Chapter 13: Patra and the Empire
As the descending turbolift shivered beneath splayed, clawed feet, Paqs Patra felt more alone than they had ever been.
A person of his species could never be alone, the part of Paqs residing in the beaked reptilian head noted. But he had never noticed how the stationary symbiote on his back that aliens tended to see as golden wings did not much count as a companion when one was facing imminent danger.
The part of their brain that was housed in the small, winged body was thinking back to the events that lead up to now, because that was what he did. His was the rational side of the twin being they were. The larger body, lacking in decisions it could contribute to, listened.
Paqs's people were intelligent, adept at taking many walks of life, and rare. The Empire had found Paqs themselves as a small-time smuggler and forcibly recruited them as an information gatherer. The price of possible failure-their home planet. And now there had been a failure. They had been supposed to capture that man they had taken to the swampy planet, just as he and Paqs's old ally Han Solo left that planet, by faking Paqs's own peril. But for some reason, coincidence or Han's distrustful nature or some skill of the Jedi, it had failed.
So Paqs was on Had Abbadon, capital of the true forces behind the Empire, to see Darth Vader about the results of that failure.
Paqs cleared away these thoughts as they finally stepped out of the turbolift. The walls of the narrow hallway there were a dark brown rock, cool and lit by glowrods in wall sconces. The only room on this level was small, but seemed a galaxarium. Holo images made it seem that the place, many klicks underground, was at the planet's surface. An insectoid surveillance ship cruised over plains and spires of rust and black rock landscape, and the sun set behind the half-framework diamond of a dry-docked Super Star Destroyer.
Darth Vader moved from a side, that rumbling breathing seeming terribly loud. Paqs had met Vader before, but they had not been in nearly so much trouble. It made his skin prickle and his small, intelligent self tuck his wings next to their body.
"I have a new assignment for you, Patra."
Paqs relaxed only slightly. "Thank you, lord Vader."
"However, the terms of our agreement seem to have altered. Those Rebels were very important to me. The Death Star's next target will be your own world."
Paqs staggered, then tried to look into the flicker of red light on metal that might have been Vader's eyes. "But lord Vader, we made no mistake! It was the Rebels, the Jedi, no desertion on our part--"
"And yet the point will be made. You will report to Commander Horn aboard the Bitter Heart for reeducation, do you understand this?"
"Of course, lord Vader." Patra said and, after Vader swept out on some other indisputable errand, stood in that room a moment more, a sour pit of fear, anger and deep sadness brewing in his hearts.