Raith. Adrian shuddered at the thought. He had been avoiding the subject, not out of any animosity toward his lifelong friend, but rather out of hesitation, not wanting to face him, to face what he might become. Everyone in the galaxy has a twin somewhere, so the saying went, and Raith and Adrian could have easily passed for brothers they resembled each other so. At eighty-three, Raith was a mere relic of his former self, not to mention what the stroke had done to him.
"As I told you back on Lumin," Typhani continued, "he might remember you. Your companionship might be very good for him." Then she lay a guilt trip upon him. "He would have been there for you had he been able. He thinks you're dead, Adrian."
He drew a deep breath. "I know. Let's . . . make the arrangements," he said as he brought up his travel scheduler.
A week later, he and Typhani made the trip to Timarthis. For the first time, Adrian left his scooter behind in their hotel suite, having graduated to a walker. That, too, he left indoors, leaning on Typhani for support instead, as they stepped out onto a balcony at the exclusive retirement compound and took their seats, with Adrian closest to Raith. Typhani gripped her husband's wrist reassuringly as he looked upon his best friend, now a frail, emaciated wisp of the man he used to be.
"Hello, Raith," he finally said, studying his friend a bit more carefully for some glimpse of the past. He thought back to the first time they ever met each other on Coruscant; Raith was ten, and Adrian nine.
"Raith, don't you remember me? It's Typhani," she prompted him. But Raith stared only in front of him, at Adrian.
"It's been a long time, no?" Adrian continued.
Raith continued to stare, and to fidget slightly, as if something began to flicker within him. Eventually, he raised a shaky hand and pointed at Adrian. "Dead?"
"No, just carbonite," Adrian assured him. "You're not dead either, my friend, not quite yet."
"Not . . . dead? No . . . Empire?"
"No, Raith, I'm not dead. You're not looking at a ghost, and the Empire isn't dead either. I am the Emperor now."
"The Emperor . . . he's dead!" Raith insisted.
"No, Raith. Palpatine is dead. I am the Emperor now."
Raith pointed at him again. "Emperor!"
"Yes. There, you see, you do understand."
"Thrawn?"
"No, Thrawn is dead."
"Emperor!" Raith insisted again with his slow and labored speech.
"That's right." Adrian could detect something in his eyes, part of a look he remembered seeing when Raith had gotten his hands on a very big and exciting new project.
"Thrawn died."
"Yes, he did, unfortunately. Did you know him?"
"Thrawn. For the Empire. He died. Now, the Emperor, you!"
"Yes, Raith, now you have it straight."
Raith reached toward Adrian then, and stared at him intensely. "846 . . .287 . . . 94 . . 942 . . . 0 . . . 063! Yes! 8 . . . 84 . . . 6 . . . 28 . . . 79 . . . 4206 . . . 3287 . . . " Raith continued to babble what to Adrian and Typhani seemed to be a random series of numbers.
"What, Raith? What are you trying to tell us? The numbers aren't making any sense," Typhani encouraged him.
"84 . . . 6 . . . " he repeated, and reached for Adrian. Then he pointed into his lap. "8 . . . 462 . .. "
"Those numbers aren't random, Typhani. He's repeating the same sequence. Quickly, my datapad!" Adrian insisted. Typhani pulled the datapad from her bag and took down the sequence that Adrian had quickly memorized and relayed to her, "846287942063."
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"I don't know. Part of some forgotten code we once knew, perhaps." But then Adrian felt a tug on his tunic sleeve, and turned back to Raith, who again began to reiterate the sequence.
"It's all right, Raith. I've got it, see?" he assured him, holding up the datapad.
"For the Empire, Emperor!"
"Yes, Raith, now can you tell me what this means? Come now, try to remember." Raith only stared at him. Then his head dropped, and he lost all coherence.
"Why?" Adrian asked his wife. "Of all people for this to happen to, why Raith?"
"I know," she said, "but that's the most lucid I've seen him in years. You'll have to keep coming. I think you could reach him, if you haven't already." She took the datapad from him and tucked it back into her bag.
"No. Now that I'm here to make the decisions, we will bring him perhaps to Eriadu. It's more familiar to him. And there we'll see that he's cared for, closer to us." They sat with Raith a while longer, until the nurse-droids came to take him in for his afternoon nap.
"That was . . . difficult," Adrian commented as he sank onto the settee back in their hotel suite.
"I know, but I don't think you realize how much he needed that, or how much seeing you back means to him. As I told you, that's the most conversation he's carried on since he had the stroke."
"Albeit it numeric," Adrian observed. "Let me have my datapad, will you, dear?" He sat contemplating the numbers for a very long time, searching his memory for what they might mean--ship model numbers, or a serial number, perhaps? Or security access codes? Account numbers? Part of a numeric code? Adrian slowly gave himself a headache. "Drats! I shall just have to run a wide-scale computer search on this when we get home," he conceded.
When they returned to Phelarion with the strange numeric sequence, Daala figured it out. "I think these are coordinates, Adrian," she said, filling in some of the missing details, the spaces and dashes, and a couple of conjectured alphanumeric characters.
"Yes, I think you're right," he said, taking the datapad from her. He looked up the information quickly on the computer, then checked the datapad again. Although he had to agree with Daala's extrapolation of the numbers Raith kept repeating, he was now uncertain that they held any significance. "This location would be well into the Unknown Regions," he told her. He knew his friend too well, though. Even through the stroke damage, Raith was insistent. They would have to follow up.
"Adrian, you can't do this," Typhani warned him. "It's too soon. You're not well enough yet, and Daala certainly can't go!"
"No, you're right, we can't do it," he agreed. "But Aerom and Kormath can."
Kormath was delighted at being given such a mission. Adrian had speculated that his knowledge of Raith's business and engineering practices would be needed depending upon what they found at the specified coordinates. Lyscithea, however, was ambivalent about the idea, but her mother quickly counseled her how to cope with such feelings.
Gilad arranged for them to take an Imperial class ship with an enhanced complement of TIE fighters and an experienced crew. When they arrived at the spot that Raith's coordinates indicated, they initially found nothing. A thorough scan of the area, however, revealed something utterly remarkable. A huge object lay cloaked directly in front of them--an object about the size of a small moon . . .
Kormath worked with the codes that Raith often used when tinkering with cloaking devices. It took him several hours, but he finally managed to uncloak the object. Kormath and Aerom stood frozen before the forward viewport as the static from the cloaking device dissipated. Their eyes grew wide with joyous disbelief. Before them loomed a full-size, fully complete, and fully operational Death Star, its design slightly different from its two doomed and lost predecessors and their prototype, but a Death Star battle station nonetheless, complete with superlaser!
After the failure of the first two designs, the perceived loss of his best friend, the hostile takeover of his family's company by the Liannans, and the decline of his nation, Raith Sienar had approached the current leadership and attempted his own redesign, following his original plans and using druids to construct the station in secret in the Unknown Regions. Thrawn died before he could take delivery of his cloaked station, and there was no one else Raith trusted with it--until now. The payment for the project, however, which Thrawn had fortunately transferred prior to his unfortunate end, had been enough for Raith to recover control of Sienar Design Systems and its subsidiaries once and for all.
But would his creation be enough to protect the Imperial Remnant once and for all? Adrian basked in unbounded excitement as he and Daala studied Aerom's holographic transmissions of the station. "We'll have to activate it and staff it quickly. How many people did you say comprise your group?" he asked Daala.
"About 2,500 adults," she confirmed.
"Well, that's quite a staff, Daala, for a start. Now, how would you like to be in command of that?" he asked, indicating the hologram. Daala beamed, but their excitement abruptly disintegrated when Rivoche burst into her uncle's study, Madame Director Isard on her heels.
"Uncle Adrian! It's Coruscant! It's--it's--gone!"
Adrian gasped nearly to the point of choking and spun around to face them.
"It was the Vong. Just like Ithor. It's utterly incinerated! I'm quite afraid there's nothing left. And, Fey'lya's dead." Ysanne explained. "The New Republic is obviously dead as well, but we've no time for celebrations."
"Where are the Vong headed now?" Adrian asked urgently.
"The Meridian Sector. Probably the Cybloc system, and then--" Ysanne looked sharply at Daala. "Then most likely the Chorios system."
This time it was Daala who gasped. "My colony . . . "
Of Restorations and Discoveries
When Daala stirred again, she sensed that someone had taken Typhani's place at her side, and it wasn't Lyscithea or Morgana. With the lingering anesthetic, it was still difficult to open her eyes, and everything was still blurry when she did. "Stroma?"
"Daala, why in the universe didn't you tell me! I opened those so- called sealed instructions you left me," she said, moving closer to her best friend.
"I didn't want you to worry," Daala defended.
"Not until I came into your house one day and found you dead on the bathroom floor or something of the like? Why didn't you go for help before Typhani came?" she asked, almost accusingly.
"There was no reason before she came," Daala told her blandly.
"No reason?" Stroma echoed. "Daala, I knew it was bad, but . . . I mean, after everything you've been through, all the times you nearly went on us in a supernova of glory--to go like this, when you could still fight?"
"It doesn't matter now," Daala told her. "I'll be all right."
"Yeah," Stroma acknowledged. "And at last you're back where you belong."
Daala realized something then, and raised her head off her pillow a bit. "It doesn't burn!" she said with elated relief as she took another deep breath. "For the first time in twelve years, it doesn't burn!"
"That's wonderful," Stroma acknowledged. She'd taken Daala in as a favor to her late husband's close friend, Gilad Pellaeon, grown close to her, and watched her struggle with the recurrent breathing problem for over a decade. Stroma was glad that relief had come at last, and that the relief had ended in life instead of death. Just for once, Stroma reflected as she took her hand and squeezed it tightly in friendship, just for once in her life, Daala deserved to belong, and be happy.
As Daala recovered, Lyjéa returned to Lumin to give her vision one last try. Fortunately for her, the process would not be nearly as lengthy or involved as it had been for her father. The doctors administered the cell regeneration formula at regular intervals directly into the arteries that fed her occipital lobe. And they waited . . .
Although it would be months before Daala would regain her strength (she would never completely regain it), her recovery went fairly well. She would still need ample bedrest and close monitoring through follow-ups, but the Andromeda Center staff let the Tarkins take her home to Phelarion after only two and a half weeks, to coincide with the completion of Lyjéa's treatment. Daala made the trip well, as Adrian had before her, and she seemed to put down roots as they blanketed her into her bed.
Lyjéa, on the other hand, accepted her situation once more, and returned to Eriadu in defeat and disappointment. Never again, she vowed. Like Daala, she had endured enough.
Adrian had not been home to Eriadu since he woke up, and so, after settling Daala in, he and Typhani made the trip, concerned that Lyjéa had retreated there instead of coming home with her family for support. Her answer was simple enough. "I just needed to be reminded of what I have accomplished--of what I can still do," she said, caressing her tactile holoplate reader as she uploaded the syllabus for the coming term's classes. "I have lesson plans to make." Like her father, Lyjéa's way of dealing with personal adversity was to cast herself fully into her work. Still, she agreed to accompany her parents on her father's first visit back to Villa Galaxia, the family estate that had been in his control before Yavin.
After Yavin, control of House Tarkin and Villa Galaxia passed first to Adrian's cousin, Nolan, and then to Nolan's son, the very competent and highly domineering Valdemar. Whether it would now pass back remained to be seen. Valdemar had orchestrated a very successful military career, having been a favorite of his older second cousin, the first Grand Moff. At twenty- four, Valdemar had just attained the rank of Commander when the Empire lost the first Death Star. Three years later, Valdemar's fleet was among the first to arrive at the assault on the Rebel base at Hoth. After the Rebels evacuated, the other Imperial officers allowed Valdemar and his flagship, the Retaliator, the "honor" of destroying the Rebel facilities.
At Endor, Valdemar took out several Rebel ships, pulling back with Pellaeon and the Chimaera just in time as the Executor became disabled and plunged into the second Death Star. He prudently retired after Endor, not wanting to draw Rebel fire to Eriadu, and took up the restoration of Villa Galaxia. He had supported Sate Pestage, Ysanne Isard, Thrawn, and Gilad Pellaeon over the years, those who would defend the Empire and strive to bring back the New Order, those who would defend his family's legacy. For nearly a year after his divorce, he had secretly admired another with such purpose, following with intense interest the attacks on Dantooine, Mon Calamari, and Yavin IV. He had been on the verge of extending his support, and perhaps more, to the renegade female admiral when shameful rumors erupted across the galaxy. Now those nasty rumors had been laid to rest, but not the lady admiral . . .
Adrian found coming home to Villa Galaxia quite pleasant, although tainted by his daughter's disappointment. Nolan, his wife Shayla Paige- Tarkin, and their children, Valdemar and his older sister, Raine, had indeed turned the place from a musty, gaudily overdone family compound, back into the tasteful and lavish exclusive resort it had been over two hundred years ago, having added numerous small guest houses and the now galactically famous spa to the grounds.
As they made their way inside, Chantir rushed toward them, her small, black shoes making a clipping sound as she ran across the polished stone floor of the colonnade. "Adrian! You're all right! Is Admiral Daala all right, too? Daddy said--he said she might not--um . . . "
"Yes, Chantir, she's going to be fine now. She's resting back at our house on Phelarion," Adrian assured his little cousin.
"She has been so worried," a young woman who bore slight resemblance to Chantir commented as she came up to join the group.
"I couldn't help it, Paige!" Chantir defended herself to her older sister. "Morgana wouldn't let me come with her."
Adrian put the name to the face he had seen in the many holoplates he'd been shown of the extended family that grew in his absence. "Ah! The political science major. Following in your grandmother's footsteps, no?"
"No, in fact not! I certainly want nothing to do with a seat in the Rebel senate!" Paige quipped with a smile. "It is so wonderful to finally meet you," she continued. "After all the years of stories and holograms--no one ever told us you were alive! Weldan and Gaston were just overwhelmed, and they can't wait to get leave so they can meet you as well."
"They're both nerds!" Chantir interceded.
"Chantir! Do not insult our brothers in front of our elders! Didn't you learn anything in those deportment classes Mom sent you to last year?"
Chantir's head dropped.
"That's better," Paige coached.
"And how is your mother?" Adrian asked. Valdemar and Quentiri had married right out of prep school four years before Yavin, and then divorced fifteen years later after having four children together.
"She's fine, thank you," Paige commented diplomatically. Adrian sensed that little love was lost between the girls and their estranged mother. She came from Muunilinst, and worshipped money and material objects to an unhealthy excess. The tabvids once rumored that Quentiri Tarkin possessed over 4,000 pairs of shoes and over 10,000 pairs of earrings. It was not Valdemar's ability to satiate her that drove them apart. Instead, Valdemar found Quentiri's excesses for the sake of excess wasteful, tiresome, and pointless, and, coming from a military family background, he found such traits against his grain. When the divorce came, Valdemar, a Tarkin to the core if ever there was one, somehow prevented Quentiri from gutting his family's fortune. No one quite knew the details of how he did it, but he and his ex wife had not spoken since. Valdemar retained residential custody of the children, yet he allowed Quentiri to see them, and them to see their mother, any time they wished.
As Paige and Chantir both sought Lyjéa's tutoring on some writing assignments, Adrian and Typhani made their way upstairs and down the long, back hall through the family's private quarters. Despite the many changes at Villa Galaxia, their own apartments, those that had been Adrian's as he grew up there, remained largely untouched and unchanged, although Typhani had used them from time to time over the years.
"I think it was nearly three years before I was able to come back here," Typhani commented as the sitting room door closed behind them.
"Nolan kept you away?" Adrian asked urgently.
"No, no, in fact, he and Shayla kept trying to coax me here. It was . . . the memories, you know." Typhani thought back to her very first visit to the sprawling and luxurious estate. Adrian had brought her home to introduce her to the rest of his family--whether they liked it or not, she mused. Over the years, the memories accumulated, watching holovids in the sitting room, planning the future of the Empire at the table by the bedroom window, making love on the balcony . . .
"Yes." Adrian acknowledged. "We've shared much amidst these walls." He, too, recollected the first time he had escorted his soul mate into his "inner sanctum," and how he had almost proposed to her after their first intimate encounter on that balcony, but then thought better of it, opting for the mutual territory of their apartment on Coruscant instead.
"Do you remember . . . " he continued, gazing out the glass paneled doors into the warm Eriaduan evening.
"All too well," she mused, and drew close to her husband as they made their way onto the balcony.
Villa Galaxia indeed held many pleasant and cherished memories for both of them. Nolan and his children had done well to preserve them and to maintain the family estate. All were in agreement that, in light of his efforts and accomplishments, Valdemar would continue to maintain Villa Galaxia, at least for the foreseeable future. However, everyone also knew who now controlled House Tarkin, and the distinction between the two.
The Governor's Mansion on the other side of Eriadu City was another matter concerning its maintenance, or lack thereof. Of course, Typhani had emptied it of their personal belongings shortly after Yavin to make way for Ardus Kaine, but he rarely used the house. After his death, it had been used from time to time for overflow Seswenna Sector government offices and such, but had not been inhabited in years. Hence, the place would have to be completely redone. Another project for them, they knew, as they looked at the boarded-up structure from the overgrown front garden.
After locating the plans for the Governor's Mansion and enjoying a final evening with family, Adrian and Typhani prepared to return to Phelarion. When they arrived, they found the security perimeter completely locked down, and guards flanked all of the exterior doors to the house.
"Oh, no, now what?" Adrian snapped as more security detail on speeder bikes closed in around their transport. A tight formation of stormtroopers surrounded them as they made their way inside, where their bodyguard unit security chief approached them.
"Your Excellencies, we have a problem, in the main reception room."
They all turned their attention in that direction, and one of the two guards flanking the door opened it. Adrian and Typhani froze, and reached for each other's hands, stunned at the site of the middle-aged woman who sat bound to a chair in the center of the room, another guard standing beside her with a blaster to her head. She did not look up at them. The security chief continued. "We picked up her trail at the border and intercepted her at the spaceport. She didn't even bother to try to hide her identity. What do you want done with her? I can have a firing squad assembled shortly." Adrian waved him off and hovered into the room, Typhani close behind him.
"Take this away, and leave us in private, please," Typhani told the guard with the blaster. She then reached down to release the binders that held the woman's hands behind her back. She still did not look up, but merely drew her arms around in front of her, rubbing her aching wrists. Typhani put a hand on her shoulder, and Adrian finally addressed her.
"Rivoche?"
Rivoche Tarkin raised her head to face her uncle then, her eyes filled with both shame and uncertainty. She didn't know what he would do with her, but, nonetheless, it was time to face her past.
Adrian reached out and took his niece's trembling hand. "Why, Rivoche? Why the Rebels?"
She looked directly at him then. "Because it was easier to hate you and leave you than to love you and lose you!" She looked away, fighting back her tears.
The three of them looked up as the door to the reception room opened again. Kormath and Lyscithea had arrived, after dropping the boys off at their other grandparents' house for the evening, and Lyscithea came into the room to see what the problem was. She took about three steps, then also froze. Her face grew deep red, and she drew her fists up at her sides. "Get away from him!" she shrieked, and lunged at Rivoche.
Her mother put an arm out to stop her. "It's all right, Scythi," she assured her.
"It is not all right, Mother! She should be executed! Now!"
"Let's go," Typhani insisted, leading her daughter out of the room, and leaving Adrian alone with his niece.
"Don't leave him alone with her! Are you out of your mind, Mother! You guards get in there! Now!" Lyscithea screamed, half-hysterical. "How did she get here! How did she get through the perimeter! How did she get in the house!"
"Scythi, calm down!" her mother demanded.
"What's the problem?" Kormath asked as he joined them in the hallway outside the reception room.
"Rivoche just came home," Typhani told him.
"What! Are you okay?"
"Yes, Kormath, we're fine. She's come home . . . at last, she's come home."
"Just like that!" Lyscithea continued heatedly. "Mother, you are far too forgiving! You've gotten weak, you know. I'd rather have you the way you were during the Conclave than this! After all the damage she did, and she's come home? First Daala and now this! Why don't we all just declare open marriages and move to Coruscant!"
"Hey, that's enough, Scythi. That's your mother you're talking to," her husband reminded her.
"I know who I'm talking to, Kormath! The next thing you know, the blasted Solos will be here for dinner! You know what Rivoche did to Lyjéa! Mother, how could you!"
By that point, Aerom Flennic and Ysanne Isard had just returned from Bastion, and heard the commotion in the hallway outside the reception room.
"Is there a problem?" Aerom asked.
"There certainly is!" Lyscithea snapped. "My father is alone in the reception room with a Rebel infiltrator!"
Aerom snapped to attention and started to march a couple of steps forward, but Typhani caught him as well. "It's all right, Aerom. It's just our niece. Apparently, she's gotten her fill of Coruscant."
"Well, maybe then that girl has some brains after all!" Ysanne commented. "She certainly didn't get them from her father!"
Then the door to the reception room opened again. "Why don't we all go into the main living room and calm down," Adrian suggested as he dismissed the guards and moved in that direction with Rivoche following close behind.
Lyscithea let out an exasperated sigh. "Aren't we leaving somebody out of this little equation? What is Lyjéa going to think of this?"
"We shall have to call Lyjéa and let her know. Then we can ask her," Typhani assured her, and led her toward the living room. Lyscithea's stomach knotted in nausea and fear as she saw Rivoche sit down next to her father.
"Look, I think I better get some air first," she insisted.
"All right then," her mother agreed. "You may join us in a few minutes."
Lyscithea turned on her heel and made her way out the kitchen door. She knew Kormath's briefbag was still in the back of the van. She retrieved what she needed, then went back into the house. The others had just begun a conversation when Lyscithea returned to find her rogue cousin now sitting between her parents. That was entirely too much for her.
"Get away from them, Rivoche, now!" she snarled. Lyscithea then raised Kormath's blaster and pointed it in her cousin's direction. Nobody moved.
"Now, Rebel!" Lyscithea demanded.
Rivoche shakily forced herself to her feet, arms out at her sides, and slowly moved a safe distance away from Adrian and Typhani.
"I always told that if you ever showed yourself around here again I'd kill you for what you did to my sister!" Lyscithea reminded her.
The memories of that wet spring morning flooded back, and Rivoche broke down. "Get it over with, Scythi! I deserve it!" she shrieked, her knees trembling.
Lyscithea aimed her husband's blaster squarely at Rivoche's chest. "That's right, Rebel scum! You more than deserve it!"
"Scythi, put the gun down," Kormath said, trying to maintain a calm tone. Aerom and Ysanne rose and cautiously approached her from behind in a precise military disarming maneuver they had been well trained to execute back on Carida. Adrian immediately recognized what they were doing, and joined Kormath in trying to distract his daughter.
"We don't destroy our own, Scythi," he said sternly.
"Oh, no?" Lyscithea retorted, glancing quickly over at her father. "Maybe you'd better have Aunt Morgana explain that concept to Uncle Gideon! We destroyed the rest of this pathetic branch of the family! When part of a tree is diseased, you cut it off!"
At that point, Aerom reached around and seized Lyscithea's wrist, raising the blaster safely into the air, as Ysanne grabbed her about the legs and midsection to immobilize her.
Rivoche sank to the floor in sobs, and Typhani went to her. "It's all right now," she assured her niece. "You're home now." She led Rivoche back over to the sofa as Kormath worked his blaster from his wife's tenacious grip and led her out of the house.
Outside, Lyscithea stood with her back to the wall, breathing hard. "I can't let this happen, Kormath!"
"Let your father handle it," he advised her calmly.
"He can't handle it!" she cried. "He can't even walk and can barely sit up by himself!"
"Then how is he going to handle the Empire? Or the Vong?"
Lyscithea looked away, rubbing her head. Kormath took her home.
Meanwhile, inside, Typhani and Rivoche glanced up toward the top of the main staircase when they saw something move. Rivoche didn't recognize the woman leaning against the upstairs wall and holding on to the railing for support, looking pale and weak, with long, red hair and wrapped in a deep jewel green velvet house robe with white trim and gold slippers.
Ysanne moved to take care of the situation. She spoke as she ascended the stairs. "Daala, you shouldn't be up. Everything's all right now. Come on, back into bed with you."
Rivoche looked at her aunt. She had heard fact, rumor, myth, and legend about the infamous Imperial officer. "That's Admiral Daala? What's wrong with her?"
Typhani leaned a bit closer to her niece. "Yes. She's not well. She just had a double lung transplant."
Rivoche glanced over her shoulder at her uncle, then turned back to her aunt, lowering her voice. "Aunt Typi, what is she doing here?"
"It's not what everybody thinks, Rivoche. You were away at school, and so you didn't know. She was going to be a surrogate for us. Yavin interrupted those plans, unfortunately. And then, of course, everything got twisted way out of proportion."
"Rivoche, I have a question for you," Aerom interceded. Rivoche looked up at him. "How do we know you're not going to cut our throats in the middle of the night?"
"Aerom!" Typhani admonished him.
"No, it's a good question," Adrian defended his chief military advisor.
Rivoche looked down into her lap. "I--I don't have a good answer for that," she replied softly. Then she looked up at her uncle. "I was going to say that I can't blame you if you never trust me again, because I don't deserve it. But you've never trusted anybody anyway." Then she looked at Aerom. "And how do I know, for that matter, that you won't kill me in the night?"
"That's enough talk about hurting one another. If there is to be any killing done, then let it be Rebels, Vong, and Jedi," Typhani declared. She rose from her chair. "It's getting late, and we've had a long day. I am going to take Rivoche up to her room now, check on Daala, and then retire for the evening."
"My . . . room?" Rivoche queried.
Her uncle addressed that. "We never gave up on you, Rivoche." But then he turned to Aerom after his wife and niece disappeared at the top of the stairs. "Post security in the upstairs hall tonight, just in case." Rivoche was right. He didn't trust anyone, and hadn't since he was a child. His mother's drinking and his father's empty promises cost him that innocence at a very early age.
"I've heard and read so much about you," Rivoche said to Daala after Typhani introduced them.
"All bad, I presume," Daala said with a half-smile.
"Well," Rivoche smiled back, "General Bel Iblis can be crass at times, but General Solo actually had some good things to say about you."
"That's because that piece of Rebel scum can't wipe his butt without help, permission, or both," Daala observed, and cracked a wider smile. Typhani and Rivoche both laughed at her.
"Doesn't he have a Wookiee to do that for him?" Typhani asked.
"Not anymore," Rivoche answered. She and her aunt then left Daala to rest and proceeded down the hall to her room.
Rivoche stepped tentatively into the room that she had not seen since she was twenty-two years old, and that was twenty-two years ago. Yet everything was exactly as she had remembered leaving it. She walked slowly around the room as her aunt stood in the doorway, running her hand over her comforter, her own faux fur throw, her dresser, her vanity. On her vanity sat a fitted wooden box that contained several small drawers and compartments. Rivoche opened a small door and reached inside to remove a dragon figurine that her aunt had given her when she was a child. The dragon also had a small compartment, a little safe of sorts, inside it. Rivoche opened the dragon and reached inside the small interior compartment to find her prep school class ring, identical to her aunt's except for the year, exactly where she used to keep it. She put it on, then pushed up her sleeve to reveal the bracelet she was wearing, a dainty chain of blue and silver beads and shells that Typhani had made for her on her sixteenth birthday. She had been wearing it when the Rebels rescued her, and so it was the only keepsake she'd had of her former life. Typhani stepped over to her, and took her hand to look at the bracelet. Then they hugged each other tightly, and Rivoche thought back to the day they buried her father, another day when she had run for safety and comfort into her aunt's arms.
Typhani held her niece out at arm's length, looking her over once more to make sure she was really there. "I just can't believe you're home!"
"I almost didn't come back. I almost just went to a neutral sector. I didn't know if you wanted me, or would have me back."
Typhani shuddered a bit. So much had come and gone. So much was different, yet still the same. She recalled her first visit to Daala as she formulated her next question to her niece. "Rivoche, can I tell you something that I've never told you before?"
Rivoche seemed a bit taken aback. "Of course, Aunt Typi. What?"
Typhani stared into her niece's eyes. "I wanted you from the day you were born."
It was just the way she said it that made Rivoche understand. She stared back at her aunt for a long time.
"You . . . you pushed my mother over the balcony, didn't you?"
"No, Rivoche, I didn't push her. But I didn't stop her, either. She'd begged me to take care of you that afternoon, made me promise that I would, for some reason. The servants were there, of course, but she insisted, and naturally I was more than willing. She seemed ill . . . upset. I didn't know what was wrong with her, so when she didn't come for you, I went to check on her. I had you in my arms, and I didn't want to give you back. I know it sounds awful, but I stood by and watched as she threw herself over the balustrade and onto the rocks. And then you were half mine, you see."
"Just like Aunt Morgana didn't stop Admiral Worrell!"
"Yes, Rivoche."
Another long silence. "You--both--wanted me that badly?"
"Yes. We both did. But as it turned out, you didn't want us. I suppose we got what we deserved." Typhani looked away.
"No!" Rivoche cried. "By the stars, no, Aunt Typi! You didn't deserve to be betrayed in the way I betrayed you, and Lyjéa certainly didn't deserve--" She broke away.
Typhani put her arm around her niece again. "I know. There's been so much pain, so much grief . . . "
Downstairs, Adrian had proceeded into his study to catch up on some work. He sat typing busily at one of his computer terminals when the comm beeped--the direct, private line that only the family used. Thinking himself the only one still up, he got it.
Lyjéa was near tears, and that concerned her father deeply. "Don't question me on this, but I need to get a message to Rivoche! Urgently!"
Startled, Adrian spun around in his chair. "I don't believe this! Lyjéa, Rivoche just came home! She's upstairs, sleeping in her own bed! We were going to wait until the morning to call you."
"I'm on my way!"
"What! Lyjéa, wait a minute! It's the middle of the night there! Lyjéa!" It was too late. She had deactivated her comm.
"What in the Empire . . . " Adrian muttered to himself as he turned back to his computer. "Now I shall have to wait up for her. Serves me right, I suppose. I missed their teenage years."
When Lyjéa arrived in the wee hours of the morning, she insisted that they wake her mother and Rivoche. "All right, Lyjéa," her father conceded as they got into the lift together. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me what's the matter."
"Just wake them!" she insisted.
Rivoche sat up with a start at word that Lyjéa actually wanted to see her. She grabbed her robe, stepped into the upstairs hall, and stood dumbfounded before her cousin.
"You didn't do it, Rivoche! You didn't do it!" Lyjéa cried.
"I didn't do what?" Rivoche asked.
Lyjéa turned to her parents. "I just got the results back from Lumin. The cell regeneration treatment didn't restore my vision because it operates at the root of the genetic code. My genetic code is wrong, at least where my vision is concerned!" She thrust a piece of flemsiplast toward them that her father took from her hand. Then she turned back in Rivoche's direction. "I went blind because of a bad Eri-Phelari genetic recombinant! It wasn't anybody's fault! It was just a coincidence that you pushed me down the stairs!" she explained.
Rivoche could hardly believe what she had just heard. Forty years of guilt and shame had just been lifted off of her, and the two women could at long last be cousins--if not friends. Adrian and Typhani beheld a sight they never thought they'd see as the two cousins--adopted sisters--embraced each other tightly.
Rivoche was home.
Daala's child was not with them, but, better than that, Daala was.
They had just doubled the size of their family. Four girls! And three grandsons! At long last, they had the large family they had always wanted. For the rest of that wonderful night, all was well with the universe.
Yet still not whole.
Rivoche Tarkin had a mission in mind as she approached her uncle in his study a few evenings later. She needed to avert what she perceived to be a serious problem for the Imperial Remnant.
"Can't you get off that scooter at all?" she asked her uncle directly. "Can you stand or walk, even for a short while?"
He looked away. "No."
"But I've seen you move. You're not paralyzed."
"Oh, no, it's nothing like that. The weakness is from the length of my encapsulation. I have no muscle tone left, not after a quarter century of non-use."
"But can't you rebuild your strength? Haven't you had physical therapy?" Rivoche was not going to let him off easy, and she had good reason.
He took a moment to answer her, neither understanding nor liking her line of questioning. "It didn't work."
"It didn't work, or you didn't give it a chance?"
"Every day for eight weeks. Nothing--except a lot of discomfort."
"You gave up? Grand Moff Never-Give-Up gave up!?"
He just stared at her. "No, the hospital staff made that decision for me. They thought it was in my best interest not to continue."
"Ha!" Rivoche exclaimed, throwing back her head. "Since when do you let others make decisions for you, especially where your own health is concerned? You've ordered these people's executions, right?"
"Well . . . no. They were the experts on the matter, and they were only trying to help. I wasn't exactly in a position to . . . " He trailed away, growing a bit nervous. He had almost just admitted that he had been vulnerable.
"You weren't in a position to what? You're the blasted Emperor, Uncle Adrian! Isn't that what you've always wanted?"
"Yes, of course it is, but what does that have to do with . . . " He looked down at his useless lower body and the base of his hoverscooter.
Rivoche did not relent. "Uncle Adrian, you've got to get off of this thing," she insisted, lightly kicking the bottom of his scooter.
"I'm afraid that's wishful thinking, Rivoche."
She took a couple of steps back from him, leaned back on one heel, and folded her arms across her chest. "You're afraid! For once in your life, you are afraid! You're afraid of trying and failing!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Rivoche!"
"Do you think the New Republic or the Yuuzhan Vong will take pity on you and leave the Imperial Remnant alone just because of this? Is this a ploy to keep them at bay? Is that it? It won't work. They don't care. I know. I was there. I was approached left and right, called into meetings-- they've been looking for a weak spot since the day it was announced that you were alive! See, they have a score to settle, something about a place called Alderaan. I'm afraid the station wasn't enough for them." She leaned forward and took him by the shoulders. He winced, and shrank from her, but she didn't let him go. "Do you know what they'll say?" she continued. "They'll say that the Imperial Remnant is just as crippled and broken as its leader! They'll point the Vong in this direction--easy pickins, they'll say! The Vong hate weakness, you know. You, Uncle Adrian, are an insult to their gods! You're going to look awfully weak in front of the entire galaxy, and that scares you more than anything else in the universe, doesn't it?"
"Of course not," he snapped, "and so I'd rather not discuss--"
She shook him slightly at that. "No! You need this. Let yourself feel for once! You have used fear all of your life as a tool to intimidate and control others, and so just once you need to experience it for yourself! You need to find out first-hand what you have espoused all these years!"
"Rivoche, I am not afraid of the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong, or of this," he insisted, now trying very hard to keep his defenses up.
"You're trembling," Rivoche observed.
He looked away.
With that, Rivoche slid her arms under his and forcibly pulled him up off the scooter. "I didn't give up my life on Coruscant and come home and watch you capitulate like this. Hang on to me. Trust me!"
"There's no such thing, Rivoche."
"You have no choice but to trust me. I've got you. I'm not going to let you fall. See, you're all right."
As he slowly calmed down, Adrian thought back to the fragile little four-year-old girl he had once held tightly in the night, and marveled at the strength and resolve in the woman she had become. She had grown up to be a Tarkin after all, he thought as he held fast to her and tried to gain some footing on his own. And this time, he noticed, for some reason it wasn't quiet so painful anymore.
"Good! That's a start. You can do this! You might need some braces for awhile, but you can do this!" she encouraged him.
Yes. Perhaps he could.
Typhani walked in then, and nearly choked on her own breath when she saw them. "Adrian! Rivoche, you'll hurt him!"
"I will not!" Rivoche insisted. "You're letting him off too easy, Aunt Typi! If he was paralyzed, that's one thing, but this is just-- carbonitis! He can do this. He has to! You won't like the New Republic's reaction if he doesn't! Now I want the physical therapy people back in here, every day, and I'm going to oversee his progress myself!" She helped her uncle back onto his scooter, but continued to rant at him.
"Do you know what else I am going to do to you? When you are doing your exercises and you get frustrated because you can't do one, or when it hurts like hell, I am going to put a great big picture of my friend Luke Skywalker in front of you! He's the one who dropped those proton torpedoes on you, you know. So are you just going to lie there on the mat and let him defeat you after all, O Mighty Exalted Mister Emperor! Well, are you?"
Adrian smiled up at his niece. "No. Certainly not!"
"Look out, Coruscant! The Tarkins are teaming up!" Typhani mused.
Back on Coruscant, the search continued for the whereabouts of Historical Bureau Associate Director Rivoche Tarkin. She'd been missing for a week now, and everyone feared the worst, that somehow agents of the former Empire, or of her own family, for that matter, had finally captured her--or worse.
Admiral Ackbar sat down at his computer terminal to check the latest feed on the search for Rivoche, and to check his own holonet messages. He was most shocked to see a message from an Imperial Remnant domain. When Ackbar opened the message, it read simply, "I'm home. I won't be back. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm all right. Rivoche." Such would not be the case for the friends and colleagues she had left behind on Coruscant.
Three days later, Rivoche made good on a threat as she and a physical therapy droid hovered over her uncle and glared down at him as he once again lay flat of his back on an exercise mat with weights strapped around his ankles. The main task that day was to raise each leg into the air and hold it there to the count of ten. "I said again!" Rivoche insisted. "Do you remember when you were teaching me to ride my first speeder bike, and I kept falling off? 'Never give up, Rivoche! Never give up!' Remember that? Good words, Uncle Adrian! Now . . . eat 'em!"
It hurt like hell. He could only make it to a count of six or seven.
"Rebel scum! Jedi vermin!" Rivoche chanted, holding up the promised picture of the Jedi Master. "Don't you remember how hard you and Uncle Bevel worked on that battle station, brand new it was, just for this little snot-nosed Jedi farm boy from Tatooine to blow it to oblivion and knock you on your Imperial butt for twenty-five years! Dammit, Uncle Adrian! He killed five of your closest friends! Put that anger of yours to good use this time! Again!"
Rivoche made him fight, and his strength began to return. Typhani stayed upstairs. She couldn't bear it. Not until a few weeks later when Rivoche unexpectedly let go of him, much as the droids had done bacon on Lumin. This time, though, he did not fall. Instead, he remembered to take a moment to orient himself, then at last took the few steps necessary to reach his wife. Rivoche broke into tears of joy. Typhani just held him, elated. He would only be able to take a few steps at a time for now, or stand for just a few moments, but it would be enough for appearances--for his coronation--and he would continue to improve.
"All right, where is this Skywalker? I'm ready for him!" Adrian declared.
"One problem, Uncle Adrian. There's a great big peace treaty with Gilad's handwriting all over it between you and him," Rivoche reminded him.
"Now when did I ever let a mere document stop me?"
"All right, back on your scooter!" Rivoche teased. By that point, she knew that the plan was to simply let as much civilization fall off of the New Republic as would come of its own accord, then wait for the rest to fall apart or be overrun. Then they would deal with the Vong. Based on her experience, though, Rivoche knew that wasn't going to happen. Still, if she was going to be home, if she was going to honor her heritage, she wanted strength, though no more violence. The Vong would provide enough of that, she knew. The Imperial Remnant and the New Republic need not inflict any more on each other. Daala and her uncle were living proof of that, and several orders of magnitude more proof lay dead throughout the galaxy.
Adrian did get back on his scooter, and back to work. He indicated for Typhani to follow him into his study. "I'd like to show you something," he said. "I need your opinion." She put her arms around her husband and leaned over his shoulder to look at the image of a partially destroyed/dismantled Imperial class star destroyer on his computer screen. "It's the Gorgon," he explained. "It's salvageable, though quite involved. This will make a fine ceremonial ship for us all, don't you think? We definitely need one, and I want something from the height of the New Order. After all, we certainly can't take the Chimaera from Gilad."
"Daala will be absolutely thrilled!"
"I know, so don't tell her. This shall be a surprise."
"Are you going to leave it at Kuat?"
"No. The Vong will no doubt take Kuat soon. Naturally, I shall enlist Sienar Fleet Systems for this retrofit."
"Ah! Quite a project for Kormath, no?" She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Adrian, you really need to go see Raith."
Raith. Adrian shuddered at the thought. He had been avoiding the subject, not out of any animosity toward his lifelong friend, but rather out of hesitation, not wanting to face him, to face what he might become. Everyone in the galaxy has a twin somewhere, so the saying went, and Raith and Adrian could have easily passed for brothers they resembled each other so. At eighty-three, Raith was a mere relic of his former self, not to mention what the stroke had done to him.
"As I told you back on Lumin," Typhani continued, "he might remember you. Your companionship might be very good for him." Then she lay a guilt trip upon him. "He would have been there for you had he been able. He thinks you're dead, Adrian."
He drew a deep breath. "I know. Let's . . . make the arrangements," he said as he brought up his travel scheduler.
A week later, he and Typhani made the trip to Timarthis. For the first time, Adrian left his scooter behind in their hotel suite, having graduated to a walker. That, too, he left indoors, leaning on Typhani for support instead, as they stepped out onto a balcony at the exclusive retirement compound and took their seats, with Adrian closest to Raith. Typhani gripped her husband's wrist reassuringly as he looked upon his best friend, now a frail, emaciated wisp of the man he used to be.
"Hello, Raith," he finally said, studying his friend a bit more carefully for some glimpse of the past. He thought back to the first time they ever met each other on Coruscant; Raith was ten, and Adrian nine.
"Raith, don't you remember me? It's Typhani," she prompted him. But Raith stared only in front of him, at Adrian.
"It's been a long time, no?" Adrian continued.
Raith continued to stare, and to fidget slightly, as if something began to flicker within him. Eventually, he raised a shaky hand and pointed at Adrian. "Dead?"
"No, just carbonite," Adrian assured him. "You're not dead either, my friend, not quite yet."
"Not . . . dead? No . . . Empire?"
"No, Raith, I'm not dead. You're not looking at a ghost, and the Empire isn't dead either. I am the Emperor now."
"The Emperor . . . he's dead!" Raith insisted.
"No, Raith. Palpatine is dead. I am the Emperor now."
Raith pointed at him again. "Emperor!"
"Yes. There, you see, you do understand."
"Thrawn?"
"No, Thrawn is dead."
"Emperor!" Raith insisted again with his slow and labored speech.
"That's right." Adrian could detect something in his eyes, part of a look he remembered seeing when Raith had gotten his hands on a very big and exciting new project.
"Thrawn died."
"Yes, he did, unfortunately. Did you know him?"
"Thrawn. For the Empire. He died. Now, the Emperor, you!"
"Yes, Raith, now you have it straight."
Raith reached toward Adrian then, and stared at him intensely. "846 . . .287 . . . 94 . . 942 . . . 0 . . . 063! Yes! 8 . . . 84 . . . 6 . . . 28 . . . 79 . . . 4206 . . . 3287 . . . " Raith continued to babble what to Adrian and Typhani seemed to be a random series of numbers.
"What, Raith? What are you trying to tell us? The numbers aren't making any sense," Typhani encouraged him.
"84 . . . 6 . . . " he repeated, and reached for Adrian. Then he pointed into his lap. "8 . . . 462 . .. "
"Those numbers aren't random, Typhani. He's repeating the same sequence. Quickly, my datapad!" Adrian insisted. Typhani pulled the datapad from her bag and took down the sequence that Adrian had quickly memorized and relayed to her, "846287942063."
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"I don't know. Part of some forgotten code we once knew, perhaps." But then Adrian felt a tug on his tunic sleeve, and turned back to Raith, who again began to reiterate the sequence.
"It's all right, Raith. I've got it, see?" he assured him, holding up the datapad.
"For the Empire, Emperor!"
"Yes, Raith, now can you tell me what this means? Come now, try to remember." Raith only stared at him. Then his head dropped, and he lost all coherence.
"Why?" Adrian asked his wife. "Of all people for this to happen to, why Raith?"
"I know," she said, "but that's the most lucid I've seen him in years. You'll have to keep coming. I think you could reach him, if you haven't already." She took the datapad from him and tucked it back into her bag.
"No. Now that I'm here to make the decisions, we will bring him perhaps to Eriadu. It's more familiar to him. And there we'll see that he's cared for, closer to us." They sat with Raith a while longer, until the nurse-droids came to take him in for his afternoon nap.
"That was . . . difficult," Adrian commented as he sank onto the settee back in their hotel suite.
"I know, but I don't think you realize how much he needed that, or how much seeing you back means to him. As I told you, that's the most conversation he's carried on since he had the stroke."
"Albeit it numeric," Adrian observed. "Let me have my datapad, will you, dear?" He sat contemplating the numbers for a very long time, searching his memory for what they might mean--ship model numbers, or a serial number, perhaps? Or security access codes? Account numbers? Part of a numeric code? Adrian slowly gave himself a headache. "Drats! I shall just have to run a wide-scale computer search on this when we get home," he conceded.
When they returned to Phelarion with the strange numeric sequence, Daala figured it out. "I think these are coordinates, Adrian," she said, filling in some of the missing details, the spaces and dashes, and a couple of conjectured alphanumeric characters.
"Yes, I think you're right," he said, taking the datapad from her. He looked up the information quickly on the computer, then checked the datapad again. Although he had to agree with Daala's extrapolation of the numbers Raith kept repeating, he was now uncertain that they held any significance. "This location would be well into the Unknown Regions," he told her. He knew his friend too well, though. Even through the stroke damage, Raith was insistent. They would have to follow up.
"Adrian, you can't do this," Typhani warned him. "It's too soon. You're not well enough yet, and Daala certainly can't go!"
"No, you're right, we can't do it," he agreed. "But Aerom and Kormath can."
Kormath was delighted at being given such a mission. Adrian had speculated that his knowledge of Raith's business and engineering practices would be needed depending upon what they found at the specified coordinates. Lyscithea, however, was ambivalent about the idea, but her mother quickly counseled her how to cope with such feelings.
Gilad arranged for them to take an Imperial class ship with an enhanced complement of TIE fighters and an experienced crew. When they arrived at the spot that Raith's coordinates indicated, they initially found nothing. A thorough scan of the area, however, revealed something utterly remarkable. A huge object lay cloaked directly in front of them--an object about the size of a small moon . . .
Kormath worked with the codes that Raith often used when tinkering with cloaking devices. It took him several hours, but he finally managed to uncloak the object. Kormath and Aerom stood frozen before the forward viewport as the static from the cloaking device dissipated. Their eyes grew wide with joyous disbelief. Before them loomed a full-size, fully complete, and fully operational Death Star, its design slightly different from its two doomed and lost predecessors and their prototype, but a Death Star battle station nonetheless, complete with superlaser!
After the failure of the first two designs, the perceived loss of his best friend, the hostile takeover of his family's company by the Liannans, and the decline of his nation, Raith Sienar had approached the current leadership and attempted his own redesign, following his original plans and using druids to construct the station in secret in the Unknown Regions. Thrawn died before he could take delivery of his cloaked station, and there was no one else Raith trusted with it--until now. The payment for the project, however, which Thrawn had fortunately transferred prior to his unfortunate end, had been enough for Raith to recover control of Sienar Design Systems and its subsidiaries once and for all.
But would his creation be enough to protect the Imperial Remnant once and for all? Adrian basked in unbounded excitement as he and Daala studied Aerom's holographic transmissions of the station. "We'll have to activate it and staff it quickly. How many people did you say comprise your group?" he asked Daala.
"About 2,500 adults," she confirmed.
"Well, that's quite a staff, Daala, for a start. Now, how would you like to be in command of that?" he asked, indicating the hologram. Daala beamed, but their excitement abruptly disintegrated when Rivoche burst into her uncle's study, Madame Director Isard on her heels.
"Uncle Adrian! It's Coruscant! It's--it's--gone!"
Adrian gasped nearly to the point of choking and spun around to face them.
"It was the Vong. Just like Ithor. It's utterly incinerated! I'm quite afraid there's nothing left. And, Fey'lya's dead." Ysanne explained. "The New Republic is obviously dead as well, but we've no time for celebrations."
"Where are the Vong headed now?" Adrian asked urgently.
"The Meridian Sector. Probably the Cybloc system, and then--" Ysanne looked sharply at Daala. "Then most likely the Chorios system."
This time it was Daala who gasped. "My colony . . . "