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activities had been funneled into Xizor Transport Systems, and XTS alone was enough to make him a wealthy and powerful man.
    Vader was also aware that the holocams were upon him. He made a comment for the record. “In the past, it seems as if your company has been slow to respond to Imperial requests.”
    “It embarrasses me to say that you are correct, Lord Vader. Certain individuals who worked for me were lax. However, those individuals are no longer employed by my company.”
    Point, counterpoint. Vader jabbed, carefully, using a fine point, and Xizor parried. Each conversation he had with the Dark Lord of the Sith was thus, an obvious surface dialogue with much hidden in the depths below it. It was a kind of fugue, in which each player tried to score, like two brothers trying to outdo each other in the eyes of a critical father.
    Xizor did not consider Vader anything like a nest-brother, however. The man was an impediment to be removed and—though he did not know it—a mortal enemy.
    Ten years ago, Vader had a pet project, research on a biological weapon. He established a hazard lab on Xizor’s home planet of Falleen. There had been an accident at the supposedly secure facility. A mutant tissue-destroying bacterium somehow escaped quarantine. In order to save the planet’s population from a horrible,rotting, always fatal infection for which there was no cure, the city around the lab had been “sterilized.”
    Sterilized, as in: baked, torched, seared, burned to cinders; houses, buildings, streets, parks—
    And people.
    Two hundred thousand Falleen had been killed by the sterilization lasers crisscrossing the doomed metropolis from orbit. The Empire counted itself lucky to have lost only that number when the necrotizing bacteria could have killed billions, maybe even escaped offworld to infect other planets. It had been a close call, but the cost had been relatively minor—in the opinion of the Empire.
    In Darth Vader’s opinion.
    Among the dead had been Xizor’s mother, father, brother, two sisters, and three uncles. He’d been offworld at the time, cementing his control of Black Sun into place; otherwise he would have been one of the victims himself.
    He had never spoken of the tragedy. He had, through the offices of Black Sun, caused his family’s deaths to be erased from Imperial records. The operatives who had done that deed had been themselves eliminated. Nobody knew that Xizor the Dark Prince had personal reasons to detest Darth Vader. It would be natural to see the two as rivals for the Emperor’s favor, and there was no way to hide that, but of the other, no one save Xizor had any inkling.
    He had been patient, Xizor had. It was never a question of “if,” only a matter of “when” he would repay Vader in kind.
    Now at last, revenge was in the making. Soon he would have it. He would spear two fleek-eels with the same trident: Vader the impediment to his power and Vader the killer of his family would both be … removed.
    Xizor felt a smile but held it from observation by Vader and his hidden holocams’ gazes. Killing the DarkLord might be possible but much too good for him—and dangerous in the extreme. Dishonor and disgrace were ever so much more painful at this level of existence. He would break Vader, would cause him to be tossed upon the trash heap by his beloved master.
    Yes. That would be justice—
    “We shall need three hundred ships,” Vader said, cutting into Xizor’s thoughts. “Half of them tankers, half dry cargo transports. Standard Imperial delivery contracts. There is a large … 
construction
project of which you are aware. Can you supply the vessels?”
    “Yes, my lord. You need but tell me where and when you desire them and I will make it so. And Imperial terms are acceptable.”
    Vader stood silently for a moment, the only sound the mechanical wheeze of his breathing.
    He didn’t expect that
, Xizor thought.
He thought I might argue or try to haggle over the price.