Supremely sorry to slightly squish your scintillating speculation...dammit, I'm channeling again.
26b should be up either late tonight, about 2-3am my time, or tomorrow.
The main event will, in fact, be the midichlorian count and what it reveals. I'm more or less running with what I remember of Darth Wong's theory in, I think, the episode-1 speculation on the main site.
This is the operational pause; when putting the objective pursuit squadron together, Lennart deliberately held on to the Comarre Meridian, the same ship that had it's bow heat-treated by a proximity detonated Rebel kamikaze and was going to take eleven days to repair.
One reason for this was to work with the rest of the squadron, see exactly what they were capable of and maybe teach them a few tricks through a sequence of exercises. Normally we are looking at months for this- they know that it's not enough, but it's the nearest round excuse between the time they nominally need and moving out right now.
Comarre Meridian is temporarily functioning as a training site as much as anything else, detachments from the engineering departments of the rest of the squadron rotating through to be assessed and given refresher training in damage control and repair. Commander Mirannon is on site, managing that.
Although the line 'I know exactly how Mirannon's going to react- "Kriff, I don't have time for this, how do I get rid of them?" followed by some really complex experiments in applied radiation'- does occur in 26b, it is not in the context of the rebel prisoners.
What he would do if he was there, and what a well trained deputy chief engineer should do, is liaise immediately with the Legion's High Colonel and ask QAG-111 what sort of help he needs or could use. Ever since the Palmus Viridis boarding action, a high proportion of Black Prince's engineers have been interested in the use of power tools for self defence, not just Mirannon- but they are at best gifted amateurs, not professionals.
If they're needed as a second line, to fill a hole or defend their own, they'll do that, and some of them will be daft enough to go looking for trouble, but as a matter of policy they act as backers up and auxilliaries to the Stormtrooper element.
Environmental and structural support systems will certainly be prepared and standing by, but not used unless the escaping rebels tear a major hole in the stormtrooper cordon. Two main inhibitions; friendly casualties, and it's always slightly more difficult to do that to your own ship, knowing you have to clear up the mess afterwards.
I can see some trigger-happy junior lieutenant being told after the event that it was time for him to learn how to think through the consequences of his actions, and being handed a brush and shovel.
Hull no. 721- a fanfic
Moderator: LadyTevar
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
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- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
OK, this one is later than I expected, and you may not like the reason. The jailbreak thing has assumed rather more importance than I originally intended it to. I tried to trim it down to fit, but it mushroomed, and I've decided to shunt it off to a separate section, probably 26c, where I can deal with it at greater length and more blood.
26b;
Captain of the Line Lennart was in the day cabin, essentially playing with the personnel records of the squadron; indulging in his favourite hobby of reading between the lines.
The advantage of holographic space is that you can shape it any way you like, customise it to your own ends. Lennart had the records laid out like an orchestra pit, little hovering head and shoulders official ID portraits, divided up by lines.
The brass section, Strike Line. Himself and Dordd he knew too well to need to look up- although it was interesting to watch the process as actual events morphed themselves down to lines on paper. Little baby white lies growing up to be big and strong.
Commander Stannis Lycarin of the Perseverance was an interesting case; he was another retread, joined during the clone wars, served with the womb-born part of the fleet initially, got transferred over, rode an old Servator for a while as gunnery officer, command for a year, then got reassigned as a Jedi General’s flag-lieutenant.
Switching from line to staff like that was usually a sign of someone who was being groomed for higher things. For the good of the service there should be a regular rotation for all, everybody agreed with it in theory but few bothered in practise.
That was an experience Lennart would have to quiz him about later, and see whether he had absorbed any of it. The most important thing he was still short of was line commanders.
After that, and apparently because of that, Lycarin was reassigned to a shoreside job, convoy planner and router for fleet support services. He had resigned just after the destruction of the last of the Confederate Remnants, become a security consultant.
That was a murky business, and Lennart was more worried about the contacts he would have made in that trade than any association with the Jedi.
He had found his way back into the Starfleet about five years ago, evidently sponsored or at least accepted by someone with the clout to overlook his background- internal politics again- and had shifted backwards and forwards between staff and line.
The pattern was the interesting part. He would crossreference that later to shifts in the sector fleet command structure, but it looked that as Lycarin rose in position himself, he was starting to turn on his patrons and bite the hand that fed him.
Twitches of conscience at last? Dormant sense of duty starting to reawaken? It was a generation later, about the right time for it. They would run through the start of the squadron exercise program, and then see what he had to say for himself, and about who his sponsors were and how his career had really ran.
The rest of the strike line consisted of two Fulgor, one their own capture; their commanders- Grey Princess’ new skipper had the background of a functionary, a being who had ticked the right boxes and kissed the right behinds to get to where he was.
What he was doing in command of a superfast pursuit frigate was anyone’s guess.
The other ship, Provornyy, was under the command of a notable maniac, Commander Jiae Sarlatt. An ex fighter pilot who had chosen to cross-badge rather than be promoted to a desk, and found himself responsible for something which could outrun ninety-eight percent of the Imperial fighter forces.
Lennart thought about what he could expect from them. Yeklendim, on the Grey Princess, he could trust to do the officially sanctioned right thing. Provided he could read through his notes from the academy fast enough to figure out what it was.
Sarlatt, he could trust to find a fight, whether it was the right thing or not.
Fulgors were well shielded, but not well armed for their size; only four twin MTL on a five hundred and sixty metre long ship. They were bulky enough and could take enough punishment to win a stand up fight against most of their own class, but that wasn’t the way to play it.
Hit and run, fire and evade, that was what you were supposed to do. Lennart doubted whether either of them had the subtlety for that, but he would reach them what he could.
Woodwind section, the sweep line. Obdurate under Raesene, well enough manned. They had reacted quickly and intelligently in that business with the, probably, Falcon. They needed a bit more practise on environmental awareness, true.
Two Servators, classified as fleet destroyers in the old, small-scale days and heavy corvettes now; Eludor and Nefarious, enthusiastic but inexperienced captains.
Two Bayonet, three Marauder, six requisitioned Customs Corvettes- Lennart had high hopes of the customs corvettes, they were fast, possessed sound antifighter weaponry, and most importantly were working ships, routinely busy.
The biggest problem, of course, was Voracious. As individuals, many of her crew were capable enough- but as a crew? There were three time limits on their operations; firstly the purely mechanical, the eleven day estimate for rebuilding Comarre Meridian’s bow.
Second the external political circumstances, what the rebels were up to. Third, internal politics, what the Moff decided he was going to do to avenge his humiliation and mutilation.
As far as training and working up went, Lennart was basing his operation plans on the mechanical time limit, and eleven days to form a crew was- before this, he would have laughed.
Imperial military regulations were realistic, in many respects- overly so in some; a bit more unreasonable optimism in the Starfighter Corps, assuming that they weren’t disposable, might do more good.
In some respects they were politically inspired, which amongst other things had led to a bizarre turf war between the Regulatory branch and the Imperial Security Bureau over whose responsibility Correct Thought in the fleet was, that Lennart had slipped through the cracks of more than once.
In others they were politically paralysed, which made it dangerous to be an innovator- but that was mainly a ground force problem.
The one thing they were supposed to be was uniform. In theory, interchangeability extended all the way up the line, one ship was supposed to be the same as any other of it’s class, run to the same schedule, the same performance targets, achieving the same standards of service at the same price.
Lennart understood that as an impossible goal to be approached asymptotically, distance made towards it but never quite attained- insofar as it was desirable at all. In theory, these ships should be instantly ready to go, already flawlessly integrated and doctrinally synchronised, able to deploy at a moment’s notice.
In practise, he had chosen a ship requiring eleven days’ repairs- and it occurred to him that it would be excellent seasoning for some of the squadrons’ engineering teams to rotate through the Comarre Meridian, to lessen the load on Black Prince’s spanner-slingers into the bargain- to give him that much time to integrate and synchronise.
Actually, he decided, he needn’t bother ordering that- if he could come up with that, Gethrim would be there long before him.
The preliminary minimum schedule he had drawn up had eight hours a day of additional training, four hours of ship exercises which were each captain’s own responsibility but that they would report on, four hours of squadron exercises.
Eighty-eight hours, when he would have welcomed as many days. Eighty left, now. They would have to look very closely at Voracious.
The first string section, Recon Line Alpha. Meridian, Demolisher, two Strike- one a minelayer variant- two Servator, three Carrack, two Bayonet, four Marauder.
The second thing he was seriously worried about. Barth- Elstrand had ran the situation fairly well up to a point, when he had underestimated Rebel resourcefulness and willingness to die for a cause.
That had nearly cost him his ship. Under a different Squadron commander, he could have been court martialled and possibly executed for his stupidity.
Lennart wanted his services rather than his head, not because he wasn’t concerned by the failure, but because he thought that a bitterly angry Elstrand, seeking to redeem himself and coached to build on what he had got right to avenge what he had got wrong, could do well.
The second string section, Recon Beta, a mirror image apart from a recon variant Strike cruiser in place of a minelayer. The third thing he was seriously worried about. Was Falldess qualified for line command? If she wasn’t, who was?
There was an obvious answer to that, and a tempting one- but it wasn’t necessarily honest. Falldess deserved a chance, but what would she make of it?
To get so far, to heavy frigate command with three strikes against her- from a backward world, the ”wrong” sex, and already had one ship shot out from under her- she had to be good.
Good enough to go further, or had she reached her peak with command of a large single ship? As a snap decision, he would say give her her chance.
Blackwood was an interesting experiment, the Strike variant. Visually very different, no curves at all, slabs and facets, and in performance just as strange- a shade over eight hundred ‘g’ faster and outgunning the existing versions sixteen to ten.
The only things she seemed to give up were troop and fighter capacity- and factors of safety.
Her captain seemed far too good to be true. Conor Kovall, Raithal graduate in his late twenties and one of Lennart’s ex-students in tactics. Looking at his record, Lennart found his stomach behaving strangely.
Kriff, he thought, when I spouted all that about thinking sideways, misleading and misdirecting, and movement as a weapon in itself, I didn’t expect to be taken this seriously.
The percussion section, the support he could expect from 851. Again, too familiar to need to check up on.
To extend the metaphor, the didgeridoo, wabbleboard and mouth organ section would be their enemies in the Rebel Alliance- a cluster of blank portraits to be filled in later.
Behind them, and this was where the orchestra metaphor really started to break down, their theoretical allies in the Vineland Sector Group. Electric guitar and octaventral heebiephone? That sounded about right.
He was still sorting, deciding who he needed to investigate in depth, when he received a call from the medical complex.
‘Captain, this is Surgeon-Lieutenant Bergeron, medical-general.’ That was the part of the medical branch responsible for the routine needs of the crew, the general-practitioner work. Diet control, exercise scheduling, fitness monitoring, illness rather than injury.
‘I have your numbers. The, ah, special numbers you asked for.’ Bergeron continued.
‘How?’ Lennart asked. There had been no disruption to the ship’s routine, nothing like testing the entire crew in rotation would cause.
‘We have enough samples left over from scheduled fitness tests to run a count without disturbing anybody.’ Bergeron said, avoiding the word ‘midichlorian’.
‘So who’s about to come down with a terminal case of self-importance?’ Lennart said, trying to ignore the sudden sinking feeling in his gut. ‘Tell me, Doc, I can take it.’
‘Captain, the numbers- the average count is between fifty and two hundred. They-‘
‘You might as well admit you’re talking about midichlorians. Enough secrecy.’
‘All right. Midichlorians are a symptom of the Force, not a cause. They are weakly correlated with several other factors, most of them to do with the nervous and immune systems.
Everybody has some midichlorian count. Below fifty is a cause for concern- a pointer towards clumsiness and susceptibility to disease. Most people score between fifty and two hundred, as I said- median value is one hundred and eight.
Their significance is exponential- two hundred is four times as potent as one hundred. Phenomena begin to become significant, heightened awareness, sharper senses especially peripheral vision, faster preconscious processing- what I believe used to be referred to as ‘force sensitivity’- around a value estimated as six hundred fifty to seven hundred.
Serious biomedical deviation sets in at a level estimated as the suspiciously round number of one thousand. This is the point at which we refer to someone ‘having the force’. I suspect there is considerable variation based on a range of other, mainly psychological, factors.’
‘Never mind the biomedical, it’s the lifestyle deviation that I’m worried about.’ Lennart said. ‘Who?’
‘There are two individuals on board with a midichlorian count over one thousand, four more with a count below that but over six hundred and fifty. Congratulations, Captain.’
‘Kriff. I suppose it’s too late to sue my parents. How bad is it?’
‘Captain, this is a good thing. Even once you subtract religious nonsense and the obviously legendary, there is still a weak but positive correlation between midichlorian count and sense acuity, brain function and metabolic efficiency.’
‘You’re avoiding the issue, Lieutenant.’ Lennart said, wishing he could.
‘Sir, the high positives are Engineer-Commander Mirannon, three thousand seven hundred and forty-four; and yourself. Five thousand one hundred and twenty- six.
The lower range of positives are Squadron Leader Jandras, six hundred ninety-eight; Surgeon-Lieutenant Commander Blei-Korberkk, seven hundred sixty-five; Senior Chief Pellor Aldrem, eight hundred and seventy- seven; Stormtrooper OB173, nine hundred and eighty- two.’
‘What do you suggest we do, form a support group?’ Lennart suggested sarcastically. ‘I can tell you right now that Commander Mirannon’s reaction is going to be “Kriff, I don’t have time for this, how do I get rid of them?” followed by some really complex experiments in applied radiation.
I suppose I should use some sort of jedi mind power on you now, but I’ll just have to make it an order instead; scramble them.
Wipe the names, randomise the service numbers, disassociate the secondary data. Everybody’s. Then-‘ and the next move in the sequence of events would be Adannan realising he had been fed data salad, reacting badly and going to Medical to wring out someone’s head.
‘Belay that. Don’t bother. Just file it under patient confidentiality and leave it with me, I suppose Blei-Korberkk already knows, I’ll notify everyone else involved. Out.’
Lennart leaned back in his chair, feet up, looked at the deckhead. He hated the idea. Had done for more than twenty years.
Two contradictory gut reactions; the first was that it was cheating.
Being in touch with some sort of cosmic energy field that let you outreact blaster bolts, walk on molten lava, fall hundreds of metres without injury, play with people’s minds like putty- it was a vitiation of all the real physical and mental effort that normal people expended on their lives. That he had.
Not that he was averse to taking any chance that offered, any advantage that could be had; but- all arrogance aside, he thought, not quite meaning it, I am a damn’ good warship commander; and I like the notion of a level playing field, not because of any abstract commitment to fairness, but because then I can measure just how far ahead of my colleagues and rivals I am.
If we are all playing by the same set of rules, then one man’s superiority over the next is a matter of skill and judgement, qualities I have spent so much blood and sweat to acquire. So hooray for the even chance, or at least as even as evolution rather than magic can make it.
To find out that one has been, inadvertently, playing to a different set of rules all along, devalues all that was done.
The other gut reaction was that perhaps the Jedi had come close to paying a fair price for their abilities, in their dissociation from and abandonment of normal life. Contradictory, but instinctive responses didn’t have to make sense.
It was a price he absolutely didn’t want to pay. The Jedi- what had he described them as? Hyperzombies? Overpowered divorcees from normality. Fatally out of touch.
And for their failures, for allowing the Galaxy to slide into the clone wars, perhaps extinction was fair return. The alternative to the jedi, however, how well did they compare?
Had not Dooku, count Serenno, been among their number? A renegade jedi, who had relearned the habits of the station he had been born to, who had probably always been allowed to get away with a little more than most- even if they were unbribable per se, the aura of his family’s power and influence would have earned him goodwill.
The enemy of the republic, and probably that of the Empire had he lived. Other notable non-Jedi wielders of the force, non-adherents to the Code- you had to go back to the Light and Darkness War that had preceded the Ruusan Reformation to find much about them. What that said of them was not good.
Most of the histories were written by jedi, and therefore classified- or by the footsoldiers of either side, therefore partial.
Lennart could not dismiss them on that account, but he did not look forward to the prospect of leafing through several million descriptions of mud and sore feet to find the parts that mattered to him right now.
Possibly time, he decided, to spend some of the ship’s operating budget on more protocol droids.
It had largely been a ground war; what naval operations there had been were largely assault landings and raids, and had been conducted by professionals on both sides, revealing relatively little of the personalities involved.
What it did was disturbing. The Dark Jedi had taken their enmity very seriously, and their darkness likewise- as if it was an inevitable polarisation, no other colours in the spectrum but black and white.
They had been deliberately and self- consciously ‘evil’, and if they had missed any opportunity of proving it, it was solely due to being too wrapped up in the drama of their lives.
What was there about the force, Lennart thought, that destroyed a man’s ability to think clearly? Was it such an intensely personal thing, this open channel to the universe, that it eliminated middle ground and made all things very personal?
He sensed that he was about to find out. Perversely, he decided to refuse to listen to the feeling, and was going back over the Sector Group’s more distinguished officers when the com terminal beeped.
He ignored that too. It beeped louder, and when it started to give him voice alert he pulled it’s plug out.
Fnord and damnation, he thought, realising; the force is starting to get to me already. Sheepishly, he plugged it back in, realised it was probably Aleph-3, and went to meet her.
The rest of the command team were still there, looking with interest at the colour-shifting red/blue iridescent armoured stormtrooper; who was maintaining a forceful and dignified silence.
‘Gentlemen,’ Lennart said, ‘I am going to ask your indulgence to share some of my troubles with you, and a partial explanation of how the situation managed to get this bad.’
Aleph-3 glared at him as if her look could melt his skull. Come to think of it, someone with the Force probably could. He smiled back at her and said ‘Could you start by explaining your own part?’
‘Captain, I had wanted to do this in private.’ She snarled.
‘We are, or at least as privately as I choose to. Who I choose to turn to for support is my problem, after all, is it not?’
She should argue the point, but decided just to get on with it. The mistakes and the madness could be patched up later, the manner mattered less than doing this at all.
‘Officially, I am a scout. Deliberate misdesignation- we are manhunters, wherever possible Jedi hunters. A relic of the days of the Purge, when the clones were all there was to do the job. We also have the responsibility of detecting and referring for recruitment those with potential, who do not hold to the ways of the Jedi.’
‘Hold on a moment. Non-jedi force users? Didn’t they try to overthrow the republic a thousand years ago?’ Brenn asked.
‘Captain, this is far too public.’ Aleph-3 rounded on him. ‘This is not a matter to be spoken of.’ She said, half angry half pleading.
‘Then you’re going to have a stang difficult time telling me about it, aren’t you?’ Lennart said, mercilessly. ‘Come on. It’s not as if we are speaking of some sort of barbarian cabal, a secret criminal society too foul to speak it’s name, is it?’
She looked at him in bogglement. Which way was he going? Who was he trying to convince, and of what?
‘That was the name their enemies gave them, certainly. Did you expect the Jedi, of all people, to be free of hypocrisy?’ she said.
‘We,’ she said addressing the rest of the command team, ‘reported Captain Lennart as having force potential. As being potentially able to wield great personal power, as potentially subject to Special Order Sixty-Six. That is the reason Adannan is here.’
There were angry mutterings over that.
‘No, it isn’t.’ Lennart said. ‘I’m certainly an en passant objective, but there is another target involved in this that he is making a play for, that if his superiors haven’t put two and two together you may want to clue them in on.’
‘What?’ she said, guessing what he meant but knowing to play the part. ‘Excuse me? None of this should be spoken of at all except behind closed doors- What is this for? What are you trying to achieve?’
‘As far as I can see, nearly everyone who the Force curses- yes, I said curses- is warped by it into an ascetic or an animal. Some manage to boomerang backwards and forwards between the two.
Neither of those is me. I may have to do this because someone has to counter Adannan. Someone has to be able to nullify him, and I seem to have got the job.
I’m telling you all this,’ he told his command team, ‘because I do not want to be either isolate or iconoclast- although I would settle for impostor if I could get away with it for long enough. I am going to need your help to hold my head together.
I will not resign my commission. I am an officer in the Imperial Starfleet first and last, and I will drink no more of this poisoned chalice than I have to.’
Aleph-3 moved so little during that, no longer arguing or advising, face statue still, Lennart wondered if he had shocked her into catatonia. Actually, the situation was becoming so strange, so fast, she was seriously considering it as an option. Keel over, and let someone else deal with the problem. Couldn’t do that, had to try.
‘Captain Lennart, I have come up against people who would die for the sake of the legend, who threw their lives away for the sake of fanning a tiny spark, who would plunder and murder for the sake of the Force.
Also, you’re not going to believe me unless I admit, with. Rejecting the force-‘ which wasn’t exactly what he had said, true- ‘is not unknown- but it is institutionalisable.’
‘What sort of institution?’ Brenn asked.
‘One with “join us or die” engraved over the door.’ Lennart said. ‘Which, as far as I’m concerned, says absolutely everything there is to say about how much fun this is likely to be.’ He looked at Aleph-3, waiting for her to contradict him.
‘A high proportion of the Imperial ruling class- far higher than would ever publicly say so- believe the force to be real and powerful.
The Jedi Order was never fully accounted for, now appears to be trying to drag itself out of it’s grave with the help of the Alliance, and new potential emerges at the same rate it always did. “Join us or die” is not an unrealistic take on the situation.’ She said.
‘Are we talking about some sort of variation on the Invisible War, here?’ Rythanor asked. ‘Spies and counterspies?’
‘As invisible as lightsabres, force lightning and telekinetic blasts get, but yes, that is a very good summary.’ Aleph-3 admitted, silently thanking him for steering just close enough to the truth that she could slingshot round it to a more acceptable conclusion.
‘And, unfortunately, a fluke of heritage has landed me in the middle of it.’ Lennart said. ‘You can draw up your own conspiracy theories about what’s been happening behind the scenes these last thousand years.
Maybe we could turn it into some kind of writing contest, help pass the time-‘ the idea that they were going to have any spare time got a nervous laugh- ‘but any theories about the last thirty, keep them to yourselves- for your own safety.’
‘Not in the middle, Captain. On one specific and particular side. There is no middle ground.’ Aleph-3 cautioned, sternly.
‘Then perhaps it’s time someone invented one.’ Lennart said, and turned to the command team. ‘Our professional job hasn’t gone away, but I do need to ask you to do as much of it as you can. As I do try to explore this, I may change, become excessively cranky.
Part of that will undoubtedly be due to lack of sleep, but one of the worst effects of the Force as I read of it is that it either chills your temper to nothing, or fans it to a raving inferno. No prizes for guessing which way Adannan went.’ A grunt from Brenn, a nervous giggle from Wathavrah.
‘Gentlemen, I’m cracking bad jokes to keep my own spirits up. The prospect of what this could do to me terrifies me.’
‘Don’t worry, skipper.’ Wathavrah said. ‘We’ll stand by you.’
‘Tell me that again in a month’s time and I’ll be a happier man.’ Lennart said. ‘Start of third watch, we have an internal exercise- convoy duty. First watch- midnight to 4 am, and why not?- we have a squadron level hunter/killer exercise, them chasing us. We may as well begin as we mean to go on. Thank you, and dismissed.’
They left, aleph-3 remained. When they were out of earshot she rounded on him and said ‘Have you any idea just how many separate precepts- of both sides of the force- you’ve just violated? How many reasons you have given light- and dark- to turn on you?’
‘Thereby going even further to convince me that “A pox on both your houses” is the only reasonable standpoint. Is there no polychromatic side of the force?’ Lennart said.
‘Nervous tension brings out the comedian in you, I see.’ She said, changing her line of approach. ‘It’s not the force; it’s power that has no sense of humour. Being able to mock them is a poor defensive measure compared to reaching out for power of your own.’
‘If there’s one thing that convinces me not to trust you, it’s how readily you can go from one mask to the next. I infuriate you to the point of wanting to bite my throat out, and you fume a little, remember the objective and slip on another face.’ he said.
‘What else do you expect from someone who was raised and trained to believe in herself as nothing, the objective as everything?’ Aleph- 3 said, hoping for a simple answer.
‘Fewer masks.’ Lennart said. ‘You have outgrown your station, your duties have changed you; you’ve become almost as much of an oddball, a misfit, as anyone on this ship.’
‘I am as loyal, and as capable within my ambit, as any of you. If there is comparison, I am certainly a better apple than you are a peelifruit, with a power you are having to be dragged kicking and screaming towards learning to use.’ She snapped.
‘A better apple than I am a peelifruit- how many of the Emperor’s Whiteskulls do you think could have come up with that?’ Lennart said. ‘Speaking of objections to the force, do you know exactly how close you come to it yourself?’
‘If I was actually capable of it, I would never have made it out of the clone cylinder. Past that, I never asked because I’m not allowed to know. It would be forbidden- but agonisingly close, close enough sometimes to smell what my targets are going to do next. It doesn’t work on you.’
‘So close that I think it’s only your own mental blocks that are preventing you from reaching for the force yourself. Nine hundred and eighty-two.
The difference in use between that and a score less than two percent higher, it’s less than the difference between a good and a bad mood. You have the potential. If you’re prepared to break the mould and reach out for it.’ Lennart dropped his bomb.
She genuinely lost her composure completely then, for the first time in her life. The universe yawned wide open around her and her intellect took wing and flew away, leaving a confused mass.
‘But…but…that’s impossible, it just isn’t, there aren’t any, certainly not accidental ones, they didn’t make me like that, that makes no- how do you know?’
‘I wondered that too, but it seems because of your special status, the regular medical services keep an additional watching brief on you, just in case. It is not a jest and it is not a lie, the number is reliable- it’s working already.
The Force is already starting to cause me to lose my sense of humour. What are you going to do?’ He asked.
‘I- I’ve never been asked that, not in my own proper person. I have a dozen masks who could cope with that with ease and grace- but this comes from within, from behind the mask. I’ve ambushed myself.’
‘One of the reasons I do try to derive you nuts from time to time is the occasional glimpses I get of the real you, in the transitions between one mask and another.’ He said, not quite lying.
‘The real me barely has a face at all, Captain. A simple creature of duty, discipline, order, capable of pretence only because it is my duty to shield my comrades, to lie in a good cause. By the book, what I should do is turn myself in for termination.
We’re not allowed- but what does that mean I’m about to become?’ she said, trying to put it together.
‘Once you recover from the shock and start thinking clearly yourself, I’m sure you’ll work it out, but this is my best guess; you’ve never shown up as a potential because you know you’re not allowed, you’re effectively suppressing your own talent.’
So have I been, probably, he added to himself, and it is her who wants me to join the dark side after all, a little manipulative poetic justice won’t go astray.
‘What you need is someone to help you stop suppressing and put that energy and self- control to pushing the other way. To look for things you can do- when we are down to this fundamental a level anything I say is going to sound insultingly elementary, but that’s it.’ Now to see if she took the bait.
‘If I can, the power would be it’s own justification and I would be safe- but you?’
‘No-one else, is there?’ he said, gently. Believably. Don’t overdo it, he cautioned himself. ‘One thing. I’ll only be a couple of days ahead of you, and scrambling to do other things as well, so no doctrinaire solutions, all right? Quick, dirty, for a specific purpose, however it comes, and leaving a trail behind me for you to follow.’
‘This is such a fantastically deviant solution, I hardly know what to say.’ She said, baffled, half-stunned by hope and fear both.
‘It’s a lot better than the book solution.’ Lennart advised.
‘It does have the merit of leaving me less dead.’ She said, smiling at him and telling the part of her that was screaming in horror to shut up.
There was a loud alarm beep from the room’s com console. Lennart went over to it. ‘What is it?’
‘Jailbreak, Captain. The Rebels are trying to get out of the complex.’ Junior-navigator officer on deck.
‘I’ll be right there.’ Lennart said, shut it off and said to Aleph-3 ‘You had better rejoin your team, they’ll probably need you. Try not to get killed.’
‘Here.’ She said, throwing the unlit red-bladed sabre at him. ‘Try not to cut your feet off.’
He left for the bridge, she for the fighting.
Half way to the first rally point, she realised; whatever the truth was- and she wanted it to be true so badly- he had got her to promise him to give him a free hand in exchange for supporting her in her attempts to learn the force herself.
Tear down from within everything she had been taught, she thought then squashed it. Had she not, in effect, just been blackmailed into standing by and saying nothing while he explored the Light Side of the Force?
She leaned against the bulkhead and laughed and laughed. The sneaky, devious, twisted bastard- of all the crazy-rational sideways logic, this had to take the prize. It wouldn’t be that much of a problem in the long run; if methodology had anything at all to do with it, he would realise he belonged on the Dark Side yet.
As she neared the rally point, she heard raised voices. Adannan.
‘You are giving ground. This will not do. You must press in on them and destroy them.’ He was yelling.
‘I’m shaping the battlefield.’ QAG-111’s voice replied, as firmly as it dared. ‘What I must do is find the leaders and put them down, then herd the rest of them back into their cells, which are my troopers’ barrack blocks the rest of the time, neatly and efficiently.
I do not intend to be panicked by a bunch of unarmed chancers into staging a maximum collateral damage clusterkriff.’
'Smile when you say that.’ Adannan glared at him. ‘If you won’t do this properly, I will.’
...and things are going to get worse from there.
Thing is, Kor Alric ('Kor' is an honorific, incidentally) isn't that stupid, to march in to some kind of hundred to one faceoff. He grandstands and poses, but he knows his limitations- although he would never admit to them in public.
What he means to do is use his sensing abilities to find the flow of social power- identify the leading personalities, basically- and pick them off, hit and run, get the rebels running round in circles panicked and leaderless.
This plan could dovetail with the Legion's very well- if they hadn't just rubbed each other up the wrong way. The rebels are going to get more of a wndow of opportunity out of this than they deserve.
Aleph-3's midichlorian count is a hell of a lot higher than anyone, especially herself, was expecting, incidentally.
26b;
Captain of the Line Lennart was in the day cabin, essentially playing with the personnel records of the squadron; indulging in his favourite hobby of reading between the lines.
The advantage of holographic space is that you can shape it any way you like, customise it to your own ends. Lennart had the records laid out like an orchestra pit, little hovering head and shoulders official ID portraits, divided up by lines.
The brass section, Strike Line. Himself and Dordd he knew too well to need to look up- although it was interesting to watch the process as actual events morphed themselves down to lines on paper. Little baby white lies growing up to be big and strong.
Commander Stannis Lycarin of the Perseverance was an interesting case; he was another retread, joined during the clone wars, served with the womb-born part of the fleet initially, got transferred over, rode an old Servator for a while as gunnery officer, command for a year, then got reassigned as a Jedi General’s flag-lieutenant.
Switching from line to staff like that was usually a sign of someone who was being groomed for higher things. For the good of the service there should be a regular rotation for all, everybody agreed with it in theory but few bothered in practise.
That was an experience Lennart would have to quiz him about later, and see whether he had absorbed any of it. The most important thing he was still short of was line commanders.
After that, and apparently because of that, Lycarin was reassigned to a shoreside job, convoy planner and router for fleet support services. He had resigned just after the destruction of the last of the Confederate Remnants, become a security consultant.
That was a murky business, and Lennart was more worried about the contacts he would have made in that trade than any association with the Jedi.
He had found his way back into the Starfleet about five years ago, evidently sponsored or at least accepted by someone with the clout to overlook his background- internal politics again- and had shifted backwards and forwards between staff and line.
The pattern was the interesting part. He would crossreference that later to shifts in the sector fleet command structure, but it looked that as Lycarin rose in position himself, he was starting to turn on his patrons and bite the hand that fed him.
Twitches of conscience at last? Dormant sense of duty starting to reawaken? It was a generation later, about the right time for it. They would run through the start of the squadron exercise program, and then see what he had to say for himself, and about who his sponsors were and how his career had really ran.
The rest of the strike line consisted of two Fulgor, one their own capture; their commanders- Grey Princess’ new skipper had the background of a functionary, a being who had ticked the right boxes and kissed the right behinds to get to where he was.
What he was doing in command of a superfast pursuit frigate was anyone’s guess.
The other ship, Provornyy, was under the command of a notable maniac, Commander Jiae Sarlatt. An ex fighter pilot who had chosen to cross-badge rather than be promoted to a desk, and found himself responsible for something which could outrun ninety-eight percent of the Imperial fighter forces.
Lennart thought about what he could expect from them. Yeklendim, on the Grey Princess, he could trust to do the officially sanctioned right thing. Provided he could read through his notes from the academy fast enough to figure out what it was.
Sarlatt, he could trust to find a fight, whether it was the right thing or not.
Fulgors were well shielded, but not well armed for their size; only four twin MTL on a five hundred and sixty metre long ship. They were bulky enough and could take enough punishment to win a stand up fight against most of their own class, but that wasn’t the way to play it.
Hit and run, fire and evade, that was what you were supposed to do. Lennart doubted whether either of them had the subtlety for that, but he would reach them what he could.
Woodwind section, the sweep line. Obdurate under Raesene, well enough manned. They had reacted quickly and intelligently in that business with the, probably, Falcon. They needed a bit more practise on environmental awareness, true.
Two Servators, classified as fleet destroyers in the old, small-scale days and heavy corvettes now; Eludor and Nefarious, enthusiastic but inexperienced captains.
Two Bayonet, three Marauder, six requisitioned Customs Corvettes- Lennart had high hopes of the customs corvettes, they were fast, possessed sound antifighter weaponry, and most importantly were working ships, routinely busy.
The biggest problem, of course, was Voracious. As individuals, many of her crew were capable enough- but as a crew? There were three time limits on their operations; firstly the purely mechanical, the eleven day estimate for rebuilding Comarre Meridian’s bow.
Second the external political circumstances, what the rebels were up to. Third, internal politics, what the Moff decided he was going to do to avenge his humiliation and mutilation.
As far as training and working up went, Lennart was basing his operation plans on the mechanical time limit, and eleven days to form a crew was- before this, he would have laughed.
Imperial military regulations were realistic, in many respects- overly so in some; a bit more unreasonable optimism in the Starfighter Corps, assuming that they weren’t disposable, might do more good.
In some respects they were politically inspired, which amongst other things had led to a bizarre turf war between the Regulatory branch and the Imperial Security Bureau over whose responsibility Correct Thought in the fleet was, that Lennart had slipped through the cracks of more than once.
In others they were politically paralysed, which made it dangerous to be an innovator- but that was mainly a ground force problem.
The one thing they were supposed to be was uniform. In theory, interchangeability extended all the way up the line, one ship was supposed to be the same as any other of it’s class, run to the same schedule, the same performance targets, achieving the same standards of service at the same price.
Lennart understood that as an impossible goal to be approached asymptotically, distance made towards it but never quite attained- insofar as it was desirable at all. In theory, these ships should be instantly ready to go, already flawlessly integrated and doctrinally synchronised, able to deploy at a moment’s notice.
In practise, he had chosen a ship requiring eleven days’ repairs- and it occurred to him that it would be excellent seasoning for some of the squadrons’ engineering teams to rotate through the Comarre Meridian, to lessen the load on Black Prince’s spanner-slingers into the bargain- to give him that much time to integrate and synchronise.
Actually, he decided, he needn’t bother ordering that- if he could come up with that, Gethrim would be there long before him.
The preliminary minimum schedule he had drawn up had eight hours a day of additional training, four hours of ship exercises which were each captain’s own responsibility but that they would report on, four hours of squadron exercises.
Eighty-eight hours, when he would have welcomed as many days. Eighty left, now. They would have to look very closely at Voracious.
The first string section, Recon Line Alpha. Meridian, Demolisher, two Strike- one a minelayer variant- two Servator, three Carrack, two Bayonet, four Marauder.
The second thing he was seriously worried about. Barth- Elstrand had ran the situation fairly well up to a point, when he had underestimated Rebel resourcefulness and willingness to die for a cause.
That had nearly cost him his ship. Under a different Squadron commander, he could have been court martialled and possibly executed for his stupidity.
Lennart wanted his services rather than his head, not because he wasn’t concerned by the failure, but because he thought that a bitterly angry Elstrand, seeking to redeem himself and coached to build on what he had got right to avenge what he had got wrong, could do well.
The second string section, Recon Beta, a mirror image apart from a recon variant Strike cruiser in place of a minelayer. The third thing he was seriously worried about. Was Falldess qualified for line command? If she wasn’t, who was?
There was an obvious answer to that, and a tempting one- but it wasn’t necessarily honest. Falldess deserved a chance, but what would she make of it?
To get so far, to heavy frigate command with three strikes against her- from a backward world, the ”wrong” sex, and already had one ship shot out from under her- she had to be good.
Good enough to go further, or had she reached her peak with command of a large single ship? As a snap decision, he would say give her her chance.
Blackwood was an interesting experiment, the Strike variant. Visually very different, no curves at all, slabs and facets, and in performance just as strange- a shade over eight hundred ‘g’ faster and outgunning the existing versions sixteen to ten.
The only things she seemed to give up were troop and fighter capacity- and factors of safety.
Her captain seemed far too good to be true. Conor Kovall, Raithal graduate in his late twenties and one of Lennart’s ex-students in tactics. Looking at his record, Lennart found his stomach behaving strangely.
Kriff, he thought, when I spouted all that about thinking sideways, misleading and misdirecting, and movement as a weapon in itself, I didn’t expect to be taken this seriously.
The percussion section, the support he could expect from 851. Again, too familiar to need to check up on.
To extend the metaphor, the didgeridoo, wabbleboard and mouth organ section would be their enemies in the Rebel Alliance- a cluster of blank portraits to be filled in later.
Behind them, and this was where the orchestra metaphor really started to break down, their theoretical allies in the Vineland Sector Group. Electric guitar and octaventral heebiephone? That sounded about right.
He was still sorting, deciding who he needed to investigate in depth, when he received a call from the medical complex.
‘Captain, this is Surgeon-Lieutenant Bergeron, medical-general.’ That was the part of the medical branch responsible for the routine needs of the crew, the general-practitioner work. Diet control, exercise scheduling, fitness monitoring, illness rather than injury.
‘I have your numbers. The, ah, special numbers you asked for.’ Bergeron continued.
‘How?’ Lennart asked. There had been no disruption to the ship’s routine, nothing like testing the entire crew in rotation would cause.
‘We have enough samples left over from scheduled fitness tests to run a count without disturbing anybody.’ Bergeron said, avoiding the word ‘midichlorian’.
‘So who’s about to come down with a terminal case of self-importance?’ Lennart said, trying to ignore the sudden sinking feeling in his gut. ‘Tell me, Doc, I can take it.’
‘Captain, the numbers- the average count is between fifty and two hundred. They-‘
‘You might as well admit you’re talking about midichlorians. Enough secrecy.’
‘All right. Midichlorians are a symptom of the Force, not a cause. They are weakly correlated with several other factors, most of them to do with the nervous and immune systems.
Everybody has some midichlorian count. Below fifty is a cause for concern- a pointer towards clumsiness and susceptibility to disease. Most people score between fifty and two hundred, as I said- median value is one hundred and eight.
Their significance is exponential- two hundred is four times as potent as one hundred. Phenomena begin to become significant, heightened awareness, sharper senses especially peripheral vision, faster preconscious processing- what I believe used to be referred to as ‘force sensitivity’- around a value estimated as six hundred fifty to seven hundred.
Serious biomedical deviation sets in at a level estimated as the suspiciously round number of one thousand. This is the point at which we refer to someone ‘having the force’. I suspect there is considerable variation based on a range of other, mainly psychological, factors.’
‘Never mind the biomedical, it’s the lifestyle deviation that I’m worried about.’ Lennart said. ‘Who?’
‘There are two individuals on board with a midichlorian count over one thousand, four more with a count below that but over six hundred and fifty. Congratulations, Captain.’
‘Kriff. I suppose it’s too late to sue my parents. How bad is it?’
‘Captain, this is a good thing. Even once you subtract religious nonsense and the obviously legendary, there is still a weak but positive correlation between midichlorian count and sense acuity, brain function and metabolic efficiency.’
‘You’re avoiding the issue, Lieutenant.’ Lennart said, wishing he could.
‘Sir, the high positives are Engineer-Commander Mirannon, three thousand seven hundred and forty-four; and yourself. Five thousand one hundred and twenty- six.
The lower range of positives are Squadron Leader Jandras, six hundred ninety-eight; Surgeon-Lieutenant Commander Blei-Korberkk, seven hundred sixty-five; Senior Chief Pellor Aldrem, eight hundred and seventy- seven; Stormtrooper OB173, nine hundred and eighty- two.’
‘What do you suggest we do, form a support group?’ Lennart suggested sarcastically. ‘I can tell you right now that Commander Mirannon’s reaction is going to be “Kriff, I don’t have time for this, how do I get rid of them?” followed by some really complex experiments in applied radiation.
I suppose I should use some sort of jedi mind power on you now, but I’ll just have to make it an order instead; scramble them.
Wipe the names, randomise the service numbers, disassociate the secondary data. Everybody’s. Then-‘ and the next move in the sequence of events would be Adannan realising he had been fed data salad, reacting badly and going to Medical to wring out someone’s head.
‘Belay that. Don’t bother. Just file it under patient confidentiality and leave it with me, I suppose Blei-Korberkk already knows, I’ll notify everyone else involved. Out.’
Lennart leaned back in his chair, feet up, looked at the deckhead. He hated the idea. Had done for more than twenty years.
Two contradictory gut reactions; the first was that it was cheating.
Being in touch with some sort of cosmic energy field that let you outreact blaster bolts, walk on molten lava, fall hundreds of metres without injury, play with people’s minds like putty- it was a vitiation of all the real physical and mental effort that normal people expended on their lives. That he had.
Not that he was averse to taking any chance that offered, any advantage that could be had; but- all arrogance aside, he thought, not quite meaning it, I am a damn’ good warship commander; and I like the notion of a level playing field, not because of any abstract commitment to fairness, but because then I can measure just how far ahead of my colleagues and rivals I am.
If we are all playing by the same set of rules, then one man’s superiority over the next is a matter of skill and judgement, qualities I have spent so much blood and sweat to acquire. So hooray for the even chance, or at least as even as evolution rather than magic can make it.
To find out that one has been, inadvertently, playing to a different set of rules all along, devalues all that was done.
The other gut reaction was that perhaps the Jedi had come close to paying a fair price for their abilities, in their dissociation from and abandonment of normal life. Contradictory, but instinctive responses didn’t have to make sense.
It was a price he absolutely didn’t want to pay. The Jedi- what had he described them as? Hyperzombies? Overpowered divorcees from normality. Fatally out of touch.
And for their failures, for allowing the Galaxy to slide into the clone wars, perhaps extinction was fair return. The alternative to the jedi, however, how well did they compare?
Had not Dooku, count Serenno, been among their number? A renegade jedi, who had relearned the habits of the station he had been born to, who had probably always been allowed to get away with a little more than most- even if they were unbribable per se, the aura of his family’s power and influence would have earned him goodwill.
The enemy of the republic, and probably that of the Empire had he lived. Other notable non-Jedi wielders of the force, non-adherents to the Code- you had to go back to the Light and Darkness War that had preceded the Ruusan Reformation to find much about them. What that said of them was not good.
Most of the histories were written by jedi, and therefore classified- or by the footsoldiers of either side, therefore partial.
Lennart could not dismiss them on that account, but he did not look forward to the prospect of leafing through several million descriptions of mud and sore feet to find the parts that mattered to him right now.
Possibly time, he decided, to spend some of the ship’s operating budget on more protocol droids.
It had largely been a ground war; what naval operations there had been were largely assault landings and raids, and had been conducted by professionals on both sides, revealing relatively little of the personalities involved.
What it did was disturbing. The Dark Jedi had taken their enmity very seriously, and their darkness likewise- as if it was an inevitable polarisation, no other colours in the spectrum but black and white.
They had been deliberately and self- consciously ‘evil’, and if they had missed any opportunity of proving it, it was solely due to being too wrapped up in the drama of their lives.
What was there about the force, Lennart thought, that destroyed a man’s ability to think clearly? Was it such an intensely personal thing, this open channel to the universe, that it eliminated middle ground and made all things very personal?
He sensed that he was about to find out. Perversely, he decided to refuse to listen to the feeling, and was going back over the Sector Group’s more distinguished officers when the com terminal beeped.
He ignored that too. It beeped louder, and when it started to give him voice alert he pulled it’s plug out.
Fnord and damnation, he thought, realising; the force is starting to get to me already. Sheepishly, he plugged it back in, realised it was probably Aleph-3, and went to meet her.
The rest of the command team were still there, looking with interest at the colour-shifting red/blue iridescent armoured stormtrooper; who was maintaining a forceful and dignified silence.
‘Gentlemen,’ Lennart said, ‘I am going to ask your indulgence to share some of my troubles with you, and a partial explanation of how the situation managed to get this bad.’
Aleph-3 glared at him as if her look could melt his skull. Come to think of it, someone with the Force probably could. He smiled back at her and said ‘Could you start by explaining your own part?’
‘Captain, I had wanted to do this in private.’ She snarled.
‘We are, or at least as privately as I choose to. Who I choose to turn to for support is my problem, after all, is it not?’
She should argue the point, but decided just to get on with it. The mistakes and the madness could be patched up later, the manner mattered less than doing this at all.
‘Officially, I am a scout. Deliberate misdesignation- we are manhunters, wherever possible Jedi hunters. A relic of the days of the Purge, when the clones were all there was to do the job. We also have the responsibility of detecting and referring for recruitment those with potential, who do not hold to the ways of the Jedi.’
‘Hold on a moment. Non-jedi force users? Didn’t they try to overthrow the republic a thousand years ago?’ Brenn asked.
‘Captain, this is far too public.’ Aleph-3 rounded on him. ‘This is not a matter to be spoken of.’ She said, half angry half pleading.
‘Then you’re going to have a stang difficult time telling me about it, aren’t you?’ Lennart said, mercilessly. ‘Come on. It’s not as if we are speaking of some sort of barbarian cabal, a secret criminal society too foul to speak it’s name, is it?’
She looked at him in bogglement. Which way was he going? Who was he trying to convince, and of what?
‘That was the name their enemies gave them, certainly. Did you expect the Jedi, of all people, to be free of hypocrisy?’ she said.
‘We,’ she said addressing the rest of the command team, ‘reported Captain Lennart as having force potential. As being potentially able to wield great personal power, as potentially subject to Special Order Sixty-Six. That is the reason Adannan is here.’
There were angry mutterings over that.
‘No, it isn’t.’ Lennart said. ‘I’m certainly an en passant objective, but there is another target involved in this that he is making a play for, that if his superiors haven’t put two and two together you may want to clue them in on.’
‘What?’ she said, guessing what he meant but knowing to play the part. ‘Excuse me? None of this should be spoken of at all except behind closed doors- What is this for? What are you trying to achieve?’
‘As far as I can see, nearly everyone who the Force curses- yes, I said curses- is warped by it into an ascetic or an animal. Some manage to boomerang backwards and forwards between the two.
Neither of those is me. I may have to do this because someone has to counter Adannan. Someone has to be able to nullify him, and I seem to have got the job.
I’m telling you all this,’ he told his command team, ‘because I do not want to be either isolate or iconoclast- although I would settle for impostor if I could get away with it for long enough. I am going to need your help to hold my head together.
I will not resign my commission. I am an officer in the Imperial Starfleet first and last, and I will drink no more of this poisoned chalice than I have to.’
Aleph-3 moved so little during that, no longer arguing or advising, face statue still, Lennart wondered if he had shocked her into catatonia. Actually, the situation was becoming so strange, so fast, she was seriously considering it as an option. Keel over, and let someone else deal with the problem. Couldn’t do that, had to try.
‘Captain Lennart, I have come up against people who would die for the sake of the legend, who threw their lives away for the sake of fanning a tiny spark, who would plunder and murder for the sake of the Force.
Also, you’re not going to believe me unless I admit, with. Rejecting the force-‘ which wasn’t exactly what he had said, true- ‘is not unknown- but it is institutionalisable.’
‘What sort of institution?’ Brenn asked.
‘One with “join us or die” engraved over the door.’ Lennart said. ‘Which, as far as I’m concerned, says absolutely everything there is to say about how much fun this is likely to be.’ He looked at Aleph-3, waiting for her to contradict him.
‘A high proportion of the Imperial ruling class- far higher than would ever publicly say so- believe the force to be real and powerful.
The Jedi Order was never fully accounted for, now appears to be trying to drag itself out of it’s grave with the help of the Alliance, and new potential emerges at the same rate it always did. “Join us or die” is not an unrealistic take on the situation.’ She said.
‘Are we talking about some sort of variation on the Invisible War, here?’ Rythanor asked. ‘Spies and counterspies?’
‘As invisible as lightsabres, force lightning and telekinetic blasts get, but yes, that is a very good summary.’ Aleph-3 admitted, silently thanking him for steering just close enough to the truth that she could slingshot round it to a more acceptable conclusion.
‘And, unfortunately, a fluke of heritage has landed me in the middle of it.’ Lennart said. ‘You can draw up your own conspiracy theories about what’s been happening behind the scenes these last thousand years.
Maybe we could turn it into some kind of writing contest, help pass the time-‘ the idea that they were going to have any spare time got a nervous laugh- ‘but any theories about the last thirty, keep them to yourselves- for your own safety.’
‘Not in the middle, Captain. On one specific and particular side. There is no middle ground.’ Aleph-3 cautioned, sternly.
‘Then perhaps it’s time someone invented one.’ Lennart said, and turned to the command team. ‘Our professional job hasn’t gone away, but I do need to ask you to do as much of it as you can. As I do try to explore this, I may change, become excessively cranky.
Part of that will undoubtedly be due to lack of sleep, but one of the worst effects of the Force as I read of it is that it either chills your temper to nothing, or fans it to a raving inferno. No prizes for guessing which way Adannan went.’ A grunt from Brenn, a nervous giggle from Wathavrah.
‘Gentlemen, I’m cracking bad jokes to keep my own spirits up. The prospect of what this could do to me terrifies me.’
‘Don’t worry, skipper.’ Wathavrah said. ‘We’ll stand by you.’
‘Tell me that again in a month’s time and I’ll be a happier man.’ Lennart said. ‘Start of third watch, we have an internal exercise- convoy duty. First watch- midnight to 4 am, and why not?- we have a squadron level hunter/killer exercise, them chasing us. We may as well begin as we mean to go on. Thank you, and dismissed.’
They left, aleph-3 remained. When they were out of earshot she rounded on him and said ‘Have you any idea just how many separate precepts- of both sides of the force- you’ve just violated? How many reasons you have given light- and dark- to turn on you?’
‘Thereby going even further to convince me that “A pox on both your houses” is the only reasonable standpoint. Is there no polychromatic side of the force?’ Lennart said.
‘Nervous tension brings out the comedian in you, I see.’ She said, changing her line of approach. ‘It’s not the force; it’s power that has no sense of humour. Being able to mock them is a poor defensive measure compared to reaching out for power of your own.’
‘If there’s one thing that convinces me not to trust you, it’s how readily you can go from one mask to the next. I infuriate you to the point of wanting to bite my throat out, and you fume a little, remember the objective and slip on another face.’ he said.
‘What else do you expect from someone who was raised and trained to believe in herself as nothing, the objective as everything?’ Aleph- 3 said, hoping for a simple answer.
‘Fewer masks.’ Lennart said. ‘You have outgrown your station, your duties have changed you; you’ve become almost as much of an oddball, a misfit, as anyone on this ship.’
‘I am as loyal, and as capable within my ambit, as any of you. If there is comparison, I am certainly a better apple than you are a peelifruit, with a power you are having to be dragged kicking and screaming towards learning to use.’ She snapped.
‘A better apple than I am a peelifruit- how many of the Emperor’s Whiteskulls do you think could have come up with that?’ Lennart said. ‘Speaking of objections to the force, do you know exactly how close you come to it yourself?’
‘If I was actually capable of it, I would never have made it out of the clone cylinder. Past that, I never asked because I’m not allowed to know. It would be forbidden- but agonisingly close, close enough sometimes to smell what my targets are going to do next. It doesn’t work on you.’
‘So close that I think it’s only your own mental blocks that are preventing you from reaching for the force yourself. Nine hundred and eighty-two.
The difference in use between that and a score less than two percent higher, it’s less than the difference between a good and a bad mood. You have the potential. If you’re prepared to break the mould and reach out for it.’ Lennart dropped his bomb.
She genuinely lost her composure completely then, for the first time in her life. The universe yawned wide open around her and her intellect took wing and flew away, leaving a confused mass.
‘But…but…that’s impossible, it just isn’t, there aren’t any, certainly not accidental ones, they didn’t make me like that, that makes no- how do you know?’
‘I wondered that too, but it seems because of your special status, the regular medical services keep an additional watching brief on you, just in case. It is not a jest and it is not a lie, the number is reliable- it’s working already.
The Force is already starting to cause me to lose my sense of humour. What are you going to do?’ He asked.
‘I- I’ve never been asked that, not in my own proper person. I have a dozen masks who could cope with that with ease and grace- but this comes from within, from behind the mask. I’ve ambushed myself.’
‘One of the reasons I do try to derive you nuts from time to time is the occasional glimpses I get of the real you, in the transitions between one mask and another.’ He said, not quite lying.
‘The real me barely has a face at all, Captain. A simple creature of duty, discipline, order, capable of pretence only because it is my duty to shield my comrades, to lie in a good cause. By the book, what I should do is turn myself in for termination.
We’re not allowed- but what does that mean I’m about to become?’ she said, trying to put it together.
‘Once you recover from the shock and start thinking clearly yourself, I’m sure you’ll work it out, but this is my best guess; you’ve never shown up as a potential because you know you’re not allowed, you’re effectively suppressing your own talent.’
So have I been, probably, he added to himself, and it is her who wants me to join the dark side after all, a little manipulative poetic justice won’t go astray.
‘What you need is someone to help you stop suppressing and put that energy and self- control to pushing the other way. To look for things you can do- when we are down to this fundamental a level anything I say is going to sound insultingly elementary, but that’s it.’ Now to see if she took the bait.
‘If I can, the power would be it’s own justification and I would be safe- but you?’
‘No-one else, is there?’ he said, gently. Believably. Don’t overdo it, he cautioned himself. ‘One thing. I’ll only be a couple of days ahead of you, and scrambling to do other things as well, so no doctrinaire solutions, all right? Quick, dirty, for a specific purpose, however it comes, and leaving a trail behind me for you to follow.’
‘This is such a fantastically deviant solution, I hardly know what to say.’ She said, baffled, half-stunned by hope and fear both.
‘It’s a lot better than the book solution.’ Lennart advised.
‘It does have the merit of leaving me less dead.’ She said, smiling at him and telling the part of her that was screaming in horror to shut up.
There was a loud alarm beep from the room’s com console. Lennart went over to it. ‘What is it?’
‘Jailbreak, Captain. The Rebels are trying to get out of the complex.’ Junior-navigator officer on deck.
‘I’ll be right there.’ Lennart said, shut it off and said to Aleph-3 ‘You had better rejoin your team, they’ll probably need you. Try not to get killed.’
‘Here.’ She said, throwing the unlit red-bladed sabre at him. ‘Try not to cut your feet off.’
He left for the bridge, she for the fighting.
Half way to the first rally point, she realised; whatever the truth was- and she wanted it to be true so badly- he had got her to promise him to give him a free hand in exchange for supporting her in her attempts to learn the force herself.
Tear down from within everything she had been taught, she thought then squashed it. Had she not, in effect, just been blackmailed into standing by and saying nothing while he explored the Light Side of the Force?
She leaned against the bulkhead and laughed and laughed. The sneaky, devious, twisted bastard- of all the crazy-rational sideways logic, this had to take the prize. It wouldn’t be that much of a problem in the long run; if methodology had anything at all to do with it, he would realise he belonged on the Dark Side yet.
As she neared the rally point, she heard raised voices. Adannan.
‘You are giving ground. This will not do. You must press in on them and destroy them.’ He was yelling.
‘I’m shaping the battlefield.’ QAG-111’s voice replied, as firmly as it dared. ‘What I must do is find the leaders and put them down, then herd the rest of them back into their cells, which are my troopers’ barrack blocks the rest of the time, neatly and efficiently.
I do not intend to be panicked by a bunch of unarmed chancers into staging a maximum collateral damage clusterkriff.’
'Smile when you say that.’ Adannan glared at him. ‘If you won’t do this properly, I will.’
...and things are going to get worse from there.
Thing is, Kor Alric ('Kor' is an honorific, incidentally) isn't that stupid, to march in to some kind of hundred to one faceoff. He grandstands and poses, but he knows his limitations- although he would never admit to them in public.
What he means to do is use his sensing abilities to find the flow of social power- identify the leading personalities, basically- and pick them off, hit and run, get the rebels running round in circles panicked and leaderless.
This plan could dovetail with the Legion's very well- if they hadn't just rubbed each other up the wrong way. The rebels are going to get more of a wndow of opportunity out of this than they deserve.
Aleph-3's midichlorian count is a hell of a lot higher than anyone, especially herself, was expecting, incidentally.
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-13 08:35pm, edited 1 time in total.
Nicely done. To be honest, I'm tempted to pull out the red marker right now, but I'll hold off until I actually have time to do a good job.
I like how your chapters have gone back to their usual length, despite you dividing them into a, b, and now c, parts.
Good update. And I liked how the hint showed up in the story.
I like how your chapters have gone back to their usual length, despite you dividing them into a, b, and now c, parts.
Good update. And I liked how the hint showed up in the story.
∞
XXXI
-
Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
That took a lot longer to write than I expected- a certain amount of real life chaos involving a dubious job interview and a funeral, not related.
27a- and yes, they have pretty much grown back to six pages, that seems to be a sort of natural length- began as a three element chapter, the rebel escape attempt, Lieutenant Aldrem and team on board the Dynamic as the instruction detachment, and the first full up squadron exercise where we got a good look at Falldess, Calliphant et al in their professional aspect; but the rebel escape started to grow.
To be honest, it was orignally intended as a framing device. I thought it would be inevitable that they would try to escape, extremely unlikely that they would get anywhere, and basically intended to use it as a backdrop for the first face to face encounter between Aleph-3 and Adannan. It sort of grew, into this.
Ch 27
A blast door opened and closed; best avoid the whole business, she thought. Especially Adannan.
On internal squad net, ‘Aleph-3 to Aleph-1; location and instructions?’
‘Corridor 82- J37A, rejoin.’
Because of the possibility of capture of helmets, the tacnet at every level was filled with short, staccato fragments of code. The situation seemed to be that the Rebels were trying to break each other out, and were at least initially willing to take catastrophic losses to take out guard troopers and steal their guns.
So far, the troopers had lost less than a squad, the Rebels over a hundred blasted, grenaded and flamed- but Adannan was right. They had given ground to preserve their line, keep lateral communications not so much to prevent casualties as to prevent any weapons falling into the rebels’ hands.
They were holding the armoury block and a line of communication to it, and that was where the rebels were gathering.
There would be one good fight there, with most of the boarding specialist batallion holding the armoury as anvil and the rest swinging in around it as hammer, and roll them back from there. A clean crisp plan, one sound military act.
Provided the Rebels did nothing outrageously brilliant, and nobody on the Imperial side did anything outrageously silly. Such as Adannan barging in like a loose rancor.
His entourage were following him as he shoved past the stormtroopers into the barrack block.
‘I said it was going to be a bloody business.’ M’Lanth was saying. He had less hair and more burnt tissue than he used to, but he didn’t expect to live long enough for it to matter.
He and four others had charged down a flamer- using stormie, he had survived because the others had caught the worst of it.
‘There’s a batallion of them or more, we have five working rifles, a flamethrower, and four sidearms- and the white hats know all about blaster powerpack bombs. How are we doing with the doors?’
‘Not good.’ One of the pilots from the Penthesilea said- he had one jacket sleeve pinned up. ‘First, you have to catch a mouse droid, dismember and rig a code cracker out of the bits. After the first time we did that the rest of them started running. It’s taking us ten minutes to crack each cell.’
‘So we would be better off using what guns we do have to shoot locks off and the like.’ M’Lanth suggested.
‘Once we get them out, where do they go?’ his opposite number said. ‘We need an escape route. The air vents are grilled off, we even tried the sewer line.’
‘What happened?’ M’Lanth asked.
‘Osmotic filter. Guy who touched it, the flesh started melting off his hand.’
‘You’d think they’d have put a dianoga down there, if only for tradition’s sake. Do you think we could- no. Even if we could unscrew it and use it, throw it over a stormie like a net, it wouldn’t get through their armour.’ M’Lanth thought about it. ‘Power lines, no. Obviously not. Have they left nothing behind?’
‘Nothing with energy in, when they moved out they cleared out. None of the cubbyholes, hides, nothing like that.’
‘Souvenirs, spares, rainy day hideaways, typical barrack room crud- everything, everywhere?’
‘They were thorough. Took most of their kit, barely left a-’ Both of them realised, and said at the same time, ‘holochess console.’
‘Do you think we can do anything meaningful with incoherent light?’ M’Lanth said, grinning. ‘Illusion, failing that a flare?’
‘I’ll do that, you work on plan B.’
‘B? I think we’re going to need D through Q.’ M’Lanth admitted. ‘Whiteheads aren’t as dumb as they’re supposed to be.’
‘Let’s hope we get as far as X and Y.’ one pilot said to the other.
‘First, Second and Third Furniture Attack Squads ready, squadron leader.’ The petty officer that reported to M’Lanth said.
‘Right.’ M’Lanth addressed the cluster of volunteers. ‘Doublethink aside- we’ll be going down three parallel corridors, each squad pushes a mobile barricade, throws as much crap as it can at them from behind it.
We’re probably all going to get killed, but I want to loosen their line, push them back, hit them from the sides, maybe get to one of the armoury blocks. Riflemen, shoot the squad support gunners first.
This is basically a human wave, we all know how stupid an idea that is but we haven’t got anything better. Let’s go.’
The barricades were mounds of junk. There was little else they could be in the time and with the parts, so it would have to do. Lockers, benches, mattresses, tables, cooking gear- pots and pans and worktable surfaces, ripped out appliances; name it, it was there.
All three lines of attack and three others would be covered by flares from holo- gear, exploding flamer canisters or both; the three others just to create a little confusion.
What was he supposed to say at a moment like this, M’Lanth wondered. Isn’t “who wants to live forever” traditional? Personally, I would settle for, oh, fifty years longer than the other guy. Chance would be a fine thing. ‘Go.’
What he expected was to be huddling behind and shooting wildly over a barricade of junk that was disintegrating and being torn apart by a red rain of blaster bolts, shoving it forward and throwing back burning bits, and probably getting blown up.
There were the sounds and flashes of that happening- but not to them.
As they pushed forward in a yelling, groaning charge, the stray thought came to him that there were very few people throughout history who had ever gone into combat armed and armoured with a dishwasher. Unfortunately, up to the point where they hit the cross-corridor, it seemed to be working.
‘Oh, no, no, no. This is not what I intended to happen.’ Adannan said, as if he was berating the universe for not following his orders. He could sense it start to go wrong. ‘Don’t they trust me?’
‘My Lord,’ Laurentia answered, ‘would you? The Legion reorganised their line to come out to escort us.’
‘Somehow, the rebels fluked their way into striking at an unprotected corridor in mid shuffle.
The only, faint, impossible chance they have and it lands right in their laps. The universe is the wrong shape.’ He screamed the last part, force lightning dancing around one hand. Somebody would be hurt for this.
M’Lanth couldn’t quite believe it; the squad they had been about to charge head on into had moved. T- junction; to his left the backs of the squad moving to take up a new position, starting to turn to face, to his right the replacements moving in.
‘You lot that way, you lot this way, go.’ Half to charge each group.
At point blank, close quarters, the stormtroopers had no line of shot that didn’t include one of their own. Last ditch procedure would be one squad opening up with everything it had, accepting the friendly for the sake of the enemy casualties- and the junior squad leader called for that, but there were too many rebels.
Only two shots came from the rebels; one miss, one straight through the head of the T-21 gunner. One flechette volley turned half the rebel leaders into red sludge, a crackle of individual shots- dropping most of the rebel front line, but there were more behind.
One blaster shot hit a rebel who was using a gelfoam mattress as cover; getting that to burn was quite a feat, but it did. The rebel soldier collapsed, the man behind him picked up the burning mat and threw it at the flechette gunner- it draped itself over the stormtrooper’s head and shoulders, blinding him.
Immediate action drill, take the helmet off, ignore the smell and keep firing; he did, but before he could shoot a broken slab of table hit him in the head, knocking him down and out.
Then it was fists and feet, rifle butts and improvised weapons at point blank. Flashes of the action;
M’Lanth faking going for the T-21, a stormtrooper about to shoot him in the kidneys suddenly having his feet swept out from under him and his head bounced off the deck;
One of the stormtroopers using the butt of his carbine to parry a wok aside, swinging the gun round for a zero-centimetre range shot, what was left of the rebel collapsing against him and pulling him down, where he was stabbed through the neck with a shard of deck plating;
The squad sargeant killing a rebel with a buttstroke to the side of the temple, grabbing the reb’s cooking knife and gutting another with it, four of them grabbing him and dragging him down, one trying to beat him to death with a footlocker.
At even odds, the stormtroopers would have taken it easily. At ten to one odds, they could have killed enough of the rebels fast enough that the rest would have broken and ran.
Being outnumbered thirty to one by do or die fanatics was too much. They went down fighting, but they went down.
The Imperial plan was swiftly revised and updated, the rest of the batallion started to fold itself in around them, englobe, lay down fire and destroy; as per the rebel plan, they picked up what weapons they could and headed for the main armoury block.
Adannan thought he had it. Had identified the man he was after, the spiritual leader of this little uprising. Time to have some fun.
Team Omega-17-Blue happened to be stalking the same target.
‘It hasn’t occurred to him that if he and his soft-skinned team weren’t there, we could gas the rebels.’ Aleph-1 said. ‘We wouldn’t even need to make pizza. He hasn’t done anything particularly renegade yet, so we can’t catch him in the crossfire.’
‘You know about that?’ Aleph-3 asked her leader.
‘Of course. Do you think I hadn’t considered the possibility? Never mind that you get the shakes whenever the Captain comes into sight.’
‘I thought I hid it better than that.’ She said, avoiding the personal in favour of the professional.
‘We’ve been working together for thirteen years. No chance. There is this; Adannan will want to interview you. Whatever you hide, given a clear mind he’ll figure it out. Confront him now. Stage- manage at least the first impression.’
‘Right. Never mind the rebels in the way.’ She said, raising her DC-15 long rifle.
‘Consider them a fringe benefit.’
In their primary role, they carried all sorts of odd and distinctive devices, with a heavy emphasis on close quarters; flechette and flamer, arc blasters, riot guns, scatter and auto-blasters, grenade launchers and a whole library of projectile weapons.
In the open field with the rest of the legion, they functioned as a group of sniper pairs, spotter and shooter.
Perversely, Aleph-3 liked the old heavy rifle as a close quarters weapon, precisely because it was a clumsy beast that required a lot of positive control- it was impossible to be casual or careless with.
It was long and rugged enough to use as a quarterstaff if they got really close, and powerful enough to shoot through walls if necessary.
Or blow pieces off them. The first batch of rebels they encountered looked like they were trying to break open a barrack block door by hitting it with a mouse droid. Only four of them.
All of them took at least two shots at first instance and another two before what was left hit the ground. Not overkill as much as warmup. The rebels had no perimeter or flank security, mainly because they had nothing to do about it if it did happen.
There was a scatter, in many cases a splatter, of Rebel wounded and dead; the incapable would be rounded up, the still dangerous were neutralised- stunshot or buttstroked- in passing.
A three horse race, then, between an Alliance fighter pilot, a Dark Jedi in the process of throwing caution to the wind and a team of Jedi-hunters on the verge of considering him fair game.
M’Lanth knew he was out of time, it had become a fight rather than an escape; and possibly not even that, perhaps an act of sabotage was the most to be had. He and the survivors of the assault party were fighting a very literal running battle, with the disadvantage that the enemy knew exactly where they were going.
The armoury block extended several levels. No sense doing the obvious. Up? Unfeasible. Down?
Lift the deck plates, avoid the pipe ducts that were covered by the ship’s tensor field and their guns would do nothing to, wriggle down to the deck below; four stormtroopers on guard, a half squad, called the alarm and opened fire.
M’Lanth flattened himself on the deck as he hit, one of the stormtroopers just a little too slow tracking him shot him in the buttock as he lay prone; adrenalin kept him moving long enough to fire two shots at the flamer trooper.
Calling them flamers was an anachronism; it was a thermal plasma weapon, to all intents and purposes- a very, very hot steam gun.
The stormtrooper dropped, shot in the arm, but not before he had burned the next three rebels down from the deckhead. Their charcoaled remains tumbled down on the rebel pilot, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
The rest hurled themselves at the stormtroopers, clambering over their own dead to do so; the armoury door was right there at the end of the corridor. There were fewer of them left, now. Less than half those who had been let out of their cells, but they had reached their first goal.
No time to faff about with security codes; plant blaster powerpack bombs on the lock and hinges and stand back.
Not far enough; the blast killed one of their own and scarred others, but it worked- the door slowly toppled outwards. They charged in and were totally baffled.
The first thing they saw in front of them was a mess of plating, spars and a squared off cylinder that probably was some kind of generator. The only obvious weapon was barbette mounted and fifteen metres long.
There was a label on the wall above; AT-AT to AT-HE conversion kit.
Another three of those along the opposite wall; on the same wall, four sets of seats and speeder bike garage facilities, AT-HE to AT-AT conversion kits.
The rebels looked at them, desperately scanning for something, anything useful; short of firing up the generator, connecting it up and trying to traverse the gunship-walker’s heavy laser, nothing.
The flamer trooper was still alive, and he laughed at them.
‘You dozy kriffwits, what do you think ‘armoured legion’ means? We’re mostly vehicles, what were you expecting?’
They shot him again, he slumped. They were still ransacking the armoury block with it’s near nothing of use when the lights flickered out- telekinetically smashed- and were replaced by a single bar of red light in the corridor.
Most of the rebels still outside the armoury, forming some kind of defence line, started shooting; Adannan laughed at them, intercepted the bolts- looking effortlessly at ease doing it.
Bounced most of them back, hit a couple of the rebels- then, just because he could, found the only heavy weapon they had, a squad T-21, and blasted the operator to abstract carbon sculpture with force lightning.
‘Where is he?’ Adannan bellowed at the rebels. ‘Where is your leader?’
No answer; he charged forwards into the middle of them, sliced a blaster rifle in half, let a punch slam into him, took it like it was nothing, with an open palm strike pushed the attacker’s heart out of the back of his chest.
He gutted one man with the sabre, felt a hand grab his wrist, another sieze the sabre hilt; sent two bolts of black light flying out, blasted the life out of both men, instantly withering them to the look of year-old corpses. An interesting power; he must try it on another force user sometime. In fact he planned to.
He wrested the sabre free, flashed a man’s head off, leapt back out of the way of another two trying to grab him and drag him down, looked around for a worthy target.
M’Lanth had barely recovered consciousness; he was seriously hurt, hazy with pain and relying on adrenalin and endorphins to function even marginally. But he did have a flamethrower.
The stormtrooper who had it before didn’t need it any more, it was the first thing M’Lanth could find to hand and the only thing he could reach. He laid it on target and squeezed the trigger.
There were powers and techniques that could block a flamethrower blast; fastest and easiest way, kill the wielder. Too late for that. Telekinetic barrier was a trick he had never learned- and absorb and dissipate, well.
He called on the force- demanded that it aid him- to absorb the heat in the plasma stream; but he had never been good at that, and it took nearly all of his concentration to hold it back, splash it away.
He advanced slowly towards the prone, charred and bleeding rebel, fighting his way upstream to the man he recognised as his chosen target; then suddenly felt a wide, hollow pain- of course. One of the other rebels had had the presence of mind to shoot him in the back. How silly of him not to have foreseen that.
Adannan’s entourage had been, as usual, ordered to hold the ring while their master moved in, unwilling to accept help or share kills. They were too far away to help, but Omega-17-Blue had been following him, and assisting the boarding batallion by burning through any particularly stubborn knots of rebels.
They saw him collapse on to his knees, distracted badly enough by the wound that his clothes and hair started to burn under the thin, bright plasma stream leaking through his defences.
It was the curse of their nature, absolute obedience to orders, regardless of how politically or tactically insane they might be. The outer cordon around the armoury complex had known they were doing a suicidally stupid thing, moving out before they were properly relieved, but the old imperatives had kicked in.
Aleph- 1 shot from the right inwards, Aleph-3 put one shot clean through M’lanth’s heart, wishing she was allowed to shoot Adannan as neatly, then switched target to two rebels from the left inwards, sidestepping away from a return shot and nailing both.
The rest of the team picked and shot for their targets, kept their heads, laid down fire. For all the guard and garrison duty they ended up pulling, it was not the stormtrooper corps’ highest talent.
They were, arguably, not even particularly good at defensive warfare, tending to turn in solid, uninspired performances. Given half a chance to counterattack, though, they were in their element.
The rebels outside the armoury melted, dropped, blasted through, pieces blown off. Some tried to shelter behind their own dead; another thing the old heavy rifles were good for.
That done, two squads of the boarding batallion went in to retake and secure the armoury. Adannan was back on his feet, one hand over the wound, looking disgusted with himself.
Aleph-3 strode up to him, took off her helmet, tucked it under her arm and held out a hand. ‘My lord, I believe you wanted to talk to me. Watcher 22173.’
He ignored her hand- it was a simple probing gesture anyway, fishing for how off balance he was. ‘I wanted him alive.’ He said, pointing- with the sabre, she swayed out of the way- at M’Lanth’s dead body.
‘No orders were given to that effect.’ She said, as if it explained everything- playing slightly dumb. ‘Standing orders categorise persons of your type as to be protected. It was him or you, my lord, I had no choice.’
‘Do you shelter behind your standing orders often?’
Oh, kriff it, she thought. Maybe if I provoke him, he will attack me and what little sense of self preservation I have will kick in profoundly enough to overcome the imperatives and let me take him. Keep that in mind as plan- well, the rebels have used up most of the alphabet around here, plan Z.
‘My lord, they proved little shelter to the troopers of the boarding batallion who were lured out of position by your presence. Your arrival in the combat zone proved to be a great asset to the rebels.’ She said, sternly.
‘How dare you criticise me.’ He shouted. ‘I am an agent of the council, I am your lord and master, and if I choose to squander you by any means, deliberate or accidental, it is of no importance.’
What was that line Lennart kept quoting? “If you forget my rank, Sire, I will forget yours?” Saying that really would get her killed. ‘That’s in standing orders too, Lord.’ She actually said.
‘So you think that I am a dangerously amateurish fool, in love with his own power, and a hindrance and a hazard to the professionals?’ he asked her, tone deceptively light.
‘As far as infantry work goes, my lord, yes.’
‘You’re not supposed to have a backbone.’ He said. Oh kriff, she thought, time to book an appointment with a cybersurgeon. ‘The moral courage to tell your leader that he’s being an idiot was never supposed to be part of the package. Where did you get it from?’
‘Osmosis, my lord- from our targets. So many neophytes prepared to challenge the Empire with nothing more than an ancient religion and a shiny stick, in the face of their heroic stupidity how could we who have skill and experience show anything less?’
Adannan laughed, then winced slightly as the pain got to him. ‘I stopped most of that. Not all, it seems. You are starting to sound almost as worthy of investigation as Captain Lennart is.’
‘Set a deviant to catch a deviant, Lord? In any case we are all put through positive vetting on a continuing basis, and I would be surprised if there were not other checks on our loyalty and stability that we do not know of.’
‘Which you are watching for little tells, accidental confirmation on my part.’ Adannan said; she looked away. ‘Does Lennart realise he has potential to be strong in the force?’ he changed subject suddenly.
She could think of lies to tell, but none that would withstand cross-examination. ‘Yes, Lord. His willingness, however…‘
‘You have spoken with him about this?’ Adannan said.
‘My Lord, he does not want the force. I have tried to do the groundwork, help persuade him.’
That was not desperately unusual in someone who could not have the force; but in a sensitive, who could sense the potential of what they could do, it was almost pathological.
‘How can he reject it? He knows what the penalty is for doing so?’ Adannan asked.
‘He knows, Lord, and although he speaks of being cursed by the force, I believe he will bow to the inevitable- although he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming towards it, at first.’ Which was more or less true.
‘H’m. The kicking and screaming, I can stimulate. Would he bow to pressure, if I threatened to start randomly disembowelling members of his crew? Accept your destiny or Spaceman G’Blort gets it?’
‘If you wished him to turn to the wrong side of the force then that is what you should do.’ She said firmly. ‘You would become his enemy pure and simple, and he would embrace the Light Side to use against you.’
‘Really? And what would the rest of his crew do, in such circumstances?’ Adannan asked.
He got a long pause in return.
‘I find that hard to believe.’ He said. ‘Of course he has built up something of a personality cult, probably through the subconscious use of the force, but powerful enough to lead his people into rebellion?’
‘My Lord,’ she said carefully, ‘he himself does not think so- but I suspect he may be being too modest in that.’
‘Hmm.’ Adannan said, would have raised an eyebrow if he had any left. His minions arrived; the Givin had an arm in an improvised sling. Laurentia darted a look of total hatred and envy at Aleph-3, that was returned with calm contempt.
‘Well,’ he said to the hunter team, ‘I’ll leave you to the tidying up. I wouldn’t want to get in your way.’
He draped one arm over Laurentia’s shoulder, started to limp away with her propping him up.
‘My lord.’ Aleph-3 called after him. He turned back to her. ‘You and Captain Lennart have more in common than you probably want to admit, in particular the sense of humour. Show him the dark side doesn’t take that away and he will turn more willingly.’
He nodded, and limped away.
‘Lord Alric, she’s biased. Her judgement is seriously compromised, she’s more than half in love with him.’ Laurentia objected.
‘She’s a skilled liar, of course, but not so skilled that she can make herself believe that anything other than Lennart embracing his destiny in the dark side is even remotely feasible. If she does desire him, she’ll be working towards that anyway.’ Adannan said.
‘It’s not possible. I couldn’t do that, and she’s me. We’re identical.’ Laurentia protested.
‘Time and experience have diverged you. You don’t have the guts any more to call me a grandstanding idiot.’
Adannan’s other aide tried not to laugh, Laurentia was indignant. ‘She said that?’
‘Yes. She was right, too.’ Adannan winced. ‘I went into that relying on intimidation to paralyse and cow the rest while I hacked them down one or two at a time.
I didn’t take the time to weigh them, realise how little they had left to lose. A fairly light price, for such a fundamental error.’ He admitted. ‘Have to do better next time.’
27a- and yes, they have pretty much grown back to six pages, that seems to be a sort of natural length- began as a three element chapter, the rebel escape attempt, Lieutenant Aldrem and team on board the Dynamic as the instruction detachment, and the first full up squadron exercise where we got a good look at Falldess, Calliphant et al in their professional aspect; but the rebel escape started to grow.
To be honest, it was orignally intended as a framing device. I thought it would be inevitable that they would try to escape, extremely unlikely that they would get anywhere, and basically intended to use it as a backdrop for the first face to face encounter between Aleph-3 and Adannan. It sort of grew, into this.
Ch 27
A blast door opened and closed; best avoid the whole business, she thought. Especially Adannan.
On internal squad net, ‘Aleph-3 to Aleph-1; location and instructions?’
‘Corridor 82- J37A, rejoin.’
Because of the possibility of capture of helmets, the tacnet at every level was filled with short, staccato fragments of code. The situation seemed to be that the Rebels were trying to break each other out, and were at least initially willing to take catastrophic losses to take out guard troopers and steal their guns.
So far, the troopers had lost less than a squad, the Rebels over a hundred blasted, grenaded and flamed- but Adannan was right. They had given ground to preserve their line, keep lateral communications not so much to prevent casualties as to prevent any weapons falling into the rebels’ hands.
They were holding the armoury block and a line of communication to it, and that was where the rebels were gathering.
There would be one good fight there, with most of the boarding specialist batallion holding the armoury as anvil and the rest swinging in around it as hammer, and roll them back from there. A clean crisp plan, one sound military act.
Provided the Rebels did nothing outrageously brilliant, and nobody on the Imperial side did anything outrageously silly. Such as Adannan barging in like a loose rancor.
His entourage were following him as he shoved past the stormtroopers into the barrack block.
‘I said it was going to be a bloody business.’ M’Lanth was saying. He had less hair and more burnt tissue than he used to, but he didn’t expect to live long enough for it to matter.
He and four others had charged down a flamer- using stormie, he had survived because the others had caught the worst of it.
‘There’s a batallion of them or more, we have five working rifles, a flamethrower, and four sidearms- and the white hats know all about blaster powerpack bombs. How are we doing with the doors?’
‘Not good.’ One of the pilots from the Penthesilea said- he had one jacket sleeve pinned up. ‘First, you have to catch a mouse droid, dismember and rig a code cracker out of the bits. After the first time we did that the rest of them started running. It’s taking us ten minutes to crack each cell.’
‘So we would be better off using what guns we do have to shoot locks off and the like.’ M’Lanth suggested.
‘Once we get them out, where do they go?’ his opposite number said. ‘We need an escape route. The air vents are grilled off, we even tried the sewer line.’
‘What happened?’ M’Lanth asked.
‘Osmotic filter. Guy who touched it, the flesh started melting off his hand.’
‘You’d think they’d have put a dianoga down there, if only for tradition’s sake. Do you think we could- no. Even if we could unscrew it and use it, throw it over a stormie like a net, it wouldn’t get through their armour.’ M’Lanth thought about it. ‘Power lines, no. Obviously not. Have they left nothing behind?’
‘Nothing with energy in, when they moved out they cleared out. None of the cubbyholes, hides, nothing like that.’
‘Souvenirs, spares, rainy day hideaways, typical barrack room crud- everything, everywhere?’
‘They were thorough. Took most of their kit, barely left a-’ Both of them realised, and said at the same time, ‘holochess console.’
‘Do you think we can do anything meaningful with incoherent light?’ M’Lanth said, grinning. ‘Illusion, failing that a flare?’
‘I’ll do that, you work on plan B.’
‘B? I think we’re going to need D through Q.’ M’Lanth admitted. ‘Whiteheads aren’t as dumb as they’re supposed to be.’
‘Let’s hope we get as far as X and Y.’ one pilot said to the other.
‘First, Second and Third Furniture Attack Squads ready, squadron leader.’ The petty officer that reported to M’Lanth said.
‘Right.’ M’Lanth addressed the cluster of volunteers. ‘Doublethink aside- we’ll be going down three parallel corridors, each squad pushes a mobile barricade, throws as much crap as it can at them from behind it.
We’re probably all going to get killed, but I want to loosen their line, push them back, hit them from the sides, maybe get to one of the armoury blocks. Riflemen, shoot the squad support gunners first.
This is basically a human wave, we all know how stupid an idea that is but we haven’t got anything better. Let’s go.’
The barricades were mounds of junk. There was little else they could be in the time and with the parts, so it would have to do. Lockers, benches, mattresses, tables, cooking gear- pots and pans and worktable surfaces, ripped out appliances; name it, it was there.
All three lines of attack and three others would be covered by flares from holo- gear, exploding flamer canisters or both; the three others just to create a little confusion.
What was he supposed to say at a moment like this, M’Lanth wondered. Isn’t “who wants to live forever” traditional? Personally, I would settle for, oh, fifty years longer than the other guy. Chance would be a fine thing. ‘Go.’
What he expected was to be huddling behind and shooting wildly over a barricade of junk that was disintegrating and being torn apart by a red rain of blaster bolts, shoving it forward and throwing back burning bits, and probably getting blown up.
There were the sounds and flashes of that happening- but not to them.
As they pushed forward in a yelling, groaning charge, the stray thought came to him that there were very few people throughout history who had ever gone into combat armed and armoured with a dishwasher. Unfortunately, up to the point where they hit the cross-corridor, it seemed to be working.
‘Oh, no, no, no. This is not what I intended to happen.’ Adannan said, as if he was berating the universe for not following his orders. He could sense it start to go wrong. ‘Don’t they trust me?’
‘My Lord,’ Laurentia answered, ‘would you? The Legion reorganised their line to come out to escort us.’
‘Somehow, the rebels fluked their way into striking at an unprotected corridor in mid shuffle.
The only, faint, impossible chance they have and it lands right in their laps. The universe is the wrong shape.’ He screamed the last part, force lightning dancing around one hand. Somebody would be hurt for this.
M’Lanth couldn’t quite believe it; the squad they had been about to charge head on into had moved. T- junction; to his left the backs of the squad moving to take up a new position, starting to turn to face, to his right the replacements moving in.
‘You lot that way, you lot this way, go.’ Half to charge each group.
At point blank, close quarters, the stormtroopers had no line of shot that didn’t include one of their own. Last ditch procedure would be one squad opening up with everything it had, accepting the friendly for the sake of the enemy casualties- and the junior squad leader called for that, but there were too many rebels.
Only two shots came from the rebels; one miss, one straight through the head of the T-21 gunner. One flechette volley turned half the rebel leaders into red sludge, a crackle of individual shots- dropping most of the rebel front line, but there were more behind.
One blaster shot hit a rebel who was using a gelfoam mattress as cover; getting that to burn was quite a feat, but it did. The rebel soldier collapsed, the man behind him picked up the burning mat and threw it at the flechette gunner- it draped itself over the stormtrooper’s head and shoulders, blinding him.
Immediate action drill, take the helmet off, ignore the smell and keep firing; he did, but before he could shoot a broken slab of table hit him in the head, knocking him down and out.
Then it was fists and feet, rifle butts and improvised weapons at point blank. Flashes of the action;
M’Lanth faking going for the T-21, a stormtrooper about to shoot him in the kidneys suddenly having his feet swept out from under him and his head bounced off the deck;
One of the stormtroopers using the butt of his carbine to parry a wok aside, swinging the gun round for a zero-centimetre range shot, what was left of the rebel collapsing against him and pulling him down, where he was stabbed through the neck with a shard of deck plating;
The squad sargeant killing a rebel with a buttstroke to the side of the temple, grabbing the reb’s cooking knife and gutting another with it, four of them grabbing him and dragging him down, one trying to beat him to death with a footlocker.
At even odds, the stormtroopers would have taken it easily. At ten to one odds, they could have killed enough of the rebels fast enough that the rest would have broken and ran.
Being outnumbered thirty to one by do or die fanatics was too much. They went down fighting, but they went down.
The Imperial plan was swiftly revised and updated, the rest of the batallion started to fold itself in around them, englobe, lay down fire and destroy; as per the rebel plan, they picked up what weapons they could and headed for the main armoury block.
Adannan thought he had it. Had identified the man he was after, the spiritual leader of this little uprising. Time to have some fun.
Team Omega-17-Blue happened to be stalking the same target.
‘It hasn’t occurred to him that if he and his soft-skinned team weren’t there, we could gas the rebels.’ Aleph-1 said. ‘We wouldn’t even need to make pizza. He hasn’t done anything particularly renegade yet, so we can’t catch him in the crossfire.’
‘You know about that?’ Aleph-3 asked her leader.
‘Of course. Do you think I hadn’t considered the possibility? Never mind that you get the shakes whenever the Captain comes into sight.’
‘I thought I hid it better than that.’ She said, avoiding the personal in favour of the professional.
‘We’ve been working together for thirteen years. No chance. There is this; Adannan will want to interview you. Whatever you hide, given a clear mind he’ll figure it out. Confront him now. Stage- manage at least the first impression.’
‘Right. Never mind the rebels in the way.’ She said, raising her DC-15 long rifle.
‘Consider them a fringe benefit.’
In their primary role, they carried all sorts of odd and distinctive devices, with a heavy emphasis on close quarters; flechette and flamer, arc blasters, riot guns, scatter and auto-blasters, grenade launchers and a whole library of projectile weapons.
In the open field with the rest of the legion, they functioned as a group of sniper pairs, spotter and shooter.
Perversely, Aleph-3 liked the old heavy rifle as a close quarters weapon, precisely because it was a clumsy beast that required a lot of positive control- it was impossible to be casual or careless with.
It was long and rugged enough to use as a quarterstaff if they got really close, and powerful enough to shoot through walls if necessary.
Or blow pieces off them. The first batch of rebels they encountered looked like they were trying to break open a barrack block door by hitting it with a mouse droid. Only four of them.
All of them took at least two shots at first instance and another two before what was left hit the ground. Not overkill as much as warmup. The rebels had no perimeter or flank security, mainly because they had nothing to do about it if it did happen.
There was a scatter, in many cases a splatter, of Rebel wounded and dead; the incapable would be rounded up, the still dangerous were neutralised- stunshot or buttstroked- in passing.
A three horse race, then, between an Alliance fighter pilot, a Dark Jedi in the process of throwing caution to the wind and a team of Jedi-hunters on the verge of considering him fair game.
M’Lanth knew he was out of time, it had become a fight rather than an escape; and possibly not even that, perhaps an act of sabotage was the most to be had. He and the survivors of the assault party were fighting a very literal running battle, with the disadvantage that the enemy knew exactly where they were going.
The armoury block extended several levels. No sense doing the obvious. Up? Unfeasible. Down?
Lift the deck plates, avoid the pipe ducts that were covered by the ship’s tensor field and their guns would do nothing to, wriggle down to the deck below; four stormtroopers on guard, a half squad, called the alarm and opened fire.
M’Lanth flattened himself on the deck as he hit, one of the stormtroopers just a little too slow tracking him shot him in the buttock as he lay prone; adrenalin kept him moving long enough to fire two shots at the flamer trooper.
Calling them flamers was an anachronism; it was a thermal plasma weapon, to all intents and purposes- a very, very hot steam gun.
The stormtrooper dropped, shot in the arm, but not before he had burned the next three rebels down from the deckhead. Their charcoaled remains tumbled down on the rebel pilot, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
The rest hurled themselves at the stormtroopers, clambering over their own dead to do so; the armoury door was right there at the end of the corridor. There were fewer of them left, now. Less than half those who had been let out of their cells, but they had reached their first goal.
No time to faff about with security codes; plant blaster powerpack bombs on the lock and hinges and stand back.
Not far enough; the blast killed one of their own and scarred others, but it worked- the door slowly toppled outwards. They charged in and were totally baffled.
The first thing they saw in front of them was a mess of plating, spars and a squared off cylinder that probably was some kind of generator. The only obvious weapon was barbette mounted and fifteen metres long.
There was a label on the wall above; AT-AT to AT-HE conversion kit.
Another three of those along the opposite wall; on the same wall, four sets of seats and speeder bike garage facilities, AT-HE to AT-AT conversion kits.
The rebels looked at them, desperately scanning for something, anything useful; short of firing up the generator, connecting it up and trying to traverse the gunship-walker’s heavy laser, nothing.
The flamer trooper was still alive, and he laughed at them.
‘You dozy kriffwits, what do you think ‘armoured legion’ means? We’re mostly vehicles, what were you expecting?’
They shot him again, he slumped. They were still ransacking the armoury block with it’s near nothing of use when the lights flickered out- telekinetically smashed- and were replaced by a single bar of red light in the corridor.
Most of the rebels still outside the armoury, forming some kind of defence line, started shooting; Adannan laughed at them, intercepted the bolts- looking effortlessly at ease doing it.
Bounced most of them back, hit a couple of the rebels- then, just because he could, found the only heavy weapon they had, a squad T-21, and blasted the operator to abstract carbon sculpture with force lightning.
‘Where is he?’ Adannan bellowed at the rebels. ‘Where is your leader?’
No answer; he charged forwards into the middle of them, sliced a blaster rifle in half, let a punch slam into him, took it like it was nothing, with an open palm strike pushed the attacker’s heart out of the back of his chest.
He gutted one man with the sabre, felt a hand grab his wrist, another sieze the sabre hilt; sent two bolts of black light flying out, blasted the life out of both men, instantly withering them to the look of year-old corpses. An interesting power; he must try it on another force user sometime. In fact he planned to.
He wrested the sabre free, flashed a man’s head off, leapt back out of the way of another two trying to grab him and drag him down, looked around for a worthy target.
M’Lanth had barely recovered consciousness; he was seriously hurt, hazy with pain and relying on adrenalin and endorphins to function even marginally. But he did have a flamethrower.
The stormtrooper who had it before didn’t need it any more, it was the first thing M’Lanth could find to hand and the only thing he could reach. He laid it on target and squeezed the trigger.
There were powers and techniques that could block a flamethrower blast; fastest and easiest way, kill the wielder. Too late for that. Telekinetic barrier was a trick he had never learned- and absorb and dissipate, well.
He called on the force- demanded that it aid him- to absorb the heat in the plasma stream; but he had never been good at that, and it took nearly all of his concentration to hold it back, splash it away.
He advanced slowly towards the prone, charred and bleeding rebel, fighting his way upstream to the man he recognised as his chosen target; then suddenly felt a wide, hollow pain- of course. One of the other rebels had had the presence of mind to shoot him in the back. How silly of him not to have foreseen that.
Adannan’s entourage had been, as usual, ordered to hold the ring while their master moved in, unwilling to accept help or share kills. They were too far away to help, but Omega-17-Blue had been following him, and assisting the boarding batallion by burning through any particularly stubborn knots of rebels.
They saw him collapse on to his knees, distracted badly enough by the wound that his clothes and hair started to burn under the thin, bright plasma stream leaking through his defences.
It was the curse of their nature, absolute obedience to orders, regardless of how politically or tactically insane they might be. The outer cordon around the armoury complex had known they were doing a suicidally stupid thing, moving out before they were properly relieved, but the old imperatives had kicked in.
Aleph- 1 shot from the right inwards, Aleph-3 put one shot clean through M’lanth’s heart, wishing she was allowed to shoot Adannan as neatly, then switched target to two rebels from the left inwards, sidestepping away from a return shot and nailing both.
The rest of the team picked and shot for their targets, kept their heads, laid down fire. For all the guard and garrison duty they ended up pulling, it was not the stormtrooper corps’ highest talent.
They were, arguably, not even particularly good at defensive warfare, tending to turn in solid, uninspired performances. Given half a chance to counterattack, though, they were in their element.
The rebels outside the armoury melted, dropped, blasted through, pieces blown off. Some tried to shelter behind their own dead; another thing the old heavy rifles were good for.
That done, two squads of the boarding batallion went in to retake and secure the armoury. Adannan was back on his feet, one hand over the wound, looking disgusted with himself.
Aleph-3 strode up to him, took off her helmet, tucked it under her arm and held out a hand. ‘My lord, I believe you wanted to talk to me. Watcher 22173.’
He ignored her hand- it was a simple probing gesture anyway, fishing for how off balance he was. ‘I wanted him alive.’ He said, pointing- with the sabre, she swayed out of the way- at M’Lanth’s dead body.
‘No orders were given to that effect.’ She said, as if it explained everything- playing slightly dumb. ‘Standing orders categorise persons of your type as to be protected. It was him or you, my lord, I had no choice.’
‘Do you shelter behind your standing orders often?’
Oh, kriff it, she thought. Maybe if I provoke him, he will attack me and what little sense of self preservation I have will kick in profoundly enough to overcome the imperatives and let me take him. Keep that in mind as plan- well, the rebels have used up most of the alphabet around here, plan Z.
‘My lord, they proved little shelter to the troopers of the boarding batallion who were lured out of position by your presence. Your arrival in the combat zone proved to be a great asset to the rebels.’ She said, sternly.
‘How dare you criticise me.’ He shouted. ‘I am an agent of the council, I am your lord and master, and if I choose to squander you by any means, deliberate or accidental, it is of no importance.’
What was that line Lennart kept quoting? “If you forget my rank, Sire, I will forget yours?” Saying that really would get her killed. ‘That’s in standing orders too, Lord.’ She actually said.
‘So you think that I am a dangerously amateurish fool, in love with his own power, and a hindrance and a hazard to the professionals?’ he asked her, tone deceptively light.
‘As far as infantry work goes, my lord, yes.’
‘You’re not supposed to have a backbone.’ He said. Oh kriff, she thought, time to book an appointment with a cybersurgeon. ‘The moral courage to tell your leader that he’s being an idiot was never supposed to be part of the package. Where did you get it from?’
‘Osmosis, my lord- from our targets. So many neophytes prepared to challenge the Empire with nothing more than an ancient religion and a shiny stick, in the face of their heroic stupidity how could we who have skill and experience show anything less?’
Adannan laughed, then winced slightly as the pain got to him. ‘I stopped most of that. Not all, it seems. You are starting to sound almost as worthy of investigation as Captain Lennart is.’
‘Set a deviant to catch a deviant, Lord? In any case we are all put through positive vetting on a continuing basis, and I would be surprised if there were not other checks on our loyalty and stability that we do not know of.’
‘Which you are watching for little tells, accidental confirmation on my part.’ Adannan said; she looked away. ‘Does Lennart realise he has potential to be strong in the force?’ he changed subject suddenly.
She could think of lies to tell, but none that would withstand cross-examination. ‘Yes, Lord. His willingness, however…‘
‘You have spoken with him about this?’ Adannan said.
‘My Lord, he does not want the force. I have tried to do the groundwork, help persuade him.’
That was not desperately unusual in someone who could not have the force; but in a sensitive, who could sense the potential of what they could do, it was almost pathological.
‘How can he reject it? He knows what the penalty is for doing so?’ Adannan asked.
‘He knows, Lord, and although he speaks of being cursed by the force, I believe he will bow to the inevitable- although he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming towards it, at first.’ Which was more or less true.
‘H’m. The kicking and screaming, I can stimulate. Would he bow to pressure, if I threatened to start randomly disembowelling members of his crew? Accept your destiny or Spaceman G’Blort gets it?’
‘If you wished him to turn to the wrong side of the force then that is what you should do.’ She said firmly. ‘You would become his enemy pure and simple, and he would embrace the Light Side to use against you.’
‘Really? And what would the rest of his crew do, in such circumstances?’ Adannan asked.
He got a long pause in return.
‘I find that hard to believe.’ He said. ‘Of course he has built up something of a personality cult, probably through the subconscious use of the force, but powerful enough to lead his people into rebellion?’
‘My Lord,’ she said carefully, ‘he himself does not think so- but I suspect he may be being too modest in that.’
‘Hmm.’ Adannan said, would have raised an eyebrow if he had any left. His minions arrived; the Givin had an arm in an improvised sling. Laurentia darted a look of total hatred and envy at Aleph-3, that was returned with calm contempt.
‘Well,’ he said to the hunter team, ‘I’ll leave you to the tidying up. I wouldn’t want to get in your way.’
He draped one arm over Laurentia’s shoulder, started to limp away with her propping him up.
‘My lord.’ Aleph-3 called after him. He turned back to her. ‘You and Captain Lennart have more in common than you probably want to admit, in particular the sense of humour. Show him the dark side doesn’t take that away and he will turn more willingly.’
He nodded, and limped away.
‘Lord Alric, she’s biased. Her judgement is seriously compromised, she’s more than half in love with him.’ Laurentia objected.
‘She’s a skilled liar, of course, but not so skilled that she can make herself believe that anything other than Lennart embracing his destiny in the dark side is even remotely feasible. If she does desire him, she’ll be working towards that anyway.’ Adannan said.
‘It’s not possible. I couldn’t do that, and she’s me. We’re identical.’ Laurentia protested.
‘Time and experience have diverged you. You don’t have the guts any more to call me a grandstanding idiot.’
Adannan’s other aide tried not to laugh, Laurentia was indignant. ‘She said that?’
‘Yes. She was right, too.’ Adannan winced. ‘I went into that relying on intimidation to paralyse and cow the rest while I hacked them down one or two at a time.
I didn’t take the time to weigh them, realise how little they had left to lose. A fairly light price, for such a fundamental error.’ He admitted. ‘Have to do better next time.’
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-13 09:32pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Thank you for the vote of confidence- there were a few silly touches there. Going into battle armed and armoured with a dishwasher?
On the other hand, it was Adannan who applied that description to himself. He can be hot tempered, but he does have some presence of mind- enough to learn from his mistakes, anyway. One of the reasons he is or was chosen as a dark adept in the first place.
He has no remorse at all about the stormtroopers he got killed by his blundering- it's only the fact that he did something suboptimal that he regrets. If he had been more emotional about it, Aleph-3 would have been harder put to it to keep her cool.
Her personality is starting to pick up some interesting wrinkles; psychologically, she still belongs to the Stormtrooper Corps, and when she says things like 'the real me barely has a face at all' that's what she means, that feeling of belonging and of duty is the foundation of her sense of self. She is growing beyond that, though, and experiencing some confusion in doing so. Coping more smoothly with situations where she can draw on that, like dealing with a dangerously amateurish superior, than in situations like talking to Lennart.
There's a half-written segment that the time just isn't right for yet, with Lennart and Adannan on vaguely civilised terms, chewing the political fat- in which Lennart points out that his generation, who grew up under the Republic and founded their careers and began adult life in the Clone Wars and Empire, are just reaching mid-life crisis point. The younger generation who grew up entirely under the Empire are just reaching adulthood and asking- what's in it for them? Probably not coincidence that this is also a time of active rebellion.
If you give her credit for her biological rather than chronological age, that puts her as part of the same restless generation as Lennart. He, incidentally, is not as keen on the relationship as she is- not for lack of lust, but because it jibes with his sense of responsibility. He would feel uncomfortable taking advantage of someone under his command- which in itself is a fair indication that he is not natural Dark Side material.
On the other hand, it was Adannan who applied that description to himself. He can be hot tempered, but he does have some presence of mind- enough to learn from his mistakes, anyway. One of the reasons he is or was chosen as a dark adept in the first place.
He has no remorse at all about the stormtroopers he got killed by his blundering- it's only the fact that he did something suboptimal that he regrets. If he had been more emotional about it, Aleph-3 would have been harder put to it to keep her cool.
Her personality is starting to pick up some interesting wrinkles; psychologically, she still belongs to the Stormtrooper Corps, and when she says things like 'the real me barely has a face at all' that's what she means, that feeling of belonging and of duty is the foundation of her sense of self. She is growing beyond that, though, and experiencing some confusion in doing so. Coping more smoothly with situations where she can draw on that, like dealing with a dangerously amateurish superior, than in situations like talking to Lennart.
There's a half-written segment that the time just isn't right for yet, with Lennart and Adannan on vaguely civilised terms, chewing the political fat- in which Lennart points out that his generation, who grew up under the Republic and founded their careers and began adult life in the Clone Wars and Empire, are just reaching mid-life crisis point. The younger generation who grew up entirely under the Empire are just reaching adulthood and asking- what's in it for them? Probably not coincidence that this is also a time of active rebellion.
If you give her credit for her biological rather than chronological age, that puts her as part of the same restless generation as Lennart. He, incidentally, is not as keen on the relationship as she is- not for lack of lust, but because it jibes with his sense of responsibility. He would feel uncomfortable taking advantage of someone under his command- which in itself is a fair indication that he is not natural Dark Side material.
Ok... it took me 3 days, but I've finally read through the story thus far.
DAMN BOY! You don't do anything by halves, do you!
Ok, I'm hooked. Show me where it goes from here.
DAMN BOY! You don't do anything by halves, do you!
Ok, I'm hooked. Show me where it goes from here.
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Thanks to everybody who has stuck with it this far, and welcome, lady Tevar.
Yes, it has grown a bit- I don't think word count when I'm in fanfic-land, which, OK, I'd need to boil it down to make it more concise- but if it took variously a week and three days to read, no, I'm not doing a rewrite any time soon.
It actually could be a lot worse; thirty-six thousand eight hundred and ten crew, if I tried to be ultra-completist and get each of them into the plot somehow...
never mind keeping them straight, my head hurts at the thought of coming up with that many names.
Next chapter should be up in a couple of days, probably Saturday evening.
Yes, it has grown a bit- I don't think word count when I'm in fanfic-land, which, OK, I'd need to boil it down to make it more concise- but if it took variously a week and three days to read, no, I'm not doing a rewrite any time soon.
It actually could be a lot worse; thirty-six thousand eight hundred and ten crew, if I tried to be ultra-completist and get each of them into the plot somehow...
never mind keeping them straight, my head hurts at the thought of coming up with that many names.
Next chapter should be up in a couple of days, probably Saturday evening.
If you tried to get every one of them into the plot, you'd have the whole project go sideways on random tangents.
I'm going to be reading through the whole damn thing over winter break, just to break in my new laser printer I should be getting soon. And then I can courier you the updated manuscript covered in red ink
.
I'm going to be reading through the whole damn thing over winter break, just to break in my new laser printer I should be getting soon. And then I can courier you the updated manuscript covered in red ink
.∞
XXXI
You must understand, my dear... I go through a 300page novel in 2-3 hours, depending on the interruptions.Phantasee wrote:Three days?! It took me a week! And this was way back when there were a lot fewer chapters up!
I'm shocked and awed.
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
17in Video monitor, not even a flat-screenPhantasee wrote:So did you print off the story? I can never read anywhere near that fast off a screen.
Unless you have an LCD monitor or something fancy like that? I should probably get one if I don't want to go blind before Remnant finishes this story...
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
I'm more than slightly embarrassed it took me this long to find and read this piece. For all I've seen it on the forum, I've never read it; something I can now see was a mistake. Needless to say, I'm now a huge Lennart fan. Good work! I look forward to see this continued.
And why is everyone surprised it took Tevar three days to finish it? It didn't take me too much longer than that to read (parts of five afternoons), and then only since it was competing with study time for my organic lab practical.
And why is everyone surprised it took Tevar three days to finish it? It didn't take me too much longer than that to read (parts of five afternoons), and then only since it was competing with study time for my organic lab practical.
"Hey, gang, we're all part of the spleen!"
-PZ Meyers
-PZ Meyers
People are always shocked that I read that fastEris wrote:I'm more than slightly embarrassed it took me this long to find and read this piece. For all I've seen it on the forum, I've never read it; something I can now see was a mistake. Needless to say, I'm now a huge Lennart fan. Good work! I look forward to see this continued.
And why is everyone surprised it took Tevar three days to finish it? It didn't take me too much longer than that to read (parts of five afternoons), and then only since it was competing with study time for my organic lab practical.
Like Eris, I wasn't reading the whole day... I think I read the first page in one night, after work. So... about 6ish-11ish? Then the second page the next night, etc. In between, I was answering IMs, posting threads of my own on other boards, petting kitties, cuddling Nitram...
And I can still give you decent details of what happened, although not which chapter, exactly
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
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Singular Quartet
- Sith Marauder
- Posts: 3896
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- Location: This is sky. It is made of FUCKING and LIMIT.
Don't worry, 600 pages on a sunday afternoon is something I have done with several good books.Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:Yes, it has grown a bit- I don't think word count when I'm in fanfic-land, which, OK, I'd need to boil it down to make it more concise- but if it took variously a week and three days to read, no, I'm not doing a rewrite any time soon.
And if your luck is bad, your finished before the evening meal at about 7pm.
Hell with finding a good book to read.
You keep searching.
Till then.Next chapter should be up in a couple of days, probably Saturday evening.
Nothing like the present.
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Vehrec
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2204
- Joined: 2006-04-22 12:29pm
- Location: The Ohio State University
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The size is intimidating to some people, but I've found it to be more than enjoyable. And some of the sub-plots make for great fandom conversation starters. "Did you ever read the fanfic where the Star Destroyer's Chief Engineer gets baby sat by the Stormtroopers?" And word-count wise, its a wonderful size.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)That's what I've enjoyed the most about the story: the interaction and close companionship between the crew, the little in-jokes between sections, the razzing of certain officers with sticks up the anal cavities (btw, I hope he dies)Vehrec wrote:The size is intimidating to some people, but I've found it to be more than enjoyable. And some of the sub-plots make for great fandom conversation starters. "Did you ever read the fanfic where the Star Destroyer's Chief Engineer gets baby sat by the Stormtroopers?" And word-count wise, its a wonderful size.
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them.
"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Sorry about the delay; my personal calendar really isn't that badly off, but between bad news, bad plumbing and a geekish argument that resulted in most of Saturday afternoon being wasted in an attempt to stat up a Nemesis-variant Warlord Titan using GURPS Vehicles, this took longer to finish than I had expected.
One entire section got rewritten until I decided it wasn't worth including; Aldrem and turret crew on board the Dynamic, which is not a happy ship. It may take another couple of attempts to get the tone of that right.
27b.
Black Prince’s main ready room; most of the captains of the squadron were attending holographically, which Lennart thought was a shame- he would have liked to meet them in the flesh, smell them and see them fidget.
With the enhanced senses that the Force is known to bring, he thought, would I be able to pick up on all the little signals, the subliminal muscle- twitches that give a person’s motives away?
And if I could, would it be genuinely useful, or would drinking in the ugly details, all the private hates and fears, prove too much and make the detachment of taking a brown robe and going ‘om’ a lot seem a blessed relief?
How easy it must be to be a cynic, when you know for certain all the things that the Force can reveal to you.
Business first. ‘From your point of view, that could have gone better. For the defender, what is the book solution?’ he asked them.
‘Pursue and destroy.’ Lycarin said. ‘The Operations Office demands it.’ He was sitting bolt upright, millimetrically precise in uniform and deportment; he was on the carpet, and knew it.
‘What the operations office claims ought to happen is less important than what can and does happen.’ Dordd reproved him. They had had a frank exchange of views- or a blazing row in plain language- which had done nothing for the defenders’ chances.
‘I agree in principle.’ Falldess spoke up. ‘Take the fight to the enemy and destroy them.’ She too was in cool, formal mode.
‘It’s easy to agree in principle.’ Kovall said. ‘Turning it into practise is the hard part.’ He was caffeinated to the eyeballs and bouncing of his own com suite’s ceiling, almost.
‘As far as I can tell, none of you were working with a full enemy intentions analysis. Delvran?’ Lennart asked.
‘You got inside the curve. What I managed to assemble couldn’t keep up with you.’ Dordd admitted. He looked very tired, and Lennart wondered how far back that went.
‘EIA is a staff level, non-combat task.’ Yeklendim pointed out, correctly according to the manual.
‘A man who manages to get himself killed as trivially as you did-‘ Kovall started to rate him. They were nominal equals in rank.
‘I chose to do things this way largely to see if, and how well, you would work together.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘Consider the actual exercise plan; one individually powerful ship, with the mission of striking a target defended by a collectively superior group of ships. My objective is obvious.’
‘Draw us out and loop round behind us?’ Elstrand muttered, subdued, then repeated it more clearly.
‘Draw us out then divide us up and take us one at a time.’ Falldess corrected him.
‘Why wasn’t that clear to you before the shooting started? Delvran, Conor, you know me better than that.
The problem is that every Grand Admiral, every oversector command, every naval academy, and every other political arm of the state who have no business doing so at all, consider it their right to add pages to the code of operations.
Part of the captains’ job is to make sense of the contradictions and work out what to ignore. So, yes, it was a trick question.’ Lennart said.
‘Let’s start with the replay and go through this point by point.’ He decided. The display tank they were sitting around resolved itself into a model of the system they had used for the exercise.
It had all been done in virtual space, for the sake of saving time, energy and fuel- and preventing accidents. Some of the recon globe had not done nearly as well as they should.
At Day 10, Lennart had a full-up battle exercise planned; they would be firing live, full power shot at each other, firing continuing to shield failure. It was inherently extremely dangerous, it wasn’t just reproducing the stress and confusion of combat, it was combat. Perhaps they would be ready.
After that, tank off to full fuel state, one sim dress- rehearsal of the operation, then move out and do it for real. That, at least, was the plan.
In the meantime, there was this to learn from. ‘Right, let’s plan this properly from the beginning, with your experiences in mind. What’s your first move?’ Lennart asked.
‘Establish formation and chain of command.’ Barth-Elstrand suggested.
‘Theoretically correct but pointless.’ Lennart stated. ‘You have a squadron and line structure and a clearly senior officer. That should have taken all of three seconds.’ He looked at Dordd, not wanting to put him on the spot but realizing it might be necessary.
‘We suffered a major internal communication breakdown, Dynamic’s data system failed as she came to operational readiness. How much did that really cost us?’ Dordd admitted.
‘Depends what you would have done instead.’ Lennart said, then turned to Vehrec.
‘The sweep line. What was your plan?’
‘Direct bomber attack in company with the ship’s guns, smaller craft supporting as they could.’ Vehrec was living up to his reputation, anyway, sprawled on a couch, apparently unconcerned, but he sounded sharp enough.
‘You need to know exactly where I am to time the strike, and how are you supposed to do that if I can use my bombers to pick off the recon ships? Or direct fire. Conor?’
‘I guessed where you were likely to be.’ The young officer stated. ‘I was right, too.’
‘Terminally right; in coming to find me you offered yourself up on a plate. What was your object?’
‘I knew you would have to eliminate the recon shell; thought I could draw you into chase, make you use energy and time that would give the rest of the squadron a chance to converge on you. Calculated risk.’
‘When does whichever version of the book each of you happen to be using say you should begin to go evasive? Lycarin?’ Lennart asked.
‘Light-second maximum.’ Lycarin stated. ‘For good reason. 99.9% wouldn’t have taken that shot, and 99.99999 couldn’t.’
‘So you don’t evade, you fly a predictable path. Which makes extreme range alpha strikes that much more viable- not feasible, no-one takes precautions, that makes it more feasible. What will you do next time?’
‘Evaluate the situation on it’s merits.’ Elstrand said. ‘Ducking and weaving too soon wastes time and energy and makes signature.’
‘Next time, I could spotlight around, trying to sucker you into giving yourselves away, yes. Whoever doesn’t take the bait, continues straight and level, gets the faceful of turbolaser.’ Lennart smiled. ‘Always another wrinkle, isn’t there? What happened from there?’
The image played itself forward; Black Prince eliminating four of the recon screen with long range fire, several of the rest backing off- ‘And there, what does that achieve?’ Lennart asked.
‘Obviously you don’t look for fights you can’t win- but the book is actually right this time. Back off beyond effective gun range and trail, when larger friendly units appear formate on them and add your firepower to theirs.’
‘We tried.’ Sarlatt said.
‘Not very hard. You still think like a fighter pilot; speed and skill are what matters and damn the odds. It saved you- there were other, more rewarding targets. Speaking of which, Raesene, what orders did you receive from your line commander?’
‘Sir, we-‘ Lennart was glaring at him. He had asked a very precise question and wanted as precise an answer. There wasn’t really any way out of it. ‘ “Targets in sight, begin attack.” That was pretty much it, captain.’
‘I see. Group Captain Vehrec, explain your thinking.’ Lennart asked, letting the rest of the table fill in the ‘if any’.
‘I assumed you had as hazy an idea of our position as we had of yours. Get ahead of your predicted track, sortie everything in a close screen with a packed attack group behind it, localize and torpedo you as you came up; the time for flight operations would have given the slower ships a chance to catch up and reform.’
‘Good plan, if they had known about it. At this point, I am moving tangentially to the recon globe, deceptive jamming full- let’s face it; we’re an Imperator, there’s no way you’re not going to notice us.
What we can do is confuse you as to our precise location, vector and status. Take the opportunity to launch hyperdrive fighters, small craft and probe droids, for instance.’
‘So that was how.’ Raesene said. ‘I knew we couldn’t have missed a normal space approach that badly.’ He had been attacked by Hunters and Avengers from Black Prince, driven them off but they had savaged a Bayonet and two Marauders in company.
‘It’s a useful trick. The probe droids are clear of our self noise and directional jamming, they’re cheap enough that they can be fired off at will and they make excellent ranging shots for no-notice fighter microjumps.
The fighters also act as targeting relays for stepdown HTL fire, enough to take out the antifighter escorts. Now at this point, with the recon shell trimmed, I aim for the gas giant, drop a couple of proton torp heads into the radiation belt in passing.
Between that and our own barrage jamming, we have a respectable local whiteout. Behind the cover of that, what am I going to do next?’
‘Kill velocity, reorient in a different direction, as we decelerate move out to meet us at a high aspect, medium range manoeuvring battle.’ Lycarin gave the book solution.
‘In theory, but a fair proportion of the rebels, and a high proportion of those that have lasted this long, are Imperial trained and know the book as well as you do. You can do one of two things- be better at it than they are, or do something strange.
Most of the early, pre-Alliance Rebels loved strange. They seemed to think they couldn’t win by being conventional, so they had to try something off the wall.
As the amateurs and lunatics die off and the professionals get left behind, the enemy is becoming more rational, more likely to go for a straightforward, logical move.
If the ship’s velocity is low enough, you can enter the upper atmosphere and play hide and seek with cloud layers. More likely to be done by a small ship, but that’s in the book too.’
‘Which is what you did with the non-hyper fighter element.’ Vehrec said. ‘Not what you’re supposed to do when you’re attacking.’
‘It is a good move when you’re outnumbered eight to one. Slightly more difficult with short-endurance TIEs; their being deployed there should have been a hint we were going to come back for them.’
‘So you basically nest them there, they hit out at the recon corvettes and retreat back into the clouds, which means we have to waste time, energy and maybe ships blockading or going in after them. Strategic-offensive, tactical defensive. Nice.’ Vehrec said.
‘I shaved the margins of their endurance doing it. Now,’ Lennart let the image advance half an hour, ‘this is where things start to go wrong, and where I should be jumping up and down demanding people’s heads on my desk.
Elstrand, you were expecting a bait and switch, weren’t you? A near reversal of vector, Black Prince moving out like this?’ Lennart sketched it on the image with a pointer laser.
‘Yes, sir, I was, and I instructed my line to conform accordingly.’ Elstrand stated.
‘Falldess?’
Sir, it occurred to me that small ships hide better than big ones. If you went in there, it would give too much advantage away to the smaller craft looking for you- so I thought Black Prince was going to curve round heading for the objective. Like this.’ She said, moving her hand like a fighter pilot, Lennart sketching it in on the image.
‘Lycarin?’ he asked the Perseverance’s commander, voice suddenly colder and harder.
‘Captain of the Line Lennart, I went with the book option.’ Lycarin said, as if in formal defence.
‘So, Captain Dordd, as senior ranking officer of this mess, what were your thoughts?’
‘On the tactical problem- your vector seemed to lead nowhere. I thought initially that you would take the chance of skimming the upper atmosphere of the giant, aerobraking and setting off how much radio noise, then waiting as we scattered and lunging out after the most exposed;
even if we did manage to manoeuvre on to a common vector, that would waste so much time that you would be able to outreach us to the objective. So I ordered the chase aborted and all ships to make for planetary orbit.
Expecting you to do something we could then react to- so that however badly screwed we were, we could at least see what to do.’ Dordd said.
‘Suboptimal, but in that situation not unreasonable. So why didn’t it happen? Group Captain Vehrec?’
‘We’d just released most of our fighters. For a high speed dash across the system we had to retrieve them. Landing ops take time- and weren’t helped by two squadrons of Starwings playing intruder, Sir.’
‘No doubt you know better, but you fell into the trap of assuming the ship is there to serve the fighters. Classic pilot gut reaction. You don’t think they happened to bounce you out of hyperspace by accident? They did it because you were in mid-retrieval. What should you have done?’
‘Bring shape back into the fight. Your units were after the bombers, so I ordered the bombers to move along our best line of defence so the PD could cover them, and vectored the fighters in after your intruders.’
‘If all you were up against was fighters, that would have made sense. Dordd?’
‘I disregarded my own orders about five seconds later.’ He admitted. ‘With one ship of force paralysed in fighter action, the most sensible thing to do was to rally around her and form up as a group.
I have to admit I was expecting you to build vector outwards, and then microjump in behind us and pound us while we were separated.’
‘That was plan A.’ Lennart said. ‘Lycarin. I know that was where you were expecting me- but didn’t the orders from your immediate superior convince you otherwise? Why didn’t you formate on Voracious and Dynamic?’
‘Voracious was off in a world of it’s own, and-to be blunt, Sir, I did not believe Dynamic was capable of any useful assistance. She was so slow in executing any move that I believed we were effectively on our own. And said so.’ Lycarin stated.
‘My plan B fell into place when you separated. I had a shot at the Perseverance from least-effective missile range closing, and took it. Falldess; attempting to close on and support Perseverance was the right choice. The execution, though- did you intend to scatter support craft along your line of flight?’
‘Captain, we could arrive all together and too late, or piecemeal and in time to matter. I regret the loss of Jointure and Splenetic, but-’ Falldess objected.
‘Another trick question. Look at your vector; you’d have been heading outsystem with too much way on to manoeuvre back into the fight. You got one good firing pass out of that, then spent the rest of the exercise retrieving life pods.’
‘I don’t understand. Am I supposed to leave them drifting?’ Falldess said, irritated.
‘Officially, yes. You fight it out to the finish, and when there’s none of the enemy left standing, then you pick up survivors. Unofficially, very few people scooped up from a drifting life pod have objected. Just wait until you’re no longer likely to join them before you start retrieval.’
‘Gunnery tactics.’ Lennart said, zooming in. ‘With full converged salvos, you miss a lot. On average, you’re more likely to kill a ship sooner with spread fire closing to effective range.
We fire converged sheaf salvos because a solid hit usually overloads the surge capacity of the target’s shielding, and starts doing real damage very quickly.
We’re able to do this because all of my gun crews, primary, secondary and most of the reserve, have put in upwards of ten thousand hours training time. Work towards that, but first, work the numbers and do what gives you the best chance.
Speaking of which, Delvran, your ship did some good shooting. Question; would I have been better off, switching target from Voracious to Dynamic after she had started to score hits, or not?’
‘Another trick question, Sir?’ Elstrand stated. ‘You do whatever reduces the enemy’s firepower by the greatest amount in the least time, Unless political or operational concerns intervene.’
‘Which is the principle you base your judgements on- but in this case, what practical result does the principle produce?’
‘Switch targets.’ Kovall said. ‘Why did you stay on the carrier?’
‘The Venator’s a theoretically easier target; once we take her out, we only have two ships of force close enough and fast enough to worry about, one already damaged.’ Lennart said, not telling the entire truth.
The image played itself out to conclusion. Black Prince’s course track was a z- shape, out from the giant, raking fire into Perseverance, accelerating at a sharp angle to pass Voracious on the far side of her from Dynamic;
the fast destroyer manoeuvring for a clear shot, the destroyer-carrier coming apart in a wave of green fire, the final gun duel between the two destroyers, swirling round each other at close quarters, high aspect;
the broader, three-engined Imperator, better balanced, sidestepping the firing arcs of the fast but clumsy Arrogant. In the little flickers of moves begun and aborted, actions and reactions, it was possible to see that the judgement of Dynamic’s captain outran the ability of his crew to put it into practise.
After the explosion, the rest was coda. Black Prince accelerated inward, delivered a bombardment as specified in the terms of the exercise, retrieved her fighters and jumped outsystem for a tanker rendezvous.
‘Individually, most of you made mostly right choices, most of the time.’ Lennart said. ‘Collectively it was a disaster. Vehrec; for this one, more than half your fighters were imaginary.
That made operations smoother than otherwise. The fact that you chose to act as a second attack force was barely justifiable in theory, in practise catastrophic.
Lycarin, you disobeyed an order to take a chance- that failed. Do that in the flesh and you’ll be lucky to live long enough to be strung up. Captain Dordd, I’ll want to talk to you later.
I want post-battle analyses from each of you. Your own opinion of your performance. We will be repeating this or something like it in a few days- the full squadron, against a computer controlled four ship division of MC-80s.’
There was little overt reaction, among command grade officers, but he detected several suppressed curses in his direction. Fine. ‘Dismiss.’ The holograms faded out, leaving Dordd still sitting there, image glowing slightly blue.
‘Do you believe me now, when I say three months to a decent state of efficiency?’ he said.
Lennart decided to avoid all recriminations and cut straight to the chase. ‘What are you going to do differently next time?’
‘Let my bridge team do their own jobs. I got the balance wrong; spent too much time on my own ship rather than on the squadron, failed to impose my will on them, failed to impose shape on the operation- not a great start, was it?’ Dordd said.
‘That’s why I left you to last and pushed in for a close turning fight. Work them a little. How did your crew react?’ Lennart asked.
‘Badly. I know you fired no real shot, but you left a trail of broken men behind anyway- I have fifteen requests in to resign commissions including two department deputies, and eighty enlisted trying to commit offences just severe enough to be reassigned or discharged.’
‘How many of them are you tempted to accept?’
‘As far as I can tell, make or break for this ship happened three years ago, on squadron manoeuvres- a bungled helm order resulted in her ramming a strike cruiser.
It broke up, blew up when the ion flare touched it, ruptured a fuel line- contamination and fires onboard. The inquiry ended in a string of court-martials. She was an unhappy ship before that, mutual blame and denunciation resulted in a breakdown of command.
When she was punted out to the rim, they left too many of the existing officers on board, officers who hated each other. She’s gone from unhappy to poisonous self- loathing tempered only by apathy.’ Dordd said.
‘You do have my authority to hire and fire.’ Dordd opened his mouth, Lennart said it first. ‘One exception- Aldrem. We’re reopening the axial defence turrets, mounting three 480’s off the Kestrel. I want him back as battery commander for that.’
‘He is not well liked on board. He’s been arrogant, pushy, demanding, abrasive and worst of all, right. He’s got no patience with that depth of ineptitude- he could teach advanced, but not remedial.
As a battery commander, I could use him- as an instructor officer, disastrous. Why did you bump him up to commissioned rank, by the way?’
‘So he would be in a position to tell you what’s going on, of course.’ Lennart said.
‘Right. Exhausting being in charge, isn’t it? I’m starting to understand the distant, formal type a lot better now.’ Dordd sighed. ‘My command style so far seems to involve a lot of cold fury and barely suppressed urges to strangle junior officers.’
‘Being the skipper is a job that throws your eccentricities into high relief, true. When I recommended you for command, I knew you were going to get something demanding.’ Lennart said.
‘I would have to deal with this one way or another. Probably better, having the chance to do so in company- at least this way we can draw off some of the bad blood, for purely professional reasons.’
‘Good. I want your report, too- but apart from that, what do you make of them?’ Lennart asked, waving at the now-empty seats.
‘Professional opinion? Vehrec should not be in a multiple branch command, not with ships and troops under his authority. He thought, what can my fighters do?, and set out to find a mission for them. Not many of Delta and Epsilon came back, did they?’
‘No, but by the time we attacked him and his fighter swarm had a chance to attack us, there weren’t enough of his bombers left to matter. And I see what you mean, he doesn’t think ‘ship’.’ Lennart said, broadly in agreement. ‘Something else to work on. Lycarin?’
‘He would sell his grandmother, and at least one of his balls, for your reputation.’ Dordd said, with suppressed anger. ‘He has the courage to rely on his own judgment, but he got very formal when it went wrong. He’s rooted in the system, all that staff time, but wishing he had the chutzpah to break out.
He is good, but not that good- he has a higher opinion of his own talents than they deserve, I think given an independent command he would overreach himself.’
‘Language like that, from the vulture?’ Lennart said. ‘What he did would have amounted to an act of mutiny if it had been on a real operation. I have enough rope to hang him, but I want his own account of his behaviour before I decide on the long or the short drop.’
‘How much damage did Kovall do to us?’ Dordd asked. ‘He microjumped out, guessed right, and gave us an early contact that we couldn’t afford to ignore. In effect he assisted you, didn’t he?’
‘It worked out that way, yes. Almost a shame, we didn’t see enough of him to make a full judgement. Raesene, too- what did you make of him? Something’s not right there.’ Lennart said, antennae twitching.
‘Yes.’ Dordd realized. ‘Slow answering orders, quick carrying them out. Fast thinking, slow to explain. Either the bridge crew are running that ship and using him as their front man, or- I don’t know. The medium frigates and lesser didn’t really have enough to do to tell.’
‘If we’re lucky, it’ll just be an exercise, but we may actually have to do a search-and-retrieve for a modular support cruiser; the one that was supposed to be coming to relieve us of our rebel prisoners.
That ship is now suspiciously late.’ Lennart said. ‘That should give the frigates and corvettes a workout. What about the recon lines?’
‘Falldess comes from a world that’s barely out of the stone age- but in a bizarre way, that actually works for her. Because she has little instinctive grasp, she has to think about what she’s doing- which too many are too eager to display proper zeal to bother. In an open-ended, cerebral fight, probe or hunter operations, she would do well.’
‘I agree. The risks she took weren’t worth the return, but that’s what this series of exercises is all about. Elstrand was a disappointment- he still hasn’t recovered, and if there was anyone I would be tempted to replace as a line commander, right now it would be him.’
‘Who with, Brenn?’ Dordd asked.
‘The obvious choice. There was one other aspect to this- I was hoping you would be able to present a credible threat, because with Adannan on board, it’s possible the Squadron may have to do it for real.’
Dordd was too tired to react demonstratively to that, but it was a scaring thought. ‘Get your report in to me soonest- I have to start planning the next round.’
‘Good luck. Dynamic out.’ Dordd broke the connection.
Lennart ordered the terminal ‘External, Comarre, get me Commander Mirannon.’
‘Gethrim? Jorian.’ Lennart began, once the com team had found him. ‘Busy?’
‘Three for one, as usual. To one significant figure it cancels out, which is better than I was expecting.’ Mirannon said, then remembered he hadn’t actually asked permission.
‘We’re rotating the rest of the squadron’s damage control detachments through Comarre Meridian to assess them and bring them up to speed. That OK?’
‘I expect you could get away with a lot more than that if you want, now. The midichlorian counts are in and there are two people on board potentially subject to Order 66. You and me.’
‘Me?’ Mirannon said. Lennart wouldn’t pull that for a prank, not even he himself would; it was so enormously mad it was probably true. ‘I need the force like I need webbed feet and feathers.
What the kriff good is it to an engineer? What am I supposed to do, turn bolts telekinetically? Draw blueprints at superhuman speed?’
‘I can think of at least two things.’ Lennart said. ‘You do as much of the hands on work as you can find an excuse for, and you work longer hours than almost anyone else. You think you’re doing that without help?
The other aspect- energy resistance. If a dark jedi can walk through flamer fire, you can deal with heat, neutrino waves, live cables-‘
‘All of that, we have tools and procedures to work with, I would be setting a dangerously bad example not using them. Sooner or later, someone else would get careless, and get killed, doing something I could do and they couldn’t.’ Mirannon said.
‘As for the hours, I’m supposed to get enthusiastic about a personality damaging, ultra-high maintenance caf alternative?’
‘Look, I hate the idea too, but I don’t think we have much option. As far as I can tell, there’s never been a coherent list of what the force can and can’t do- too much mystic nonsense and too many secrets kept- so I’m trying to put it together from memories, legends, and marginal sources no-one got around to classifying.’
‘So what are we looking at? Obviously there’s the second-order stuff, force versus force, which we may have to pay more attention to than would otherwise be justified because of Adannan, but what is there of primary usefulness to me or you?’ Mirannon said.
‘Not much that I can think of off the top of my head.’ Lennart admitted. ‘I was hoping that if I could manage to persuade you it was worth taking seriously, then maybe you could do the same for me.’
‘How easy is it for a trainee force user to blow himself up? Self- teaching may not be the smartest plan.’
Mirannon said. ‘The non- option- force users in name only? We can deal with Adannan by other means, and metaphorically take the money and run.’
‘Psychologically damaging, one way or the other, and of questionable usefulness, but the fringe benefits are excellent?’ Lennart summarized. ‘I don’t want to give in to this line of thinking because it sounds too good to be true, but historically, most force users have been trained from diapers up.
Moulded by the force, in some sense taken over by it. So there almost certainly is a gee-gosh-wow-zap-kapow element to it, stuck somewhere between repressed childishness and a child’s image of maturity.’
‘Doesn’t hold water.’ Mirannon said. ‘Your theory is that the potential of the force resolves down to what the users make of it, the known powers are what the historical users have made of it? So a middle aged career officer is naturally going to find things in the force that cloister-raised monks miss.’
‘You sound skeptical.’ Lennart said.
‘I am. They had enough time and enough people to throw at the problem; inefficient or not, they would have had to be superhumanly stupid not to fill out the possibility envelope in twenty thousand years.
I’m not discounting that, but probability is, what they knew of is all there is. So what are the known possibilities?’ Mirannon asked.
‘The sheer incoherence of the list makes me think ‘superhumanly stupid’ is very possible. Or maybe just incomplete research on my part.
First up, telekinesis- apparently the ability to move yourself, move someone else and move inanimate objects are separate talents, breaking down into a shoal of microtalents depending on who you listen to.’
‘On the face of it, I could have a use for that.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘Transhuman strength and dexterity, but the limit isn’t biology, it’s whether or not it’s better than the tools for the job. The other options?’
‘As far as I can tell, there’s biomanipulation, senses natural and unnatural, and a whole incoherent spectrum of illogical, inexplicable and grotesquely unpleasant ways to kill people. There’s a lot more detail, but those are essentially the heads of proposals.’
‘That’s not a child, a celibate or a eunuch; you’re describing an animal. Man as life form, not as rational actor.’
‘That way of looking at it makes a lot of things fall into place.’ Lennart agreed. ‘For myself, I’m looking at the sensory talents. They seem the most potential use to me.’
‘What would be of most use to you would be to go down to Main Machinery-2 and put in some sparring time. Start learning how to hit people with a lightsabre, because sure as stang you’re going to need it.’
One entire section got rewritten until I decided it wasn't worth including; Aldrem and turret crew on board the Dynamic, which is not a happy ship. It may take another couple of attempts to get the tone of that right.
27b.
Black Prince’s main ready room; most of the captains of the squadron were attending holographically, which Lennart thought was a shame- he would have liked to meet them in the flesh, smell them and see them fidget.
With the enhanced senses that the Force is known to bring, he thought, would I be able to pick up on all the little signals, the subliminal muscle- twitches that give a person’s motives away?
And if I could, would it be genuinely useful, or would drinking in the ugly details, all the private hates and fears, prove too much and make the detachment of taking a brown robe and going ‘om’ a lot seem a blessed relief?
How easy it must be to be a cynic, when you know for certain all the things that the Force can reveal to you.
Business first. ‘From your point of view, that could have gone better. For the defender, what is the book solution?’ he asked them.
‘Pursue and destroy.’ Lycarin said. ‘The Operations Office demands it.’ He was sitting bolt upright, millimetrically precise in uniform and deportment; he was on the carpet, and knew it.
‘What the operations office claims ought to happen is less important than what can and does happen.’ Dordd reproved him. They had had a frank exchange of views- or a blazing row in plain language- which had done nothing for the defenders’ chances.
‘I agree in principle.’ Falldess spoke up. ‘Take the fight to the enemy and destroy them.’ She too was in cool, formal mode.
‘It’s easy to agree in principle.’ Kovall said. ‘Turning it into practise is the hard part.’ He was caffeinated to the eyeballs and bouncing of his own com suite’s ceiling, almost.
‘As far as I can tell, none of you were working with a full enemy intentions analysis. Delvran?’ Lennart asked.
‘You got inside the curve. What I managed to assemble couldn’t keep up with you.’ Dordd admitted. He looked very tired, and Lennart wondered how far back that went.
‘EIA is a staff level, non-combat task.’ Yeklendim pointed out, correctly according to the manual.
‘A man who manages to get himself killed as trivially as you did-‘ Kovall started to rate him. They were nominal equals in rank.
‘I chose to do things this way largely to see if, and how well, you would work together.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘Consider the actual exercise plan; one individually powerful ship, with the mission of striking a target defended by a collectively superior group of ships. My objective is obvious.’
‘Draw us out and loop round behind us?’ Elstrand muttered, subdued, then repeated it more clearly.
‘Draw us out then divide us up and take us one at a time.’ Falldess corrected him.
‘Why wasn’t that clear to you before the shooting started? Delvran, Conor, you know me better than that.
The problem is that every Grand Admiral, every oversector command, every naval academy, and every other political arm of the state who have no business doing so at all, consider it their right to add pages to the code of operations.
Part of the captains’ job is to make sense of the contradictions and work out what to ignore. So, yes, it was a trick question.’ Lennart said.
‘Let’s start with the replay and go through this point by point.’ He decided. The display tank they were sitting around resolved itself into a model of the system they had used for the exercise.
It had all been done in virtual space, for the sake of saving time, energy and fuel- and preventing accidents. Some of the recon globe had not done nearly as well as they should.
At Day 10, Lennart had a full-up battle exercise planned; they would be firing live, full power shot at each other, firing continuing to shield failure. It was inherently extremely dangerous, it wasn’t just reproducing the stress and confusion of combat, it was combat. Perhaps they would be ready.
After that, tank off to full fuel state, one sim dress- rehearsal of the operation, then move out and do it for real. That, at least, was the plan.
In the meantime, there was this to learn from. ‘Right, let’s plan this properly from the beginning, with your experiences in mind. What’s your first move?’ Lennart asked.
‘Establish formation and chain of command.’ Barth-Elstrand suggested.
‘Theoretically correct but pointless.’ Lennart stated. ‘You have a squadron and line structure and a clearly senior officer. That should have taken all of three seconds.’ He looked at Dordd, not wanting to put him on the spot but realizing it might be necessary.
‘We suffered a major internal communication breakdown, Dynamic’s data system failed as she came to operational readiness. How much did that really cost us?’ Dordd admitted.
‘Depends what you would have done instead.’ Lennart said, then turned to Vehrec.
‘The sweep line. What was your plan?’
‘Direct bomber attack in company with the ship’s guns, smaller craft supporting as they could.’ Vehrec was living up to his reputation, anyway, sprawled on a couch, apparently unconcerned, but he sounded sharp enough.
‘You need to know exactly where I am to time the strike, and how are you supposed to do that if I can use my bombers to pick off the recon ships? Or direct fire. Conor?’
‘I guessed where you were likely to be.’ The young officer stated. ‘I was right, too.’
‘Terminally right; in coming to find me you offered yourself up on a plate. What was your object?’
‘I knew you would have to eliminate the recon shell; thought I could draw you into chase, make you use energy and time that would give the rest of the squadron a chance to converge on you. Calculated risk.’
‘When does whichever version of the book each of you happen to be using say you should begin to go evasive? Lycarin?’ Lennart asked.
‘Light-second maximum.’ Lycarin stated. ‘For good reason. 99.9% wouldn’t have taken that shot, and 99.99999 couldn’t.’
‘So you don’t evade, you fly a predictable path. Which makes extreme range alpha strikes that much more viable- not feasible, no-one takes precautions, that makes it more feasible. What will you do next time?’
‘Evaluate the situation on it’s merits.’ Elstrand said. ‘Ducking and weaving too soon wastes time and energy and makes signature.’
‘Next time, I could spotlight around, trying to sucker you into giving yourselves away, yes. Whoever doesn’t take the bait, continues straight and level, gets the faceful of turbolaser.’ Lennart smiled. ‘Always another wrinkle, isn’t there? What happened from there?’
The image played itself forward; Black Prince eliminating four of the recon screen with long range fire, several of the rest backing off- ‘And there, what does that achieve?’ Lennart asked.
‘Obviously you don’t look for fights you can’t win- but the book is actually right this time. Back off beyond effective gun range and trail, when larger friendly units appear formate on them and add your firepower to theirs.’
‘We tried.’ Sarlatt said.
‘Not very hard. You still think like a fighter pilot; speed and skill are what matters and damn the odds. It saved you- there were other, more rewarding targets. Speaking of which, Raesene, what orders did you receive from your line commander?’
‘Sir, we-‘ Lennart was glaring at him. He had asked a very precise question and wanted as precise an answer. There wasn’t really any way out of it. ‘ “Targets in sight, begin attack.” That was pretty much it, captain.’
‘I see. Group Captain Vehrec, explain your thinking.’ Lennart asked, letting the rest of the table fill in the ‘if any’.
‘I assumed you had as hazy an idea of our position as we had of yours. Get ahead of your predicted track, sortie everything in a close screen with a packed attack group behind it, localize and torpedo you as you came up; the time for flight operations would have given the slower ships a chance to catch up and reform.’
‘Good plan, if they had known about it. At this point, I am moving tangentially to the recon globe, deceptive jamming full- let’s face it; we’re an Imperator, there’s no way you’re not going to notice us.
What we can do is confuse you as to our precise location, vector and status. Take the opportunity to launch hyperdrive fighters, small craft and probe droids, for instance.’
‘So that was how.’ Raesene said. ‘I knew we couldn’t have missed a normal space approach that badly.’ He had been attacked by Hunters and Avengers from Black Prince, driven them off but they had savaged a Bayonet and two Marauders in company.
‘It’s a useful trick. The probe droids are clear of our self noise and directional jamming, they’re cheap enough that they can be fired off at will and they make excellent ranging shots for no-notice fighter microjumps.
The fighters also act as targeting relays for stepdown HTL fire, enough to take out the antifighter escorts. Now at this point, with the recon shell trimmed, I aim for the gas giant, drop a couple of proton torp heads into the radiation belt in passing.
Between that and our own barrage jamming, we have a respectable local whiteout. Behind the cover of that, what am I going to do next?’
‘Kill velocity, reorient in a different direction, as we decelerate move out to meet us at a high aspect, medium range manoeuvring battle.’ Lycarin gave the book solution.
‘In theory, but a fair proportion of the rebels, and a high proportion of those that have lasted this long, are Imperial trained and know the book as well as you do. You can do one of two things- be better at it than they are, or do something strange.
Most of the early, pre-Alliance Rebels loved strange. They seemed to think they couldn’t win by being conventional, so they had to try something off the wall.
As the amateurs and lunatics die off and the professionals get left behind, the enemy is becoming more rational, more likely to go for a straightforward, logical move.
If the ship’s velocity is low enough, you can enter the upper atmosphere and play hide and seek with cloud layers. More likely to be done by a small ship, but that’s in the book too.’
‘Which is what you did with the non-hyper fighter element.’ Vehrec said. ‘Not what you’re supposed to do when you’re attacking.’
‘It is a good move when you’re outnumbered eight to one. Slightly more difficult with short-endurance TIEs; their being deployed there should have been a hint we were going to come back for them.’
‘So you basically nest them there, they hit out at the recon corvettes and retreat back into the clouds, which means we have to waste time, energy and maybe ships blockading or going in after them. Strategic-offensive, tactical defensive. Nice.’ Vehrec said.
‘I shaved the margins of their endurance doing it. Now,’ Lennart let the image advance half an hour, ‘this is where things start to go wrong, and where I should be jumping up and down demanding people’s heads on my desk.
Elstrand, you were expecting a bait and switch, weren’t you? A near reversal of vector, Black Prince moving out like this?’ Lennart sketched it on the image with a pointer laser.
‘Yes, sir, I was, and I instructed my line to conform accordingly.’ Elstrand stated.
‘Falldess?’
Sir, it occurred to me that small ships hide better than big ones. If you went in there, it would give too much advantage away to the smaller craft looking for you- so I thought Black Prince was going to curve round heading for the objective. Like this.’ She said, moving her hand like a fighter pilot, Lennart sketching it in on the image.
‘Lycarin?’ he asked the Perseverance’s commander, voice suddenly colder and harder.
‘Captain of the Line Lennart, I went with the book option.’ Lycarin said, as if in formal defence.
‘So, Captain Dordd, as senior ranking officer of this mess, what were your thoughts?’
‘On the tactical problem- your vector seemed to lead nowhere. I thought initially that you would take the chance of skimming the upper atmosphere of the giant, aerobraking and setting off how much radio noise, then waiting as we scattered and lunging out after the most exposed;
even if we did manage to manoeuvre on to a common vector, that would waste so much time that you would be able to outreach us to the objective. So I ordered the chase aborted and all ships to make for planetary orbit.
Expecting you to do something we could then react to- so that however badly screwed we were, we could at least see what to do.’ Dordd said.
‘Suboptimal, but in that situation not unreasonable. So why didn’t it happen? Group Captain Vehrec?’
‘We’d just released most of our fighters. For a high speed dash across the system we had to retrieve them. Landing ops take time- and weren’t helped by two squadrons of Starwings playing intruder, Sir.’
‘No doubt you know better, but you fell into the trap of assuming the ship is there to serve the fighters. Classic pilot gut reaction. You don’t think they happened to bounce you out of hyperspace by accident? They did it because you were in mid-retrieval. What should you have done?’
‘Bring shape back into the fight. Your units were after the bombers, so I ordered the bombers to move along our best line of defence so the PD could cover them, and vectored the fighters in after your intruders.’
‘If all you were up against was fighters, that would have made sense. Dordd?’
‘I disregarded my own orders about five seconds later.’ He admitted. ‘With one ship of force paralysed in fighter action, the most sensible thing to do was to rally around her and form up as a group.
I have to admit I was expecting you to build vector outwards, and then microjump in behind us and pound us while we were separated.’
‘That was plan A.’ Lennart said. ‘Lycarin. I know that was where you were expecting me- but didn’t the orders from your immediate superior convince you otherwise? Why didn’t you formate on Voracious and Dynamic?’
‘Voracious was off in a world of it’s own, and-to be blunt, Sir, I did not believe Dynamic was capable of any useful assistance. She was so slow in executing any move that I believed we were effectively on our own. And said so.’ Lycarin stated.
‘My plan B fell into place when you separated. I had a shot at the Perseverance from least-effective missile range closing, and took it. Falldess; attempting to close on and support Perseverance was the right choice. The execution, though- did you intend to scatter support craft along your line of flight?’
‘Captain, we could arrive all together and too late, or piecemeal and in time to matter. I regret the loss of Jointure and Splenetic, but-’ Falldess objected.
‘Another trick question. Look at your vector; you’d have been heading outsystem with too much way on to manoeuvre back into the fight. You got one good firing pass out of that, then spent the rest of the exercise retrieving life pods.’
‘I don’t understand. Am I supposed to leave them drifting?’ Falldess said, irritated.
‘Officially, yes. You fight it out to the finish, and when there’s none of the enemy left standing, then you pick up survivors. Unofficially, very few people scooped up from a drifting life pod have objected. Just wait until you’re no longer likely to join them before you start retrieval.’
‘Gunnery tactics.’ Lennart said, zooming in. ‘With full converged salvos, you miss a lot. On average, you’re more likely to kill a ship sooner with spread fire closing to effective range.
We fire converged sheaf salvos because a solid hit usually overloads the surge capacity of the target’s shielding, and starts doing real damage very quickly.
We’re able to do this because all of my gun crews, primary, secondary and most of the reserve, have put in upwards of ten thousand hours training time. Work towards that, but first, work the numbers and do what gives you the best chance.
Speaking of which, Delvran, your ship did some good shooting. Question; would I have been better off, switching target from Voracious to Dynamic after she had started to score hits, or not?’
‘Another trick question, Sir?’ Elstrand stated. ‘You do whatever reduces the enemy’s firepower by the greatest amount in the least time, Unless political or operational concerns intervene.’
‘Which is the principle you base your judgements on- but in this case, what practical result does the principle produce?’
‘Switch targets.’ Kovall said. ‘Why did you stay on the carrier?’
‘The Venator’s a theoretically easier target; once we take her out, we only have two ships of force close enough and fast enough to worry about, one already damaged.’ Lennart said, not telling the entire truth.
The image played itself out to conclusion. Black Prince’s course track was a z- shape, out from the giant, raking fire into Perseverance, accelerating at a sharp angle to pass Voracious on the far side of her from Dynamic;
the fast destroyer manoeuvring for a clear shot, the destroyer-carrier coming apart in a wave of green fire, the final gun duel between the two destroyers, swirling round each other at close quarters, high aspect;
the broader, three-engined Imperator, better balanced, sidestepping the firing arcs of the fast but clumsy Arrogant. In the little flickers of moves begun and aborted, actions and reactions, it was possible to see that the judgement of Dynamic’s captain outran the ability of his crew to put it into practise.
After the explosion, the rest was coda. Black Prince accelerated inward, delivered a bombardment as specified in the terms of the exercise, retrieved her fighters and jumped outsystem for a tanker rendezvous.
‘Individually, most of you made mostly right choices, most of the time.’ Lennart said. ‘Collectively it was a disaster. Vehrec; for this one, more than half your fighters were imaginary.
That made operations smoother than otherwise. The fact that you chose to act as a second attack force was barely justifiable in theory, in practise catastrophic.
Lycarin, you disobeyed an order to take a chance- that failed. Do that in the flesh and you’ll be lucky to live long enough to be strung up. Captain Dordd, I’ll want to talk to you later.
I want post-battle analyses from each of you. Your own opinion of your performance. We will be repeating this or something like it in a few days- the full squadron, against a computer controlled four ship division of MC-80s.’
There was little overt reaction, among command grade officers, but he detected several suppressed curses in his direction. Fine. ‘Dismiss.’ The holograms faded out, leaving Dordd still sitting there, image glowing slightly blue.
‘Do you believe me now, when I say three months to a decent state of efficiency?’ he said.
Lennart decided to avoid all recriminations and cut straight to the chase. ‘What are you going to do differently next time?’
‘Let my bridge team do their own jobs. I got the balance wrong; spent too much time on my own ship rather than on the squadron, failed to impose my will on them, failed to impose shape on the operation- not a great start, was it?’ Dordd said.
‘That’s why I left you to last and pushed in for a close turning fight. Work them a little. How did your crew react?’ Lennart asked.
‘Badly. I know you fired no real shot, but you left a trail of broken men behind anyway- I have fifteen requests in to resign commissions including two department deputies, and eighty enlisted trying to commit offences just severe enough to be reassigned or discharged.’
‘How many of them are you tempted to accept?’
‘As far as I can tell, make or break for this ship happened three years ago, on squadron manoeuvres- a bungled helm order resulted in her ramming a strike cruiser.
It broke up, blew up when the ion flare touched it, ruptured a fuel line- contamination and fires onboard. The inquiry ended in a string of court-martials. She was an unhappy ship before that, mutual blame and denunciation resulted in a breakdown of command.
When she was punted out to the rim, they left too many of the existing officers on board, officers who hated each other. She’s gone from unhappy to poisonous self- loathing tempered only by apathy.’ Dordd said.
‘You do have my authority to hire and fire.’ Dordd opened his mouth, Lennart said it first. ‘One exception- Aldrem. We’re reopening the axial defence turrets, mounting three 480’s off the Kestrel. I want him back as battery commander for that.’
‘He is not well liked on board. He’s been arrogant, pushy, demanding, abrasive and worst of all, right. He’s got no patience with that depth of ineptitude- he could teach advanced, but not remedial.
As a battery commander, I could use him- as an instructor officer, disastrous. Why did you bump him up to commissioned rank, by the way?’
‘So he would be in a position to tell you what’s going on, of course.’ Lennart said.
‘Right. Exhausting being in charge, isn’t it? I’m starting to understand the distant, formal type a lot better now.’ Dordd sighed. ‘My command style so far seems to involve a lot of cold fury and barely suppressed urges to strangle junior officers.’
‘Being the skipper is a job that throws your eccentricities into high relief, true. When I recommended you for command, I knew you were going to get something demanding.’ Lennart said.
‘I would have to deal with this one way or another. Probably better, having the chance to do so in company- at least this way we can draw off some of the bad blood, for purely professional reasons.’
‘Good. I want your report, too- but apart from that, what do you make of them?’ Lennart asked, waving at the now-empty seats.
‘Professional opinion? Vehrec should not be in a multiple branch command, not with ships and troops under his authority. He thought, what can my fighters do?, and set out to find a mission for them. Not many of Delta and Epsilon came back, did they?’
‘No, but by the time we attacked him and his fighter swarm had a chance to attack us, there weren’t enough of his bombers left to matter. And I see what you mean, he doesn’t think ‘ship’.’ Lennart said, broadly in agreement. ‘Something else to work on. Lycarin?’
‘He would sell his grandmother, and at least one of his balls, for your reputation.’ Dordd said, with suppressed anger. ‘He has the courage to rely on his own judgment, but he got very formal when it went wrong. He’s rooted in the system, all that staff time, but wishing he had the chutzpah to break out.
He is good, but not that good- he has a higher opinion of his own talents than they deserve, I think given an independent command he would overreach himself.’
‘Language like that, from the vulture?’ Lennart said. ‘What he did would have amounted to an act of mutiny if it had been on a real operation. I have enough rope to hang him, but I want his own account of his behaviour before I decide on the long or the short drop.’
‘How much damage did Kovall do to us?’ Dordd asked. ‘He microjumped out, guessed right, and gave us an early contact that we couldn’t afford to ignore. In effect he assisted you, didn’t he?’
‘It worked out that way, yes. Almost a shame, we didn’t see enough of him to make a full judgement. Raesene, too- what did you make of him? Something’s not right there.’ Lennart said, antennae twitching.
‘Yes.’ Dordd realized. ‘Slow answering orders, quick carrying them out. Fast thinking, slow to explain. Either the bridge crew are running that ship and using him as their front man, or- I don’t know. The medium frigates and lesser didn’t really have enough to do to tell.’
‘If we’re lucky, it’ll just be an exercise, but we may actually have to do a search-and-retrieve for a modular support cruiser; the one that was supposed to be coming to relieve us of our rebel prisoners.
That ship is now suspiciously late.’ Lennart said. ‘That should give the frigates and corvettes a workout. What about the recon lines?’
‘Falldess comes from a world that’s barely out of the stone age- but in a bizarre way, that actually works for her. Because she has little instinctive grasp, she has to think about what she’s doing- which too many are too eager to display proper zeal to bother. In an open-ended, cerebral fight, probe or hunter operations, she would do well.’
‘I agree. The risks she took weren’t worth the return, but that’s what this series of exercises is all about. Elstrand was a disappointment- he still hasn’t recovered, and if there was anyone I would be tempted to replace as a line commander, right now it would be him.’
‘Who with, Brenn?’ Dordd asked.
‘The obvious choice. There was one other aspect to this- I was hoping you would be able to present a credible threat, because with Adannan on board, it’s possible the Squadron may have to do it for real.’
Dordd was too tired to react demonstratively to that, but it was a scaring thought. ‘Get your report in to me soonest- I have to start planning the next round.’
‘Good luck. Dynamic out.’ Dordd broke the connection.
Lennart ordered the terminal ‘External, Comarre, get me Commander Mirannon.’
‘Gethrim? Jorian.’ Lennart began, once the com team had found him. ‘Busy?’
‘Three for one, as usual. To one significant figure it cancels out, which is better than I was expecting.’ Mirannon said, then remembered he hadn’t actually asked permission.
‘We’re rotating the rest of the squadron’s damage control detachments through Comarre Meridian to assess them and bring them up to speed. That OK?’
‘I expect you could get away with a lot more than that if you want, now. The midichlorian counts are in and there are two people on board potentially subject to Order 66. You and me.’
‘Me?’ Mirannon said. Lennart wouldn’t pull that for a prank, not even he himself would; it was so enormously mad it was probably true. ‘I need the force like I need webbed feet and feathers.
What the kriff good is it to an engineer? What am I supposed to do, turn bolts telekinetically? Draw blueprints at superhuman speed?’
‘I can think of at least two things.’ Lennart said. ‘You do as much of the hands on work as you can find an excuse for, and you work longer hours than almost anyone else. You think you’re doing that without help?
The other aspect- energy resistance. If a dark jedi can walk through flamer fire, you can deal with heat, neutrino waves, live cables-‘
‘All of that, we have tools and procedures to work with, I would be setting a dangerously bad example not using them. Sooner or later, someone else would get careless, and get killed, doing something I could do and they couldn’t.’ Mirannon said.
‘As for the hours, I’m supposed to get enthusiastic about a personality damaging, ultra-high maintenance caf alternative?’
‘Look, I hate the idea too, but I don’t think we have much option. As far as I can tell, there’s never been a coherent list of what the force can and can’t do- too much mystic nonsense and too many secrets kept- so I’m trying to put it together from memories, legends, and marginal sources no-one got around to classifying.’
‘So what are we looking at? Obviously there’s the second-order stuff, force versus force, which we may have to pay more attention to than would otherwise be justified because of Adannan, but what is there of primary usefulness to me or you?’ Mirannon said.
‘Not much that I can think of off the top of my head.’ Lennart admitted. ‘I was hoping that if I could manage to persuade you it was worth taking seriously, then maybe you could do the same for me.’
‘How easy is it for a trainee force user to blow himself up? Self- teaching may not be the smartest plan.’
Mirannon said. ‘The non- option- force users in name only? We can deal with Adannan by other means, and metaphorically take the money and run.’
‘Psychologically damaging, one way or the other, and of questionable usefulness, but the fringe benefits are excellent?’ Lennart summarized. ‘I don’t want to give in to this line of thinking because it sounds too good to be true, but historically, most force users have been trained from diapers up.
Moulded by the force, in some sense taken over by it. So there almost certainly is a gee-gosh-wow-zap-kapow element to it, stuck somewhere between repressed childishness and a child’s image of maturity.’
‘Doesn’t hold water.’ Mirannon said. ‘Your theory is that the potential of the force resolves down to what the users make of it, the known powers are what the historical users have made of it? So a middle aged career officer is naturally going to find things in the force that cloister-raised monks miss.’
‘You sound skeptical.’ Lennart said.
‘I am. They had enough time and enough people to throw at the problem; inefficient or not, they would have had to be superhumanly stupid not to fill out the possibility envelope in twenty thousand years.
I’m not discounting that, but probability is, what they knew of is all there is. So what are the known possibilities?’ Mirannon asked.
‘The sheer incoherence of the list makes me think ‘superhumanly stupid’ is very possible. Or maybe just incomplete research on my part.
First up, telekinesis- apparently the ability to move yourself, move someone else and move inanimate objects are separate talents, breaking down into a shoal of microtalents depending on who you listen to.’
‘On the face of it, I could have a use for that.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘Transhuman strength and dexterity, but the limit isn’t biology, it’s whether or not it’s better than the tools for the job. The other options?’
‘As far as I can tell, there’s biomanipulation, senses natural and unnatural, and a whole incoherent spectrum of illogical, inexplicable and grotesquely unpleasant ways to kill people. There’s a lot more detail, but those are essentially the heads of proposals.’
‘That’s not a child, a celibate or a eunuch; you’re describing an animal. Man as life form, not as rational actor.’
‘That way of looking at it makes a lot of things fall into place.’ Lennart agreed. ‘For myself, I’m looking at the sensory talents. They seem the most potential use to me.’
‘What would be of most use to you would be to go down to Main Machinery-2 and put in some sparring time. Start learning how to hit people with a lightsabre, because sure as stang you’re going to need it.’
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-13 09:45pm, edited 1 time in total.