Shadows of the Empire Read Free Page A

with Guri’s expert manipulation, not ever.
    Xizor glanced up at the ceiling. He’d had the pattern of the galaxy installed into the glowtiles. When thelights were dim—and they usually were—he had an edge-on view of the home galaxy floating holographically there, with more than a million individual glowing dust-small stars hand-drawn in it. It had taken the artist three months and had cost a warlord’s ransom, but the Dark Prince could not spend what he already had even if he tried hard, and more than that kept flowing in all the time. Credits were nothing; he had billions. A way of keeping score, that was all. Not important.
    He looked at the holograph again. Beautiful and deadly, these two, a combination he enjoyed. He himself was of the Falleen, a species whose distant ancestors had been reptilian, and who had evolved into what was generally considered the most beautiful of all humanoid species. He was over a hundred years old, but he looked thirty. He was tall, had a topknot ponytail jutting up from his otherwise bald head and a hard body crafted by stim units. He also exuded natural pheromones that made most of the human-stock species feel instantly attracted to him, and his skin color, normally a dusky green, changed with the rise of those pheromones, shading from the cool into the warm spectrum. His handsomeness and appeal were tools, nothing more. He was the Dark Prince, Underlord of Black Sun, one of the three most powerful men in the galaxy. He could also kick a sunfruit off the top of a tall humanoid’s head without a warm-up stretch, and he could lift twice his own weight over his head using only his own muscles. He could claim a sound—if admittedly devious—mind in a sound body.
    His galactic influence was surpassed only by the Emperor and the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader.
    He smiled at the image before him again. Third—but about to become second, if his plans went as intended. It had been months since he’d overheard the Emperor and Vader talking of a threat they’d perceived,months, and now the preliminaries were done. Xizor was ready to move in earnest.
    “Time?” he said.
    His room computer answered and gave it to him.
    Ah. Only an hour remained before his meeting. It was but a short walk through the protected corridors to Vader’s, not much beyond where the Emperor’s massive gray-green stone and mirror-crystal palace thrust itself up into the high atmosphere. A few kilometers, no more; a brisk stroll would put him there in a few minutes. No hurry. He did not want to arrive early.
    A chime announced a visitor.
    “Enter,” Xizor said. His bodyguards were not here, but there was no need for them in his sanctum—no one could penetrate its defenses. And only a few of his underlings had the right to visit him here, all of them loyal. As loyal as fear could make them.
    One of his sublieutenants, Mayth Duvel, came in and bowed low. “My prince Xizor.”
    “Yes?”
    “I have a petition from the Nezriti Organization. They wish an alliance with Black Sun.”
    Xizor gave Duvel a measured smile. “I’m sure they do.”
    Duvel produced a small package. “They offer a token of their esteem.”
    Xizor took the package, thumbed it open. Inside was a gem. It was an oval-cut, bloodred Tumanian pressure-ruby, a very rare stone, apparently flawless, and easily worth several million credits. The Dark Prince held it up, turned it in his fingers, nodded. Then he tossed it onto his desktop. It bounced once, slid to a stop next to his drinking cup. If it had fallen onto the floor, he would not have bent to retrieve it, and if the cleaning droid came in later and sucked it up, well, so what? “Tell them we’ll consider it.”
    Duvel bowed and backed away.
    When he was gone, Xizor stood, stretched his neckand back. The evolved reptilian ridge over his spine elevated slightly, felt sharp against his fingertips as he rubbed it. There were other applicants waiting to see him, and ordinarily he would sit