Orientation Read online

  “Battle stations! Hostiles off the starboard bow!”

  In the command well of the Imperial cruiser Defiance, 20 members of the skeleton crew hastily turned to their terminals, ready to defend against attack. Every mind was attuned to the situation — save the one belonging to the figure looming dark and large above them on the catwalk. Darth Vader looked on with utter disinterest.

  There was nothing in this “battle” to engage the Dark Lord’s attention. It wasn’t real. There was no one to challenge the Empire. He and his Master Darth Sidious, who now ruled the galaxy as the Emperor, had brought the Clone Wars to a conclusion not long before; and while the two were on their way to Ryloth now to root out insurgency, the “hostiles” outside were pure fiction, part of a training exercise.

  “Hard about, my cretins,” shouted Commandant Baylo, passing Vader as he stalked along the catwalk. “While I’ve been waiting for your picnic to end, you’ve lost your forward shields!” He clapped his hands on the railing and leaned over to bellow. “We have an observer today. Are you trying to make me look bad?”

  Vader thought he already did. Well past 70 and with a nose too long for his face, Pell Baylo walked with an exaggerated limp that caused the stumpy man to bob up and down like a flying thing. He nonetheless commanded the attention of the cadets in the pits on either side of the catwalk, all of whom were now scrambling to correct their errors.

  Vader thought his own presence here was a mistake, too. But Sidious had brought him to Defiance’s bridge and left him. It was his duty to remain, even if he saw no other reason for being there.

  Crossing the vast swath of cosmos between Coruscant and Ryloth, Darth Sidious had ordered a stop in the Denon system so he could consult with several chiefs of the navy, visiting there to discuss how the jumble of affiliated military schools that had existed under the Republic might be better integrated into the Imperial Academy. His livelihood under review, Baylo had suggested a timesaving solution: the meeting could take place aboard Defiance, the cruiser he’d operated as a flight training school for nearly 50 years. The commandant could show his students in action while they conveyed his Imperial Highness on one leg of his trip.

  The Emperor had praised Baylo for his suggestion. Vader saw through the offer. A futile effort to save his school. The Clone Wars had brought the Defiance Flight Training Institute — known to most spacers as “the Baylo School” — directly under the umbrella of the Republic Navy, with Baylo receiving a rank as a line officer. Yet the commandant treated the institute as his personal property, ignoring schedules and asserting he knew best when recruits were ready for service. Even now, with the Empire in charge, naval leaders were loath to rein Baylo in; he’d trained many of them aboard Defiance, after all. Vader expected that resistance would wilt, now that the Emperor was on the scene. Baylo was just another fossil, married to archaic practices.

  But his Master had spent half a minute on the bridge before departing for his meetings with the naval chiefs who were Baylo’s superiors — leaving Vader behind to observe Baylo’s silly pantomime show. Vader had objected, as strenuously as he dared: “I would serve you better elsewhere, Master.” The Emperor had not been amused. “I decide where you are needed. You will remain and be my eyes.”

  That was hours ago, and Vader hadn’t seen anything worth his attention. Baylo had run his cadets through their paces, dressing down one after another and spewing aphorisms. The first mock attack concluded, he unleashed another one.

  “— it’s all about attitude, in more ways than one,” Baylo was saying to someone, mid-rant. “Think about your direction, your facing. Don’t you know where you’re going, cadet? Because if you don’t, your ship certainly won’t…”

  The trainees — humans in their early twenties, some on their first orientation flights — seemed almost happy to absorb the platitudes and abuse. Vader knew Baylo had a mythic status in naval circles, and not just for his exploits. Defiance had fought pirates when it was in patrol service, yes — but Baylo’s spine had been injured, and now his daily battle was with near-constant pain. Twice since he had been aboard, Vader had heard cadets whispering of Baylo’s bravery in working despite the agony.

  Ridiculous. Baylo knew nothing of pain.

  A voice came from behind. “Shuttle arriving from Denon, Commandant. Vice Admiral Tallatz aboard.

  Baylo stood back from the railing. “That’ll be the last of Palpatine’s — of the Emperor’s guests for his meeting.” He checked the time. “Navigator, plot our hyperspace route to —”

  “I already have it, sir,” called out a female voice from the pit.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” Forcing one atrophied foot in front of the other, Baylo fought his way down the steps into the command well. A woman with deep brown skin, dressed in sharp cadet grays, slid her chair from her terminal, allowing the old man to approach. She wore the trace of a knowing smile as Baylo read the monitor.

  “I’m impressed, cadet,” he said. “You’ll go far — and so will this ship. Or did you not intend to plot a course into Wild Space?”

  The cadet’s grin vanished. The young woman looked past him at her calculations, suddenly puzzled. “It is a course to Christophsis, sir, where the Perilous will meet us.”

  “You’ve failed to account for a singularity along our route which will reshape our hyperspace passage in a most startling way. We now know who our next admiral will be,” he added with a snort. The young woman stepped away in humiliation as Baylo began to work the console. After a moment’s effort, he stepped back. “There. Small repair, major difference.” He looked around and about. “Details matter, everyone. A navy isn’t built on captains — but on crews that watch their work.”

  “Aye, Commandant,” came the response from the cadets.

  Aware of Vader’s gaze, Baylo looked up at the Dark Lord. “They don’t learn right away, but they do learn. I get results. You can tell your Emperor that.”

  “He is your Emperor, as well.” They were the first words Vader had spoken before the trainees, and several shifted in their seats on hearing his powerful voice.

  But if Baylo was shaken, he didn’t show it. “I’m sorry. I forget — what are you to the Emperor, again?”

  “You would do well never to learn.”

  That time, Vader got a reaction. Baylo straightened — a strenuous feat for him — and he slapped the back of the chair of the woman he had corrected. “Well, I can still teach my people a few things. Extra courier detail for you, Sloane, once you’re done here. You can think about navigation while you’re finding your way around ship.”

  “Aye, Commandant.” The cadet returned to her station and stared blankly at the screen before her, trying to understand her mistake.

  Baylo hobbled back toward the staircase. “You have the settings. Take us to hyperspace as soon as the admiral’s docking is complete. I need to prepare in case they need me.” He struggled up the steps and made his way past Vader. “Carry on, cadets.”

  Vader watched the aged commandant exit — and then thought about the exchange. The man Vader had been would have bristled at such treatment. His Jedi teachers all thought they knew better than he did. And they were so smug, always pretending they knew some secret about the universe he was unworthy to learn. It was all a lie, a false front to hide their weaknesses. Darth Sidious, now the Emperor, had the secrets, not them. It had been a delight to prove them all wrong.

  But Sidious was now in that same role as teacher, and he was doing many of the same things: acting as though he knew better, and doling out information only as he chose. Vader had traded all the masters on the Jedi council for one. A better one, he knew: the secrets of power Sidious shared were real. And yet, as different as their master-apprentice relationship was, he
had served Sidious long enough to get that familiar feeling. The Emperor had something else to do — and he had given Vader busy work.

  No. That concept fundamentally clashed with something Vader had long known about himself. Every job I do is important — because I am the one doing it.

  His cape trailing behind him, Vader descended the stairs into the command well. There, at the end, sat the chastened cadet from earlier.

  “Tallatz has debarked,” called out her neighbor. “His shuttle’s clear.”

  Sloane looked hard at the numbers before her again and sighed. “Commandant’s coordinates locked in the navicomputer. Stand by for hyperspace jump on my mark.”

  “Hold.”

  Vader’s voice startled her, and she turned her chair. Brown eyes widened as she looked up at him. “Yes, my lord?”

  “What do you see?”

  “N-nothing.”

  “You fear to contradict your master.”

  She shuffled in her seat. “My lord, I don’t wish to say the admiral is wrong about —”

  “No. That is exactly what you wish to do.” The woman had hidden her emotions from her companions, but could not fool Vader. He had felt her anger at being embarrassed — and it had bubbled up since, finally breaking through his own preoccupied thoughts. “Speak, cadet —?”

  “Sloane.” She swallowed hard. “Rae Sloane, of Ganthel.”

  She gestured to the panel behind her. “I’ve studied our orientation and done the math, with the computer and without. Something isn’t right…”

  Baylo was waiting in the anteroom as Vader stepped onto the administrative deck. Wearing an antique greatcoat, dress attire for the era during which he trained, Baylo leaned near a large viewport looking out upon the streaming stars of hyperspace. He was using the window frame for support, Vader saw. He looked old, even for Baylo.

  He straightened as he saw Vader. “Told you we’d get underway on time.”

  Vader said nothing.

  “Hmph.” Baylo looked back at the closed door. “Not used to waiting outside my own office.”

  “It is not your office.”

  Baylo looked at Vader — and chuckled lightly. “Whatever you say,” he said. Before the old man could return his gaze outside, the door to the office opened. Three women and one man emerged, admirals all: chiefs of various branches of the Imperial Navy. Each glanced briefly at Baylo and silently headed for the elevator.

  That evoked a frown from the commandant, but only for a moment. “The Emperor will see us now,” Vader said.

  “Who told you that?”

  Vader simply pointed to the door. Shrugging, Baylo took a breath and started for it, shadowed by the Dark Lord.

  The master of Defiance stood in his own office, hands clasped and eyes directly forward. The room was windowless save for a single viewport — and the walls were covered with plaques and pictures depicting the names and faces of cadet classes from the past. Vader thought the room somber, a pathetic shrine to a soon-to-be-forgotten past. An appropriate setting, too: seated at Baylo’s desk, the black-robed Emperor began to describe his just-settled plans for the Imperial Academy. They included several modifications to streamline operations, making the body more responsive to him. And one other change: “Defiance is approaching obsolescence — and we will employ no one who is unresponsive to command The ‘Baylo School’, as you call it, will be folded into the existing training center at Corellia. And you will take a chair at the navigation institute planetside.”

  “No.”

  The Emperor was more surprised by Baylo’s response than Vader was. “Repeat yourself,” his Master said, in a voice nearing a hiss.

  “No, I will not transfer this vessel to your new command.” Still standing as erect as his gnarled frame would allow, Baylo nodded toward the great seal on the wall to the right of his desk. “Defiance was commissioned by the Galactic Republic — and detached to me so those who trained here might serve that Republic. I do not recognize your order as legitimate.”

  The Emperor frowned. “Don’t play games, Commandant. Whether you’ve had time to redecorate or not, the Republic is no more. The Senate decided —”

  “— to dissolve its pact with the people,” Baylo said, voice rising in volume. “What I owed allegiance to no longer exists. I consider the Galactic Empire a hostile power — and I can’t fulfill these orders.” He reached inside his waistcoat, an act that drew Vader’s immediate attention. But before he reached through the Force to summon his lightsaber, Vader saw Baylo produce a datapad. “This is my resignation.” He offered it to the Emperor.

  The Emperor simply stared. Then he chuckled. “A republican, Baylo? I was told you were more intelligent.”

  Finding no takers, Baylo returned the datapad to his pocket. “I am, of course, willing to report to the brig until we reach our destination. I understand the need to keep an orderly ship.” He fixed his eyes on the Emperor. “But order’s place is in the military. Not in civilian life.” Baylo looked back toward Vader. Seeing no response, the commandant shrugged. He looked up to the viewport, and the stars streaking by. “Enjoy the rest of your journey. I figure I’m dismissed.”

  Vader took a step toward Baylo. He, too, had been watching the stars flying past outside while listening to the man’s little speech — and waiting to see how the Emperor reacted. Baylo turned to discover Vader barring his way. “This guy again.” Baylo spoke through clenched teeth, trying not to betray any fear. “I don’t care if you kill me.”

  “No,” Vader said. That much is true. “Because you think you are already dead.”

  The Emperor looked keenly at Vader. “His ailments?”

  “No. He plotted a course that will cause Defiance to emerge from hyperspace at Christophsis — and plunge into the sun.”

  The Emperor’s eyes widened a little.

  “I countermanded the orders.”

  Now they narrowed. His Master asked, “And?”

  And as if in answer, Defiance returned to realspace at that moment — with millions of safe kilometers between it and the aforementioned star. Vader could see it shining outside the viewport, along with something else: Perilous was there, waiting as instructed.

  Seeing them, Baylo mouthed an obscenity. The Emperor saw them, too. “Very good, my old friend.” He looked kindly on Vader. “This is part of what I expect from you — to manage the petty problems so that I can focus on larger matters.”

  Vader felt a surge of pride. He had suspected it was a test the Emperor had placed in his path; instead, he’d caught something his Master had missed. Even so, the word “petty” didn’t sit well with Vader, and he could feel it bothered Baylo more. “You have something to say?” Vader asked.

  “You bet,” Baylo said, throwing caution away. He’d sagged on learning of his plot’s failure, but in focusing his pain and anger on the Emperor he seemed to gain strength. “I’ve watched you and your cronies, Palpatine. Corrupting the navy, bit by bit during the Clone Wars. Turning something noble, something meant as a shield, into a weapon. Something oppressive. A service it’s taken generations to build, that students of mine have given their lives to!” He thrust his finger to the images on the far wall. “I’m older than you, ‘Emperor’ — no matter what you look like now. I remember when this was an honorable calling!”

  Vader had been waiting for his Master’s angry reprisal ever since Baylo opened his disrespectful mouth, but instead the Emperor seemed amused. “You would have killed several of your own colleagues.”

  “Traitors, trying to save their posts.”

  “And a crew of your cadets, for vengeance?

  “A better fate than turning them into droids. Because that’s what you want, isn’t it? Mindless slaves, just robots in your —”

  The words caught in Baylo’s throat — as did his breath. Vader clutched the fingers of his right hand together, summoning the dark side of the Force to snap the commandant’s windpipe. He fell to the deck like a Toydarian whose wings had been clipped; a
not unpleasant comparison, Vader thought.

  But the Emperor’s smile vanished. “Lord Vader!” he said, rising from his seat. “I did not instruct you to kill him.”

  Vader looked at the Emperor and said nothing. Alone again, they were master and apprentice, Sidious and Vader: and the elder Sith Lord spoke freely and angrily. “I would have kept the wretch alive, to take pleasure from his pain as I transformed his Navy — while I broke down his precious ship into cafeteria trays.” He mused as he looked on the corpse. “And a teacher who could so easily kill his students might be molded into something I could use.”

  “He was a threat,” Vader said. “He is finished.”

  Sidious scowled. “Still, I did not command it.”

  “He is a petty thing, one of those you expect me to deal with. My way is faster,” Vader said, before catching himself, and adding: “— Master.”

  Sidious looked at him. But before more words could pass between them, a chime came from the door. “Enter,” the Emperor said.

  The door slid open, and Sloane stepped forward. “Captain Luitt of Perilous has hailed,” she said. Reluctant to look directly at the Emperor and his ominous servant, she sought for something else to focus on. “He’s ready to resume your journey to Ryloth as soon as you…” The proper cadet trailed off as her eyes discovered the body on the floor. She gasped.

  “Commandant Baylo succumbed to his injuries at last,” the Emperor said, indifferent.

  Sloane looked startled. Baylo had been all right the last time she’d seen him. But she could not be unhappy, Vader thought: Baylo had belittled her in public. Sloane would probably realize that later, once she remembered where her priorities lay. She was smart, and smart people could figure that out.

  But now the Emperor claimed her attention as he stepped past the fallen commandant en route to the exit. “I have an additional instruction for you to convey to your superiors at the Academy.”

  “Y-yes, my lord?”

  “This training vessel’s name is to be changed,” the Emperor said, looking back purposefully at Vader. “From Defiance to Obedience.”