The icy storm of hyperspace swirled around Roganda's message boat. She ignored the red-blinking shields and minor hull damage to consider her prize. The seed was as dormant as Roganda's surviving DTs, but just being near it was enough to make her giddy. That was a sensation she could only remember feeling a handful of times in her life. When she confirmed that Irek was Force sensitive was probably the only other time in her adult life.
Her Emperor had described it as the product of ancient Dark Side practices, but he had never said more than that. Only that if he acquired it and commanded it he could use it to make even the Death Star obsolete as a tool of Imperial power. It just needed to be directed and, most importantly, controlled. The product of all her subsequent experimentation, all her trials and all her errors, was the Silencer-7 droid intelligence. The seed would complete Silencer-7, Irek would command it, and all Roganda's plans would be fulfilled.
Despite the seed's silence it practically pulsed with power. Energy and potential swirled around its quiet core. A piece of technology it might seem to be, but it had a presence in the Force, one she could palpably feel.
Sleep, precious, she thought to it, fighting the urge to stroke it with her long fingers. Sleep. We're almost home, and then you can be reborn in glory.
Irek and Halmere were waiting for her when she arrived. So too were their pet cyberneticists, probably to ensure that the Silencer command interface would operate properly even after Silencer-7 was merged with the seed. She spared her son a nod both severe and welcoming—he seemed to understand the combination of necessary discipline and congratulations for his efforts—but kept her attention on the one real threat in the room.
"Emperor-Regent," she greeted him.
"You are late," Halmere said. The man's Force-sense glimmered with lingering anger—no doubt, Roganda thought, he was still mad at her for the dismissive way she had treated him in their last meeting.
Too bad, Roganda thought. I need you even less than I did. Once Silencer-7 is complete and battle-tested, I will need you not at all.
She said none of that out loud. For the moment, Silencer-7 was not complete, and she was not sure how long the mergence between the AI that she had built for the Emperor and the seed would take. So instead, as politely as she could manage, she said: "I have what I was looking for."
Halmere's expression shifted slightly, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, almost the beginnings of a frown, quickly schooled. "That is good news."
By contrast, Irek was enthused. He always was happy for her successes. "Congratulations, mother!"
She favored him with a dignified nod, and he swallowed and resumed a more formal mein.
Beside him, Cray Mingla and Nichos Marr looked as if they were at a wake. Which, Roganda thought smugly, they were. A wake for all the New Order's enemies—all her enemies—and all they held dear. Soon the war would be over, all the losses washed away, and her Empire would straddle the galaxy.
She wanted that as quickly as possible. "Come," she ordered. "Now. I will wait no longer."
They traveled into the depths of Silencer Station.
At its core was something that only she had seen. Inside all the walls, all the bulkheads, all the layers of armor, at the station's very center, was its genesis. The original molecular furnace, designed to break matter down into raw materials and reforge it into whatever was needed. The large computer mainframe which housed the original Silencer droid intelligence.
The last component was her original core. It was tiny compared to the one recovered from Nar Shaddaa. Small enough to fit within her fist, it too had a presence in the Force… but a tiny one, easily missed. It had been reduced—or perhaps it had never been the equal to the seed she now carried—but it had possessed the kernel of energy she had needed to create Silencer Station's motivating force. That small remnant had brought Silencer-7 to life, allowing it to begin the process of manufacturing the New Order's military.
What, she thought, giddy with anticipation, would the true seed accomplish with it? How long would it take her to produce enough droids to defeat the rebellion and see Irek truly installed as Emperor? A week? A month? A year? No matter how long it took, she would make it happen.
Silencer Station's computer core was as she remembered it. A square room, each of the walls was lined with enormous computer terminals, each with a monitor that provided far too much information for a human mind to assimilate. Their screens flashed with inhuman quickness, a flutter of white and blue light that cast fleeting shadows, quickly replaced. Above them, climbing into the high ceiling, the computers had been built directly into the wall—and, Roganda knew, had steadily grown outwards, filling the space around this room in almost every direction. The room was hot, and both the floors and the ceiling had vents that constantly cast out cold air, clashing with the heat produced by all that hardware.
In the center of the room was a square podium. It seemed to rise directly out of the floor, seamless; the podium was illuminated with a single, bright light that pointed directly down from the high ceiling above. At the center of that column of light was a small, spherical object, held suspended in mid-air within the box, spinning slowly. The object itself was not interesting to look at; a dodecahedron, it reminded Roganda of a holocron—another example of Force-imbued technology.
As they entered, the dodecahedron started to spin faster. Roganda could feel it in the Force, just as she could feel the artifact recovered from Nar Shaddaa. They felt the same, two fragments of the same whole… one shaved off by some reckless treasure hunter, and the other forgotten in the depth of Nar Shaddaa until she and her droids had awakened it.
The artifact began to spin as well. She pushed the repulsorsled that carried it into the center of the room, until it was flush against the podium, and the fragment that was already there abruptly shot through the air towards the sled. It impacted the artifact and was swallowed up, merging once more into the unity from which it had at some point in the past been stolen.
The now-complete seed continued its spin, but that spin slowed. As she and Irek—and Halmere and the cyberneticists—watched it came to a stop once more, gleaming in the dark.
"What is it?" asked Cray, sounding amazed.
"You study the marriage of biology and machines," Roganda answered smugly. "This is the marriage of the Force and machines." She took the seed in both hands—it was surprisingly light—and placed it at the center of the podium. The podium itself had been the product of many hours of Roganda's work… though, with a not insignificant amount of the Emperor's guidance. It had been constructed as a host for the seed, and as she placed the seed atop that podium she knew that her life's work was truly complete.
The computers all around them stopped flashing. All the light went out as one, leaving only the bright illumination of the seed in the center of the room. The seed itself seemed to glow in the Force, imbued with energy and… intent… and as she watched, awed, the computers slowly restarted, one by one, until all four walls were bright once more. They flashed simultaneously, and then they all went blank.
Text scrolled across them in a large font.
SILENCER-7 ACTIVATION COMPLETE. SYSTEMS TEST UNDERWAY. MOLECULAR FURNACE TEST UNDERWAY. MANUFACTURING CAPACITY TEST UNDERWAY. LOGIC ENGINE TEST UNDERWAY.
. . .
TESTS COMPLETE. MOLECULAR FURNACE OPERATING AT CAPACITY. MANUFACTURING FACILITIES AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS. LOGIC ENGINE UPGRADES IN PROGRESS.
. . .
TESTING COMMAND INTERFACE. COMMAND INTERFACE INTENDED FOR [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR.
Roganda took the command interface that Cray had built from its resting place at the end of the repulsorsled that had carried the seed to its final destination. Carrying it like a crown, she held it out with both hands for her son. "And with Irek," she said, "it will become the marriage of all three."
Irek glanced at Cray and Nichos nervously as he took the command interface from his mother. She stepped back from him—as if retreating to a safe distance—and nodded. "I know you have commanded Silencer-7 before," she encouraged him. "It is now ready, and it awaits your will."
With trepidation, he settled the interface onto his head, holding his breath, his heart beating in time to his fear. The electricity, the pressure, of merging with the interface started at his temples, filling his ears with a dull roar. He could feel it expand to fill his skull, compressing the consciousness he kept behind his eyes, and pressure grew to pain as his head exploded with presence.
The last time he had worn the interface, Silencer-7 had communicated with him via the screen that came down in front of his eyes. That screen stayed dark, because it was unnecessary. He could hear Silencer-7 without it, its… thoughts… intermingled with his own.
WELCOME [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR.
Was the AI supposed to have a personality? There was something almost human about that voice—a voice Irek knew that only he could hear, because it was conveyed through the interface, directly from the computer into his mind. He could feel Silencer-7, surrounding him, and felt like he was an island, floating in an ocean he could not see the ends of.
Silencer-7? His own thoughts felt quiet compared to the booming voice rattling his ears.
WHAT IS YOUR WILL, [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR?
Somewhere, in the world outside the interface, he could hear his mother's voice. Or was that Halmere's? They all blurred, and it took his mind some time to reassemble the stimulus into something he could understand. Tell it to begin constructing our fleet. We must know its new limits.
COMMAND UNDERSTOOD, the AI boomed in his mind, not waiting for him to communicate the message deliberately. It could hear everything he could hear.
Now the screen in front of Irek's eyes did activate. There was no scrolling text, but it showed him Silencer Station's massive molecular furnace. The gaping maw of the station illuminated with intensity seemingly equal to that of a star, and the entire station descended lower. What had once been the fifth planet in the K-3-947 system—now increasingly just a large cracked planetoid and a growing cluster of large rocks—was sucked up into that maw. All that raw material was broken down by the furnace, processed, and used to construct a quickly-growing number of TIE droids.
COMMAND EXECUTION UNDERWAY, [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR. WHAT IS YOUR WILL?
Cray watched, both stunned and horrified, as the interface and Irek intermingled. That had always been the intention—it was a cybernetic interface, a vergence of human and artificial intelligence like any arm or organ she had worked on before. But despite that, this still felt wrong.
The screens around the room blinked with text.
COMMAND UNDERSTOOD. MAXIMIZING CONSTRUCTION EFFICIENCY. MANUFACTURING FACILITIES AT TWENTY PERCENT CAPACITY. ESTIMATING TIME UNTIL FULL CAPACITY.
Those words scrolled around the room, sliding from screen to screen, and then went blank. They were replaced, second later, with:
AWAITING FURTHER COMMANDS FROM [DESIGNATE] EMPEROR.
Halmere stepped towards the boy, but Roganda spoke before he could. "Tell us what else this station can do, now that it is complete?"
Halmere spoke even before she was finished speaking, eyeing her with annoyance as he did. "What are this station's combat abilities?"
One again, he heard words, like a whisper from beyond his body. What else can this station do?
As before, the AI recognized and processed the question almost without any involvement from Irek. The visual interface that filled his sight shifted, revealing a full picture of Silencer Station. As he watched, information poured across it. Turbolaser batteries. Tractor beams. Concussion missile launchers. Layers and layers and layers of armor. Overlapping shield generators. All of it powered by the energy produced by the molecular furnace, constantly breaking down and reconstructing matter.
COMBAT ABILITIES UNDEVELOPED. QUERY: CURRENT PRIORITY IS MANUFACTURING. ALTER PRIORITY TO DEVELOPMENT OF DIRECT COMBAT ABILITIES?
There was another voice speaking to him, but he couldn't make it out. Irek, it said, but Silencer-7 ignored it. Irek tried to focus on it, tried to listen. His arms were slow, sluggish things; he'd nearly forgotten what they were for or could do. Could he remove the interface? It felt like a part of his skull, inextricable.
He realized that he was speaking, relaying the question from Silencer-7 to Halmere and his mother. It was odd, how unconscious that was… how distant the world beyond Silencer-7 seemed to him. He sank deeper and deeper into the ocean that was the AI's consciousness, and the booming voice of the machine started to sound more and more like his own voice as he submerged in it.
"—Silencer Station is also equipped with overlapping shield generators, with individual fusion power generators. In total, the station has power production capabilities on par with one hundred Imperial II-class Star Destroyers, making its shields nearly impenetrable to conventional weapons. The station also has armor heavier than a Golan III Space Defense NovaGun, which can be constantly reconstructed as long as the molecular furnace has access to raw materials. These defensive capabilities—"
"Something is wrong," Cray raised her voice to be heard over Irek's litany. She had prompted Irek twice now and he had responded to neither. His voice had become raw and mechanical, with none of the boy's typical sarcastic energy. He sounded instead like a droid intelligence, and that was not at all how the command interface was supposed to work.
"That's the AI… talking…" Nichos agreed raggedly. Even with the weakness in his voice, she could hear the sudden concern. "In this kind… of cybernetic convergence… the human intelligence is supposed… to take precedence…"
"But he can still relay commands from us to Silencer-7?" Roganda asked. "Tell the Station to develop its combat power?"
Cray stared at the woman in disbelief. "If we don't disengage the interface there's a chance he won't come out at all!" To her astonishment, neither Roganda nor Halmere looked even moderately concerned. Halmere's callousness did not surprise her, but this was Roganda's own son!
She started towards the boy, intent on tearing that interface off his head, but Halmere grabbed her with an invisible fist. His real fist was clenched in the air; she wrenched backwards when he made a single scattering gesture. Nichos stumbled, trying to come to help, but Halmere merely pushed him over. Unbalanced, Nichos hit the ground with a heavy, awkward crunch and a cry of pain. Cray struggled, trying to wrench herself out of the Emperor-Regent's grip—
Irek's voice brought their struggle to a surprised halt. The interface was now in his hand, rather than upon his head, and his eyes were clear. He looked exhausted, ragged and worn, and like Nichos he nearly collapsed—but unlike Nichos, he was able to catch himself before he fell. When Irek spoke, it was with the same, exhausted timbre that Cray was used to hearing from Nichos. "Silencer-7 is developing its combat abilities," he murmured, almost whisper-soft. "As you instructed."
He swayed and Roganda caught him. "Are you all right?" she asked insistently. "Will you be able to command it again?"
"I think so." Irek's eyes went unfocused. He was looking in Cray's direction, but without the gaze that he so often levied upon her—the gaze of teenage infatuation and attraction. He looked through her, as if she were not even there. "So much power…"
"Yes, my son," Roganda said, her voice an equal mix of assurance and avarice. "So much power at our fingertips."
Halmere released Cray; she promptly fell at Nichos' side, hooking her arm around him and helping him strenuously back to his feet.
Roganda watched them, helping Irek much as Cray was helping Nichos. "Do not kill them," she ordered Halmere. "I still have a task for them."
"Do you?"
She smiled. "You'll be pleased. I intend to put Project 'Fit to Serve' into full effect." She pointed at Cray. "I will send one of my droids for you. You will come, and you will work, or there will be consequences." Roganda looked meaningfully at Nichos.
Cray had no doubt the woman was serious. The way she treated Irek, she surely would kill Nichos. But then, Cray was more and more convinced that Roganda would do that anyway. She considered refusing and provoking the two Imperials into killing them both right here, but if she did that she and Nichos' suffering would all be for nothing, because they had not yet found a good opportunity to sabotage the Empire's efforts… and she still could not stand the idea of losing him. Not now. Not here. Not like this.
The droid that came to fetch Cray and Nichos was one of Halmere's assassin droids. Despite its pretense towards human-ness, it came off as far less human than a typical protocol droid. Covered with a thick black armored carapace over its skeleton, the way it moved—and especially the way it interacted with people—made clear that it was an inhuman creation. It did not even look at Cray; neither its head nor its glowing, pupil-less red eyes focused their attention on her in any kind of overt way. It simply stayed close to them, watching them with less obvious sensors. Cray wasn't sure why its designers had even bothered with the head at all, after all there was no need to make a new droid design look human.
She knew she was babbling to herself, trying to assert some control over her situation. Some understanding. It was hard, because she understood little, and much of her energy was spent supporting Nichos. He was struggling now, more than he had been; he had never fully recovered from being stunned during his foolhardy attempt to get a message out, and he had been steadily deteriorating before that. Even worse was the fact that they were going to see Roganda. Roganda was dangerous and unpredictable, more willing to use the threat of force to induce immediate compliance with her demands. That increasingly set her apart from her son. Something had changed in Irek, in the way he looked at Nichos… as if he could see a person now, and not just an obstacle, or worse an animal to be both pitied and scorned.
Unfortunately, to Roganda both Cray and Nichos were creatures to be pitied and scorned, perhaps minus the pity.
The hallways in this part of Silencer Station did not illuminate when they walked through them. The droid escorting her just led her straight down the hall, through the precise middle, and the only light was the dim red from the droid's eyes and indicators.
"Creepy down here," Nichos whispered, his voice strained.
"Yeah," she replied shortly.
"Any idea what she's going to have us working on?"
Cray shook her head wordlessly.
"Me neither."
The droid escort came to an abrupt halt. Its legs stayed planted, but its midsection swiveled to face them, its enormous blaster rifle pointed half in their direction. The droid made an inhuman grunting sound—not something Cray would ever have picked for a droid of her own creation—and the door nearest them slid open. The sudden burst of whiteness and light from within was almost blinding, and both Cray and Nichos gasped. She covered her eyes with a hand as they adjusted.
Behind her, the droid grunted again, more insistently.
Wincing, Cray helped Nichos through the door. They stepped into what was, unmistakably, a medical ward. This hallway, unlike the one they had just come from, was well-lit. Medical droids were going about apparently important business, hurrying through the hall, coming in and out of rooms. Occasionally they were accompanied by large repulsorlifts. Some of these were flat carrying what appeared to be cylindrical containers, about a foot in diameter and three feet in height, transparent at the top and shielded in the middle and bottom. All Cray could see was that they were filled with some kind of liquid. Other repulsorlifts appeared to be biohazard disposal units of some kind.
"A station crewed almost entirely by droids," Nichos murmured, his voice both weak and curious. The curiosity reminded her of the man she'd fallen in love with, and she tightened her arm around him. "What does it need with a secret hospital?"
"I have a better question," Cray said. Sudden dread wrenched at her. There was something wrong, something deeply wrong with all this. "We're not medical doctors. What does she want us to do here?"
Nichos went very quiet.
Cray looked all around them. Their droid escort had not accompanied them into the hospital and, other than the medical droids, they were alone. "Where are we supposed to go?" she wondered.
Without a better answer to that question, they started to wander down the hall. They tried to get answers from the medical droids, but received none—the droids completely ignored their presence, except when they disrupted their work, which clearly made the droids irritated. They were, however, apparently free to explore at their leisure otherwise.
She came to a stunned, surprised stop as they entered one of the first rooms, unable to stop herself from gasping. The first room was filled with beds, each one next to a set of medical equipment. There were men sleeping on those beds, completely and utterly silent; their arms and legs were hooked up to intravenous injectors from the machines. They weren't dead—Cray could see some of them breathing—but from a distance, Cray would have thought they were.
Many of the men had been wounded in combat, she realized. She saw many shrapnel wounds, occasional lost limbs…
"Combat wounds," Nichos managed, taking in the sights as she did. "Imperial wounded from the war."
"They're keeping them unconscious," Cray agreed. "Maybe waiting until they have the ability to better treat their wounds."
"Maybe that's what she wants us for?" Nichos guessed. "Working on their replacement limbs and other cybernetics? Getting their wounded warriors back into battle to continue the war?" He turned his head slightly in her direction. "If that is what she wants, should we go along? Or…"
Or is it time for us to refuse? Cray finished the sentence silently. Is it time for us to refuse to let them use us anymore? She glanced around, but she couldn't say what she was really thinking—there was too high a risk that the Empire had monitoring devices in these rooms. We're still going to find a way to hurt them, Nichos, she promised him—and herself. We're going to beat them, no matter what it costs us. And we're going to do it together.
She tightened her grip on him. He seemed to understand, even without the words, and offered her a sparse nod.
Behind them, the door to the ward whispered open. A medical droid with one of the repulsorsleds walked in, with eight of the cylindrical containers arrayed precisely upon it. She got a better look at them than she had inside, but as best she could tell, they contained nothing but the fluid she'd already seen outside.
The droid made its way directly to the patient nearest the door. Shortly thereafter, a second droid followed with the second sled.
Cray helped Nichos out of their path. "What are they doing?" she asked, confused, as the two droids performed a quick examination of the patient. They attached a few pieces of medical equipment—devices that Cray actually recognized, from studies she had been doing prior to being kidnapped by the Empire, as ones that monitored brain and central motor function—and waited for the results.
"Let's keep going," Nichos murmured to her. "We should try to see as much as we can before Roganda gets here."
The medical droids were working their way through all the patients, repeating their scans on each one, when Cray and Nichos exited.
The second room was not so brightly lit, but neither was it as dark as the exterior corridor had been. Rows of shelves lined through the space, each one dimly lit. Cray could see that on the shelves were the odd cylindrical containers they had seen on the repulsorsleds outside.
But these…
They weren't empty.
A fist of realization and horror clenched itself around her throat, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. In each one of the containers was a human brain. They were all hooked up to some kind of monitoring system, one that beeped and flickered with light visible in the dimness.
Nichos had very nearly stopped breathing altogether. "Sithspawn," he gasped, sounding more pained, more exhausted, than his illness alone had ever made him.
Neither of them said another word. They didn't need to. There was nothing to say, so they clung to one another, hoping to wake up from a nightmare, to be back at the Magrody Institute and find that all the time they'd lost was restored. That the horrors the Empire had inflicted upon them both had been just a dream.
In the final room, they found a hangar. Two rows of TIE droids were housed within it, one on each side of the room; at the far end, there was an enormous opening that led into Silencer Station's much, much larger main hangar. Droids were hard at work on each fighter, both medical droids and engineering units, and next to many of them were those horrible repulsorsleds and those even more horrible cylindrical containers.
In the center of the hangar, facing the door they entered through, was Roganda Ismaren, sitting on a throne. She watched them wordlessly as they came in, then parted her hands in a gesture of welcome. "Doctors Mingla and Marr. You have arrived. I trust your tour of the facility has answered any questions you might have?"
Fury boiled in Cray's gut. She set her jaw hard, staring viciously. "You are a monster."
"I imagine every inferior thinks that about their betters," Roganda replied with a vicious smile of her own. "Welcome to Project 'Fit to Serve.' You actually deserve much of the credit for this, Doctor Mingla. It was your own research at Magrody Labs that first gave me the idea."
Cray could feel all the blood drain out of her cheeks. All those horrible nights, all the desperate searches, all the lack of sleep… even before they'd been kidnapped, she had been hard at work, searching for a solution, any solution, to Nichos' illness. After all, his was an illness of the body, not the mind, and she was a cyberneticist. One possible solution, among many, had been uploading Nichos' consciousness to a droid body…
The sudden tension in Nichos' body told her that he understood the implication too. Anger and embarrassment flooded through her. "I was looking for a way to save lives!" she snarled.
"These men may not have been in any danger of dying," Roganda conceded, "but I can assure you, what we have saved here is no less valuable."
"You had no right to do this to them without their consent!"
"On the contrary, Doctor Mingla, I had every right." Roganda stood slowly, to her full regal height. "I am the Emperor's Hand. I am the Dowager Empress. I am the Empire. These men, every one of them, swore an oath to serve the Empire, to serve me, until they were no longer fit. It is I, and I alone, who determines when they are unfit to serve. As droids they will be perfectly loyal, fit to serve longer and better than they ever could have as men. As droids they will see the redemption and restoration of the Empire. As men they would have seen only its defeat."
She smiled. It was the kind of smile that had hidden jagged edges, and when Cray gazed, transfixed, at the older woman's twisted features, it was a gaze into the heart of madness.
"What do you want Cray for?"
Nichos could still speak, which astonished Cray. Her mouth was dry and she was utterly without words.
"The merger is imperfect," Roganda admitted casually. "The cybernetic brains do not yet work properly. The droids tell me that after installation, and even detailed calibration, the TIEs become erratic."
"You put a human brain into a droid!" Cray snarled. "It's not a surprise if it becomes erratic!"
"Perhaps. But I suspect that is a problem that you can help me with, isn't it?"
"I wouldn't even know where to start! You can't program a human brain the way you can program an AI! I can't just put a restraining bolt—"
"You can help me," Roganda said calmly, "or you can join them. My supply of droid bodies is practically indefinite."
Cray could feel herself starting to hyperventilate, could feel her anger seizing at her. She wanted to kill this woman, to make her suffer, suffer the way all these poor men had suffered, suffer the way Nichos suffered—
"Does he know?" Nichos asked slowly, and with immense deliberation. The words shocked Cray's rage back under control. What was Nichos talking about?
"Does who know?" Roganda asked, equally puzzled.
"Irek," Nichos said, the single syllable pronounced with a stiff anger that matched Cray's own. "Your son. The one you're feeding to the Silencer AI like you're feeding these men to those droids."
If we don't disengage the interface there's a chance he might not come out at all.
He might not come out at all.
Those had been her own words, just a few hours before. Cray had not realized her horror could go any deeper than it already did, but she was discovering that there were new depths to her disgust and anger.
Roganda just stared at Nichos, her eyes smoking.
"Did you tell him?" Nichos pressed, yet again. "Does he know what it will do to him?"
"Do to him?" Roganda laughed. "It will make him the most powerful man in the galaxy!"
"I won't help you," Nichos said, his jaw set.
"Oh, but I think you will," Roganda countered. The older woman reached out, flicking her fingers towards Cray. There was a crackle of energy, a hint of blue light, and then Cray's body was on fire, agony tracing through her, crackling around her toes and, tangy electricity spasming over her tongue.
Cray smelled sulfur. Everything hurt.
The toe of a boot nudged her nose. "Now do you understand?"
Cray couldn't talk. She could barely breathe. Somewhere she could feel Nichos' presence, could hear his voice, his own desperation to protect her, but all Cray could see was Roganda's boot in her face, nudging her nose.
"TIE droids with human intelligence, human intuition, and human creativity," Roganda said casually. "I want them. I will have them. You will give them to me." The toe of Roganda's boot receded. Somewhere, in the recesses of Cray's mind where there was something other than pain, fear, and anger, there was apparently still some capacity for surprise. That surprise came upon her now, as Roganda knelt down to lean towards Cray, the older woman's voice lowering to a whisper. "Such anger you have in you, Doctor Mingla. Perhaps someday we will explore that, as well."
For all its size, Natasi Daala found Silencer Station to be remarkably inhospitable. The people who served aboard her were almost uniformly ISB types, and the function they actually served was mostly to keep Halmere and Roganda updated at all times about events in the galaxy. They were advisors and briefing officers, not soldiers. The soldiers aboard were droids. All of them were droids. The DT-model assassin droids were the most common sight, though the station's hangars were starting to grow with larger and larger numbers of TIE droids.
Daala had, therefore, relocated back to Stormhawk the moment she felt sure she understood the full scope of what Silencer Station had to offer.
Sarreti had told her that the intention had been for the station to produce a thousand TIE droids a month, but that the station had never reached that capacity. Whatever it was that the Emperor's Hand had brought had changed that, because just in the last few days she had watched the number of TIE droids grow from a few hundred to three times that number. They were improved behaviorally, too, not as dumb as the ones she'd turned into missiles during her attack on Coruscant.
Even with the Empire in such a reduced state, even with the loss of Carida, the loss of Corellia… with the number of TIE droids she was being given, there was a chance she could save the Empire. At the very least, she would be able to stave off defeat. The ships she'd brought back from the Core were now allocated to reinforce the Empire's defenses against New Republic advance.
The best thing, she knew, was to wait. Silencer Station and its capabilities were immense and they were growing. All they needed to do was let those capabilities grow. If now Daala had what she needed to stave off defeat, what would the station offer her in a month? In a year? In three years? Would it always be limited to constructing TIE droids? Where did its capabilities end?
She didn't know, but it was best not to provoke the New Republic into an assault that she could not hope to withstand until she found out.
Unfortunately, she was only Grand Admiral. That decision was not hers to make.
"I understand your desire to force Ferrouz to capitulate," Daala said, speaking slowly and precisely. On the other side of the flatscreen was the large, blocky form of Emperor-Regent Halmere. "But Silencer Station gives us a long-term advantage. Time is on our side, your highness."
"Faith in the Empire is waning," Halmere countered. "We have lost Corellia and Rendili, and both of them were lost not to assaults by the Rebellion, but to revolt from within. Ferrouz's victory against us, and his unexpected strength, was enough to provoke Corellia into rebellion. What will it mean for places like Muunilinst? No, Grand Admiral, we must assault, and we must do so now. Whatever Ferrouz and Pellaeon have to oppose us will not stand against the power of Silencer Station."
"You intend to attack with the Station itself?" Daala questioned. The Station was everything! The Station was the Empire's entire future—for all intents and purposes, it was the Empire. With the Station they had a chance to win the war. Without it, they would surely be defeated, and in short order. And he intended to put the Station in danger? "Your Highness…"
"Nothing they have will stand against the power of Silencer Station," Halmere said calmly. "We will crush Ferrouz, just as we will crush all those who stand against the Empire."
"I'll prepare an escort—"
Halmere's smile was cold. "Grand Admiral Daala, I do not think you understand what Silencer Station represents. It needs no escort. It needs no help. It is now the singular power. All it requires to subjugate the galaxy once more under the Empire's control is time. You and the galaxy will see that at Poln Major, and none will question our rule again."
He went silent, watching her. "Yes, Emperor-Regent," she said, as she was expected to.
The flatscreen went black.
She turned away from it, placing her hands flat on her desk. "If he is wrong, all is lost," she said to Ephin Sarreti, sitting on the far side of her desk.
"He seems quite confident he is not wrong," Sarreti said.
Something had changed, Daala thought. Sarreti's gaze had a certain intensity to it, but that intensity wasn't on her. But there was a stiffness to his expression, an anger that held his cheeks stiff and his lips firmly together, that made his motions appear stiff and mechanical.
"We will prepare for either eventuality," she said.
"There were once eleven planets in this system," Sarreti said. "Silencer Station ate one and used its resources to construct itself into its current form." His intensity was suddenly on her. "It will consume Poln Major too, I think. And then other worlds. What will it look like when it is done?"
That was an odd question, Daala thought, and not one she thought it appropriate for Sarreti to ask.