Roqoo Depot

Last ‘Tarkin’ Excerpt

Tarkin by James Luceno will be out next week, so to tide you over, Star Wars Books has released one more excerpt.

“Obliteration.”

“Whatever you deem necessary, my lord. Force is the only real and unanswerable power. Oftentimes, beings who haven’t been duly punished cannot be reasoned with or edified.”

The Emperor repeated the words to himself, then said, “That has the ring of a parental lesson, Governor Tarkin.”

Tarkin laughed pleasantly. “So it was, my lord—though applied in a more personal manner.”

The Emperor swiveled his chair toward the light, and Tarkin glimpsed his sepulchral visage; the molten skin beneath his eyes, the bulging forehead. After all these years, he was still not accustomed to it.

“When one consorts with vipers, one runs the risk of being struck,” the Emperor had told Tarkin following the attack on him by a quartet of Jedi Masters.

There were many stories about what had occurred that day in the chancellor’s office. The official explanation was that members of the Jedi Order had turned up to arrest Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and a ferocious duel had ensued. The matter of precisely how the Jedi had been killed or the Emperor’s face deformed had never been settled to everyone’s satisfaction, and so Tarkin had his private thoughts about the Emperor, as well. That he and Vader were kindred spirits suggested that both of them might be Sith.

Tarkin often wondered if that wasn’t the actual reason Palpatine had been targeted for arrest or assassination by the Jedi. It wasn’t so much that the Order wished to take charge of the Republic; it was that the Jedi couldn’t abide the idea of a member of the ancient Order they opposed and abhorred emerging as the hero of the Clone Wars and assuming the mantle of Emperor.

Posted By: Skuldren for Roqoo Depot.