They picked the highest spot in the area for the DS-1 Memorial. The entire length of the trail up the mountain was lined with metal plaques listing names, they were now incomplete after the guards had gone and the locals had scavenged them for scrap, others remained but had been stained with anti-imperial slogans. The real memorial was at the summit, from the top of the mountain one could see for miles around, even the height of the temple below looked small. Near the final clearing there were several dozen Bronzium statues, honoring the highest-ranking officers and those given posthumous awards; every one of the soldiers killed during Skywalker and Solo’s raid was honored, as were all of the TIE pilots lost during the rebel assault. At the center, standing in front of it all was Tarkin’s statue, eternally frozen with an expression of smug superiority and standing rail straight, with the main memorial behind him. 

Tarkin was a complicated figure in Raskta’s life, especially for someone she had never met personally. On a few occasions she had been in the same room when he was present for official occasions, and during her counterinsurgency days in the Storm Commandos Tarkin’s writings were practically gospel, his ethos left an impression even from a distance. At first she believed in it with her whole heart, the Tarkin Doctrine, rule by fear, savagery in service of civilization, brutality to create an order that could stand strong enough to protect all of the galaxy’s citizens,  and all of the language about the great work that would enrich the lives of countless generations to come. Once that had been her view also, she probably would’ve bought in even without all of the ideological purity tests, and it was with her even when her unit was committing acts that would’ve been immediate grounds for execution under the Old Republic. Where it faltered was when she saw the end results. 

Dankayo was a small planet, a colony out in the Shwuy Exchange, far from the cosmopolitan splendor of Alderaan, but it was one she knew intimately from a long, drawn-out counter guerilla operation. She had been part of the bloodshed and punitive measures but also the genuine acts of aid, setting up schools for the kids, safeguarding moisture farms from rebel raids, and delivering supplies to the areas ravaged by the guerilla war. But now, there was not one trace of her efforts left anymore, not a single lifeform above the microbial level left on the planet. A decision had been made far above her paygrade to cleanse the planet with a Base Delta Zero operation, her unit even having the honors of being the last imperial personnel to leave planet once they had finished the job of providing the targeting data. The most loyal had been evacuated beforehand, all of the rest were given no warning when the fire rained from the skies. The fleet in orbit didn’t stop their barrage until the crust of the planet was slag and the atmosphere had been burnt away, rendering any potential enemy elements fully and incontrovertibly neutralized. 

	A decision like that was incompatible with any of the lofty goals the empire preached, and she began to see what the rebels meant when they said the empire was built upon lies. Perhaps if she had stopped there, she might’ve even joined their side, but time with the Royal Guard had revealed a new truth to her: Tarkin’s rhetoric was built on contradictions, but Tarkin’s rhetoric was not the rhetoric of the emperor himself. In fragmentary speeches and texts that only the most loyal were allowed to witness she had pieced together the truth: the empire was never the end, it was never the goal, it was merely a means to an end. Palpatine’s public pronouncements were just another layer, and the empire was just his greatest implement for his truest desire, the pursuit of power and perfection above all else. In Palpatine she found truth, she found purpose, and in his power witnessed something that was genuinely awe-inspiring enough to devote her life to.

She took a moment to appreciate the memorial, having seen the renderings but never the actual finished site. It stood as a gigantic wall, tall as a wookie, seemingly flat but actually having an extremely subtle curve to it, matching the curvature of the death star itself, as if this piece had been ripped from the hull. In a way, it was, all of the sections of the wall were created from recovered metal debris, now painted in all black, mimicking the darkness of space. Embedded within it were over a million tiny shards, shimmering and shining as the sunlight reflected off of them. These where pieces had come from a massive composite kyber crystal, one built as a spare for the death star’s superlaser, then pulled out of storage and cut into microscopic pieces for the memorial. Every shard represented one life lost, and with them all arrayed together the entire memorial looked as serene and wondrous as the night’s sky. At the center was a holographic terminal hooked up to a data bank with the names and information of every casualty, allowing visitors to find specific people and project their likeness upon the wall. She contemplated trying to find some of the Royal Guards who had perished in the list, but stopped herself because she never knew if someone could be monitoring the terminal.

Despite appearances, Raskta was not here to appreciate the architecture or reflect on her life decisions. With her macrobinoculars in hand she looked and made note of the layout of the dig site, which entrances had evidence of that they were in use, where the vehicles were parked, any power lines or other equipment set up outside the temple, and trying to keep a rough count of how many she saw around. There were signs that they had some type of armed guards around but nothing else lept out as odd, and after a little more surveying she was satisfied enough to make the trek down to the site itself.

She picked the least busy side of the temple to approach. After watching long enough to be satisfied that no one was around, she walked towards one of the ventilation grills outside the temple and knelt down beside it. Raskta was trying to not look suspicious, no outwardly visible weapons or armor, clothing that looked like a backpacker trekking through the jungle, but the next portion would have to be done quickly because it would look obvious to outside observers. She removed the casing that had concealed her Force Pike as a walking stick and got to work.

A Force Pike did not have the cutting strength of a lightsaber, but it was fine for something like the grill of the ventilation shaft. It even had an advantage for this purpose, the tip of it made cuts that were much thinner those made by a lightsaber, difficult to notice without close examination. With precision trained from a lifetime of dueling, Raskta made an angled slice to the edges of the grill, such that it could be removed by hand but would still lay in place when set. The plans had told her these vents were large, they had to be to supply an underground area as large as the temple had, and it was unlikely that any of the staff of the dig site was interested in them. Her macrobinoculars had a nightvision mode that let her see in the unlit ducts, so she crept from vent to vent and peered into the rooms of the temple complex. Raskta carefully recorded which ones were empty and which ones had evidence of the dig team, though she was unable to survey all of them. 

After spending more time than she would like crawling through the ventilation ducts, Raskta only had two tasks left. First, she found a spot to place a cache of supplies she might need for later; she was undecided if she wanted to remain hidden or try to concoct a cover story for her next move, but either way it was beneficial to have a stash that didn’t require a trek all the way back to her ship to retrieve. As she began to emerge from the vent, she heard the noise of a ship touching down. Thoughts started racing in her head, and she decided not to step out yet, watching and listening as a group of people disembarked. It was difficult to discern much of anything about them from this position, so she focused on not making noise and contemplating whether it was better to find another exit shaft and continue her “curious hiker” act or to try and venture into the temple itself.