Star wars Tales From the New Republic by Peter Schweighofer & Craig Carey

Author:Peter Schweighofer & Craig Carey [Schweighofer, Peter & Carey, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: New Republic era
ISBN: 9780553578829
Google: zckjjGTF9B8C
Amazon: 0553578820
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1999-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

The longest fall

by Patricia A. Jackson

The Imperial Star Destroyer Interrogator maintained its support position, matching coordinate planes and acceleration bursts with its nav computer specifications. From the observation deck, several levels beneath the flight bridge, the commanding officer stared through the transparisteel platform as the Imperial II-CLASS Star Destroyer maneuvered into the mouth of a vacuous, black nebula. Gliding from the sinister shadow of undistinguished space, the Interrogator was an impressive sight, a precisely honed dagger tip against the starless backdrop of space.

An advanced point ship, his vessel was moving in to investigate a little-known area of space known as the Nharqis’I. The term, despite its romantic appeal, was a crude variation of a word in a lingering smuggler dialect, which he understood to mean “the death place.” Starless, featureless, menacing-the foreboding nebula was a testimonial to seemingly endless continuity.

Chewing nervously at his lower lip, the young captain stared into the faceless void, wishing he could lose himself inside it. The Nharqis’I could be no colder or more forbidding a place than the anonymous darkness of Lord Tremayne’s waiting room. And the Nharqis “Also, a hideous, mythical leviathan said to lurk within the nebula, could certainly be no more terrifying an entity than the Emperor’s leading High Inquisitor himself.

In the midst of the sparsely furnished, cruelly antiseptic interior of the waiting chamber, the young captain noticed only one chair sitting against the far wall. He wondered how many Imperial officers had sat in that chair and how many had lived to tell about it. The numbers were quite disproportionate to each other, he was certain, and he congratulated himself on his decision not to sit in it.

Though he was not a superstitious man, the captain was confident that he enhanced his chances of survival if Tremayne should come and find him standing in anticipation of this meeting. He had, in fact, been standing, respectfully at attention, for the past three hours, waiting for the Dark Adept to address him personally.

And if his diligence had no bearing at all upon the outcome of their meeting, at least he would have the satisfaction of meeting High Inquisitor Tremayne and his own potential execution with a small measure of dignity.

The others died on their feet, his subconscious told him. Admiral Ozzel. Admiral Ranes. Captain Needa. His esteemed mentor and friend, Captain Nolaan. And there were others who did not directly come to mind. What makes you so different?

The inability to answer that question brought a hollow, unsettled feeling to the bottom of his stomach. Clasping his hands tightly behind his back, the young captain swayed back and forth on his heels, an impatient habit learned on the bridge and honed by the daily stresses of commanding a ship in the Emperor’s most prestigious war fleet. It was a peculiar fixation on motion that he was working to eliminate and had regulated it with some success. In any case, the swaying did not trouble him quite so much as the violent tremors that shook his hands.

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