TK-421, Why Aren't You At Your Post? - Episode 4

Tarkin leaned in close, causing waves of pungent scent to crash over me.

“We’ve lost some rather sensitive information – in fact, a complete technical read-out of this very battle station.  We have reason to believe that the plans are being carried by an Artoo unit who is traveling with a protocol droid.  Last we saw they were headed towards a small planet on the outer rim – Tatooine.”

“Okay,” I said, getting out my datapad to take some notes, “so I assume you’ve already gotten started looking there?”

“Oh yes,” said Tarkin. “We have a crew of our brightest and best stormtroopers combing the planet for the droids, but they haven’t found them.”

“Uh, great, that’s great,” I said.  You’ve got to understand: stormtroopers mean well, but talking about the “brightest and best” of them is kind of like talking about “the cleanest and best-smelling” of the nerf-herders.   Imperial propaganda has it that they’re these genetically enhanced, highly intelligent super-clones, and sure, the hosts are usually pretty bright and certainly good fighters, but the fact of the matter is, lots of things tend to get lost in translation when you’re cloning, and the troopers generally come out a few ears short of a gundark.  Personally, I wouldn’t hire one as a babysitter, much less to do investigative work.  The non-clones are mostly high-school dropouts who couldn’t get a job at a Toshi Station, so yeah, not a whole lot better.

We were suddenly interrupted by a chirping rendition of “Gungan Style”, and Tarkin fished his comlink out of his pocket.  He rolled his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said, “I think I’d better not ignore this.  I do apologize.”

“Take your time,” I said.  I was being paid by the hour.

“Grand Moff Tarkin here,” he said into the comlink.  A garble of unintelligible speech crackled through the comlink.  Tarkin (who, miraculously, seemed to be able to understand it) frowned, and sat up straighter.

“Why didn’t you notify me immediately?  Yes, of course it’s important!  We shall meet you in the docking bay shortly.”

“I sense something…”

I jumped, because I had kind of forgotten Vader was there.

“Oh, do shut up,” said Tarkin peevishly.  He turned back to me.  “I think, Investigator, that you had better come with us.  It would seem that a strange ship has been intercepted on its way to Aldaraan and was pulled in by our tractor beam.  This may well be the key to our missing plans.”

“Sure, I’m game,” I said. “Come on, Jawa.”  Jawa pushed himself off the edge of the chair and we followed Vader and Tarkin out the blast doors and into the turbolift.