PROLOGUE (SORT OF)
'It was just like that. Our lives, efforts, plans, resources, intrigues and conflicts all converged into one single goal: The Project. The Star that was not a star.
So many of those involved in this most ambitious Imperial program never even came to guess what it was they were helping to create, blissfully unaware, and only a handful were trusted enough to know the truth about the most advanced piece of weaponry this galaxy would ever see. Many thousands in my Corps alone, civil and military alike, reported to different persons within the highest echelon - so that, in case of an ever probable yet much dreaded failure, there would always be someone to heap all the blame upon, or merely pretend they had never existed. Only those few of us who served as a liaison between the Corps and the Intelligence or the Bureau were 'privileged' to glimpse the sheer immensity of the endeavor.
Oh, it had gathered quite a collection of designations over the years, both pretentious and plain, many of them never once heard by outsiders. Deep Space Mobile Battle Station. The Greatest Weapon. Celestial Power. Utterblight. Kyber-Stash. Planet-Killer. Sun-Blocker. Doom From Above. Skyfall; Titanic; Wormwood (I still have no idea where these last ones came from). A high-ranking colleague from an Outer Rim world, where some rare-earth elements necessary for the project's completion were being mined and the settlers were mostly loyal to the Grand Moff whom they called simply "Gray Tarkin", Tar'keeni-gharai, suggested the title Death-Stare. I believe it was this last one – or, more precisely, Death-Star – which ultimately became known to the wider masses, and we used it too, as in "DS-One", for there was already a second one under construction and probably more.
Amongst ourselves, however, we preferred yet another, more poetic name: Stardust.
But that is a different story...'
– Ne'el Khaimunn, of the Imperial Corps of Engineers, from his unpublished memoir (highly classified)