TK-421, Why Aren't You at Your Post? - Episode 2

           We walked into the conference room that the storm trooper had pointed us to.   It was empty.  The blast door slid closed behind us with that quiet, ominous sound that I always find so irritating.   There wasn’t much to look at: the conference room looked like everything else in the space station – gray, flat and boring – but there was a window that looked out over the hangar.  With nothing else to do, I stared out of it.  I could see my own ship, a modest little Corellian cruiser, being taken care of by a small crew of maintenace droids.   As my eyes wandered over the hangar, something else caught my eye: a smaller ship, obviously not Imperial, seemed to be attracting a lot of attention.  It was Corellian-made, an older model from the YT series, but it looked like someone had done a clumsy job of trying to soup it up.   I had seen ships like that, usually being flown by young hot-shots trying to look tough and claiming to be in smuggler gangs.  It looked out of place next to the top-of-the-line TIE fighters, and even my little cruiser put it to shame.  “What a piece of junk,” I said.  Besides me, Jawa’s glittering eyes were staring at it, too, and he was rubbing his little black hands together.  Jawas love junk.   

       The door on the opposite side of the room opened and we were immediately met by this really foul stench.  

       “Ah, Inspector Dagnar.”  The man coming toward us was human, older for their species, with sunken-in cheeks that made it look like he’d swallowed his teeth.  I recognized him from some of the Empire’s propaganda holos, but I’d never been close enough to smell him.  “Welcome aboard the Death Star.  Allow me to introduce myself: Governor Tarkin.”

            It’s a mixed blessing, being one of the many races in this galaxy that has hyper-sensitive olfactory senses.  Ironically enough, lots of people think that I can’t smell just because I don’t have a nose, but actually the skin-flaps on my cheeks are way better than what most races would call a nose.  Humans, for instance, have an extremely low olfactory sense, and probably because of this they usually smell a little funky, but this guy was exceptional: he must have practically taken a bath in cologne, the sick-smelling stuff that some humans like to wear because they think it makes them smell better.  I took a quick glance at Jawa and wondered what he was thinking.  Superior smelling is one of the few things we have in common – the jawas even use it in their communication – but I had already learned that his taste in smells ran to the unrefined.  I guess it comes from his former life in the garbage business.

               “Lord Vader will be joining us shortly,” Tarkin explained.

              "Oh, joy,” I thought inwardly.  I keep on the right side of the Empire, like anybody with any brains does, but that guy gives me the creeps.  I had worked with him before, and I hadn’t exactly been impressed with his bedside manner.  I wasn’t sure precisely what his role in the Imperial hierarchy was (aside from mascot – they had this whole line of merchandise, including a breakfast gruel, with his face all over it), but his leadership style consisted mostly of impromptu executions.