Merry christmas and happy new year to all!
Hull no. 721- a fanfic
Moderator: LadyTevar
Yep, double that.AradoX wrote:I check for updates every day, and decided it was about time that I said Thanks for including me in your story... better late than never
Merry christmas and happy new year to all!
And may we hope on lots of new story parts from several (ongoing) stories.
Nothing like the present.
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Again, what a mess chapter 29 has become. Three scenes under simultaneous construction- this is a Frankenchapter, a godawful stitched together mess.
I have to admit I'm not overly happy with how Lennart and Adannan's personality clash went; at times, it feels as if I'm trying to write in cinema. That is, I can see it happen in my mind's eye, and what comes out in text is a description of that. That one lost a hell of a lot in translation.
There was no real meeting of minds, no real exploration. Just a sideswipe, as they largely talked past each other. That may have been exactly what would happen- they both opened too agressively and spent the rest of the encounter trying to avoid a head on clash, which it was in Adannan's interest to force.
A psychoanalyst could probably make a lot out of the fact that Adannan intended to use Lennart's relationship with Aleph-3 as a psycho-political weapon, assuming a principle of inversion holds, and a man as publicly easygoing as Lennart has a lot of private sexual hangups.
Lennart called his bluff, and Adannan, who ought not to fear abandoning himself to passion, does- and backs down. Worse, Lennart later admits, to the woman yet, that he does. Or at least lies fairly convincingly. Freud's ghost would have...several unlicensed nuclear accelerators pointed in it's direction, ideally.
Something I am going to have to write is the postmortem between Adannan and Laurentia as they discuss this.
Anyway, this is the next part that's immediately ready to go. The continuity glitch has not yet been plugged; the battle scene is still under construction. This is the conversation that immediately follows the last.
‘So, Group captain, have you had a chance to look over the sector ORBAT yet and decide exactly what to requisition?’ Lennart asked, pointedly.
‘Not in depth.’ Vehrec said, sounding nonchalant.
‘Let me guess; it wasn’t a look as much as a drool. You know exactly what you want, but have only the haziest recollection of where you saw it, because you never bothered to make notes. If I told you to go shopping for them, what would you come up with?’
‘Captain, are you implying my past makes me untrustworthy?’ Vehrec said.
‘Of course it does. What by the book, die-stamp cloned, procedure- stuffed rear area imitation of an officer would trust a man with your history?’ Lennart asked, smiling.
‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘because they don’t understand where you’re coming from, they won’t react to your orders and instructions with energy, won’t anticipate fluently, certainly won’t go the extra light year for you.
There are jobs and orders I could give you, that friction would prevent you from succeeding in. Does that not constitute untrustworthiness?’
‘I took an old run- down carrier out of mothballs and brought it to join the fleet. I succeeded in that.’ Vehrec said, as aggressively as he dared- pot and kettle, this, considering Lennart’s reputation. Which Lennart would have agreed with if he had said so.
‘Yes, with an all volunteer crew. That’s actually a major point in your favour, they have some enthusiasm and energy already, use it. Mainly, don’t be too hasty to shake off the dust of Altyna.’ Lennart said.
‘Somewhere in the rings of Altyna V, there is an ice fragment with IHTKP etched into the surface. No-one can prove it was me, because handwriting analysis doesn’t work when you scribble with laser cannon.’
‘How do you think I coped, coming back to this ship after eight years away from the line? My time as an instructor helped me immensely; the twin problems of keeping an unruly bunch of youngsters from getting themselves disciplined- or sat on- by the system, and of bringing out the best in them, the same problems I faced running a crew.’ Lennart said.
‘Fighter pilots aren’t like that, you can’t treat them like younglings, you have to let them be a little crazy.’ Vehrec said. ‘Confidence, yeh, maybe it does go the length of arrogance, is an invaluable force multiplier.’
‘Which has been most fighter pilots’ stock excuse for the last twenty thousand years. Trust me, the rest of the galaxy has finally managed to catch on.’ Lennart said.
‘Still true. The point is that you don’t teach fighter pilots like you lead them in the field. They hatch; there is a transition. Getting your wings is as big a deal as coming of age.
Going to an instructional job from command of a line unit is like being demoted from university lecturer to primary school, and the other way round too.’
‘One ship, with seventy- four hundred crew and a power rating of 3E24 watts, carrying a reinforced infantry division. It’s not all about the pilots. Spearhead’s no use without a shaft behind it, warhead’s no use without a launcher.’ Lennart warned.
‘Yeh, you hammered that one home pretty thoroughly on exercise. I know I’m not a stellarly good ship commander. Never pretended to be. Didn’t it nearly work, though?’
‘Not really, no.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘All else taken into account, we’re doing Caliphant no favour by asking him to cover your blind spots. He’s not ready for something that big. You know how to make an officer grow?’
‘Is it the same recipe as for mushrooms?’ Vehrec said.
‘No wonder we handed you your head.’ Lennart bounced back. ‘By giving them jobs towards the upper limit of their capability.
For junior lieutenants that’s damn’ near everything, so it’s easy enough, but a Senior Lieutenant requires a little more careful handling. He’ll either be able to cope or he won’t, and the size of the job means the odds are against.
If he doesn’t, there he is. Even if he does, he’ll make so many enemies and rivals in the process the next step up is going to get that much harder, he’ll have to hack his way to the top. That usually doesn’t make a good officer in the long term.’
‘I think he can cope.’ Vehrec said.
‘Then back him with your authority so he doesn’t have to mortgage his future and make enemies of most of the crew.
As for the fighter complement, we have authority to requisition anything in service with the sector group, or to private- purchase- you really could go shopping. What group composition do you think the situation calls for?’ Lennart asked.
‘Captain, if you really think I’m juvenile enough to have skipped my homework, for kriff’s sake, and not read the tactical circular, you can just come out and say so.’
‘Remember what I was saying about friction?’ Lennart asked. ‘Well, have you?’
There was only one possible answer. ‘No.’ Just to watch the Captain of the Line react.
Lennart appeared to keep his temper fairly well, at least outwardly, but Vehrec could read the signs. First up was; I will crucify him. Second, can’t afford to do that just yet, I need him, but I can let him see the receipt for the wood and the nails.
Third, he can’t possibly mean that, nobody could be that irresponsible. Fourth; could he?
‘I did help write it, though.’ Vehrec added.
Time for a little experiment, Lennart thought. Call it public relations. He reached into his pocket, drew out the lightsabre, then thought about where that would go.
Vehrec’s eyes were bugging out badly enough already; he had not anticipated this, not serving with one of Vader’s men. I don’t need to turn the thing on and wave it at him, Lennart thought, I need to calm him down.
I hardly needed to do anything; just the thought of it was enough, all the fear happened on the other end.
‘Yes, the authorities know. Yes, it is a red blade. My temper is not quite as controlled as it used to be. I think I can still take a joke- but don’t push it too far. The Sweep Line’s fighter elements?’
‘Ah…QX, we have three conflicting ways to load out.’ Vehrec said, trying to concentrate on anything but the black cylinder in Lennart’s hand.
'We can emphasise area dominance and control which means loading up heavily on TIE Fighters and Interceptors, tactical strike which would be bomber- heavy, or long range rapid reaction, which would be expensive. With thirty-five squadrons, we could multirole and do all three.’
Lennart shook his head. ‘Too much division of effort. Bombers make relatively good recon, they have the sensors. I’m thinking a recon/strike force built around them, with mainly hyper capable cover/intervention forces. What have you got now?’
What, you didn’t read the statement of condition? Vehrec thought of saying, decided not to. ‘At the moment, we have in flying order three squadrons of standard /ln, two old Assault and one of Avenger, of line-regulation type.
Left- over Clone War era types, we can put up two squadrons of Aethersprite, two of V-19 Torrent, three of Nimbus and four of Actis.
Training modified, four squadrons of Bomber/IFT, two squadrons of Stingers- light missile TIE/ln- four of other /ln types, one squadron failed Interceptor variants, three mixed aggressor squadrons, three halves Y-wing, one half each PTB-625, Z-95, R-41, that’s pretty much it.’
‘We raided the remains of both Rebel ships; found quite a few interesting bits and pieces. We have the maintenance parts, tools and manuals for maybe three squadrons of X- wings.
More to the point, we can increase your complement of relics with another two Nimbus and four Actis squadrons, and give you a total of six squadrons’ worth of booster rings.’
‘You had a flight of Advanced/X7 until recently, yes?’ Vehrec asked, Lennart nodded. ‘You must be fairly well in with Sienar, especially if they let you keep them until you had tested them to destruction. You don’t think resorting to wholesale blasts from the past might, well, piss them off royally?’
‘No more than using the ones we already have in hand, it was pure politics why they were removed from service in the first place. Torrents are dubious- no FTL.
Return the initial trainers, the /ln mods and the aggressors to Altyna, that leaves thirteen squadrons to be drafted in from the sector group. We already have a significant qualitative edge, I’d like to keep that.’ Lennart said.
‘A qualitative edge over who, exactly? For all that I love the older Kuati designs as pilot’s spacecraft, they were almost all bleeding edge. They need top line maintenance teams to keep them in good enough shape to be worth it.
If we could transfer the Aethersprites and Torrents to Black Prince, you would make better use of them and they would simplify my problems.’
‘I’ll take the Aethersprites. Pack the Torrents off to Altyna as well. That’ll round the Strike Wing out to full strength, leave you with eight squadrons of short-range sublight fighters, eleven squadrons of hyper capable fighters.
If you can get another squadron of Avengers from somewhere, four squadrons of Interceptor if possible and /ln if not, and round up eleven squadrons of Bombers, that gives you decent area coverage, long range recon, and independent strike power.’ Lennart decided.
‘That’s a lot of firepower. One thing, though- who’s the target?’ Vehrec asked, not sure he was going to like the answer.
‘Do you want the menu? If we’re outrageously lucky, the rebellion. If we’re not, the rebellion and most of the aliens in the sector. If the worst case scenario plays itself out the way I expect it to, you can take that lot and throw in renegade elements of the sector group.
Oh, and I need to borrow one of your shuttles. One not registered to Black Prince, anyway.’
‘Yes, Sir- what for?’ Vehrec asked.
‘Got to see a man about an extermination warrant.’
Slight spoilerisation, considering I don't know when this is going to get around to being written;
"We've got him alive, but the shape he's in...the only use the security bureau is likely to have for him now is if Darth Vader needs a body double."
Vianca, CDR Falldess was quite harsh to her bridge crew, there. There is going to be some fallout from that. She is also quite suspicious of the situation on board Obdurate. When her navigator denounces her for anti-Imperial sentiment- that "uniformed bully boys" crack- to the security presence on board Obdurate, do you think they'll be able to resist rising to the bait?
I have to admit I'm not overly happy with how Lennart and Adannan's personality clash went; at times, it feels as if I'm trying to write in cinema. That is, I can see it happen in my mind's eye, and what comes out in text is a description of that. That one lost a hell of a lot in translation.
There was no real meeting of minds, no real exploration. Just a sideswipe, as they largely talked past each other. That may have been exactly what would happen- they both opened too agressively and spent the rest of the encounter trying to avoid a head on clash, which it was in Adannan's interest to force.
A psychoanalyst could probably make a lot out of the fact that Adannan intended to use Lennart's relationship with Aleph-3 as a psycho-political weapon, assuming a principle of inversion holds, and a man as publicly easygoing as Lennart has a lot of private sexual hangups.
Lennart called his bluff, and Adannan, who ought not to fear abandoning himself to passion, does- and backs down. Worse, Lennart later admits, to the woman yet, that he does. Or at least lies fairly convincingly. Freud's ghost would have...several unlicensed nuclear accelerators pointed in it's direction, ideally.
Something I am going to have to write is the postmortem between Adannan and Laurentia as they discuss this.
Anyway, this is the next part that's immediately ready to go. The continuity glitch has not yet been plugged; the battle scene is still under construction. This is the conversation that immediately follows the last.
‘So, Group captain, have you had a chance to look over the sector ORBAT yet and decide exactly what to requisition?’ Lennart asked, pointedly.
‘Not in depth.’ Vehrec said, sounding nonchalant.
‘Let me guess; it wasn’t a look as much as a drool. You know exactly what you want, but have only the haziest recollection of where you saw it, because you never bothered to make notes. If I told you to go shopping for them, what would you come up with?’
‘Captain, are you implying my past makes me untrustworthy?’ Vehrec said.
‘Of course it does. What by the book, die-stamp cloned, procedure- stuffed rear area imitation of an officer would trust a man with your history?’ Lennart asked, smiling.
‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘because they don’t understand where you’re coming from, they won’t react to your orders and instructions with energy, won’t anticipate fluently, certainly won’t go the extra light year for you.
There are jobs and orders I could give you, that friction would prevent you from succeeding in. Does that not constitute untrustworthiness?’
‘I took an old run- down carrier out of mothballs and brought it to join the fleet. I succeeded in that.’ Vehrec said, as aggressively as he dared- pot and kettle, this, considering Lennart’s reputation. Which Lennart would have agreed with if he had said so.
‘Yes, with an all volunteer crew. That’s actually a major point in your favour, they have some enthusiasm and energy already, use it. Mainly, don’t be too hasty to shake off the dust of Altyna.’ Lennart said.
‘Somewhere in the rings of Altyna V, there is an ice fragment with IHTKP etched into the surface. No-one can prove it was me, because handwriting analysis doesn’t work when you scribble with laser cannon.’
‘How do you think I coped, coming back to this ship after eight years away from the line? My time as an instructor helped me immensely; the twin problems of keeping an unruly bunch of youngsters from getting themselves disciplined- or sat on- by the system, and of bringing out the best in them, the same problems I faced running a crew.’ Lennart said.
‘Fighter pilots aren’t like that, you can’t treat them like younglings, you have to let them be a little crazy.’ Vehrec said. ‘Confidence, yeh, maybe it does go the length of arrogance, is an invaluable force multiplier.’
‘Which has been most fighter pilots’ stock excuse for the last twenty thousand years. Trust me, the rest of the galaxy has finally managed to catch on.’ Lennart said.
‘Still true. The point is that you don’t teach fighter pilots like you lead them in the field. They hatch; there is a transition. Getting your wings is as big a deal as coming of age.
Going to an instructional job from command of a line unit is like being demoted from university lecturer to primary school, and the other way round too.’
‘One ship, with seventy- four hundred crew and a power rating of 3E24 watts, carrying a reinforced infantry division. It’s not all about the pilots. Spearhead’s no use without a shaft behind it, warhead’s no use without a launcher.’ Lennart warned.
‘Yeh, you hammered that one home pretty thoroughly on exercise. I know I’m not a stellarly good ship commander. Never pretended to be. Didn’t it nearly work, though?’
‘Not really, no.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘All else taken into account, we’re doing Caliphant no favour by asking him to cover your blind spots. He’s not ready for something that big. You know how to make an officer grow?’
‘Is it the same recipe as for mushrooms?’ Vehrec said.
‘No wonder we handed you your head.’ Lennart bounced back. ‘By giving them jobs towards the upper limit of their capability.
For junior lieutenants that’s damn’ near everything, so it’s easy enough, but a Senior Lieutenant requires a little more careful handling. He’ll either be able to cope or he won’t, and the size of the job means the odds are against.
If he doesn’t, there he is. Even if he does, he’ll make so many enemies and rivals in the process the next step up is going to get that much harder, he’ll have to hack his way to the top. That usually doesn’t make a good officer in the long term.’
‘I think he can cope.’ Vehrec said.
‘Then back him with your authority so he doesn’t have to mortgage his future and make enemies of most of the crew.
As for the fighter complement, we have authority to requisition anything in service with the sector group, or to private- purchase- you really could go shopping. What group composition do you think the situation calls for?’ Lennart asked.
‘Captain, if you really think I’m juvenile enough to have skipped my homework, for kriff’s sake, and not read the tactical circular, you can just come out and say so.’
‘Remember what I was saying about friction?’ Lennart asked. ‘Well, have you?’
There was only one possible answer. ‘No.’ Just to watch the Captain of the Line react.
Lennart appeared to keep his temper fairly well, at least outwardly, but Vehrec could read the signs. First up was; I will crucify him. Second, can’t afford to do that just yet, I need him, but I can let him see the receipt for the wood and the nails.
Third, he can’t possibly mean that, nobody could be that irresponsible. Fourth; could he?
‘I did help write it, though.’ Vehrec added.
Time for a little experiment, Lennart thought. Call it public relations. He reached into his pocket, drew out the lightsabre, then thought about where that would go.
Vehrec’s eyes were bugging out badly enough already; he had not anticipated this, not serving with one of Vader’s men. I don’t need to turn the thing on and wave it at him, Lennart thought, I need to calm him down.
I hardly needed to do anything; just the thought of it was enough, all the fear happened on the other end.
‘Yes, the authorities know. Yes, it is a red blade. My temper is not quite as controlled as it used to be. I think I can still take a joke- but don’t push it too far. The Sweep Line’s fighter elements?’
‘Ah…QX, we have three conflicting ways to load out.’ Vehrec said, trying to concentrate on anything but the black cylinder in Lennart’s hand.
'We can emphasise area dominance and control which means loading up heavily on TIE Fighters and Interceptors, tactical strike which would be bomber- heavy, or long range rapid reaction, which would be expensive. With thirty-five squadrons, we could multirole and do all three.’
Lennart shook his head. ‘Too much division of effort. Bombers make relatively good recon, they have the sensors. I’m thinking a recon/strike force built around them, with mainly hyper capable cover/intervention forces. What have you got now?’
What, you didn’t read the statement of condition? Vehrec thought of saying, decided not to. ‘At the moment, we have in flying order three squadrons of standard /ln, two old Assault and one of Avenger, of line-regulation type.
Left- over Clone War era types, we can put up two squadrons of Aethersprite, two of V-19 Torrent, three of Nimbus and four of Actis.
Training modified, four squadrons of Bomber/IFT, two squadrons of Stingers- light missile TIE/ln- four of other /ln types, one squadron failed Interceptor variants, three mixed aggressor squadrons, three halves Y-wing, one half each PTB-625, Z-95, R-41, that’s pretty much it.’
‘We raided the remains of both Rebel ships; found quite a few interesting bits and pieces. We have the maintenance parts, tools and manuals for maybe three squadrons of X- wings.
More to the point, we can increase your complement of relics with another two Nimbus and four Actis squadrons, and give you a total of six squadrons’ worth of booster rings.’
‘You had a flight of Advanced/X7 until recently, yes?’ Vehrec asked, Lennart nodded. ‘You must be fairly well in with Sienar, especially if they let you keep them until you had tested them to destruction. You don’t think resorting to wholesale blasts from the past might, well, piss them off royally?’
‘No more than using the ones we already have in hand, it was pure politics why they were removed from service in the first place. Torrents are dubious- no FTL.
Return the initial trainers, the /ln mods and the aggressors to Altyna, that leaves thirteen squadrons to be drafted in from the sector group. We already have a significant qualitative edge, I’d like to keep that.’ Lennart said.
‘A qualitative edge over who, exactly? For all that I love the older Kuati designs as pilot’s spacecraft, they were almost all bleeding edge. They need top line maintenance teams to keep them in good enough shape to be worth it.
If we could transfer the Aethersprites and Torrents to Black Prince, you would make better use of them and they would simplify my problems.’
‘I’ll take the Aethersprites. Pack the Torrents off to Altyna as well. That’ll round the Strike Wing out to full strength, leave you with eight squadrons of short-range sublight fighters, eleven squadrons of hyper capable fighters.
If you can get another squadron of Avengers from somewhere, four squadrons of Interceptor if possible and /ln if not, and round up eleven squadrons of Bombers, that gives you decent area coverage, long range recon, and independent strike power.’ Lennart decided.
‘That’s a lot of firepower. One thing, though- who’s the target?’ Vehrec asked, not sure he was going to like the answer.
‘Do you want the menu? If we’re outrageously lucky, the rebellion. If we’re not, the rebellion and most of the aliens in the sector. If the worst case scenario plays itself out the way I expect it to, you can take that lot and throw in renegade elements of the sector group.
Oh, and I need to borrow one of your shuttles. One not registered to Black Prince, anyway.’
‘Yes, Sir- what for?’ Vehrec asked.
‘Got to see a man about an extermination warrant.’
Slight spoilerisation, considering I don't know when this is going to get around to being written;
"We've got him alive, but the shape he's in...the only use the security bureau is likely to have for him now is if Darth Vader needs a body double."
Vianca, CDR Falldess was quite harsh to her bridge crew, there. There is going to be some fallout from that. She is also quite suspicious of the situation on board Obdurate. When her navigator denounces her for anti-Imperial sentiment- that "uniformed bully boys" crack- to the security presence on board Obdurate, do you think they'll be able to resist rising to the bait?
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-15 09:20am, edited 1 time in total.
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Vehrec
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2204
- Joined: 2006-04-22 12:29pm
- Location: The Ohio State University
- Contact:
As much as this strokes my ego, I'd much prefer if the next update plugged those holes. The Continuity gaps itch at my mind, in a way that is very hard to define. If you think its bad to be writi9ng the frakenchapter, believe me its just as bad on this end.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)-
Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Half a hole is still a hole in it's own right, but this is what I have ready to go. This is effectively the mid-game of the running fight, with the end game still to come. It fits immediately before "Captain? Vidcall, from the Imperial suite." and there should be one more, I reckon in a week to ten days, to fill the gap.
HIMS Blackwood was the coordination ship for the line now, and it was an interestingly two-edged assignment. She had the best sensor fit, so she spent more time in real space than any of the others, monitoring and keeping overwatch on them; that also made her the most important target.
In theory, she was also the ship that had the best chance to spot trouble coming and get out of the way. Kovall enjoyed being on the spot; it was a chance to shine, to show what he and his ship could do.
The rebel fighters that Aron had been chasing had dropped out to realspace, reoriented, and Kovall could now see that they were heading for an attack run on Tarazed Meridian, but the Imperial fighter screen had got there first. That problem seemed in hand. The chase, the captured modular cruiser, was proving perversely hard to find, though.
A very bright, obvious initial signature, but that still left about eighty cubic light years as a potential end point, and the sweep would move through and around that area- as well as covering the flanks of it to spot incoming craft.
One of which he had a touch on. The modular cruiser had a lot of people on board, either the compForce security troopers- unlikely- or Rebel infantry, and if they were, that meant they had come from a rebel warship.
Like the one he was manoeuvring for drop position on; computers tentatively identified it as a Dreadnaught-class, “heavy cruiser” on the peacetime system, practically speaking actually a medium frigate.
That made sense. She had the troop complement to board and take a modular cruiser, which were one of the very few things a dreadnaught could actually catch.
Older, slower, clumsier, less well armed than his recon ship but a lot tougher. In a stand-up fight, it would depend on hit rates, how much of the Dread’s fire Blackwood could sidestep and vice versa. Kovall had no intent of letting it degenerate that far.
It was moving in a sparse, skeletally open pattern of short jumps that probably meant it was serving as rally point and navigation provider for it’s fighters, too faint to be seen at this distance.
Perfect; it could be hit without it’s screen in place- unless the rebel captain was running a double bluff. Chance worth taking.
He stopped himself just before giving the order to calculate an interception course. What about the rest of the line, that he was supposed to be coordinating? Responsibility was no fun.
He gave the order to calculate, but not yet to initiate. Watched the main plotting board.
Guillemot was the most important unit at the moment, the most heavily armed of the line; she had shifted into centre position, waiting to interdict whatever came their way.
Relayed data indicated they had a target; it was dimly, fuzzily visible at the limits of Blackwood’s range of clarity, they wouldn’t have noticed it unless they had been clued in. It was running muted, not exactly silent but enough to reduce it’s visibility. Probably a MC-40 rebel medium frigate.
It was also aiming itself at one of the Carrack-Marauder pairs. That was a target well within their capability. Blackwood was just about a fair match for one, but Guillemot had the heavy turbolasers- the last of their line to do so. Obdurate was far out on the ascendant rim of the search pattern- assuming their target had been able to stabilise her course, unlikely.
Raesene would need time to react, and after all his ship did have a hot reputation, one Guillemot’s captain was determined to prove she didn’t deserve. Guillemot moved after the Rebel cruiser, intending a double ambush.
A fine point of tactics; to warn the Carrack, or not? Subtractor, and the attendant marauder- class TC-932GG “Cacophony in Q flat major”, could not realistically take on a Rebel medium frigate.
But they could serve as bait long enough to keep the reb in place long enough for Guillemot to jump her in her turn. No warning.
The rebel wouldn’t have given them any anyway. Her captain, probably not a Mon Cal if behaviour was anything to go by, chose to enter the fight with a manoeuvre that Raesene would have recognised instantly. It was the same bouncing entry he had used when he joined the squadron, splashing off the far side of the light barrier, setting up a false descent/transition signature.
Subtractor howled out an alert, and turned to face the entry; distant, but not out of contact- bombardment gun range. Apparently.
Blackwood was monitoring the situation, had time to send a warning before leaping into hyperspace on the pursuit of the Dreadnaught; but there was no time to prepare, and Subtractor would have gone with her own sensor picture anyway.
The Rebel frigate emerged on the far side of her, the side she had focused sensors and shields away from. Cacophony reacted more quickly, turning bow quarter on and starting to scramble her fighters. Spraying LTL fire, too, for what good it would do.
The rebel came out of hyperspace with her turrets already approximately laid on, opened fire three seconds after emergence.
Subtractor had been faked out, and paid the price; turned to face, just too slowly to matter. She had four turrets each mounting single medium turbolasers, to the –40’s six quadruple turrets, three of which could bear. The rebels fired sequentially, three long strings of scarlet pulses, and the Carrack’s captain let himself be trapped by the class’s reputation for being able to withstand punishment just a little too long.
They were tough ships, for their size; designed as fleet outriders, they had the armour and shielding-once it was focused to bear- to survive single stray HTL shot, but a sustained pounding would bring them down just as it would anything else.
Which was exactly what the Alliance ship commenced to deliver. Collectively outnumbered and outgunned, she had to hit hard and fast. The first few shot hit hull protected only by the tensor field and heat sinks, ripped gaps in the Imperial ship’s side. Heavy, redundant compartmentalisation could only achieve so much.
Shields refocused to meet the incoming fire, but backed by damaged, compromised hull they were not fully effective; they could not channel heat away fast enough, the generators started to overload, bleedthrough did further damage.
Subtractor rolled to present her undamaged side, scrambled her flight of fighters- only /ln, but they could join Cacophony’s mixed squadron of /ln and/sa Bombers- if they were in time to matter at all. The Alliance frigate was in the middle of calculating her own next move; knew she would have to move out and the energy expended on Imperial shielding was probably wasted.
That didn’t stop her from keeping on pounding, pounding away. Subtractor had more freedom to manoeuvre, but fewer engines and less structural integrity left to do it with.
Return fire achieved nothing except to force the rebel to keep shields up. She was too heavily protected for Subtractor to be able to do more than prolong the agony by trying to stave her off with return fire.
The rebel frigate monitored Guillemot’s premature, distant emergence; that was time in hand, then. Time to burn down the shielding in one capacitor- straining sustained burst, melting the shield emitters, hammering into the Carrack, smashing open compartment after compartment. Fuel tanks, hyperdrive, quarters, comms and most of sensors, life support- blasted away.
Cacophony’s bombers threw themselves at the Rebel, but with jammers up and point defence active, their chances were minimal. They shot off their torpedoes from medium range, semi- guided relying only on their own sensors, then accelerated to follow them in. They still had their drop chutes and the seismic charges they loaded. The /ln went in with them, for what strafing might do.
Most of the –40’s light turbolasers were pointing on as well, the ion cannon lashed out at the torpedoes and the Imperial fighters. Imperial return fire mostly sparked off the turrets; aiming for them, even the shot that leaked through the shields failing to do much to that armour.
The reb’s ion cannon fired grid patterns at the incoming torpedo wave, blotting them out as they came. No fratricide, no sympathetic detonations- but of seventy-two fired, twenty made it in to contact.
Not a kill, nowhere close. The fighters followed, weaving, half- blind in the Rebel frigate’s jamming, spraying fire ahead of them; they were actually relatively safe. The rebels knew the /ln were relatively little threat, but the bombers still had unpowered heavy ordnance. They were the target.
The rough rule of thumb was, for an effective attack, the fighters had to outnumber the warship target’s point defence weapons at least two to one. Eighteen guns firing at six fighters was not the mathematics of victory.
One of the bombers took an unlucky hit dead on the payload bay, blowing out the failsafes, and the ordnance detonated. One more was hit by enough current to melt a radiator wing, and heat buildup blew it apart. Three were hit and disabled, drifting away ballistically.
One, the second element leader, was lucky enough to be hit in the empty warhead launcher. Most of the controls were disabled; so was he. The flashes of lightning over him had shorted his life support and left his heart about to arrest.
He had enough control left to set his charges to contact detonation; and nudge his bomber into a collision course with the frigate.
The rebels saw it coming, but not in time. It was still a better bet to take the hit than to shift shields towards it and leave themselves open to MTL fire. The ion cannon tried to reach it, but short of detonating the charges, nothing would work, and they weren’t that precise.
The bomber hit midships on the starboard flank, and the seismics let go.
Four hoop-shaped flashes of light seemed to burst out from the body of the ship, the other half going into the shields- which overloaded, locally, and left huge molten scars across the Mon cal frigate. No hull breach, but she looked as if she had been branded.
Guillemot finally managed to recalibrate and move in- not long, but under fire, eternity. That was the Alliance frigate’s cue. Guillemot barely had time to point her guns on before the Mon Cal frigate accelerated away to light speed.
It had been a well executed hit and run strike. The bombers sacrificing themselves was all that had saved Subtractor from being pounded into little luminous pieces.
The rebel fighters attacking Tarazed Meridian emerged in two long lines. Slightly reinforced squadrons, fourteen each, one a bomb/attack outfit, two three-strong flights of B-wings, two four strong flights of Y.
The other squadron was something new and different. Two elements of A-wings, covering two elements and two three-strong flights of something or other.
They looked like T-wings at first, and Gamma’s flight computers marked them as T-wing Mod, same sort of fat angel-fish shape, but Epsilon’s threw that idea out, identified them as new and started assembling profiles.
They were thinner and more angular, and had some sort of S-foil, or at least outrigger, that expanded away from the main hull and seemed to be an etheric rudder and manoeuvre jet assembly; from the colour of their engine flares, they were at peak thrust, accelerating at the Imperial fighters, while the A-wings were at ninety percent.
That put their performance about that of an /ln, maybe a little better in a straight line, probably more agile. Shielded, of course.
The division of effort was obvious. Starwings after the B- and Y- wings, Hunters after the A’s and those peculiar little things, whatever they were.
Behind him, the frigate’s manoeuvre thrusters fired, stopping her spin, and the bays opened. Prematurely; it would take them time to sort themselves out and launch, and thinking about it the shock probably hadn’t been too kind on the fighters either. Still- Aron didn’t quite understand the rebel tactics.
The fighters and bombers were separating, the fighters coming in at high thrust; why? One overrunning, strafing pass, and then they would be clear and the rebel bombers would be hit by Starwings and Hunters both, and their fighters would have to decelerate-and-return well within Tarazed Meridian’s point defence envelope.
That couldn’t possibly be the point; no Rebel squadron leader would ever admit that getting Imperial point defence to fire into a furball was more effective than doing it with their own lasers.
Was it possible that all they had been expecting was /ln, and their game plan was to rush ahead, clear the field for the bombers in one fast pass, then harass and strafe, preventing the Imperial frigate from aligning her shields to take the bombers’ torpedoes?
That might have worked. Were those new things- was this more than half experiment, was their chain of command convoluted enough that they were better off doing the wrong thing, sticking to the plan, right away than backing off and doing the right thing?
Maybe. Well, they had a backstop now, although how much use this bunch of raw, limp /ln jockeys would be- not much, he thought.
When did you get to be such an elitist? He asked himself. Obviously, when you got put in charge of an elite. Even if Gamma aren’t that good, at least they were good enough to make the selection grade.
‘Gamma, missiles. Hit the A-wings, get rid of them, then let’s see how well the alliance’s new buzz buggy turns and burns.’
Twelve on four, three missiles each; it was a late, slow, difficult track, the A-wing’s jammer difficult to pierce, and the absence of return fire meant that either that didn’t have enough missiles to go round, or they were packing torpedoes instead.
Obviously not heavyweight torps, because his target’s performance was pretty much unimpeded. It opened to full throttle and banked away, maximum divergence of angle initially, then chopped to radical evasion in a twisting, signature-blurring corkscrew, and Aron’s esm warned him that someone was trying to lock lasers on him.
Typical rebel, thought the force was with him and he didn’t need his targeting computer; Aron sidestepped three bursts of closely grouped triple shot, light lasers.
A dogfighter’s armament, designed for use against /ln and interceptors, useful but lacking the raw punch of the Hunter’s or Starwing’s twin heavies. Stay on the A-wing or chase down the new type? What was life without a little novelty?
A close, high- deflection pass then a range- opening test of marksmanship. The Alliance fighter moved to strafe past him, jinking and jigging, not daring to move in too straight a line for too long.
Nimble little bastard, Aron thought. The thing’s long manoeuvre limbs made it unexpectedly agile, it was built for flying sideways, but it’s power output wasn’t that impressive.
It’s rate of fire was, and it did land the first hit on his upper left s-foil. Aron instantly overcorrected, rolling into the hit and found himself almost tumbling, it was a lot less power than he expected. The rebel was probably equally surprised.
Aron rolled out, spun to bear and this time went for the rebel head on. It put one triple bolt in that he actually closed his eyes for, shooting back blind- Kriff, he thought, better not do too much of that or people might start thinking I have the Force.
It’s shot sparked off his shielding, deflected and absorbed; his heavier guns hit one on the nose, one on the port outrigger, both of them cut through the rebel’s shielding to do real damage.
The sensor cluster must be in the nose, there was a complicated flare of burning electronics; the manoeuvre arm ripped off, and the rebel twisted out of control, then retrieved and turned to break away. Aron opened his eyes, triggered a second shot that caught it and exploded it.
‘Gamma, this is Gamma One. They’re lightweights, you can take them head on. Control, has anyone else come across these things?’
‘Flight Control approves of your tactics, Gamma One. Their provisional name is M-wing.’ Franjia said. Aron thought of the sharp-nosed central pod, twin outriggers- that made some kind of sense. More than the B-wing, anyway. ‘Same idea as the T, a cheap, reliable low-end partner to the A-wing, a step back from the bleeding edge; no missiles, but they may have bombs.’
Stang. That was all they needed. That made the rebel plan make a lot more sense.
Franjia added mischievously, ‘Control requests that you ionise-‘
‘Galactic Spirit, no.’ Aron shouted.
‘You OK, one?’ His senior flight leader asked. Of course he knew that they had taken out a pair of B-wings, and been recaptured from a Rebel light freighter. There were probably still rumours about that bit of funny business.
‘Bad experiences with ion cannon.’ Aron said. He had been weaving on reflex, looking down at the scanner globe.
Epsilon were doing well, but then they were up against a known, inferior, quantity; one outright loss- Eight, who was in the eight spot now? One of the replacements. Two damaged, as well, but for a score of three B-wings and two Y-wings gone.
Gamma, not so good. One of the A-wings was dead and two damaged, one withdrawing. Two of the M-wings’ blips were gone, but there were four Hunters gone, one apparently by collision. Three drifting Imperial pilots, one of whom was showing up as wounded, needing immediate medical attention. Chances were he wouldn’t get it.
Two of the B-wings started to ripple- fire their torp payload from distance; dropping their load at the earliest possible opportunity to get some manoeuvrability back. One of them managed to empty it’s launchers, one didn’t last that long.
Aron looked for clear space and found it; most of the M and A wings were flying backwards now, he wanted to be able to line up on one without being backshot by a B-wing. That would be embarrassing, briefly- firepower was their one good quality. Settle down and aim on; he tried to get a prediction lock on one of the M-wings, but the little sod kept skating around the rim of his gunsight.
Then part three of their problem emerged from hyperspace. The three larger blips; it was a fair relief. Two of them were freakmobiles, examples of a nearly extinct type- the superheavy starfighter. TL-118 StarHammers were bulky and visually chaotic- blocks and bulges and bits smushed together in what could best be described as a lump.
Moat of their armament was fighter weight, as per spec, but they had room and power for a lot of customisation. Their main drawback was that they were painfully easy targets. It was doubtful whether they could win a fight with a Starwing one on one, never mind credit for credit and still less ton for ton.
They needed antifighter escort- and that was what the third blip turned out to be. It was an obviously stolen- flameclaw paint job- Customs Frigate, a colossal, titanic forty metres long. It would barely count as a bug on the windshield of a real frigate, but it did have enough speed and enough turrets to threaten a fighter outfit.
The rebel plan suddenly made a lot more sense now; this was the execution squad. The rebel warships must have known that whatever lighter Imperial units they managed to attack, they would have to be extraordinarily lucky to have time to finish off. So hit, run, and send a group of hyper capable bombers as a follow-up team.
They had only gone after the wrong target; instead of hitting a Carrack and Marauder, which they probably could take, they had gone after a heavy frigate with her point defence guns intact.
They could be made to pay for that, provided the rest of the rebel group didn’t take a hand.
HIMS Blackwood was the coordination ship for the line now, and it was an interestingly two-edged assignment. She had the best sensor fit, so she spent more time in real space than any of the others, monitoring and keeping overwatch on them; that also made her the most important target.
In theory, she was also the ship that had the best chance to spot trouble coming and get out of the way. Kovall enjoyed being on the spot; it was a chance to shine, to show what he and his ship could do.
The rebel fighters that Aron had been chasing had dropped out to realspace, reoriented, and Kovall could now see that they were heading for an attack run on Tarazed Meridian, but the Imperial fighter screen had got there first. That problem seemed in hand. The chase, the captured modular cruiser, was proving perversely hard to find, though.
A very bright, obvious initial signature, but that still left about eighty cubic light years as a potential end point, and the sweep would move through and around that area- as well as covering the flanks of it to spot incoming craft.
One of which he had a touch on. The modular cruiser had a lot of people on board, either the compForce security troopers- unlikely- or Rebel infantry, and if they were, that meant they had come from a rebel warship.
Like the one he was manoeuvring for drop position on; computers tentatively identified it as a Dreadnaught-class, “heavy cruiser” on the peacetime system, practically speaking actually a medium frigate.
That made sense. She had the troop complement to board and take a modular cruiser, which were one of the very few things a dreadnaught could actually catch.
Older, slower, clumsier, less well armed than his recon ship but a lot tougher. In a stand-up fight, it would depend on hit rates, how much of the Dread’s fire Blackwood could sidestep and vice versa. Kovall had no intent of letting it degenerate that far.
It was moving in a sparse, skeletally open pattern of short jumps that probably meant it was serving as rally point and navigation provider for it’s fighters, too faint to be seen at this distance.
Perfect; it could be hit without it’s screen in place- unless the rebel captain was running a double bluff. Chance worth taking.
He stopped himself just before giving the order to calculate an interception course. What about the rest of the line, that he was supposed to be coordinating? Responsibility was no fun.
He gave the order to calculate, but not yet to initiate. Watched the main plotting board.
Guillemot was the most important unit at the moment, the most heavily armed of the line; she had shifted into centre position, waiting to interdict whatever came their way.
Relayed data indicated they had a target; it was dimly, fuzzily visible at the limits of Blackwood’s range of clarity, they wouldn’t have noticed it unless they had been clued in. It was running muted, not exactly silent but enough to reduce it’s visibility. Probably a MC-40 rebel medium frigate.
It was also aiming itself at one of the Carrack-Marauder pairs. That was a target well within their capability. Blackwood was just about a fair match for one, but Guillemot had the heavy turbolasers- the last of their line to do so. Obdurate was far out on the ascendant rim of the search pattern- assuming their target had been able to stabilise her course, unlikely.
Raesene would need time to react, and after all his ship did have a hot reputation, one Guillemot’s captain was determined to prove she didn’t deserve. Guillemot moved after the Rebel cruiser, intending a double ambush.
A fine point of tactics; to warn the Carrack, or not? Subtractor, and the attendant marauder- class TC-932GG “Cacophony in Q flat major”, could not realistically take on a Rebel medium frigate.
But they could serve as bait long enough to keep the reb in place long enough for Guillemot to jump her in her turn. No warning.
The rebel wouldn’t have given them any anyway. Her captain, probably not a Mon Cal if behaviour was anything to go by, chose to enter the fight with a manoeuvre that Raesene would have recognised instantly. It was the same bouncing entry he had used when he joined the squadron, splashing off the far side of the light barrier, setting up a false descent/transition signature.
Subtractor howled out an alert, and turned to face the entry; distant, but not out of contact- bombardment gun range. Apparently.
Blackwood was monitoring the situation, had time to send a warning before leaping into hyperspace on the pursuit of the Dreadnaught; but there was no time to prepare, and Subtractor would have gone with her own sensor picture anyway.
The Rebel frigate emerged on the far side of her, the side she had focused sensors and shields away from. Cacophony reacted more quickly, turning bow quarter on and starting to scramble her fighters. Spraying LTL fire, too, for what good it would do.
The rebel came out of hyperspace with her turrets already approximately laid on, opened fire three seconds after emergence.
Subtractor had been faked out, and paid the price; turned to face, just too slowly to matter. She had four turrets each mounting single medium turbolasers, to the –40’s six quadruple turrets, three of which could bear. The rebels fired sequentially, three long strings of scarlet pulses, and the Carrack’s captain let himself be trapped by the class’s reputation for being able to withstand punishment just a little too long.
They were tough ships, for their size; designed as fleet outriders, they had the armour and shielding-once it was focused to bear- to survive single stray HTL shot, but a sustained pounding would bring them down just as it would anything else.
Which was exactly what the Alliance ship commenced to deliver. Collectively outnumbered and outgunned, she had to hit hard and fast. The first few shot hit hull protected only by the tensor field and heat sinks, ripped gaps in the Imperial ship’s side. Heavy, redundant compartmentalisation could only achieve so much.
Shields refocused to meet the incoming fire, but backed by damaged, compromised hull they were not fully effective; they could not channel heat away fast enough, the generators started to overload, bleedthrough did further damage.
Subtractor rolled to present her undamaged side, scrambled her flight of fighters- only /ln, but they could join Cacophony’s mixed squadron of /ln and/sa Bombers- if they were in time to matter at all. The Alliance frigate was in the middle of calculating her own next move; knew she would have to move out and the energy expended on Imperial shielding was probably wasted.
That didn’t stop her from keeping on pounding, pounding away. Subtractor had more freedom to manoeuvre, but fewer engines and less structural integrity left to do it with.
Return fire achieved nothing except to force the rebel to keep shields up. She was too heavily protected for Subtractor to be able to do more than prolong the agony by trying to stave her off with return fire.
The rebel frigate monitored Guillemot’s premature, distant emergence; that was time in hand, then. Time to burn down the shielding in one capacitor- straining sustained burst, melting the shield emitters, hammering into the Carrack, smashing open compartment after compartment. Fuel tanks, hyperdrive, quarters, comms and most of sensors, life support- blasted away.
Cacophony’s bombers threw themselves at the Rebel, but with jammers up and point defence active, their chances were minimal. They shot off their torpedoes from medium range, semi- guided relying only on their own sensors, then accelerated to follow them in. They still had their drop chutes and the seismic charges they loaded. The /ln went in with them, for what strafing might do.
Most of the –40’s light turbolasers were pointing on as well, the ion cannon lashed out at the torpedoes and the Imperial fighters. Imperial return fire mostly sparked off the turrets; aiming for them, even the shot that leaked through the shields failing to do much to that armour.
The reb’s ion cannon fired grid patterns at the incoming torpedo wave, blotting them out as they came. No fratricide, no sympathetic detonations- but of seventy-two fired, twenty made it in to contact.
Not a kill, nowhere close. The fighters followed, weaving, half- blind in the Rebel frigate’s jamming, spraying fire ahead of them; they were actually relatively safe. The rebels knew the /ln were relatively little threat, but the bombers still had unpowered heavy ordnance. They were the target.
The rough rule of thumb was, for an effective attack, the fighters had to outnumber the warship target’s point defence weapons at least two to one. Eighteen guns firing at six fighters was not the mathematics of victory.
One of the bombers took an unlucky hit dead on the payload bay, blowing out the failsafes, and the ordnance detonated. One more was hit by enough current to melt a radiator wing, and heat buildup blew it apart. Three were hit and disabled, drifting away ballistically.
One, the second element leader, was lucky enough to be hit in the empty warhead launcher. Most of the controls were disabled; so was he. The flashes of lightning over him had shorted his life support and left his heart about to arrest.
He had enough control left to set his charges to contact detonation; and nudge his bomber into a collision course with the frigate.
The rebels saw it coming, but not in time. It was still a better bet to take the hit than to shift shields towards it and leave themselves open to MTL fire. The ion cannon tried to reach it, but short of detonating the charges, nothing would work, and they weren’t that precise.
The bomber hit midships on the starboard flank, and the seismics let go.
Four hoop-shaped flashes of light seemed to burst out from the body of the ship, the other half going into the shields- which overloaded, locally, and left huge molten scars across the Mon cal frigate. No hull breach, but she looked as if she had been branded.
Guillemot finally managed to recalibrate and move in- not long, but under fire, eternity. That was the Alliance frigate’s cue. Guillemot barely had time to point her guns on before the Mon Cal frigate accelerated away to light speed.
It had been a well executed hit and run strike. The bombers sacrificing themselves was all that had saved Subtractor from being pounded into little luminous pieces.
The rebel fighters attacking Tarazed Meridian emerged in two long lines. Slightly reinforced squadrons, fourteen each, one a bomb/attack outfit, two three-strong flights of B-wings, two four strong flights of Y.
The other squadron was something new and different. Two elements of A-wings, covering two elements and two three-strong flights of something or other.
They looked like T-wings at first, and Gamma’s flight computers marked them as T-wing Mod, same sort of fat angel-fish shape, but Epsilon’s threw that idea out, identified them as new and started assembling profiles.
They were thinner and more angular, and had some sort of S-foil, or at least outrigger, that expanded away from the main hull and seemed to be an etheric rudder and manoeuvre jet assembly; from the colour of their engine flares, they were at peak thrust, accelerating at the Imperial fighters, while the A-wings were at ninety percent.
That put their performance about that of an /ln, maybe a little better in a straight line, probably more agile. Shielded, of course.
The division of effort was obvious. Starwings after the B- and Y- wings, Hunters after the A’s and those peculiar little things, whatever they were.
Behind him, the frigate’s manoeuvre thrusters fired, stopping her spin, and the bays opened. Prematurely; it would take them time to sort themselves out and launch, and thinking about it the shock probably hadn’t been too kind on the fighters either. Still- Aron didn’t quite understand the rebel tactics.
The fighters and bombers were separating, the fighters coming in at high thrust; why? One overrunning, strafing pass, and then they would be clear and the rebel bombers would be hit by Starwings and Hunters both, and their fighters would have to decelerate-and-return well within Tarazed Meridian’s point defence envelope.
That couldn’t possibly be the point; no Rebel squadron leader would ever admit that getting Imperial point defence to fire into a furball was more effective than doing it with their own lasers.
Was it possible that all they had been expecting was /ln, and their game plan was to rush ahead, clear the field for the bombers in one fast pass, then harass and strafe, preventing the Imperial frigate from aligning her shields to take the bombers’ torpedoes?
That might have worked. Were those new things- was this more than half experiment, was their chain of command convoluted enough that they were better off doing the wrong thing, sticking to the plan, right away than backing off and doing the right thing?
Maybe. Well, they had a backstop now, although how much use this bunch of raw, limp /ln jockeys would be- not much, he thought.
When did you get to be such an elitist? He asked himself. Obviously, when you got put in charge of an elite. Even if Gamma aren’t that good, at least they were good enough to make the selection grade.
‘Gamma, missiles. Hit the A-wings, get rid of them, then let’s see how well the alliance’s new buzz buggy turns and burns.’
Twelve on four, three missiles each; it was a late, slow, difficult track, the A-wing’s jammer difficult to pierce, and the absence of return fire meant that either that didn’t have enough missiles to go round, or they were packing torpedoes instead.
Obviously not heavyweight torps, because his target’s performance was pretty much unimpeded. It opened to full throttle and banked away, maximum divergence of angle initially, then chopped to radical evasion in a twisting, signature-blurring corkscrew, and Aron’s esm warned him that someone was trying to lock lasers on him.
Typical rebel, thought the force was with him and he didn’t need his targeting computer; Aron sidestepped three bursts of closely grouped triple shot, light lasers.
A dogfighter’s armament, designed for use against /ln and interceptors, useful but lacking the raw punch of the Hunter’s or Starwing’s twin heavies. Stay on the A-wing or chase down the new type? What was life without a little novelty?
A close, high- deflection pass then a range- opening test of marksmanship. The Alliance fighter moved to strafe past him, jinking and jigging, not daring to move in too straight a line for too long.
Nimble little bastard, Aron thought. The thing’s long manoeuvre limbs made it unexpectedly agile, it was built for flying sideways, but it’s power output wasn’t that impressive.
It’s rate of fire was, and it did land the first hit on his upper left s-foil. Aron instantly overcorrected, rolling into the hit and found himself almost tumbling, it was a lot less power than he expected. The rebel was probably equally surprised.
Aron rolled out, spun to bear and this time went for the rebel head on. It put one triple bolt in that he actually closed his eyes for, shooting back blind- Kriff, he thought, better not do too much of that or people might start thinking I have the Force.
It’s shot sparked off his shielding, deflected and absorbed; his heavier guns hit one on the nose, one on the port outrigger, both of them cut through the rebel’s shielding to do real damage.
The sensor cluster must be in the nose, there was a complicated flare of burning electronics; the manoeuvre arm ripped off, and the rebel twisted out of control, then retrieved and turned to break away. Aron opened his eyes, triggered a second shot that caught it and exploded it.
‘Gamma, this is Gamma One. They’re lightweights, you can take them head on. Control, has anyone else come across these things?’
‘Flight Control approves of your tactics, Gamma One. Their provisional name is M-wing.’ Franjia said. Aron thought of the sharp-nosed central pod, twin outriggers- that made some kind of sense. More than the B-wing, anyway. ‘Same idea as the T, a cheap, reliable low-end partner to the A-wing, a step back from the bleeding edge; no missiles, but they may have bombs.’
Stang. That was all they needed. That made the rebel plan make a lot more sense.
Franjia added mischievously, ‘Control requests that you ionise-‘
‘Galactic Spirit, no.’ Aron shouted.
‘You OK, one?’ His senior flight leader asked. Of course he knew that they had taken out a pair of B-wings, and been recaptured from a Rebel light freighter. There were probably still rumours about that bit of funny business.
‘Bad experiences with ion cannon.’ Aron said. He had been weaving on reflex, looking down at the scanner globe.
Epsilon were doing well, but then they were up against a known, inferior, quantity; one outright loss- Eight, who was in the eight spot now? One of the replacements. Two damaged, as well, but for a score of three B-wings and two Y-wings gone.
Gamma, not so good. One of the A-wings was dead and two damaged, one withdrawing. Two of the M-wings’ blips were gone, but there were four Hunters gone, one apparently by collision. Three drifting Imperial pilots, one of whom was showing up as wounded, needing immediate medical attention. Chances were he wouldn’t get it.
Two of the B-wings started to ripple- fire their torp payload from distance; dropping their load at the earliest possible opportunity to get some manoeuvrability back. One of them managed to empty it’s launchers, one didn’t last that long.
Aron looked for clear space and found it; most of the M and A wings were flying backwards now, he wanted to be able to line up on one without being backshot by a B-wing. That would be embarrassing, briefly- firepower was their one good quality. Settle down and aim on; he tried to get a prediction lock on one of the M-wings, but the little sod kept skating around the rim of his gunsight.
Then part three of their problem emerged from hyperspace. The three larger blips; it was a fair relief. Two of them were freakmobiles, examples of a nearly extinct type- the superheavy starfighter. TL-118 StarHammers were bulky and visually chaotic- blocks and bulges and bits smushed together in what could best be described as a lump.
Moat of their armament was fighter weight, as per spec, but they had room and power for a lot of customisation. Their main drawback was that they were painfully easy targets. It was doubtful whether they could win a fight with a Starwing one on one, never mind credit for credit and still less ton for ton.
They needed antifighter escort- and that was what the third blip turned out to be. It was an obviously stolen- flameclaw paint job- Customs Frigate, a colossal, titanic forty metres long. It would barely count as a bug on the windshield of a real frigate, but it did have enough speed and enough turrets to threaten a fighter outfit.
The rebel plan suddenly made a lot more sense now; this was the execution squad. The rebel warships must have known that whatever lighter Imperial units they managed to attack, they would have to be extraordinarily lucky to have time to finish off. So hit, run, and send a group of hyper capable bombers as a follow-up team.
They had only gone after the wrong target; instead of hitting a Carrack and Marauder, which they probably could take, they had gone after a heavy frigate with her point defence guns intact.
They could be made to pay for that, provided the rest of the rebel group didn’t take a hand.
I am enjoying reading this - but I seem to be having trouble tracking why things are happening and what is driving the sequence of recent events and characters actions/ motivations. Something just isn't fitting together recently as much as it should for such a well written work. I'm not sure why: the closest I can suggest is either due to the structuring; or that maybe the key moments to give this understanding were too brief or didn't stand-out?
Hmmm reading the above, this information isn't really that helpful...
However it is overall good, please don't take this comment as a negative. I'd just like to see it get even better.
Hmmm reading the above, this information isn't really that helpful...
However it is overall good, please don't take this comment as a negative. I'd just like to see it get even better.-
Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
On reflection, I have to admit Frogcurry has a point. The section between Adannan and Lennart is exceptionally jangled, because it was written in such a choppy, incoherent way because of real life pressures. I'm disappointed but not surprised it came out that way.
Basically, temp-with-the-option job with a company I wanted a permanent position with, so being extra committed and willing to try and make sure I got that. Source of chaos one. Problem two, mid way through this realising the company's reputation was a lot different from how things looked on the inside, and I really didn't want to be there over the long term.
Problem three, running administrative chaos. I was transferred from one department to the other, released and then rehired, before finally being told, the sunday night before a monday morning shift, that contrary to what their own middle and lower management had been told initially and were telling us, none of the temps were going to be kept on. Glorious.
That section is going to need to be rewritten, I think- the rewrite is half done as is, and shouldn't be much longer.
Anyway, here's the endgame of the battle.
Blackwood was starting to suspect she had a tiger by the tail. The dreadnaught- now approaching Obdurate’s position in apparent willingness to sacrifice herself- was a bit too energetic for comfort. It was possible that she was Vainglorious- class.
Rendili’s dreadnaughts were peculiar craft, minimally automated and very poorly centralised. Their multiple subsystems needed that many people, there were real jobs for them- which made them superb school ships.
The Republic Starfleet had put up with them for so long because of that, in part. The stream of raw meat that went into them and trained personnel that came out was the seed of the battlefleet of the future, the assertion of central authority and the rejuvenation of the republic.
Of course, it hadn’t worked out that way, and the Imperial Starfleet was still stuck with the damned things.
The Vainglorious class was an attempt to rationalise the design into an effective modern combatant, integrating most of the systems and losing most of the crew and as much as possible of the dead weight.
Rendili’s official name for the things was ‘superDreadnaught’; the Imperial Starfleet’s designation owed more to political pressure from Kuat, whose in-house deputy chief designer was supposed to have said “That’s brilliant- I love the way you’ve managed to put an entire medium frigate into a corset.”
The ID files transmitted over from Black Prince with the first tactical circular contained a complete rundown, although for some reason Lennart dropped the ‘Vain’ and referred to them as Illustris class.
Their reputation was that of an attempt to gild a white elephant, but if the file was right, she was a bit more heavily armed than that, carrying five full-blown heavy turbolasers.
That made her a lot more capable than the common wisdom suggested, a fit match for a Demolisher class frigate- especially as she was making a pretty good effort to play dumb, look like a normal Dreadnaught, and lure the Imperial ship in.
Subtractor was limping away, covered by the Cacophony and two squadrons of fighters from Black Prince; there was nothing heading that way, her survivors- mostly on board the Marauder- were safe enough, apart from their commander.
Obdurate was moving towards the last transition point of the rebel frigate, willing to accept the fight. Whether that was actually the rebel’s intent- Kovall didn’t think so.
Even if they were arrogant enough to assume they had an edge in skill, it was still too much like a straight fight even for an Illustris. Suicide for a Dreadnaught.
What would be a sensible plan? Hit a few of the scout globe, get the rest of the Imperial line looking after their cripples, make time and room to pull off the rescue. Any actual damage inflicted was a bonus, secondary to the objective.
So- their own lowest visibility assets, hyperdrive fighters, out looking for the modular cruiser, and their larger ships playing tip and run.
The MC-40 was moving in closer to Tarazed Meridian; moving to threaten her, call for a response that would pull the larger Imperial warships away to intercept her before she could attack the crippled line leader.
The Illustris couldn’t possibly be intending to play it straight. Raesene didn’t expect it to, anyway, which was just as well. He had a pretty good sensor picture, chose his drop point intending to fight a distant engagement.
Avoiding the gun and missile mine field the Rebel frigate had laid.
Lightweight, capacitor- fed ion cannon with barrel lives in the dozens of rounds only, single antiship concussion missiles with a sensor pack and manoeuvre jets attached-
the rebel had been expecting a straightforward close quarters drop, ten thousand kilometres, and at that range they would have made a difference.
Both ships turned to bear and opened fire at a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres. Raesene had more room to manoeuvre than the rebel did, as it began to retrieve its mines and fighters.
That held out the promise of an engagement long enough to be decisive, provided there were no more unpleasant surprises. Which there probably would be.
Obdurate began an attack pattern, zig-zagging towards the rebel ship, using her full manoeuvre envelope so the rebel seemed to roll around the rim of the guns’ alpha arc.
The MC- 40 was still in play; it had jumped close to Tarazed Meridian. It was, Kovall realised, all of a piece. Obdurate was engaged; there were a few tiny sparkles of rebel fighters, that could sweep for the lost mod cruiser, or jump in to threaten Obdurate.
If the Imperial frigate deployed her own fighters, the time it would take to retrieve them would pin her in place. If not, she could be torpedoed on her blind side, or forced to weaken the shields facing the Illustris.
There was a third solution, of course- deploy the fighters for cover then save time by not retrieving them. That was why official doctrine considered the starfighter pilots as expendable for the greater good.
From the imperial point of view, they had a missing cruiser to retrieve, two cripples to protect and two rebel ships to do as much damage to as possible.
It was unlikely that the Illustris- Obdurate duel would last long enough to be decisive for either side; both ships had enough shielding that, at any reasonable kind of hit probability, they would last longer than the situation would give either of them reason to stay.
Unless she encountered spectacular good fortune- and Raesene was trying to think of some way of faking it- it was going to be a long, slow fight.
He was mildly amused when the Rebel came up with a lame-duck ruse before he did. Neither ship was scoring continuous hits, not enough to batter through the shielding; they might have been better off settling into a shallower weave and making the ship a relatively stable firing platform.
He weighed the odds; would the increased hit probabilities on both sides change the fundamental equation- no, he decided, not to the Obdurate’s advantage anyway.
He was moderately pleased with the practise his gunners were making, not brilliant but well above average; less pleased with his gunnery officer who was staring at the stream of tracer markers with barely disguised horror at the cost in energy they implied, and the wear and tear on his gun barrels. So were the two ISB men.
‘This is- ridiculous. Surely you should have something more to show than this? That’s valuable Imperial energy you’re pouring away, and enemies of the empire not dying nearly fast enough.’ The younger of the two agents snapped.
Calm down.’ The older of the agents said. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant-Commander Raesene isn’t deliberately fighting shy.’ He said it in a subtly mocking tone, inviting Raesene to overreact in his own defence.
‘You’re a blasterman, aren’t you?’ Raesene asked the junior agent.
‘I do my duty for the Empire.’ The agent said, grumpily, patting his holster. In fact, he had shot a mere two men in the course of his career, although not for want of looking for opportunities.
‘Look at it. At any range that won’t activate our collision alarms, a starship is a smaller target than a man. They have a lot more relative manoeuvrability than a man on his own feet, and when they do take a hit the shields and armour can ride it out much more easily than a man can take a blaster bolt.
Space war involves a lot more hanging around waiting, a lot more waste when anything does happen, and a smenge of a lot more low order results than the public thinks it does.’ Raesene said, insulting- and intending to insult- the agent by lumping him in under the heading of ‘public’.
‘And there I was, thinking you were going to draw the obvious analogy with police work.’ The senior agent said dryly.
One bolt connected; there was a white flash of partial deflection, then a brilliant blue-white flare from the Illustris’ blind-side docking bay; a series of undulating surges in it’s shields, it’s engines spasmed randomly, and it’s forward guns fell silent.
Two of the pit officers cheered, and Raesene briefly thought ‘got you, you bastard’- before thinking it might be too good to be true.
It was probably- or at least was supposed to be- one of the missile mines or ion cannon misfiring as it was brought in through the shielding, either touched off by the flash of a hit lapping round the frigate or by fluctuations in her own shield setup.
It was not particularly improbable that hotwired missiles and cobbled- together guns should be that volatile, but it was remarkably usefully timed.
The senior agent raised an eyebrow and was about to make some smart quip when one of the comtechs interrupted.
‘Captain, orders.’ The tech said, addressing Lieutenant-Commander Raesene by his courtesy title, something they had been doing more often since the security men came on board.
‘Continue the approach run.’ Raesene ordered in the mean time, then turned to the tech.
‘Sir, it’s headed ‘3 of 10’, it’s our part of a line manoeuvre order.’ The tech explained, and handed him the flimsy.
‘I think we may have an interest in this.’ The senior agent declared.
‘Operations come first.’ Raesene said, quickly skimming down it. It wasn’t as much an order as a statement of intent.
Maintain contact, it said. Pursue, continue to apply pressure, but take no unnecessary risks, make no headlong rushes on a ship that had already demonstrated an ability to play with minefields. Keep her in place if possible, pursue her if she moves away, but wait for support to make a clean kill of it.
‘Guns, step down to 1/10 power. Navigation, I want a plot for a microjump from-‘ he called up the local area chart; pushed his finger into the holoprojection, just short of the Rebel frigate; again, a light second away on the far side of it. ‘Here, to here.’
‘Sir? Aye, aye, Sir.’
If it had been him in that position, he would have reeled in most of the warheads, but left them parked on the hangar bay deck.
As soon as the Imperial ship closed in for the kill, roll to unmask, mass missile and crash ion volley combined with the Illustris’ main guns firing, and probably the reb MC-40 and whatever strike fighters they could spare jumping in behind him. Raesene made his preparations accordingly.
Aron’s part of the same order was numbered 1 of 10, but it was already obsolete.
Lennart wanted to use Tarazed Meridian as the anvil and his own ship as the hammer, lure the MC-40 into trying to attack her and then drop in on them; they were supposed to give the rebels a crumb of success, enough to lead them in- the order was unspecific.
Evidently they figured he had enough practise at making up objectives as he went along to cope.
More professionally, the situation would be changing rapidly enough that the judgement of the man on the spot would be critical.
Two bastard minutes ago, Aron thought, this would have been feasible. The TIEs from Tarazed Meridian had almost been more of a hindrance than a help, turning an even- too even considering the casualties- fight into a target rich environment for the Rebels and a collision and friendly fire hazard for the Imperials.
Epsilon had made relatively short work of the Y’s and B’s, losing another fighter destroyed and one more damaged, but only five of the fourteen Rebel bombers had made it out, and the torps they had fired off had been relatively easily intercepted.
Gamma had lost one to collision with an /ln, but the rebel fighters had broken off past them, not bothering to decelerate; there had been that one pass, a pursuit and exchange of long range fire, then they had scattered seismics, proton bombs and concussion pods over Tarazed Meridian- most of which had been intercepted, the rest adding a little energy to the shields, not enough to matter.
The M-wings had turned out to be quite capable deadfall bombers, in theory, but they had already made their attack and had it fail by the time it occurred to Aron to simulate real damage as a result.
The superheavies would have made a more credible threat, but they had gone the way of their kind- too big, and far too easy a target. What heavy fighter laser couldn’t accomplish, a squirt of LTL fire could.
They had fireballed spectacularly from the onboard ordnance- one of the pilots had, amazingly, managed to eject- and the customs frigate, lightly grilled, had ran for it with a flock of concussion missiles in pursuit.
One of Tarazed Meridian’s shuttles and an escort flight of /ln were doing retrieval. It was not without incident- one of the drifting rebel pilots had refused to give up and started firing back from his sidearm.
It had done nothing to the shuttle itself, but scattering the retrieval team waiting in the open bay.
They shot back at him with handgun fire of their own, the rebel pilot drew something that looked like a grenade; one of the escorting TIE fighters picked him off, and the unstable thermal detonator he had been about to use cooked off.
The shuttle had a scorch mark under it’s chin now, and the retrieval team had invented a new game; shoot the drifting rebels with anaesthetic darts, and use grappling lines to try to reel them in before they depressurised.
It had been a close run thing a couple of times. The fight was over, though, and there was no more ground to give.
Falldess wasn’t happy with that. ‘That’s it, they won’t reinforce failure, not if they have enough brains to be dangerous in the first place. Nav, do we have enough power to jump?’
Her navigation officer boggled at her for a moment. That wasn’t his job. He looked at the engineering liaison, who shrugged.
‘We can power the backup hyperdrive directly,’ the tech said, ‘drain the capacitors and we can make transition on the main drive.’
‘Captain,’ nav said, ‘We can move slowly, and our combat readiness would not decrease any further, or move quickly and lose all stored power for the guns. I recommend a speed run back to base station at Ghorn II.’
Falldess thought about it for a second. ‘Do you really?’ she said. ‘Flight Control, round up the rest of the swimmers, try to stop the retrieval crew harpooning any of our own, then bring the fighters back on board and prepare to move.’
Blackwood had been sticking to the primary mission, the rest of the line also refusing to be drawn off, or to huddle together for maximum protection; watching the rebel recon fighters move, spotting the holes in the pattern.
Their primary navigation provider was in action and embedded, so they were saving energy. There were also only a handful of them left- too few of them to make a difference.
There, Kovall decided. Slightly out of the main search area- which was almost inevitable. That was the most likely position of their target.
Probe droid? No. Crash the party directly.
Blackwood’s viewers blurred with bluewhite streaks, her sensor radius contracted as she tried to look back across the light barrier, then bradyonic reality snapped back into place around her as she reentered.
Target acquired. One modular cruiser, unmistakable- the damage made it obvious it was the right one. Blackwood activated her com jammers; the rebel’s cries for help went unaided.
That only left the slight technical issue of how to board and recapture a ship with the best part of two regiments of rebel troops on board, with a single company of stormtroopers.
Aron’s fighters had been joined by the majority of Alpha and Beta squadrons, and Beta One had taken over tactical command. Just in time to miss all the fun.
After all, nothing was due to happen, and all there was to do was fend off any stray, last moment Rebel probing attack, and wait for a tender to retrieve the damaged frigate.
That was what he thought was going to happen, until Tarazed Meridian began to turn and accelerate.
So far, so good- until she continued her turn past any possible approach course for Ghorn II, and locked on to the last known position of the rebel MC-40.
Falldess’ reasoning was quite straightforward; if the rebels would not come to the bait, then the bait would go to them. Perhaps the rigidity of Imperial discipline had some advantages after all.
Her navigating officer had laid in the intercept course under protest, with one of the stormtroopers keeping him covered, but he had done it and she doubted any of the would challenge her authority now.
The hard part would be preventing them from cringing away from her, keeping them still willing to offer opinions and advice.
The fighter units had been ordered to pursue, and a new line manoeuvre order was issued; Guillemot to jump to join Obdurate, Kuruma to move out into the deep operational field, the smaller units of the line to support Blackwood.
The modular cruiser had not quite managed to nail it’s position down, not precisely enough to plot a clean jump clear, and the arrival of the Imperial ships forced the issue.
‘How long is it going to take you to get a safe route out of here?’ the colonel asked the navy lieutenant.
‘Um…ten minutes.’
‘How long is it going to take them to burn through the shields and blow this ship up?’ the colonel asked.
‘Three minutes?’ the lieutenant estimated.
‘Two minutes and fifty seconds more calculation buys us how much more safety?’
‘More than being shot- but not by much. Our hyperdrive- we were lucky to get here in one piece.’
‘Why? There was nothing in the way.’ The colonel said.
‘Gently curved spacetime from a tachyonic perspective, and gravity gradients being multiplied by transluminal dilation? In a bantha’s arse there was nothing in the way.’
The modular cruiser had turned to bring it’s bow battery on target, and was returning fire. It probably wasn’t going to matter. The imperial ships could all focus on it, and any one it concentrated fire on in return would go on to full defensive/evasive routine.
Worse, the larger ships pouring fire into them were too big to be taken down in time. They could nail one or two of the light corvettes, but that was a poor return for an auxiliary cruiser.
‘What can we do?’ The rebel ground force colonel asked.
‘What do we have enough of to do anything with?’ The lieutenant said, thinking aloud, trying to jumpstart his own brain. ‘Disintegrator booths?’
‘Good idea. We could rewire the module as a giant disintegrator effect cluster bomb.’ The lieutenant started to smile- then his face fell again as the colonel added ‘Give my combat engineers twenty hours to rig it up.’
‘Ground troops.’ The lieutenant said. ‘Could you board one of them and-‘that wasn’t especially promising either.
‘And do slightly more damage as we go down fighting? Call that plan B. Ah. The prisoners. We could load them into the escape pods, fire them off and use the cloud of drifting Imperials as cover.’
‘They’re on board now, and they’re still shooting at us; if we kick the prisoners out, making them much smaller targets much more likely to actually survive, why would that make the Imp ships stop firing?’
‘One hundred seconds to shield failure.’ The pit crew tech interrupted, tone almost losing it.
‘This was one of their own ships. Are they going to destroy it outright, or just disable and board?’ The colonel said. Maybe they would come to him, and if it took long enough, took more than say seven minutes to retake the mod cruiser, that could work.
‘They can subtract the other factors, read the hotel load and make a rough estimate of how many people we have on board.
Either they don’t care about blowing up what they have no reason to think isn’t a large number of ISB personnel, or they are going to disable and recapture.’ The rebel naval lieutenant guessed.
‘Why is that an oddly comforting thought- about the ISB, I mean? I’ll get the prisoners into pods, in case we need some chaff.’
The MC-40 had been licking it’s wounds, bleeding off heat from it’s scars and hoping it’s presence would divert lighter Imperial forces towards it and away from the search area.
It had four precalculated paths out- one to move in towards the Imperial heavy frigate, one towards the distant covering force, one towards the Rebel heavy frigate it was supposed to be supporting, one to their best guess as to where the rescue ship had ended up.
They were not expecting to be attacked by a supposedly crippled Imperial warship.
Of the four different things they could do, they chose the fifth. Stay in position and receive the attack.
Tarazed Meridian had gone with her secondary, backup hyperdrive; she had capacitor stored power for the main guns. Her back up reactor gave less power than the Rebel ship’s standard setup, so her course of action was obvious.
Emerge as close as possible and pound the rebel ship with what HTL shot she had available, as fast as possible, and then finish the reb off on the MTL. She cut her exit closely enough that the rebel had bow-shock to warn him.
The MC-40 rolled round to present it’s guns; was on target and shooting five seconds before the Imperial ship had yawed and rolled to open it’s prime overhead arc. The rebel had no alpha arc; at most, four of it’s turrets could bear.
They opened up with long strings of ripple fire, powerful bolts quickly cycled, tearing into Tarazed Meridian; flare after flare- the Meridian’s shields had taken some shock damage as well. They were not fully effective, loose, transmitting impact through into the hull.
Imperial return fire was more coherent. All six HTL turrets were functional, only four of the MTL; they crashed out together. A last- millisecond swerve from the MC-40 avoided part of the fire pattern, not all.
The brilliant white flare of partial deflection, then a red rimmed white flare from the far side of the lighter Rebel frigate. A power conduit shorting and the flash vapourising the matter nearby, burning a hole through the hull; impressive.
Tarazed Meridian’s electronics suite was not on top line; the gunners were working on a patchwork mix of central and local control, droid input and guesswork. Her jammers were not in good enough shape to stop the rebel frigate calling for help.
The only available help was the third rebel element, the proximate covering force- a Quasar Fire class light carrier.
She was responsible for the kill team and the recon fighters, and could put together an improvised strike package- a handful of Y’s and X’s, mainly Z-95s and other lightweight clone wars leftovers.
In theory. If the Imperial Verberor-class medium frigate Kuruma hadn’t been given an interception vector by Black Prince’s nav teams, and re-emerged from hyperspace well within contact range.
Quasar Fire class ships had only one distinguishing feature- their cheapness. Medium-small cargo haulers, they had enough room and payload to operate fighters, but nothing else- no real drive power, no shielding worth the name, defensive weapons that might keep a meteorite or two off with luck.
They were compelled, or condemned, to operate as standoff monitor/retrieval platforms, which meant they had some electronic capability- but not enough to avoid targeting, or to scream for help loud enough to matter. Her fighters had just left, could be called back- but not fast enough to matter.
Kuruma rolled to bring maximum firepower to bear and opened up. The Strike class ship squeezed off four eight- gun salvoes before the rebel ship tried to run for it.
The first salvo went wide. Three shots from the second hit, and the rebel ship’s shields flared out and shut down. One shot from the third salvo hit bare metal and found nothing solid enough to shed it’s energy on- overpenetrated burning through the fighter bay.
The fourth landed two, one smashed into the command module in the ship’s bow decapitating her, one aft at one end of the long engine bar.
The rebel ship entered hyperspace, out of control and severely damaged. Kuruma would be credited with a ‘probable’.
The Illustris- class medium frigate monitored the demise of the coordination ship; and the imminent appearance of a second Demolisher- class frigate. At best, it was going to be a messy fight- at worst, pure loss.
She gave up the pretence, tractor-pushed the missile and ion mines back out of her flight bay and turned to run for hyperspace.
‘Nav, shortjump. Now.’ Raesene ordered; the navigation team initiated the microhop he had planned, initially to avoid the minefield- now to get ahead of the Illustris and rake it as it surged by accelerating to lightspeed.
It was not perfect; about thirty degrees out. A crossing target, still running jammers, shields still up. Too much to expect that.
Obdurate landed three more hits before the medium frigate made it across the light barrier and free; one of them hit an engine mount. That would make life interestingly difficult for them.
Guillemot emerged in the capture area of the minefield. She came in expecting trouble, but not that particular kind of trouble- that cost her several seconds spent reacting rather than acting. The mines took full advantage.
The missiles should have been easy prey for the Imperial frigate’s point defence systems- if they were still functional, after the ion cannon bolts had splattered over her.
Raesene shouted at her- com team reflexively opening a channel- ‘Obdurate to Guillemot, shut down your LTL, shut them down and safe them, ride out the ion hits then bring them back on line for the missiles- Gunnery, do what you can.’ He added to his own weapons team.
The ion mines did, between them, carry enough power to batter through Guillemot’s shields. Obdurate’s gun team concentrated on the mines to begin with, knock enough of them out and Guillemot would still be able to return fire.
That was the theory, anyway. Guillemot ignored the advice to shut down her light guns, and there were two flashes of secondary damage as overcharged capacitors blew;
between the mines Obdurate took out and her own defensive effort, she had just enough firing power to beat back the mine swarm before they knocked down her shields and paralysed her entirely.
The missiles hit next; twenty of them. They were only moderately effective- between jamming and LTL fire, eleven destroyed, eight of those by Obdurate, four missed, five hit.
What was left of the shielding was burnt off by the first two; three hits did physical damage. One exploded low and starboard, against workshop and life support complexes; concussion damage and breached compartments.
The second hit was against the keel- the frigate’s tensor fields absorbed most of that. The third hit was on one of the turrets.
The bluish-white flare of the warhead was eclipsed by a greenish- white flash an eyeblink later, and Raesene thought, kriff, she’s going- but that was it.
Beam chambers on the gun rupturing, the flash didn’t reach the capacitor bank. The turret was destroyed, and came within an inch- actually five centimetres of blast plating- of taking Guillemot up with her; but close only counts in horseshoes and hypernuclears.
‘I thought you said,’ the older of the two ISB men asked the Lieutenant- Commander, ‘that space combat was less eventful than most people think?’
‘It is. One of our medium frigates lost a turret, one of theirs lost a main engine. Both ships are eighty, ninety percent operational. That was a low order result.’ Raesene said, so simply and with such transparent honesty that the policemen entirely refused to believe him.
Blackwood was still pounding Free Gravity For All’s shielding when the first of the life pods jettisoned. Their simple, automated sensors registered that they were in the vicinity of heavy fire, and their beacons started flashing ‘cease fire, we’re Imperial.’
It played hell with their targeting, the autosystems had to be overridden to allow manual fire; legacy code from the Republic Starfleet, from a time when you weren’t supposed to fire at life pods. Each shot had to be confirmed manually- which only really gave the officers responsible a chance to make mistakes.
Hadn’t even Vader’s personal ship suffered from the same problem, once? Two officers required to authorise an attack on a pod, who had made the wrong decision by not taking the shot?
Kovall remembered Lennart’s words after the exercise. No-one ever yet complained about being scooped up from a drifting life pod- just make sure that you’re not likely to join them before you start making retrievals. Fine, but the bastard things were getting in the way.
Black Prince was aware of the problem.
‘Com-scan,’ Lennart ordered, ‘detach Rontaine’s customs corvettes to move in and make retrieval.’ In response to Brenn’s raised eyebrow he added ‘The crews have the experience, the ships have the speed and agility, and the special adaptions, to pull it off.’
‘I know that, Captain, it’s the next obvious question that’s worrying me.’ Brenn asked.
‘Why didn’t I use them as minesweepers to cover Obdurate and Guillemot?’ Lennart asked- Brenn nodded.
‘Because the Illustris had time, attention, and light and medium guns to spare to make it prohibitively dangerous for them; the modular cruiser doesn’t.
A better question,’ Lennart said, ‘would be why Guillemot didn’t co-ordinate her drop point properly and came in on information that was dangerously out of date.’
‘Glory hounding? Trying for a minimum distance drop to steal Obdurate’s kill? That, or just behind the curve.’
‘Not by that much in absolute terms, either. Just enough to be disastrous.’ Lennart shook his head. ‘At least we get to conduct an enquiry rather than an inquest. I trust our intercept solution is current?’
‘Continuously updating.’ Brenn confirmed.
‘Initiate.’
Black Prince made the jump into hyperspace; a short, almost barrel-roll shaped course, designed to prevent her bow being pointed at the target until four seconds before emergence. That should give just enough warning for the target to have time to say ‘oh shit’, but not to do anything meaningful about it.
The target was the Rebel MC-40. Their objectives had been fairly straightforward-hit the apparently suicidal Imperial heavy frigate as hard as possible then get out before any of her friends arrived. Their timing was a little out.
Falldess was uncomfortably aware that she had probably made the wrong choice- that the rebel frigate was moving well enough, sidestepping enough of her fire, that it was likely to be a close thing with both ships taking real damage.
The strain her ship was under and the damage caused earlier compounded; personnel not at full efficiency, sensors and fire control gear partially bypassed and working on reduced function.
Her first thought on recognising the angular, discoloured shape of the Star Destroyer emerging from hyperspace was one of relief. Then guilt at feeling relieved that he had arrived to support her, and anger- she could do this herself, couldn’t she?
Followed by a glance round to see how the bridge team were reacting- no-one actually said ‘thank kriff for that’ but it was pretty clear they felt it. All right, perhaps they had a point. Still, now was not the time to relax.
‘Guns? We can use their eyes, can’t we?’ she said.
Take advantage of their ECM, ESM and fire direction, her gunnery officer silently translated. And the tone had been that of an order.
Black Prince’s Fire Direction Centre was generous enough to cut them in on their targeting; but sixty-four overpowered guns against six underpowered was little contest.
Gunnery officers in particular sometimes referred to a ship’s powerplant by the per-second yield of the weapons it could energise; it made for a more intuitively graspable result.
Tarazed Meridian’s secondary could manage ten teratons, a pittance against her primary’s two hundred and four.
Mirannon had been busy, Black Prince carried additional secondary reactors and heat-reabsorption systems that took her total power output up to three thousand and eighty.
The rebel medium frigate didn’t know the precise details, but ‘Star Destroyer’ was enough. To realign shields to give themselves some protection, refocus jammers for the same, to give the orders to discontinue action, bring the hyperdrive on line, pick a course and add the running corrections, took seconds.
Long enough for Tarazed Meridian, redlining it, to land two hits.
Long enough for Black Prince to roll to open alpha arc and land a converged sheaf of fifty.
The rebel frigate melted under the impacts, it’s own power systems distinctly less impressive than the effect of the hits. ‘Only seventy-eight percent? Against a target blindsided and at point blank? Wathavrah, you’re slipping.’ Lennart said, com network routing his words down to gunnery control.
‘From a snapshot with cold guns? Anything over fifty percent would be acceptable, Captain, and you know it. The crews had no time to warm up and shoot themselves in at all.’ Wathavrah said, gently chiding.
‘Well, we can’t have all the fun.’ Lennart said. ‘I need to give the squadron something to do.’ Good, he thought about Wathavrah’s tone. At least he’s not taking this jedi crap too seriously, either.
‘Speaking of which; Com-Scan, put in another request for repair tenders to the Sector fleet. Make sure they get this one acknowledged and dispatched promptly, because our working relationship is going to go very sour shortly afterwards once I start yelling at them about the lack of cover they gave that modular cruiser.
That and give me a link to the frigate.' That done, he said 'Tarazed Meridian, this is Black Prince Actual. Can you manoeuvre under your own power or do you need to be towed back to Ghorn II?’
‘Black Prince, this is Tarazed Meridian Actual, we are able to move.’ Falldess said.
Right, Lennart thought. No technical details whatsoever and a severe case of the gung-ho’s. That’s not unprecedented, but also not smart. Why does she want to go looking for more trouble- correction, what further trouble does she want to go looking for?
Of course. ‘Falldess, take your ship back to Ghorn II on backup hyperdrive, and hand yourself over to Captain Dordd of the Dynamic for debriefing. That is an order and I expect you to acknowledge. Clear?’
Falldess looked around her bridge crew. Some of them might be willing to follow her, willing to go with her example, but not many, not enough- and those that would were thinking, almost audibly, please don’t ask this of me.
But dammit- she wanted to hit something, wanted to strangle something. The rRasfenoni. Lennart. Her exec. Find something and blow it up and make it die.
Her ship might take one converged sheaf salvo on fresh shielding, but not two. Not at this range. That was what she was looking at if she went renegade. That wasn’t an option- but it hurt having to admit it.
‘Acknowledged.’ She said, grumpily.
‘Listen to me.’ Lennart added. ‘Assuming that this turns out to be what it seems, and not some other alien species- or political faction of an alien species- trying to incriminate the rRasfenoni, not some Rebel diversionary attack-
or force forfend some kind of Imperial destabilisation/provocation op, not some rogue human element, once I am satisfied that the finger of blame is pointing where it needs to point- then, then they are going to burn.
What I will not do is draft a hunting license on unanalysed evidence, or on the word of someone who is crazy enough to think about attacking a defended planet in a ship with it’s main power system shot out.’
Falldess opened her mouth to answer back, then her brain caught up with it. What was she going to say? Advocate roasting them, retributive justice which was fine by her, only on the strength of a moral certainty? Lennart was right. There were any number of ways to run a false flag operation.
He also wasn’t hammering it in, letting her work out for herself that it was far too important a call to make on the strength of what they had to go on at present. An eye for an eye and a world for a world- that was what she wanted, but how terrible it would be to be wrong.
Tarazed Meridian turned to enter hyperspace, on course for Ghorn II.
‘She saw sense. For a moment I didn’t think she would.’ Lennart said, with relief.
‘Skipper?’ one of the com-scan team. ‘Message from Blackwood, text transmission, first line starts ‘oops’.’
‘Oh, kriff.’ Lennart sighed. ‘Sensor feed?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to have some kind of precognition thing now?’ Brenn asked, while the com-scan team set it up.
‘I expect to take some learning and experimentation time to make it fully useful, and at least until then I intend to stick with good old- fashioned cognition. I didn’t expect Kovall to screw this up.’
Relayed sensor data depicted what had happened. Rontaine’s six customs corvettes had emerged, fanned out and started tractoring in life pods. Free Gravity For All’s point defence system had done what it could to discourage them, but none of the corvettes had been seriously damaged.
They had, sensibly, stayed out of the way of the squadron’s fire, but had done some shooting of their own. Half-megaton long barrels were fairly accurate, and they had mainly been shooting at the turrets. One of which had fireballed.
The modular cruiser had been damaged badly by that, rocked to one side- exposing the module to the salvo coming in, which was intended for the engine complex.
The module had an independent power plant to cover the energy budget of the disintegrator chambers. It had been hit. Being proprietary, none of the rebels had a sufficiently clear idea of how to stabilise it.
It had been a rupture, rather than a detonation- but it had been enough to break the modular cruiser’s back.
Most of the personnel on board were alive- and now considering surrender- but the ship itself was a constructive total loss.
‘That takes our tally of rebel prisoners up to eleven thousand, doesn’t it?’ Lennart stated. It was a rhetorical question.
‘Just how badly do you want to piss the sector group off, skipper?’ Brenn asked.
‘Good point.’ Lennart said, forcing himself to calm down. ‘I’d probably just start ranting. You make the call. Tell Sector that we need sufficient transport, sufficiently escorted, for eleven thousand rebels now.
Tell them that if they get it wrong again, I’ll fly to the capital and release them in the Moff’s palace grounds. If they screw up sufficiently badly, I’ll give the rebels their guns back first.’
‘One other thing, Skipper. You could have sent Delta squadron in on the minesweeping job?’
‘In theory, I could have.’ Lennart agreed. ‘In practise, I wanted something out in the deep operational field to follow that Illustris home.’
Basically, temp-with-the-option job with a company I wanted a permanent position with, so being extra committed and willing to try and make sure I got that. Source of chaos one. Problem two, mid way through this realising the company's reputation was a lot different from how things looked on the inside, and I really didn't want to be there over the long term.
Problem three, running administrative chaos. I was transferred from one department to the other, released and then rehired, before finally being told, the sunday night before a monday morning shift, that contrary to what their own middle and lower management had been told initially and were telling us, none of the temps were going to be kept on. Glorious.
That section is going to need to be rewritten, I think- the rewrite is half done as is, and shouldn't be much longer.
Anyway, here's the endgame of the battle.
Blackwood was starting to suspect she had a tiger by the tail. The dreadnaught- now approaching Obdurate’s position in apparent willingness to sacrifice herself- was a bit too energetic for comfort. It was possible that she was Vainglorious- class.
Rendili’s dreadnaughts were peculiar craft, minimally automated and very poorly centralised. Their multiple subsystems needed that many people, there were real jobs for them- which made them superb school ships.
The Republic Starfleet had put up with them for so long because of that, in part. The stream of raw meat that went into them and trained personnel that came out was the seed of the battlefleet of the future, the assertion of central authority and the rejuvenation of the republic.
Of course, it hadn’t worked out that way, and the Imperial Starfleet was still stuck with the damned things.
The Vainglorious class was an attempt to rationalise the design into an effective modern combatant, integrating most of the systems and losing most of the crew and as much as possible of the dead weight.
Rendili’s official name for the things was ‘superDreadnaught’; the Imperial Starfleet’s designation owed more to political pressure from Kuat, whose in-house deputy chief designer was supposed to have said “That’s brilliant- I love the way you’ve managed to put an entire medium frigate into a corset.”
The ID files transmitted over from Black Prince with the first tactical circular contained a complete rundown, although for some reason Lennart dropped the ‘Vain’ and referred to them as Illustris class.
Their reputation was that of an attempt to gild a white elephant, but if the file was right, she was a bit more heavily armed than that, carrying five full-blown heavy turbolasers.
That made her a lot more capable than the common wisdom suggested, a fit match for a Demolisher class frigate- especially as she was making a pretty good effort to play dumb, look like a normal Dreadnaught, and lure the Imperial ship in.
Subtractor was limping away, covered by the Cacophony and two squadrons of fighters from Black Prince; there was nothing heading that way, her survivors- mostly on board the Marauder- were safe enough, apart from their commander.
Obdurate was moving towards the last transition point of the rebel frigate, willing to accept the fight. Whether that was actually the rebel’s intent- Kovall didn’t think so.
Even if they were arrogant enough to assume they had an edge in skill, it was still too much like a straight fight even for an Illustris. Suicide for a Dreadnaught.
What would be a sensible plan? Hit a few of the scout globe, get the rest of the Imperial line looking after their cripples, make time and room to pull off the rescue. Any actual damage inflicted was a bonus, secondary to the objective.
So- their own lowest visibility assets, hyperdrive fighters, out looking for the modular cruiser, and their larger ships playing tip and run.
The MC-40 was moving in closer to Tarazed Meridian; moving to threaten her, call for a response that would pull the larger Imperial warships away to intercept her before she could attack the crippled line leader.
The Illustris couldn’t possibly be intending to play it straight. Raesene didn’t expect it to, anyway, which was just as well. He had a pretty good sensor picture, chose his drop point intending to fight a distant engagement.
Avoiding the gun and missile mine field the Rebel frigate had laid.
Lightweight, capacitor- fed ion cannon with barrel lives in the dozens of rounds only, single antiship concussion missiles with a sensor pack and manoeuvre jets attached-
the rebel had been expecting a straightforward close quarters drop, ten thousand kilometres, and at that range they would have made a difference.
Both ships turned to bear and opened fire at a hundred and fifty thousand kilometres. Raesene had more room to manoeuvre than the rebel did, as it began to retrieve its mines and fighters.
That held out the promise of an engagement long enough to be decisive, provided there were no more unpleasant surprises. Which there probably would be.
Obdurate began an attack pattern, zig-zagging towards the rebel ship, using her full manoeuvre envelope so the rebel seemed to roll around the rim of the guns’ alpha arc.
The MC- 40 was still in play; it had jumped close to Tarazed Meridian. It was, Kovall realised, all of a piece. Obdurate was engaged; there were a few tiny sparkles of rebel fighters, that could sweep for the lost mod cruiser, or jump in to threaten Obdurate.
If the Imperial frigate deployed her own fighters, the time it would take to retrieve them would pin her in place. If not, she could be torpedoed on her blind side, or forced to weaken the shields facing the Illustris.
There was a third solution, of course- deploy the fighters for cover then save time by not retrieving them. That was why official doctrine considered the starfighter pilots as expendable for the greater good.
From the imperial point of view, they had a missing cruiser to retrieve, two cripples to protect and two rebel ships to do as much damage to as possible.
It was unlikely that the Illustris- Obdurate duel would last long enough to be decisive for either side; both ships had enough shielding that, at any reasonable kind of hit probability, they would last longer than the situation would give either of them reason to stay.
Unless she encountered spectacular good fortune- and Raesene was trying to think of some way of faking it- it was going to be a long, slow fight.
He was mildly amused when the Rebel came up with a lame-duck ruse before he did. Neither ship was scoring continuous hits, not enough to batter through the shielding; they might have been better off settling into a shallower weave and making the ship a relatively stable firing platform.
He weighed the odds; would the increased hit probabilities on both sides change the fundamental equation- no, he decided, not to the Obdurate’s advantage anyway.
He was moderately pleased with the practise his gunners were making, not brilliant but well above average; less pleased with his gunnery officer who was staring at the stream of tracer markers with barely disguised horror at the cost in energy they implied, and the wear and tear on his gun barrels. So were the two ISB men.
‘This is- ridiculous. Surely you should have something more to show than this? That’s valuable Imperial energy you’re pouring away, and enemies of the empire not dying nearly fast enough.’ The younger of the two agents snapped.
Calm down.’ The older of the agents said. ‘I’m sure Lieutenant-Commander Raesene isn’t deliberately fighting shy.’ He said it in a subtly mocking tone, inviting Raesene to overreact in his own defence.
‘You’re a blasterman, aren’t you?’ Raesene asked the junior agent.
‘I do my duty for the Empire.’ The agent said, grumpily, patting his holster. In fact, he had shot a mere two men in the course of his career, although not for want of looking for opportunities.
‘Look at it. At any range that won’t activate our collision alarms, a starship is a smaller target than a man. They have a lot more relative manoeuvrability than a man on his own feet, and when they do take a hit the shields and armour can ride it out much more easily than a man can take a blaster bolt.
Space war involves a lot more hanging around waiting, a lot more waste when anything does happen, and a smenge of a lot more low order results than the public thinks it does.’ Raesene said, insulting- and intending to insult- the agent by lumping him in under the heading of ‘public’.
‘And there I was, thinking you were going to draw the obvious analogy with police work.’ The senior agent said dryly.
One bolt connected; there was a white flash of partial deflection, then a brilliant blue-white flare from the Illustris’ blind-side docking bay; a series of undulating surges in it’s shields, it’s engines spasmed randomly, and it’s forward guns fell silent.
Two of the pit officers cheered, and Raesene briefly thought ‘got you, you bastard’- before thinking it might be too good to be true.
It was probably- or at least was supposed to be- one of the missile mines or ion cannon misfiring as it was brought in through the shielding, either touched off by the flash of a hit lapping round the frigate or by fluctuations in her own shield setup.
It was not particularly improbable that hotwired missiles and cobbled- together guns should be that volatile, but it was remarkably usefully timed.
The senior agent raised an eyebrow and was about to make some smart quip when one of the comtechs interrupted.
‘Captain, orders.’ The tech said, addressing Lieutenant-Commander Raesene by his courtesy title, something they had been doing more often since the security men came on board.
‘Continue the approach run.’ Raesene ordered in the mean time, then turned to the tech.
‘Sir, it’s headed ‘3 of 10’, it’s our part of a line manoeuvre order.’ The tech explained, and handed him the flimsy.
‘I think we may have an interest in this.’ The senior agent declared.
‘Operations come first.’ Raesene said, quickly skimming down it. It wasn’t as much an order as a statement of intent.
Maintain contact, it said. Pursue, continue to apply pressure, but take no unnecessary risks, make no headlong rushes on a ship that had already demonstrated an ability to play with minefields. Keep her in place if possible, pursue her if she moves away, but wait for support to make a clean kill of it.
‘Guns, step down to 1/10 power. Navigation, I want a plot for a microjump from-‘ he called up the local area chart; pushed his finger into the holoprojection, just short of the Rebel frigate; again, a light second away on the far side of it. ‘Here, to here.’
‘Sir? Aye, aye, Sir.’
If it had been him in that position, he would have reeled in most of the warheads, but left them parked on the hangar bay deck.
As soon as the Imperial ship closed in for the kill, roll to unmask, mass missile and crash ion volley combined with the Illustris’ main guns firing, and probably the reb MC-40 and whatever strike fighters they could spare jumping in behind him. Raesene made his preparations accordingly.
Aron’s part of the same order was numbered 1 of 10, but it was already obsolete.
Lennart wanted to use Tarazed Meridian as the anvil and his own ship as the hammer, lure the MC-40 into trying to attack her and then drop in on them; they were supposed to give the rebels a crumb of success, enough to lead them in- the order was unspecific.
Evidently they figured he had enough practise at making up objectives as he went along to cope.
More professionally, the situation would be changing rapidly enough that the judgement of the man on the spot would be critical.
Two bastard minutes ago, Aron thought, this would have been feasible. The TIEs from Tarazed Meridian had almost been more of a hindrance than a help, turning an even- too even considering the casualties- fight into a target rich environment for the Rebels and a collision and friendly fire hazard for the Imperials.
Epsilon had made relatively short work of the Y’s and B’s, losing another fighter destroyed and one more damaged, but only five of the fourteen Rebel bombers had made it out, and the torps they had fired off had been relatively easily intercepted.
Gamma had lost one to collision with an /ln, but the rebel fighters had broken off past them, not bothering to decelerate; there had been that one pass, a pursuit and exchange of long range fire, then they had scattered seismics, proton bombs and concussion pods over Tarazed Meridian- most of which had been intercepted, the rest adding a little energy to the shields, not enough to matter.
The M-wings had turned out to be quite capable deadfall bombers, in theory, but they had already made their attack and had it fail by the time it occurred to Aron to simulate real damage as a result.
The superheavies would have made a more credible threat, but they had gone the way of their kind- too big, and far too easy a target. What heavy fighter laser couldn’t accomplish, a squirt of LTL fire could.
They had fireballed spectacularly from the onboard ordnance- one of the pilots had, amazingly, managed to eject- and the customs frigate, lightly grilled, had ran for it with a flock of concussion missiles in pursuit.
One of Tarazed Meridian’s shuttles and an escort flight of /ln were doing retrieval. It was not without incident- one of the drifting rebel pilots had refused to give up and started firing back from his sidearm.
It had done nothing to the shuttle itself, but scattering the retrieval team waiting in the open bay.
They shot back at him with handgun fire of their own, the rebel pilot drew something that looked like a grenade; one of the escorting TIE fighters picked him off, and the unstable thermal detonator he had been about to use cooked off.
The shuttle had a scorch mark under it’s chin now, and the retrieval team had invented a new game; shoot the drifting rebels with anaesthetic darts, and use grappling lines to try to reel them in before they depressurised.
It had been a close run thing a couple of times. The fight was over, though, and there was no more ground to give.
Falldess wasn’t happy with that. ‘That’s it, they won’t reinforce failure, not if they have enough brains to be dangerous in the first place. Nav, do we have enough power to jump?’
Her navigation officer boggled at her for a moment. That wasn’t his job. He looked at the engineering liaison, who shrugged.
‘We can power the backup hyperdrive directly,’ the tech said, ‘drain the capacitors and we can make transition on the main drive.’
‘Captain,’ nav said, ‘We can move slowly, and our combat readiness would not decrease any further, or move quickly and lose all stored power for the guns. I recommend a speed run back to base station at Ghorn II.’
Falldess thought about it for a second. ‘Do you really?’ she said. ‘Flight Control, round up the rest of the swimmers, try to stop the retrieval crew harpooning any of our own, then bring the fighters back on board and prepare to move.’
Blackwood had been sticking to the primary mission, the rest of the line also refusing to be drawn off, or to huddle together for maximum protection; watching the rebel recon fighters move, spotting the holes in the pattern.
Their primary navigation provider was in action and embedded, so they were saving energy. There were also only a handful of them left- too few of them to make a difference.
There, Kovall decided. Slightly out of the main search area- which was almost inevitable. That was the most likely position of their target.
Probe droid? No. Crash the party directly.
Blackwood’s viewers blurred with bluewhite streaks, her sensor radius contracted as she tried to look back across the light barrier, then bradyonic reality snapped back into place around her as she reentered.
Target acquired. One modular cruiser, unmistakable- the damage made it obvious it was the right one. Blackwood activated her com jammers; the rebel’s cries for help went unaided.
That only left the slight technical issue of how to board and recapture a ship with the best part of two regiments of rebel troops on board, with a single company of stormtroopers.
Aron’s fighters had been joined by the majority of Alpha and Beta squadrons, and Beta One had taken over tactical command. Just in time to miss all the fun.
After all, nothing was due to happen, and all there was to do was fend off any stray, last moment Rebel probing attack, and wait for a tender to retrieve the damaged frigate.
That was what he thought was going to happen, until Tarazed Meridian began to turn and accelerate.
So far, so good- until she continued her turn past any possible approach course for Ghorn II, and locked on to the last known position of the rebel MC-40.
Falldess’ reasoning was quite straightforward; if the rebels would not come to the bait, then the bait would go to them. Perhaps the rigidity of Imperial discipline had some advantages after all.
Her navigating officer had laid in the intercept course under protest, with one of the stormtroopers keeping him covered, but he had done it and she doubted any of the would challenge her authority now.
The hard part would be preventing them from cringing away from her, keeping them still willing to offer opinions and advice.
The fighter units had been ordered to pursue, and a new line manoeuvre order was issued; Guillemot to jump to join Obdurate, Kuruma to move out into the deep operational field, the smaller units of the line to support Blackwood.
The modular cruiser had not quite managed to nail it’s position down, not precisely enough to plot a clean jump clear, and the arrival of the Imperial ships forced the issue.
‘How long is it going to take you to get a safe route out of here?’ the colonel asked the navy lieutenant.
‘Um…ten minutes.’
‘How long is it going to take them to burn through the shields and blow this ship up?’ the colonel asked.
‘Three minutes?’ the lieutenant estimated.
‘Two minutes and fifty seconds more calculation buys us how much more safety?’
‘More than being shot- but not by much. Our hyperdrive- we were lucky to get here in one piece.’
‘Why? There was nothing in the way.’ The colonel said.
‘Gently curved spacetime from a tachyonic perspective, and gravity gradients being multiplied by transluminal dilation? In a bantha’s arse there was nothing in the way.’
The modular cruiser had turned to bring it’s bow battery on target, and was returning fire. It probably wasn’t going to matter. The imperial ships could all focus on it, and any one it concentrated fire on in return would go on to full defensive/evasive routine.
Worse, the larger ships pouring fire into them were too big to be taken down in time. They could nail one or two of the light corvettes, but that was a poor return for an auxiliary cruiser.
‘What can we do?’ The rebel ground force colonel asked.
‘What do we have enough of to do anything with?’ The lieutenant said, thinking aloud, trying to jumpstart his own brain. ‘Disintegrator booths?’
‘Good idea. We could rewire the module as a giant disintegrator effect cluster bomb.’ The lieutenant started to smile- then his face fell again as the colonel added ‘Give my combat engineers twenty hours to rig it up.’
‘Ground troops.’ The lieutenant said. ‘Could you board one of them and-‘that wasn’t especially promising either.
‘And do slightly more damage as we go down fighting? Call that plan B. Ah. The prisoners. We could load them into the escape pods, fire them off and use the cloud of drifting Imperials as cover.’
‘They’re on board now, and they’re still shooting at us; if we kick the prisoners out, making them much smaller targets much more likely to actually survive, why would that make the Imp ships stop firing?’
‘One hundred seconds to shield failure.’ The pit crew tech interrupted, tone almost losing it.
‘This was one of their own ships. Are they going to destroy it outright, or just disable and board?’ The colonel said. Maybe they would come to him, and if it took long enough, took more than say seven minutes to retake the mod cruiser, that could work.
‘They can subtract the other factors, read the hotel load and make a rough estimate of how many people we have on board.
Either they don’t care about blowing up what they have no reason to think isn’t a large number of ISB personnel, or they are going to disable and recapture.’ The rebel naval lieutenant guessed.
‘Why is that an oddly comforting thought- about the ISB, I mean? I’ll get the prisoners into pods, in case we need some chaff.’
The MC-40 had been licking it’s wounds, bleeding off heat from it’s scars and hoping it’s presence would divert lighter Imperial forces towards it and away from the search area.
It had four precalculated paths out- one to move in towards the Imperial heavy frigate, one towards the distant covering force, one towards the Rebel heavy frigate it was supposed to be supporting, one to their best guess as to where the rescue ship had ended up.
They were not expecting to be attacked by a supposedly crippled Imperial warship.
Of the four different things they could do, they chose the fifth. Stay in position and receive the attack.
Tarazed Meridian had gone with her secondary, backup hyperdrive; she had capacitor stored power for the main guns. Her back up reactor gave less power than the Rebel ship’s standard setup, so her course of action was obvious.
Emerge as close as possible and pound the rebel ship with what HTL shot she had available, as fast as possible, and then finish the reb off on the MTL. She cut her exit closely enough that the rebel had bow-shock to warn him.
The MC-40 rolled round to present it’s guns; was on target and shooting five seconds before the Imperial ship had yawed and rolled to open it’s prime overhead arc. The rebel had no alpha arc; at most, four of it’s turrets could bear.
They opened up with long strings of ripple fire, powerful bolts quickly cycled, tearing into Tarazed Meridian; flare after flare- the Meridian’s shields had taken some shock damage as well. They were not fully effective, loose, transmitting impact through into the hull.
Imperial return fire was more coherent. All six HTL turrets were functional, only four of the MTL; they crashed out together. A last- millisecond swerve from the MC-40 avoided part of the fire pattern, not all.
The brilliant white flare of partial deflection, then a red rimmed white flare from the far side of the lighter Rebel frigate. A power conduit shorting and the flash vapourising the matter nearby, burning a hole through the hull; impressive.
Tarazed Meridian’s electronics suite was not on top line; the gunners were working on a patchwork mix of central and local control, droid input and guesswork. Her jammers were not in good enough shape to stop the rebel frigate calling for help.
The only available help was the third rebel element, the proximate covering force- a Quasar Fire class light carrier.
She was responsible for the kill team and the recon fighters, and could put together an improvised strike package- a handful of Y’s and X’s, mainly Z-95s and other lightweight clone wars leftovers.
In theory. If the Imperial Verberor-class medium frigate Kuruma hadn’t been given an interception vector by Black Prince’s nav teams, and re-emerged from hyperspace well within contact range.
Quasar Fire class ships had only one distinguishing feature- their cheapness. Medium-small cargo haulers, they had enough room and payload to operate fighters, but nothing else- no real drive power, no shielding worth the name, defensive weapons that might keep a meteorite or two off with luck.
They were compelled, or condemned, to operate as standoff monitor/retrieval platforms, which meant they had some electronic capability- but not enough to avoid targeting, or to scream for help loud enough to matter. Her fighters had just left, could be called back- but not fast enough to matter.
Kuruma rolled to bring maximum firepower to bear and opened up. The Strike class ship squeezed off four eight- gun salvoes before the rebel ship tried to run for it.
The first salvo went wide. Three shots from the second hit, and the rebel ship’s shields flared out and shut down. One shot from the third salvo hit bare metal and found nothing solid enough to shed it’s energy on- overpenetrated burning through the fighter bay.
The fourth landed two, one smashed into the command module in the ship’s bow decapitating her, one aft at one end of the long engine bar.
The rebel ship entered hyperspace, out of control and severely damaged. Kuruma would be credited with a ‘probable’.
The Illustris- class medium frigate monitored the demise of the coordination ship; and the imminent appearance of a second Demolisher- class frigate. At best, it was going to be a messy fight- at worst, pure loss.
She gave up the pretence, tractor-pushed the missile and ion mines back out of her flight bay and turned to run for hyperspace.
‘Nav, shortjump. Now.’ Raesene ordered; the navigation team initiated the microhop he had planned, initially to avoid the minefield- now to get ahead of the Illustris and rake it as it surged by accelerating to lightspeed.
It was not perfect; about thirty degrees out. A crossing target, still running jammers, shields still up. Too much to expect that.
Obdurate landed three more hits before the medium frigate made it across the light barrier and free; one of them hit an engine mount. That would make life interestingly difficult for them.
Guillemot emerged in the capture area of the minefield. She came in expecting trouble, but not that particular kind of trouble- that cost her several seconds spent reacting rather than acting. The mines took full advantage.
The missiles should have been easy prey for the Imperial frigate’s point defence systems- if they were still functional, after the ion cannon bolts had splattered over her.
Raesene shouted at her- com team reflexively opening a channel- ‘Obdurate to Guillemot, shut down your LTL, shut them down and safe them, ride out the ion hits then bring them back on line for the missiles- Gunnery, do what you can.’ He added to his own weapons team.
The ion mines did, between them, carry enough power to batter through Guillemot’s shields. Obdurate’s gun team concentrated on the mines to begin with, knock enough of them out and Guillemot would still be able to return fire.
That was the theory, anyway. Guillemot ignored the advice to shut down her light guns, and there were two flashes of secondary damage as overcharged capacitors blew;
between the mines Obdurate took out and her own defensive effort, she had just enough firing power to beat back the mine swarm before they knocked down her shields and paralysed her entirely.
The missiles hit next; twenty of them. They were only moderately effective- between jamming and LTL fire, eleven destroyed, eight of those by Obdurate, four missed, five hit.
What was left of the shielding was burnt off by the first two; three hits did physical damage. One exploded low and starboard, against workshop and life support complexes; concussion damage and breached compartments.
The second hit was against the keel- the frigate’s tensor fields absorbed most of that. The third hit was on one of the turrets.
The bluish-white flare of the warhead was eclipsed by a greenish- white flash an eyeblink later, and Raesene thought, kriff, she’s going- but that was it.
Beam chambers on the gun rupturing, the flash didn’t reach the capacitor bank. The turret was destroyed, and came within an inch- actually five centimetres of blast plating- of taking Guillemot up with her; but close only counts in horseshoes and hypernuclears.
‘I thought you said,’ the older of the two ISB men asked the Lieutenant- Commander, ‘that space combat was less eventful than most people think?’
‘It is. One of our medium frigates lost a turret, one of theirs lost a main engine. Both ships are eighty, ninety percent operational. That was a low order result.’ Raesene said, so simply and with such transparent honesty that the policemen entirely refused to believe him.
Blackwood was still pounding Free Gravity For All’s shielding when the first of the life pods jettisoned. Their simple, automated sensors registered that they were in the vicinity of heavy fire, and their beacons started flashing ‘cease fire, we’re Imperial.’
It played hell with their targeting, the autosystems had to be overridden to allow manual fire; legacy code from the Republic Starfleet, from a time when you weren’t supposed to fire at life pods. Each shot had to be confirmed manually- which only really gave the officers responsible a chance to make mistakes.
Hadn’t even Vader’s personal ship suffered from the same problem, once? Two officers required to authorise an attack on a pod, who had made the wrong decision by not taking the shot?
Kovall remembered Lennart’s words after the exercise. No-one ever yet complained about being scooped up from a drifting life pod- just make sure that you’re not likely to join them before you start making retrievals. Fine, but the bastard things were getting in the way.
Black Prince was aware of the problem.
‘Com-scan,’ Lennart ordered, ‘detach Rontaine’s customs corvettes to move in and make retrieval.’ In response to Brenn’s raised eyebrow he added ‘The crews have the experience, the ships have the speed and agility, and the special adaptions, to pull it off.’
‘I know that, Captain, it’s the next obvious question that’s worrying me.’ Brenn asked.
‘Why didn’t I use them as minesweepers to cover Obdurate and Guillemot?’ Lennart asked- Brenn nodded.
‘Because the Illustris had time, attention, and light and medium guns to spare to make it prohibitively dangerous for them; the modular cruiser doesn’t.
A better question,’ Lennart said, ‘would be why Guillemot didn’t co-ordinate her drop point properly and came in on information that was dangerously out of date.’
‘Glory hounding? Trying for a minimum distance drop to steal Obdurate’s kill? That, or just behind the curve.’
‘Not by that much in absolute terms, either. Just enough to be disastrous.’ Lennart shook his head. ‘At least we get to conduct an enquiry rather than an inquest. I trust our intercept solution is current?’
‘Continuously updating.’ Brenn confirmed.
‘Initiate.’
Black Prince made the jump into hyperspace; a short, almost barrel-roll shaped course, designed to prevent her bow being pointed at the target until four seconds before emergence. That should give just enough warning for the target to have time to say ‘oh shit’, but not to do anything meaningful about it.
The target was the Rebel MC-40. Their objectives had been fairly straightforward-hit the apparently suicidal Imperial heavy frigate as hard as possible then get out before any of her friends arrived. Their timing was a little out.
Falldess was uncomfortably aware that she had probably made the wrong choice- that the rebel frigate was moving well enough, sidestepping enough of her fire, that it was likely to be a close thing with both ships taking real damage.
The strain her ship was under and the damage caused earlier compounded; personnel not at full efficiency, sensors and fire control gear partially bypassed and working on reduced function.
Her first thought on recognising the angular, discoloured shape of the Star Destroyer emerging from hyperspace was one of relief. Then guilt at feeling relieved that he had arrived to support her, and anger- she could do this herself, couldn’t she?
Followed by a glance round to see how the bridge team were reacting- no-one actually said ‘thank kriff for that’ but it was pretty clear they felt it. All right, perhaps they had a point. Still, now was not the time to relax.
‘Guns? We can use their eyes, can’t we?’ she said.
Take advantage of their ECM, ESM and fire direction, her gunnery officer silently translated. And the tone had been that of an order.
Black Prince’s Fire Direction Centre was generous enough to cut them in on their targeting; but sixty-four overpowered guns against six underpowered was little contest.
Gunnery officers in particular sometimes referred to a ship’s powerplant by the per-second yield of the weapons it could energise; it made for a more intuitively graspable result.
Tarazed Meridian’s secondary could manage ten teratons, a pittance against her primary’s two hundred and four.
Mirannon had been busy, Black Prince carried additional secondary reactors and heat-reabsorption systems that took her total power output up to three thousand and eighty.
The rebel medium frigate didn’t know the precise details, but ‘Star Destroyer’ was enough. To realign shields to give themselves some protection, refocus jammers for the same, to give the orders to discontinue action, bring the hyperdrive on line, pick a course and add the running corrections, took seconds.
Long enough for Tarazed Meridian, redlining it, to land two hits.
Long enough for Black Prince to roll to open alpha arc and land a converged sheaf of fifty.
The rebel frigate melted under the impacts, it’s own power systems distinctly less impressive than the effect of the hits. ‘Only seventy-eight percent? Against a target blindsided and at point blank? Wathavrah, you’re slipping.’ Lennart said, com network routing his words down to gunnery control.
‘From a snapshot with cold guns? Anything over fifty percent would be acceptable, Captain, and you know it. The crews had no time to warm up and shoot themselves in at all.’ Wathavrah said, gently chiding.
‘Well, we can’t have all the fun.’ Lennart said. ‘I need to give the squadron something to do.’ Good, he thought about Wathavrah’s tone. At least he’s not taking this jedi crap too seriously, either.
‘Speaking of which; Com-Scan, put in another request for repair tenders to the Sector fleet. Make sure they get this one acknowledged and dispatched promptly, because our working relationship is going to go very sour shortly afterwards once I start yelling at them about the lack of cover they gave that modular cruiser.
That and give me a link to the frigate.' That done, he said 'Tarazed Meridian, this is Black Prince Actual. Can you manoeuvre under your own power or do you need to be towed back to Ghorn II?’
‘Black Prince, this is Tarazed Meridian Actual, we are able to move.’ Falldess said.
Right, Lennart thought. No technical details whatsoever and a severe case of the gung-ho’s. That’s not unprecedented, but also not smart. Why does she want to go looking for more trouble- correction, what further trouble does she want to go looking for?
Of course. ‘Falldess, take your ship back to Ghorn II on backup hyperdrive, and hand yourself over to Captain Dordd of the Dynamic for debriefing. That is an order and I expect you to acknowledge. Clear?’
Falldess looked around her bridge crew. Some of them might be willing to follow her, willing to go with her example, but not many, not enough- and those that would were thinking, almost audibly, please don’t ask this of me.
But dammit- she wanted to hit something, wanted to strangle something. The rRasfenoni. Lennart. Her exec. Find something and blow it up and make it die.
Her ship might take one converged sheaf salvo on fresh shielding, but not two. Not at this range. That was what she was looking at if she went renegade. That wasn’t an option- but it hurt having to admit it.
‘Acknowledged.’ She said, grumpily.
‘Listen to me.’ Lennart added. ‘Assuming that this turns out to be what it seems, and not some other alien species- or political faction of an alien species- trying to incriminate the rRasfenoni, not some Rebel diversionary attack-
or force forfend some kind of Imperial destabilisation/provocation op, not some rogue human element, once I am satisfied that the finger of blame is pointing where it needs to point- then, then they are going to burn.
What I will not do is draft a hunting license on unanalysed evidence, or on the word of someone who is crazy enough to think about attacking a defended planet in a ship with it’s main power system shot out.’
Falldess opened her mouth to answer back, then her brain caught up with it. What was she going to say? Advocate roasting them, retributive justice which was fine by her, only on the strength of a moral certainty? Lennart was right. There were any number of ways to run a false flag operation.
He also wasn’t hammering it in, letting her work out for herself that it was far too important a call to make on the strength of what they had to go on at present. An eye for an eye and a world for a world- that was what she wanted, but how terrible it would be to be wrong.
Tarazed Meridian turned to enter hyperspace, on course for Ghorn II.
‘She saw sense. For a moment I didn’t think she would.’ Lennart said, with relief.
‘Skipper?’ one of the com-scan team. ‘Message from Blackwood, text transmission, first line starts ‘oops’.’
‘Oh, kriff.’ Lennart sighed. ‘Sensor feed?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to have some kind of precognition thing now?’ Brenn asked, while the com-scan team set it up.
‘I expect to take some learning and experimentation time to make it fully useful, and at least until then I intend to stick with good old- fashioned cognition. I didn’t expect Kovall to screw this up.’
Relayed sensor data depicted what had happened. Rontaine’s six customs corvettes had emerged, fanned out and started tractoring in life pods. Free Gravity For All’s point defence system had done what it could to discourage them, but none of the corvettes had been seriously damaged.
They had, sensibly, stayed out of the way of the squadron’s fire, but had done some shooting of their own. Half-megaton long barrels were fairly accurate, and they had mainly been shooting at the turrets. One of which had fireballed.
The modular cruiser had been damaged badly by that, rocked to one side- exposing the module to the salvo coming in, which was intended for the engine complex.
The module had an independent power plant to cover the energy budget of the disintegrator chambers. It had been hit. Being proprietary, none of the rebels had a sufficiently clear idea of how to stabilise it.
It had been a rupture, rather than a detonation- but it had been enough to break the modular cruiser’s back.
Most of the personnel on board were alive- and now considering surrender- but the ship itself was a constructive total loss.
‘That takes our tally of rebel prisoners up to eleven thousand, doesn’t it?’ Lennart stated. It was a rhetorical question.
‘Just how badly do you want to piss the sector group off, skipper?’ Brenn asked.
‘Good point.’ Lennart said, forcing himself to calm down. ‘I’d probably just start ranting. You make the call. Tell Sector that we need sufficient transport, sufficiently escorted, for eleven thousand rebels now.
Tell them that if they get it wrong again, I’ll fly to the capital and release them in the Moff’s palace grounds. If they screw up sufficiently badly, I’ll give the rebels their guns back first.’
‘One other thing, Skipper. You could have sent Delta squadron in on the minesweeping job?’
‘In theory, I could have.’ Lennart agreed. ‘In practise, I wanted something out in the deep operational field to follow that Illustris home.’
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-15 09:54am, edited 1 time in total.
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Vehrec
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This is a good chapter, with only a slight flaw- I have trouble remembering which ships are what and where without an order of battle and some kind of Diagram. That's mostly me, but it gives you an idea of how great a job you're doing-you've created realistic multi-threaded battles that make someone's head spin.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)No problem with who is who.Vehrec wrote:This is a good chapter, with only a slight flaw- I have trouble remembering which ships are what and where without an order of battle and some kind of Diagram. That's mostly me, but it gives you an idea of how great a job you're doing-you've created realistic multi-threaded battles that make someone's head spin.
As for the were is were, I think as every ship on it's own A4 paper (pesonal space).
It helps me with not getting got (to fast) by it.
It's the distance (and time) that gets me.
In battle, time is relative.
So, us readers won't have any help with that.
Unless somebody say's it at the debriefing.
Nothing like the present.
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
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- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
When thinking about the times and distances involved, I was using the rough mental model of a cone maybe forty degrees at the apex and around a hundred and fifty light years deep.
Relatively small scale, in other words, compared to the galactic ranges and speeds hyperdrive is capable of. Navigation time becomes more significant than journey time- it takes longer to plot a course than it does to fly it, which has the interesting tactical effect of favouring large ships with larger navigation teams, who can pre-plot a range of courses and choose between them.
Also rebel type fighters, who carry their navigation data stored in the astromech droids, a selection of precalculated courses. I know this was a WEG derived idea that makes it's way into the EU, but let's play with it for a moment and see where it goes.
They can get into and out of trouble virtually instantly; go to a point and return, or fly a preprogramed circuit, with very little delay- but they can't move off that predetermined track. They buy tactical flexibility at the price of operational flexibility. That adds an interesting enough wrinkle to be worth taking seriously.
The only rationale I can come up with for why navigation is still a problem even in what is virtually a line of sight jump is to assume that hyperspace is much more strongly curved than normal space, or that the ships are existing from a tachyonic perspective makes even small curvatures much more significant.
Damn, it's hard to avoid sounding pseud-ish when talking about this stuff without numbers- but conceptually, above lightspeed, losing energy causes you to gain velocity, right? Gaining energy causes the ship to decelerate. So what happens when a ship cruising at say 20 million times lightspeed encounters the fringes of a solar system's gravity well? How much stress does even the microgravity involved place on the ship's structure, when the bow of the ship tries to decelerate at a different rate from the stern? Do we or do we not have the tidal pull from hell, here?
All of the problems are soluble- they solve them, after all- but not without planning and preparation, and I'm starting to think that navigation doesn't involve working out where to go as much as it does predicting the stresses on the ship along the way and preparing the hyperdrive and other systems to cope with them.
The most interesting wrinkle of the lot; either factor is less significant than the length of time it takes one ship to burn through another's shielding. Which is in itself dependent on hit rates.
To use the fully enumerated Acclamator as a yardstick, it has heat dispersion of a third of it's total output. That means two Acclamators could sit at the right range for a hit probability of 33% or less, pound each other, and accomplish nothing other than turning a lot of hypermatter into neutrinos, all day long. Or at least until the fuel runs out.
A large majority of the time, the losing ship should be able to disengage and jump out, or call for help and have it arrive, before it's shields actually collapse. Compared to arranging the situation so the enemy has a reason to hang around long enough to actually be destroyed, the fighting may be the easy part.
Anyway, the squadron listing;
Strike Line;
Black Prince, (Imperator-1A2), Ln.Cpt J.A. Lennart,
Dynamic, (Arrogant [Anon-II]), Cpt D. Dordd,
Perseverance (Anon-I, probably Victory-III), Cdr S. Lycarin
Grey Princess,LCdr E. Yeklendim, Provornyy, Cdr J. Sarlatt, Fulgor- class light frigates
Ungovernable, Cobalt Rose (both Mod Carrack heavy corvette- one recon, one minelayer conversion)
ASJ-112, “Colonel Pranger”, ENE-457 “The Masked Discombobulator” (Bayonet medium corvettes)
Sweep line;
Voracious (Venator), Gp.Cpt K.Vehrec, SLt Caliphant
Obdurate (Demolisher med frigate), LCdr K.A. Raesene
Eludor, Nefarious (Servator heavy corvettes),
DSM- 395 “Revenge of the Planck-ton”, JHE-634 “Shooting Pains” Bayonet med corvettes,
AF-217ED “Counterparting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, ER-897JH “Spiral Eyes Joe”, VY-493LQ “We Distrain Upon You” Marauder light corvettes,
6 Rendili customs corvettes- CN27AJ19 “The Silent Bugler” (flotilla lead), SFA E.Rontaine, FL89IA12, BD10NJ30, Il45EB28, NE54OA98, RO72SJ65
Recon line A;
Comarre Meridian, Cdr A. Barth-Elstrand (Meridian [Acclamator-II] heavy frigate),
Janduvar Tythallin (Demolisher med frigate)
Havoc, Darxani (Strike- class med frigates, Havoc is minelayer variant),
Placator, Scrimmage (Servator heavy corvettes)
Breaker, Scalpel, Effortless (Carrack heavy corvettes)
RLB- 351 “The Iron Turnip”, WYT- 874 “Helga the Horrible”, Bayonet medium corvettes,
KE-844RJ “Sweet 16,832,917”, UR-176JS “Polyfather of Eristic Excess”, LF-203FD “Erogenous Jones” KE- 967WJ “Fuzzy Pink Rancor” marauder light corvettes
Recon line B;
Tarazed Meridian (Meridian [Acclamator-II] heavy frigate), Cdr V. Falldess
Guillemot (Demolisher med frigate)
Blackwood, LCdr C.Kovall, Kuruma (Strike-class med frigates, Blackwood radical recon-in-force variant),
Henchman, Jointure (Servator heavy corvettes)
Nonpareil, Splenetic, Subtractor (Carrack heavy corvettes)
APZ- 670 “Franklinstein”, ENS-994 “I went to Eroticon 6, and all I got was this lousy nameplate”, Bayonet medium corvettes,
AI-376ME “Do We Need A Reason, When All We Wanted was An Excuse”, KQ-478EI “Ag, Ag ag ag, Ag ag ag, Ag”, TC-932GG “Cacophony in Q Flat Major”, VY-466ZZ “I’m So Bad, Baby I Don’t Care” Marauder lt corvettes
Total carriage 102 fighter squadrons, 1 Marine armoured, 1 Navy Trooper Line pattern, 1 composite division
Oh, and. I said I was going to rewrite the incident between Lennart and Adannan, and the first half if it is indeed done. This is actually where it belongs in proper continuity anyway, so see if you think this is any better.
‘Captain? Vidcall, from the Imperial Suite.’
‘The one on board this ship, I trust, not the one on Coruscant?’ Lennart replied.
‘It’s Kor Alric and please, Sir, don’t even joke about things like that.’ The comtech said.
Lennart started to say ‘If you’re so scared you won’t even poke fun at them from time to time, then the bastards really have ground you down’- but stopped himself just before committing high treason.
What kind of thing was that to say about the saviour of the galaxy and his own ultimate boss? Something to say very quietly or ideally not at all, he decided.
‘Captain Lennart. I trust you are not too busy to attend on me?’ Adannan said, sarcastically.
‘We’re in the mop up phase of the operation. Between that and the paperwork I should have half an hour or so free.’ He said.
‘It is not wise of you to take the Force so lightly.’ Adannan snarled.
‘Really? In a knock-down drag out fight between a cosmic energy web connecting all life and the dead hand of bureaucratic procedure, I know who my money’s on.’ Lennart quipped.
‘Can the dead hand do-‘ Adannan began, about to force choke Lennart, then realised; draining the life out of someone, taking their air away…yes, the dead hand of bureaucracy could do that.
‘Brenn, you have the conn, Kor Alric, I’ll be right up.’ Lennart hung up; Brenn wanted to say something, ideally wanted to stop him, but there really wasn’t any choice.
‘If I’m not back in an hour-‘
‘Send a search party?’ Brenn interrupted.
‘No, send a Bomber with antiship torps to blow the suite’s viewport out. If I have to deal with him for an hour, by that point I think I’d prefer to take a chance with hard vacuum.’ Lennart said.
The Imperial suite was guarded; four stormtroopers, two with carbines and two with flamethrowers. Interesting load. Lennart simply strolled past them into the main chamber of the suite.
All joking aside, what is my game plan? Lennart asked himself. To survive; but not at any price.
I have touched the force, a grand total of twice; I have an aversion to it that amounts to the pathological, and all of twenty minutes’ practise with a lightsabre.
Time to start listening to my own objections, and recognise that I am dealing with a man who has been driven mad by his connection to the Cosmic All- and wants me to start howling at the moon with him.
To follow down that path leads to several sorts of possible futures, none of them good. I may be an authoritarian by many standards and a murderer by some, but I can put up a rational, civilised defence for most of the things I’ve done- and it’s the things that you didn’t manage to do that hurt the most, anyway. I will not descend to the level of a man who has no reason at all. In either sense.
Adannan was there in his robes, washed and pressed; the classic mad- monk look.
‘Why you?’ He began by saying.
‘I was in the wrong place at the right time. Destiny’s twisted sense of humour, or my own nose for trouble.’ Lennart said, deciding not to waste time wondering but instead to play it by ear. ‘Who else, you?’
‘Captain Lennart, my dear fellow, don’t you see how reasonable I’m being?’ Adannan said, mockingly, although whether he was mocking Lennart or himself was hard to tell.
‘Actually, the fact that you can say that with a straight face scares the crap out of me.’ Lennart said- recognising the ground that Adannan was trying to manoeuvre him on to. ‘Should I have asked, why me what?’
‘If you have to be told, you’re not fit to know.’ Adannan stated. ‘Do you doubt your fitness to wield the Force?’
‘Yes.’ Lennart said, watching his face carefully. Adannan was not a man that it would be safe to play sabacc with, he decided. There was the danger that he might win.
Adannan had been opening himself to the force for far too long, it took real conscious effort to maintain a state of outward calm, and the more something mattered, the more he let it show. Anger visibly conflicted with relief on his face, then guilt at feeling relief. Then annoyance at being so closely watched.
‘The force flows through all things, even you. You can reach out and direct that flow, you will not reject it and you will not fail to make yourself master of it. I will not permit you to fail.’ Adannan said.
‘You perhaps would be better off if you did.’ Lennart pointed out.
Adannan had to think hard what Lennart might mean, was on the verge of asking, then realised that it wasn’t the obvious. ‘Why issue orders, when you can command with the power of your mind? Why mess around with public relations stunts and soft leadership, when you can have them jump to your voice as to the crack of a whip?’
‘Because,’ Lennart decided to give an honest answer just to annoy Adannan, ‘on some level, and you don’t have to tell me how officially wrong this is, I still think of this ship and her crew as ‘us’. Would you whip your own family?’
‘Laurentia.’ Adannan shouted, calling her to him.
He hardly ever used her full name; she entered the room in a state of advanced fear, sure something terrible was about to happen. She looked at Lennart, pleading with him; he had no reason to trust her or to help her, apart from principle, and he wondered if Adannan had primed her to do this.
If she was an actress of the same calibre as her sister- and Lennart doubted it, but not by much- then she could be faking it, but he didn’t think so. She was genuinely terrified.
‘Yes, my Lord?’ she asked him, voice held level with difficulty.
‘Disembowel yourself.’ Adannan threw a vibroblade to her. ‘Nice and messy, but don’t make an immediately terminal job of it, I may want to stitch you back together again later.’
In theory, Lennart had always known that such things were, and lived on the dark side of the force- and on the dark side of human nature, for that matter. He had studied, was passing familiar with the sociology and the criminology.
Having it happen in front of him shook his composure, but only for a second. He took a deep breath, thought of various gambits and how Adannan would react to them, and said
‘You could just use an inkblot.’ Much more calmly than he felt. There, that was the effect of the force right there- the fact that he didn’t jump Adannan and try to beat the sick bastard’s head in with the butt end of his own lightsabre.
‘You’re not even going to try to save her? Interesting that you should immediately think it’s all about you.’ Adannan said.
Laurentia was sitting there, cross legged, with the blade’s edge against her gut, not yet activated.
‘From what? From her own lord and master who can do this to her again, any time the mood or the madness takes you? Besides which, I thought you’d be able to come up with a more subtle test case.’ As opposed, Lennart decided not to say, to one virtually designed to impress me with the malevolence and waste of the dark side.
‘So, Captain Egomaniac, what am I going to do next?’ Adannan asked him, gloatingly.
‘Depends on me, I expect.’ Lennart said, flippantly- which was not what he felt. ‘Why should I stop you depriving yourself of one of your small and shrinking band of followers?’ Laurentia looked at him, eyes pleading. ‘Why interrupt you, when you’re making a mistake?’ Lennart added.
‘The quote is “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”. Do you think I’m completely ignorant of the military?’ Adannan asked him, fishing for a response as they both knew.
Lennart knew he was expected to call Adannan a dilettante who knew just enough to be dangerous, so he didn’t.
‘For all the brushfire wars, for all the individuals who lost their innocence, the galactic conventional wisdom pretty much was completely ignorant of the military before the Clone Wars- and look what happened. People- peoples- change, sometimes for the worse, and they learn, sometimes the wrong things.’
‘Is that all you have, cliché?’ Adannan asked.
‘For a situation as stilted, contrived and artificial as this, I don’t need more. In what demented way do you imagine I could be even vaguely positively influenced by this?’ Lennart shot back. Then cursed himself for an idiot. This was not the right moment to challenge Adannan. Which was why he was trying to make it the necessary moment.
‘I don’t want you to be.’ Adannan said. He was in a state of doubt, himself, uncomfortably aware that Lennart was potentially more powerful than he realised.
Lennart was a strange one. It was an article of faith among the Jedi that the younger they were taken, the better. It was thought necessary to have the postulants from a very young age, ideally out of the cradle, for two things- so that they grew up with the force as a basic part of their being, thoroughly familiar with and infused with it from the beginning.
The other side of that principle was that they come to the Force without real life experience, without joys and miseries, loves and hates, dreams, fears and ideals. One cannot be selfish if one does not yet truly have a self.
That way, the Jedi considered, lay the dark side. A child should learn the Force as soon as they were old enough to comprehend the instructions they were given, not long after they learned to walk and talk. An older child would not be accepted for training; a child past the age of puberty and it’s turmoils was more likely to be placed on police surveillance for the rest of their life, or possibly quietly assassinated.
Captain of the Line Jorian Lennart was forty-seven, and his relationship with the force was basically pathological. He would be an impossible student.
Why did I decide to do this? Adannan asked himself, wishing that he could come up with a more sensible answer than the truth- that he had ignored the potential problems in favour of the mandatory faith in his own abilities.
He had followed a lead given to him by, of all the absurdities in the galaxy, a love-struck stormtrooper- that in itself should have been sufficient warning from destiny that things were going to get weird.
He had pursued something that was half a legend and half a scurrilous rumour, chasing power- gone well off reservation in doing so, for which he would be forgiven if he succeeded.
He had found a situation that was more complex and more dangerous than it seemed, and this man, this neophyte of the force- and veteran commander of one of His Imperial Majesty’s star destroyers- in his way. Or was that an excessively depressive way of looking at the situation?
His original plan had been to blackmail Lennart into acting as his apprentice, and use the power of the dark side and the master- apprentice bond to dominate him into doing his bidding. That might still be possible- there had not really been a test of will between them yet, but the outcome was looking less certain.
For a brief moment, Adannan consciously thought, what have I let myself in for? Cursed his luck and wished he was home in bed. He looked at Lennart, and saw that he was evidently thinking the same thing.
‘You were right about one thing. I was a medic; trauma surgeon in fact, just going through that phase where the false confidence wears away and I was busy enough, seeing and doing too much, to build real experience and skill. One stoned, spice- headed idiot came in one night to accident and emergency, shouting and bullying, demanding drugs and treatment- I was fed up with the idiots like him, morons whose troubles are of their own making.
You see, I was a different person then. This man offended me, offended my then friends and colleagues; assaulted someone whom I…I saw red. He turned on me, and I took him apart. I beat him until I had broken every bone and burst every organ in his body.
Then I reeled away out into the night away from the team I was no longer part of, away from their horror and their disbelief, in a worse mental state than he had been, blasted out of my head on blood, adrenalin and the stirrings of the Force.
The Inquisitors found me shortly before the police did, and now I am what I have become.
So you see,’ he visibly came back down to earth, looked Lennart directly in the eye again, ‘I run no risk by ordering Ren to open her belly; I can always put her back together again, and the touch of mortality is good for her.’
‘I weigh the risks,’ Lennart said, slowly, almost meditatively to begin with, ‘and at times I have felt very conscious of doing a deal with death, of agreeing to hand over so many of mine in exchange for so many of theirs. I have not yet come out on the short end of the bargain- I do take pride in demanding a very high price for the lives of those he manages to get his bony hands on, and almost always getting it. Never play with the lives of your people, and never give the bastard an inch.’
‘Weighing risks? Calculating? Doing deals with death? Very un- Corellian of you.’ Adannan said. On one hand it was good that he had managed to get Lennart to open up, to give in to his impulses, but- the situation he had arranged to do it was so reminiscent of his own description of the tipping point that had sent him to the Dark Side- inevitably so.
Buried patterns re-emerging, old keys being used to open new doors. With one exception. He, Adannan, was playing the part of the man who had his skull smashed in.
Had that been a subconscious challenge to himself?
‘Nothing quite as pointless as a half- hearted heretic, is there?’ Lennart said. ‘I think you’re doing this-‘ he nodded at Laurentia who was sitting there shivering, waiting for confirmation that she was supposed to cut- ‘in part as a test of your own fealty to the dark side. To prove to yourself that you can do something so desperately at odds with the man you used to be.’
That made more sense. That was, in a way, more comforting. Of course, he couldn’t possibly admit it.
The next obvious thing to say- what’s wrong with random acts of senseless violence?- would be even more potentially disastrous. Lennart was all too likely to tell him.
Adannan decided to change the subject instead. ‘You were a politics student, weren’t you?’ He asked.
‘Philosophy Politics and Economics, with a heavy side order of teenage idiot.’ Lennart said. ‘I was studying politics, and I was political- Moderate Centrist, but not the dour-leftie typical, we were more the comedy terrorist squad. Evidence uncovered, politicians mocked, ventilation systems spiked and police graffiti’d while you wait.
One day, after one long, rambling, drunken discussion, I had what you might call an epiphany.
The system had been spawning, and marginalizing or buying off, people like us for twenty thousand years. We weren’t really doing anything that was remotely new, we were just fooling ourselves into thinking that we were.
We were children; simultaneously believers and pranksters, juggling airily with concepts we didn’t really understand the weight of, or how much they would hurt when they fell on your head.
I decided to change everything. Service, rather than priviledge; mathematical rigour, rather than vague generalisations; discipline rather than anarchy. You can tell how little I knew about the Republic Starfleet at the time.’ Lennart, typically, added a punchline.
‘I made a conscious decision, under some subconscious pressures, and I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if I had gone another path- but seldom regretted this one. I think I got a better deal out of my conversion than you did from yours.’
‘How so? Adannan asked. ‘The power of the Force-‘
‘The very greatest feats of the force are only open to the very greatest practitioners. On average, well, how much power does your force lightning put out? Fifty, sixty kilowatts, hundred maybe? As opposed to a 3082 -teraton per second alpha arc.’
‘That’s external.’ Adannan half-shouted. ‘The force belongs to your inner self, it flows out of the very heart of your being, it is a power and a strength and a freedom that does not belong to the outside world, but purely to yourself.’ So why was he trying to steal brain- hacking technology and technique from the past? Even if it had been a good question, now was not the time to ask himself. Lennart might be able to hear him thinking.
‘You don’t think command does?’ Lennart said. ‘The light side had an excuse for forgetting what normal humanity is capable of- they attributed to the force qualities that belong to man alone. You don’t have that excuse.’
‘Consider this.’ Adannan changed the subject. ‘The political implications of the Force.’
‘Commendably honest of you, refusing to spell it out for me. Another inkblot? Hm.’ Lennart said. ‘The obvious, or the very obvious? Start with the merely stunningly obvious- that the force is living proof that all men, women, transgender, beings with tri- and quad- phase reproductive cycles, et cetera- all people are not created equal.
The fundamental basis of democracy is at best a convenient legal fiction, at worst an outright lie. Only power matters.’
‘Yes.’ Adannan said, pleased- then Lennart decided to spoil it for him.
‘Absolutely none of which is news. The existence of life-forms other than human proved that at the dawn of galactic history. That one man- or one life form- can succeed where another fails was proof of that, before the historical record began. The convenient legal fiction still persists, and I would like you to consider why.’
‘Longer than it had any business doing. It was a sign of weakness, not to be able to impose your will- to have to ask for the opinions and gain the consent of others is the mark of a being too weak to be worthy of power.’ Adannan said. Declaimed, even.
Lennart decided to meet Adannan head on.
‘To squander the talents and the lives of those who serve is the brand of a being too stupid to deserve power.’ He snapped back, and had to consciously centre himself, avoid giving in to a surge of anger and hate- then noticed that Adannan wasn’t reacting nearly as badly as he thought he would have.
Had that been the point of the exercise? To lure me, Lennart thought, into a situation where I would be tempted to call upon the force; either allow the dark side to lend me strength, or openly declare my allegiance to the Light- nonexistent, but it wasn’t going to look that way on the report, he was sure.
‘Look at the results in the flesh; we are both responsible for iterations of the same breed.’ He waved an arm at Laurentia. ‘Is this your statement of intent? Is this what happens to people who are merely one remove distant from the Force? Am I supposed to admire this wastage, or want to be a part of it?’
‘You’re angry.’ Adannan said, happily.
‘I’m disgusted. Shall we make a bet? A measurable, testable bet?’ Lennart said, aware that there was a risk- at least two separate risks- involved. This was sailing close to the wind; was it justified? On balance, yes. ‘We have started with identical copies, and I have made more out of mine than you have of yours. Fitter, stronger, faster, clearer thinking- any challenge you care to name, Aleph- 3 will do better at it than Laurentia.’
Adannan grinned. He could make use of this.
‘With one exception.’ Lennart added. ‘Commiting suicide or any variation thereof.’
‘Thereof? You really were about to go into politics, weren’t you… I’m impressed. Both by your willingness to trust the entity who got you into this mess in the first place, and your willingness to sacrifice her to buy yourself more time to think.’
Adannan watched Lennart’s reaction- a flash of guilt at that, the rapid multicoloured blur of abstract thought as he considered if it was going to work or not; an instinctive denial, a consideration of whether or not Adannan might be on to something, eventually deciding that he wasn’t.
He wanted her here because he needed her help. Doing it in such a dangerous and dubious way- what else was to be expected, when dealing with a man like Adannan?
‘Well?’ He asked, more confidently than he felt.
‘This could prove to be entertaining. Send for her.’
Relatively small scale, in other words, compared to the galactic ranges and speeds hyperdrive is capable of. Navigation time becomes more significant than journey time- it takes longer to plot a course than it does to fly it, which has the interesting tactical effect of favouring large ships with larger navigation teams, who can pre-plot a range of courses and choose between them.
Also rebel type fighters, who carry their navigation data stored in the astromech droids, a selection of precalculated courses. I know this was a WEG derived idea that makes it's way into the EU, but let's play with it for a moment and see where it goes.
They can get into and out of trouble virtually instantly; go to a point and return, or fly a preprogramed circuit, with very little delay- but they can't move off that predetermined track. They buy tactical flexibility at the price of operational flexibility. That adds an interesting enough wrinkle to be worth taking seriously.
The only rationale I can come up with for why navigation is still a problem even in what is virtually a line of sight jump is to assume that hyperspace is much more strongly curved than normal space, or that the ships are existing from a tachyonic perspective makes even small curvatures much more significant.
Damn, it's hard to avoid sounding pseud-ish when talking about this stuff without numbers- but conceptually, above lightspeed, losing energy causes you to gain velocity, right? Gaining energy causes the ship to decelerate. So what happens when a ship cruising at say 20 million times lightspeed encounters the fringes of a solar system's gravity well? How much stress does even the microgravity involved place on the ship's structure, when the bow of the ship tries to decelerate at a different rate from the stern? Do we or do we not have the tidal pull from hell, here?
All of the problems are soluble- they solve them, after all- but not without planning and preparation, and I'm starting to think that navigation doesn't involve working out where to go as much as it does predicting the stresses on the ship along the way and preparing the hyperdrive and other systems to cope with them.
The most interesting wrinkle of the lot; either factor is less significant than the length of time it takes one ship to burn through another's shielding. Which is in itself dependent on hit rates.
To use the fully enumerated Acclamator as a yardstick, it has heat dispersion of a third of it's total output. That means two Acclamators could sit at the right range for a hit probability of 33% or less, pound each other, and accomplish nothing other than turning a lot of hypermatter into neutrinos, all day long. Or at least until the fuel runs out.
A large majority of the time, the losing ship should be able to disengage and jump out, or call for help and have it arrive, before it's shields actually collapse. Compared to arranging the situation so the enemy has a reason to hang around long enough to actually be destroyed, the fighting may be the easy part.
Anyway, the squadron listing;
Strike Line;
Black Prince, (Imperator-1A2), Ln.Cpt J.A. Lennart,
Dynamic, (Arrogant [Anon-II]), Cpt D. Dordd,
Perseverance (Anon-I, probably Victory-III), Cdr S. Lycarin
Grey Princess,LCdr E. Yeklendim, Provornyy, Cdr J. Sarlatt, Fulgor- class light frigates
Ungovernable, Cobalt Rose (both Mod Carrack heavy corvette- one recon, one minelayer conversion)
ASJ-112, “Colonel Pranger”, ENE-457 “The Masked Discombobulator” (Bayonet medium corvettes)
Sweep line;
Voracious (Venator), Gp.Cpt K.Vehrec, SLt Caliphant
Obdurate (Demolisher med frigate), LCdr K.A. Raesene
Eludor, Nefarious (Servator heavy corvettes),
DSM- 395 “Revenge of the Planck-ton”, JHE-634 “Shooting Pains” Bayonet med corvettes,
AF-217ED “Counterparting is Such Sweet Sorrow”, ER-897JH “Spiral Eyes Joe”, VY-493LQ “We Distrain Upon You” Marauder light corvettes,
6 Rendili customs corvettes- CN27AJ19 “The Silent Bugler” (flotilla lead), SFA E.Rontaine, FL89IA12, BD10NJ30, Il45EB28, NE54OA98, RO72SJ65
Recon line A;
Comarre Meridian, Cdr A. Barth-Elstrand (Meridian [Acclamator-II] heavy frigate),
Janduvar Tythallin (Demolisher med frigate)
Havoc, Darxani (Strike- class med frigates, Havoc is minelayer variant),
Placator, Scrimmage (Servator heavy corvettes)
Breaker, Scalpel, Effortless (Carrack heavy corvettes)
RLB- 351 “The Iron Turnip”, WYT- 874 “Helga the Horrible”, Bayonet medium corvettes,
KE-844RJ “Sweet 16,832,917”, UR-176JS “Polyfather of Eristic Excess”, LF-203FD “Erogenous Jones” KE- 967WJ “Fuzzy Pink Rancor” marauder light corvettes
Recon line B;
Tarazed Meridian (Meridian [Acclamator-II] heavy frigate), Cdr V. Falldess
Guillemot (Demolisher med frigate)
Blackwood, LCdr C.Kovall, Kuruma (Strike-class med frigates, Blackwood radical recon-in-force variant),
Henchman, Jointure (Servator heavy corvettes)
Nonpareil, Splenetic, Subtractor (Carrack heavy corvettes)
APZ- 670 “Franklinstein”, ENS-994 “I went to Eroticon 6, and all I got was this lousy nameplate”, Bayonet medium corvettes,
AI-376ME “Do We Need A Reason, When All We Wanted was An Excuse”, KQ-478EI “Ag, Ag ag ag, Ag ag ag, Ag”, TC-932GG “Cacophony in Q Flat Major”, VY-466ZZ “I’m So Bad, Baby I Don’t Care” Marauder lt corvettes
Total carriage 102 fighter squadrons, 1 Marine armoured, 1 Navy Trooper Line pattern, 1 composite division
Oh, and. I said I was going to rewrite the incident between Lennart and Adannan, and the first half if it is indeed done. This is actually where it belongs in proper continuity anyway, so see if you think this is any better.
‘Captain? Vidcall, from the Imperial Suite.’
‘The one on board this ship, I trust, not the one on Coruscant?’ Lennart replied.
‘It’s Kor Alric and please, Sir, don’t even joke about things like that.’ The comtech said.
Lennart started to say ‘If you’re so scared you won’t even poke fun at them from time to time, then the bastards really have ground you down’- but stopped himself just before committing high treason.
What kind of thing was that to say about the saviour of the galaxy and his own ultimate boss? Something to say very quietly or ideally not at all, he decided.
‘Captain Lennart. I trust you are not too busy to attend on me?’ Adannan said, sarcastically.
‘We’re in the mop up phase of the operation. Between that and the paperwork I should have half an hour or so free.’ He said.
‘It is not wise of you to take the Force so lightly.’ Adannan snarled.
‘Really? In a knock-down drag out fight between a cosmic energy web connecting all life and the dead hand of bureaucratic procedure, I know who my money’s on.’ Lennart quipped.
‘Can the dead hand do-‘ Adannan began, about to force choke Lennart, then realised; draining the life out of someone, taking their air away…yes, the dead hand of bureaucracy could do that.
‘Brenn, you have the conn, Kor Alric, I’ll be right up.’ Lennart hung up; Brenn wanted to say something, ideally wanted to stop him, but there really wasn’t any choice.
‘If I’m not back in an hour-‘
‘Send a search party?’ Brenn interrupted.
‘No, send a Bomber with antiship torps to blow the suite’s viewport out. If I have to deal with him for an hour, by that point I think I’d prefer to take a chance with hard vacuum.’ Lennart said.
The Imperial suite was guarded; four stormtroopers, two with carbines and two with flamethrowers. Interesting load. Lennart simply strolled past them into the main chamber of the suite.
All joking aside, what is my game plan? Lennart asked himself. To survive; but not at any price.
I have touched the force, a grand total of twice; I have an aversion to it that amounts to the pathological, and all of twenty minutes’ practise with a lightsabre.
Time to start listening to my own objections, and recognise that I am dealing with a man who has been driven mad by his connection to the Cosmic All- and wants me to start howling at the moon with him.
To follow down that path leads to several sorts of possible futures, none of them good. I may be an authoritarian by many standards and a murderer by some, but I can put up a rational, civilised defence for most of the things I’ve done- and it’s the things that you didn’t manage to do that hurt the most, anyway. I will not descend to the level of a man who has no reason at all. In either sense.
Adannan was there in his robes, washed and pressed; the classic mad- monk look.
‘Why you?’ He began by saying.
‘I was in the wrong place at the right time. Destiny’s twisted sense of humour, or my own nose for trouble.’ Lennart said, deciding not to waste time wondering but instead to play it by ear. ‘Who else, you?’
‘Captain Lennart, my dear fellow, don’t you see how reasonable I’m being?’ Adannan said, mockingly, although whether he was mocking Lennart or himself was hard to tell.
‘Actually, the fact that you can say that with a straight face scares the crap out of me.’ Lennart said- recognising the ground that Adannan was trying to manoeuvre him on to. ‘Should I have asked, why me what?’
‘If you have to be told, you’re not fit to know.’ Adannan stated. ‘Do you doubt your fitness to wield the Force?’
‘Yes.’ Lennart said, watching his face carefully. Adannan was not a man that it would be safe to play sabacc with, he decided. There was the danger that he might win.
Adannan had been opening himself to the force for far too long, it took real conscious effort to maintain a state of outward calm, and the more something mattered, the more he let it show. Anger visibly conflicted with relief on his face, then guilt at feeling relief. Then annoyance at being so closely watched.
‘The force flows through all things, even you. You can reach out and direct that flow, you will not reject it and you will not fail to make yourself master of it. I will not permit you to fail.’ Adannan said.
‘You perhaps would be better off if you did.’ Lennart pointed out.
Adannan had to think hard what Lennart might mean, was on the verge of asking, then realised that it wasn’t the obvious. ‘Why issue orders, when you can command with the power of your mind? Why mess around with public relations stunts and soft leadership, when you can have them jump to your voice as to the crack of a whip?’
‘Because,’ Lennart decided to give an honest answer just to annoy Adannan, ‘on some level, and you don’t have to tell me how officially wrong this is, I still think of this ship and her crew as ‘us’. Would you whip your own family?’
‘Laurentia.’ Adannan shouted, calling her to him.
He hardly ever used her full name; she entered the room in a state of advanced fear, sure something terrible was about to happen. She looked at Lennart, pleading with him; he had no reason to trust her or to help her, apart from principle, and he wondered if Adannan had primed her to do this.
If she was an actress of the same calibre as her sister- and Lennart doubted it, but not by much- then she could be faking it, but he didn’t think so. She was genuinely terrified.
‘Yes, my Lord?’ she asked him, voice held level with difficulty.
‘Disembowel yourself.’ Adannan threw a vibroblade to her. ‘Nice and messy, but don’t make an immediately terminal job of it, I may want to stitch you back together again later.’
In theory, Lennart had always known that such things were, and lived on the dark side of the force- and on the dark side of human nature, for that matter. He had studied, was passing familiar with the sociology and the criminology.
Having it happen in front of him shook his composure, but only for a second. He took a deep breath, thought of various gambits and how Adannan would react to them, and said
‘You could just use an inkblot.’ Much more calmly than he felt. There, that was the effect of the force right there- the fact that he didn’t jump Adannan and try to beat the sick bastard’s head in with the butt end of his own lightsabre.
‘You’re not even going to try to save her? Interesting that you should immediately think it’s all about you.’ Adannan said.
Laurentia was sitting there, cross legged, with the blade’s edge against her gut, not yet activated.
‘From what? From her own lord and master who can do this to her again, any time the mood or the madness takes you? Besides which, I thought you’d be able to come up with a more subtle test case.’ As opposed, Lennart decided not to say, to one virtually designed to impress me with the malevolence and waste of the dark side.
‘So, Captain Egomaniac, what am I going to do next?’ Adannan asked him, gloatingly.
‘Depends on me, I expect.’ Lennart said, flippantly- which was not what he felt. ‘Why should I stop you depriving yourself of one of your small and shrinking band of followers?’ Laurentia looked at him, eyes pleading. ‘Why interrupt you, when you’re making a mistake?’ Lennart added.
‘The quote is “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”. Do you think I’m completely ignorant of the military?’ Adannan asked him, fishing for a response as they both knew.
Lennart knew he was expected to call Adannan a dilettante who knew just enough to be dangerous, so he didn’t.
‘For all the brushfire wars, for all the individuals who lost their innocence, the galactic conventional wisdom pretty much was completely ignorant of the military before the Clone Wars- and look what happened. People- peoples- change, sometimes for the worse, and they learn, sometimes the wrong things.’
‘Is that all you have, cliché?’ Adannan asked.
‘For a situation as stilted, contrived and artificial as this, I don’t need more. In what demented way do you imagine I could be even vaguely positively influenced by this?’ Lennart shot back. Then cursed himself for an idiot. This was not the right moment to challenge Adannan. Which was why he was trying to make it the necessary moment.
‘I don’t want you to be.’ Adannan said. He was in a state of doubt, himself, uncomfortably aware that Lennart was potentially more powerful than he realised.
Lennart was a strange one. It was an article of faith among the Jedi that the younger they were taken, the better. It was thought necessary to have the postulants from a very young age, ideally out of the cradle, for two things- so that they grew up with the force as a basic part of their being, thoroughly familiar with and infused with it from the beginning.
The other side of that principle was that they come to the Force without real life experience, without joys and miseries, loves and hates, dreams, fears and ideals. One cannot be selfish if one does not yet truly have a self.
That way, the Jedi considered, lay the dark side. A child should learn the Force as soon as they were old enough to comprehend the instructions they were given, not long after they learned to walk and talk. An older child would not be accepted for training; a child past the age of puberty and it’s turmoils was more likely to be placed on police surveillance for the rest of their life, or possibly quietly assassinated.
Captain of the Line Jorian Lennart was forty-seven, and his relationship with the force was basically pathological. He would be an impossible student.
Why did I decide to do this? Adannan asked himself, wishing that he could come up with a more sensible answer than the truth- that he had ignored the potential problems in favour of the mandatory faith in his own abilities.
He had followed a lead given to him by, of all the absurdities in the galaxy, a love-struck stormtrooper- that in itself should have been sufficient warning from destiny that things were going to get weird.
He had pursued something that was half a legend and half a scurrilous rumour, chasing power- gone well off reservation in doing so, for which he would be forgiven if he succeeded.
He had found a situation that was more complex and more dangerous than it seemed, and this man, this neophyte of the force- and veteran commander of one of His Imperial Majesty’s star destroyers- in his way. Or was that an excessively depressive way of looking at the situation?
His original plan had been to blackmail Lennart into acting as his apprentice, and use the power of the dark side and the master- apprentice bond to dominate him into doing his bidding. That might still be possible- there had not really been a test of will between them yet, but the outcome was looking less certain.
For a brief moment, Adannan consciously thought, what have I let myself in for? Cursed his luck and wished he was home in bed. He looked at Lennart, and saw that he was evidently thinking the same thing.
‘You were right about one thing. I was a medic; trauma surgeon in fact, just going through that phase where the false confidence wears away and I was busy enough, seeing and doing too much, to build real experience and skill. One stoned, spice- headed idiot came in one night to accident and emergency, shouting and bullying, demanding drugs and treatment- I was fed up with the idiots like him, morons whose troubles are of their own making.
You see, I was a different person then. This man offended me, offended my then friends and colleagues; assaulted someone whom I…I saw red. He turned on me, and I took him apart. I beat him until I had broken every bone and burst every organ in his body.
Then I reeled away out into the night away from the team I was no longer part of, away from their horror and their disbelief, in a worse mental state than he had been, blasted out of my head on blood, adrenalin and the stirrings of the Force.
The Inquisitors found me shortly before the police did, and now I am what I have become.
So you see,’ he visibly came back down to earth, looked Lennart directly in the eye again, ‘I run no risk by ordering Ren to open her belly; I can always put her back together again, and the touch of mortality is good for her.’
‘I weigh the risks,’ Lennart said, slowly, almost meditatively to begin with, ‘and at times I have felt very conscious of doing a deal with death, of agreeing to hand over so many of mine in exchange for so many of theirs. I have not yet come out on the short end of the bargain- I do take pride in demanding a very high price for the lives of those he manages to get his bony hands on, and almost always getting it. Never play with the lives of your people, and never give the bastard an inch.’
‘Weighing risks? Calculating? Doing deals with death? Very un- Corellian of you.’ Adannan said. On one hand it was good that he had managed to get Lennart to open up, to give in to his impulses, but- the situation he had arranged to do it was so reminiscent of his own description of the tipping point that had sent him to the Dark Side- inevitably so.
Buried patterns re-emerging, old keys being used to open new doors. With one exception. He, Adannan, was playing the part of the man who had his skull smashed in.
Had that been a subconscious challenge to himself?
‘Nothing quite as pointless as a half- hearted heretic, is there?’ Lennart said. ‘I think you’re doing this-‘ he nodded at Laurentia who was sitting there shivering, waiting for confirmation that she was supposed to cut- ‘in part as a test of your own fealty to the dark side. To prove to yourself that you can do something so desperately at odds with the man you used to be.’
That made more sense. That was, in a way, more comforting. Of course, he couldn’t possibly admit it.
The next obvious thing to say- what’s wrong with random acts of senseless violence?- would be even more potentially disastrous. Lennart was all too likely to tell him.
Adannan decided to change the subject instead. ‘You were a politics student, weren’t you?’ He asked.
‘Philosophy Politics and Economics, with a heavy side order of teenage idiot.’ Lennart said. ‘I was studying politics, and I was political- Moderate Centrist, but not the dour-leftie typical, we were more the comedy terrorist squad. Evidence uncovered, politicians mocked, ventilation systems spiked and police graffiti’d while you wait.
One day, after one long, rambling, drunken discussion, I had what you might call an epiphany.
The system had been spawning, and marginalizing or buying off, people like us for twenty thousand years. We weren’t really doing anything that was remotely new, we were just fooling ourselves into thinking that we were.
We were children; simultaneously believers and pranksters, juggling airily with concepts we didn’t really understand the weight of, or how much they would hurt when they fell on your head.
I decided to change everything. Service, rather than priviledge; mathematical rigour, rather than vague generalisations; discipline rather than anarchy. You can tell how little I knew about the Republic Starfleet at the time.’ Lennart, typically, added a punchline.
‘I made a conscious decision, under some subconscious pressures, and I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if I had gone another path- but seldom regretted this one. I think I got a better deal out of my conversion than you did from yours.’
‘How so? Adannan asked. ‘The power of the Force-‘
‘The very greatest feats of the force are only open to the very greatest practitioners. On average, well, how much power does your force lightning put out? Fifty, sixty kilowatts, hundred maybe? As opposed to a 3082 -teraton per second alpha arc.’
‘That’s external.’ Adannan half-shouted. ‘The force belongs to your inner self, it flows out of the very heart of your being, it is a power and a strength and a freedom that does not belong to the outside world, but purely to yourself.’ So why was he trying to steal brain- hacking technology and technique from the past? Even if it had been a good question, now was not the time to ask himself. Lennart might be able to hear him thinking.
‘You don’t think command does?’ Lennart said. ‘The light side had an excuse for forgetting what normal humanity is capable of- they attributed to the force qualities that belong to man alone. You don’t have that excuse.’
‘Consider this.’ Adannan changed the subject. ‘The political implications of the Force.’
‘Commendably honest of you, refusing to spell it out for me. Another inkblot? Hm.’ Lennart said. ‘The obvious, or the very obvious? Start with the merely stunningly obvious- that the force is living proof that all men, women, transgender, beings with tri- and quad- phase reproductive cycles, et cetera- all people are not created equal.
The fundamental basis of democracy is at best a convenient legal fiction, at worst an outright lie. Only power matters.’
‘Yes.’ Adannan said, pleased- then Lennart decided to spoil it for him.
‘Absolutely none of which is news. The existence of life-forms other than human proved that at the dawn of galactic history. That one man- or one life form- can succeed where another fails was proof of that, before the historical record began. The convenient legal fiction still persists, and I would like you to consider why.’
‘Longer than it had any business doing. It was a sign of weakness, not to be able to impose your will- to have to ask for the opinions and gain the consent of others is the mark of a being too weak to be worthy of power.’ Adannan said. Declaimed, even.
Lennart decided to meet Adannan head on.
‘To squander the talents and the lives of those who serve is the brand of a being too stupid to deserve power.’ He snapped back, and had to consciously centre himself, avoid giving in to a surge of anger and hate- then noticed that Adannan wasn’t reacting nearly as badly as he thought he would have.
Had that been the point of the exercise? To lure me, Lennart thought, into a situation where I would be tempted to call upon the force; either allow the dark side to lend me strength, or openly declare my allegiance to the Light- nonexistent, but it wasn’t going to look that way on the report, he was sure.
‘Look at the results in the flesh; we are both responsible for iterations of the same breed.’ He waved an arm at Laurentia. ‘Is this your statement of intent? Is this what happens to people who are merely one remove distant from the Force? Am I supposed to admire this wastage, or want to be a part of it?’
‘You’re angry.’ Adannan said, happily.
‘I’m disgusted. Shall we make a bet? A measurable, testable bet?’ Lennart said, aware that there was a risk- at least two separate risks- involved. This was sailing close to the wind; was it justified? On balance, yes. ‘We have started with identical copies, and I have made more out of mine than you have of yours. Fitter, stronger, faster, clearer thinking- any challenge you care to name, Aleph- 3 will do better at it than Laurentia.’
Adannan grinned. He could make use of this.
‘With one exception.’ Lennart added. ‘Commiting suicide or any variation thereof.’
‘Thereof? You really were about to go into politics, weren’t you… I’m impressed. Both by your willingness to trust the entity who got you into this mess in the first place, and your willingness to sacrifice her to buy yourself more time to think.’
Adannan watched Lennart’s reaction- a flash of guilt at that, the rapid multicoloured blur of abstract thought as he considered if it was going to work or not; an instinctive denial, a consideration of whether or not Adannan might be on to something, eventually deciding that he wasn’t.
He wanted her here because he needed her help. Doing it in such a dangerous and dubious way- what else was to be expected, when dealing with a man like Adannan?
‘Well?’ He asked, more confidently than he felt.
‘This could prove to be entertaining. Send for her.’
-
Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Sorry about the delay; real life can be a bummer at times. This is the last of the backtrack, and my only excuse is that I think it makes better story.
Before anyone condemns me as a heretic, I should point out that Adannan is right; Lennart is just trying to make his head explode. Most of it is just intellectual gamesmanship. I do think this made for a better clash of wills between the two.
Editing note; this is the version that stands, inserted over the other in sequence.
29a1
The Imperial suite did have one distinct problem; a severe shortage of furniture. In the sidechambers beside and behind, yes, but in the main audience hall, there was the plinth, the swivel throne, and not much else.
Most of it- copies of statuary and a rug- was black or sepia. If ever there was a room that needed the services of a good graffiti artist, Lennart thought.
Amongst other things. Adannan had been pacing up and down, stopped at one point to fondle the still cowering, still cringing Laurentia; how does this constitute a life? Lennart wondered.
How is this a worthwhile thing to do, to break somebody down to the point where they are ready to put a knife to their own belly at your say-so?
‘A credit for your thoughts, Captain.’ Adannan asked him.
‘Now you’re just trying to confuse me by pretending that you can’t read them anyway.’ Lennart said. ‘Isn’t it obvious, or has the force taken away your ability to guess?’
‘I no longer need to guess, with the power of the Force.’ Adannan gave the doctrinaire statement, then struggled to hide his amazement as he couldn’t read Lennart.
‘ “Power makes stupid.” ’ Lennart quoted. ‘Before you ask, pre-Republic, one of the minor dictators of Xim’s time, who conned, bluffed, charmed and wriggled his way into power with astonishing dexterity and cleverness.
Once there he turned his brain off, did everything he had accused the previous leadership of and forgot all the warnings he had left himself, and led his people to complete and utter disaster.’
‘So he proved his own argument? How historically convenient of him. Is that why you have established such elaborate mental defences against becoming powerful yourself?’ Adannan asked.
‘In terms of the Force, maybe.’ Lennart agreed. ‘In terms of the ability to make things happen and get things done, I’m a medium sized fish. Some out there with more authority and the majority of the galaxy with a lot less.
What was the point of this?’ Lennart said, waving at Laurentia. ‘Something about the uses to which power is put?’
‘Like you guessed; an inkblot.’ Adannan replied. ‘You really do think of yourself as the good guy, don’t you?’
‘I repeat my earlier jibe about cliché. Don’t you people have traditions? Any kind of collective memory- at the very least, a record of Great Jedi Hokum of the Past, so you can study avoiding it?’
‘I am not,’ Adannan snarled, ‘a Jedi.’
Lennart decided to take his hypothesis for a walk- that Adannan would accept any behaviour from himself that was basically Sith-like.
Pride and arrogance, he could get away with more easily than reason and logic, because that was what pointed down the road that Adannan wanted him to take. It was probably not a good idea to do more than pretend.
‘Weren’t most of the Sith ex-Jedi? You may not be, but the side you belong to has it’s origins in renegades and deserters from the light- and do you actually think that’s good enough?’ he said, in the tone he would have used on a junior lieutenant.
‘The Sith and the Jedi have been at each other’s throats for thousands of years, we took them perfectly seriously as enemies.’ Adannan snapped.
‘How you ever managed to take them seriously, I don’t know.’ Lennart said, more flippantly than he felt- maybe this was the better way? Keep Adannan off balance, baffle him with bullshit?
No- take that too far and the feral thing he had encouraged to live in him would emerge, instead of, as it was now, using the still human aspects of him like a puppet.
‘Not doing your basic research. Which part of “served through the clone wars” didn’t you get? Why do you think I was happy about Order 66?’
‘I presumed that you had enough sense not to object to it loudly enough to be overheard.’ Adannan said.
‘I served as part of the human professional leaven on an otherwise clone crewed ship, under successively three jedi Generals with two padawan- only one of the five of them I personally would have promoted past junior lieutenant. That chiefly because she was cute.’
‘Did you? Did you execute your Jedi General?’ Adannan said, suddenly enthusiastic.
‘Didn’t have to. Second Coruscant did the job for us.’ Lennart said, more bleakly- and truthfully- than he had intended to admit. For a moment he feared Adannan would pick up on it, but force trivia got the better of him.
‘Fourth.’ Adannan said. ‘Exar Kun-‘
‘That wasn’t a battle, that was a jailbreak- specifically a rescue attempt after the failure of the First Battle of Coruscant. Doesn’t count.
Besides which, depending on how many minor scuffles you’re prepared to dignify, you could make a claim for there having been dozens of the bastard things.’ Lennart pointed out, and was about to go on when Adannan said
‘Don’t you find it interesting, just how many of the Galaxy’s great men down the centuries have belonged to one side or the other? Were they drawn to the Force because they were great- or did they become age-bestriding titans precisely because they had the Force?’
‘None of the men and women I met who had the Force were particularly great. Most of them were downright lousy. I’ll go further than that; professionally incompetent.
You were a doctor; fairly safe bet you put in a lot of time and effort learning to be one. Didn’t you look down on those who hadn’t served their dues, people who hadn’t been through the same trials and toils? Don’t you now?’
‘Why do you think I am reaching out for every form of greatness I can get my hands on?’ Adannan said.
‘I don’t think that, chiefly because you aren’t. I prefer to judge a man by his friends than his enemies; any damn fool can be annoying enough to have noteworthy opposition, you have to put real time and effort into keeping your friends.
What have you made of the people who you have asked to work for you, and take risks for you, and believe for you?’ Lennart challenged.
‘I have made them mine.’
‘You’ve made them less.’ Lennart said.
‘I suppose you think you have a better alternative?’ Adannan asked. Of course he thinks he does, the dark jedi reminded himself. The odd man out, the licensed fool, the internal renegade.
‘I do. So did the Empire, until very recently. The convenient legal fiction; the illusion of consent. Make them think they have a say, that it was their idea, that their hopes and fears- and their pride- is being taken account of.
The most efficient exercise of tyranny is in the pretence of democracy-that worked for the Emperor with the Senate, after all.’
‘Why do you think He dissolved the Senate?’ Adannan asked, trying not to sound too interested. There was an additional opportunity here.
Probably Lennart- who was tired, after all, tired and talking far too much- would veer into outright treason which would be another useful hold to have over him.
Either that or he would go so far into treason by thought and word that he might prove a useful ally in the larger project.
Lennart was tired, it had been a long day, a long several days, but he was not yet so far gone that he was ready to waltz straight into the trap. Head for it with the intention of employing a little judo, maybe.
‘How big is Time? How long should it take to purge the body politic of fifty million worlds, and what were the chances that the senate were ever going to do it for themselves?
At least with the college of Moffs, the constitutional mechanisms- all right, administrative mechanisms- exist for greater accountability and responsibility than the sectoral Senators ever accepted.
There are better ways than having their feet cut off, I expect it’ll take four, five generations for the bugs to work their way out of the system.’ Lennart said, aware that his line of reasoning was fairly contradictory and wondering which part of it Adannan would pick up on.
‘So you did approve of that, then?’
‘It was…only explicable in the sense of a move in a political game.’ Lennart said. ‘I intended to deal with it, with you, the same way I did during the clone wars;
gloss over the more disconnected mystic rambling, not look for the logic involved because there usually wasn’t any, and try to translate the ravings of the force into feasible operation orders.
That turns out to be not quite as feasible as I thought it was going to be.’
Adannan was still deciding where to take that when there was a click of heels from the entranceway- Aleph-3 announcing herself. Iridescent armour, DC-15 with sniper sights slung over her shoulder and holding a flamer, just in case.
She took in the situation quickly, wondered whether to open with some kind of quip and decided to play it straight for now.
‘Reporting as ordered, Sir.’
‘Ah, good. Probably.’ Lennart said. ‘Kor Alric and I are having a slight disagreement…’
‘Captain Lennart has essentially bet your life-‘ Adannan started,
‘-on your own skills and abilities.’ Lennart interrupted him.
Aleph-3 noticed her sister was muttering some kind of mantra, lips quivering slightly- in pattern rather than plain fear. I am one of millions, she was chanting, there are many of me, if I fail another will succeed, where I fall another will take my place. Well, the only one of Laurentia’s sisters to hand was her.
She stopped herself just before turning to glare at Adannan. Standard drill, she thought. Usual practise for sneaking up on a jedi in disguise.
Think happy thoughts, be content of mind, let your own aggressive impulses build beneath the conscious level, so that it is almost as much a surprise to you as it is to him when you ram the stem of his crystal goblet through his eye…
That had been fun. She could do this, cope with this, whatever it was. Probably.
She wondered whether to ask for an explanation or not. Lennart decided he owed her one anyway.
‘Methodological argument.’ Lennart said. ‘Open tyranny versus the illusion of liberty, all that y’zz.’
‘I see. Because unit 6NL- 108- 554E and myself started out as nearly identical, we make a good test case. Provided you can set up some kind of control condition.
How do you intend to take account of the time before I was assigned to this ship, before she was assigned to you?’ she asked Adannan.
Adannan decided to ignore that. Somewhere in the back of his head, he was kicking himself for being ignorant enough to have forgotten about control groups- but it wasn’t as if this was a fair, or even a real, test.
So what was it, then? Why had he- the bit of his brain that was kicking itself for ignoring experimental procedure put on steel toecaps over the fact that it had been Lennart’s idea.
Why had he allowed a man who wasn’t exactly friend, wasn’t exactly enemy, wasn’t really a rival yet, partly all three- why had he let this man invite a moderately capable sniper-scout who specialised in jedi to the party, and if the careful non-presence outside was anything to go by, bring her friends?
He hadn’t actually been thinking, had he? Just feeling. Wanting to embarrass and humiliate, maybe even go some way to breaking, Lennart by putting his girlfriend on the spot.
There was a possible line of attack. Why had Lennart never married? No serious romantic entanglements in his past, no dirt to be dug up there? Worth pursuing. Working on him via her now looked less good an idea than it had sounded.
Stuff it. The force had led him to this and it would lead him through. Perhaps the force, too, enjoyed a catfight from time to time- if any part of it came from red- blooded human males, it would.
‘Your commander has declared that anything one of your kind habituated to my rule can do, one of you trained under his can do better. His method produces superior human material, he claims. I intend to take him at his word on that.’ Adannan said, leering slightly.
‘Despite the myriad moral and intellectual challenges that could involve, I presume this actually is going to devolve into sharp pointy things?’ she asked Adannan, not without sarcasm.
‘Would anything less be a complete test?’ he said, smiling nastily.
Aleph-3 looked at her sister and cautioned herself against overconfidence. This probably wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.
‘Backgrounds irrelevant? My unbroken front line and behind-the-lines service against her staff time, and worse? Really just come as you are?’ She asked Adannan, wondering why he was letting her get away with this, and what he expected to happen.
‘Is life fair? Why should it’s trials be fair?’ Adannan asked- and before he was finished talking, she had thrown, underhand, her flamer at Lennart and shrugged her heavy rifle off her shoulder.
Adannan was still reaching for his lightsabre when she brought the DC-15 arcing up, switched to stun, and put a bolt into Laurentia’s chest, just as she was starting to stand and turn to face.
The big gun continued to pivot, coming to a stop pointing on Adannan, and Lennart had managed to turn the flamer right side up, although it would take another second or two for his brain to switch combat modes from ‘political’ to ‘close quarters’.
That was not what I wanted to happen, Adannan thought. ‘Point your gun somewhere else.’
‘My apologies, Lord Alric. That was reflex.’ She said, lowering the muzzle of the heavy rifle.
Could he react fast enough to get them both? Who to go for first, him or her? No, this was not the time for adrenalin. This was a time to drift on the black currents of the force, to ride and steer events.
‘Sudden and brutal. I approve. How good are you at rebuilding a broken personality?’ Adannan asked.
Aleph-3 considered her answer carefully. Worst case- assigned to Adannan’s retinue. He had the authority to do so; what would stop him? Not wanting her, or needing her to be somewhere else.
Why worst? It was simply duty after all, and that was what she was for, wherever and to whatever it led.
Except in this case- no, not just this. Am I getting picky? Deviant, to the point that I should stick my own head in a blender, if my comrades don’t do it for me anyway?
Maybe. Growing, not becoming damaged- although what’s the difference? Do personalities break, or do they weather? She resorted to the default option- straightforward fact.
‘Basic field medic skills cover shock and psychological trauma, but nothing like the specialist skills I’d need for that.’
‘No? Disappointing. Then-perhaps best two out of three?’
He placed a hand on Laurentia’s shoulder, what precise power or combination he used Aleph-3 had no time to place, but whatever it was, it worked; she came up off the floor like a synthpanther.
Aleph-3 had time to turn to put the point of her shoulder towards her wild- eyed sister, take the blow; a snapshot might have missed- an if it had hit, what would it have achieved? The two collided and went down in a heap, Aleph-3 making the discovery that her sister was wearing an impact vest. Hmmm.
They rolled over each other, Aleph-3 threw her sister off- in the direction of the door; Lennart had to duck out of the way. Laurentia, or whatever vortex of hate and fear was riding her, landed on her feet and charged again instantly, grabbing for her sister’s gun.
Aleph-3 let her sister get the muzzle end, then twisted it up and towards herself and over her shoulder, trying to kick Laurentia’s feet out from under her at the same time; Laurentia leapt up and levered herself on the DC-15, kicking with both feet at Aleph-3‘s stomach.
It didn’t work; the armour took the force of the blow, Aleph-3 dropped the gun letting her sister fall with it, and snatched the magazine before Laurentia could get her hands on the trigger.
Laurentia tried to shoot, heard the ‘click’, and by that time her sister was already jabbing her beneath the ribs.
The light-armoured one doubled over, reeled back, Aleph-3 skipped out of the way expecting her sister to be faking it; Laurentia swung for her sister with the heavy rifle as a club, realised her sister had moved, slowed the move and reversed it to fend her off, tried to twist out of the way.
Aleph-3 kicked for her sister’s elbow; the old armour-piercing judo routine, go for the gaps between plates, try to dislocate the joints under them.
Successful hit, Laurentia howled and stepped back, swung up one- handed with the butt end of the rifle for Aleph-3‘s gut, managed to connect.
Aleph-3’s armour took almost all the force out of it, but she rocked back slightly. What was the point of this? Her sister had little or no chance of actually winning, unless she did something exceptionally daft. Then what?
Laurentia swung for her sister again, aiming for her head, Aleph-3 grabbed the rifle and twisted it out of her hand but by then her sister was already following it in, aiming for her throat with the point of her elbow.
Aleph-3 was already rolling beneath it, and headbutted her sister as they came into close contact.
Their eyes should have been the same colour; instead Laurentia’s were- closer to green than blue, faded somehow. How much damage had Adannan done to her?
Never mind that, how much was what she was doing now down to her and how much down to him? In this situation, what constitutes victory?
If I beat Laurentia to the extent that she needs telekinesis rather than any mental influence to hold her up, then- is that a triumph for the power of the Force?
Really? Aleph-3 thought, taking a kick on her hip and sweeping Laurentia’s other foot out from under her; Laurentia backward-rolled out of range and came back to her feet, bouncing slightly, eyes still defocused and seething.
Adannan expected to empower Laurentia with the Force, so that he would win, and either get an admission of such or force Lennart to do something stupid.
What did it matter to him that she got beaten to a bloody pulp in the process? As far as he was concerned, he had a spare. No you bloody don’t, she thought, wondering if she could get away with going for him directly.
Laurentia was doing her best to avoid giving her sister time to think, with a flying kick that Aleph-3 sidestepped- she landed on one foot and stretched the other into a back kick that Aleph-3 took and rolled with, maintaining the distance between them.
So if he is using the power of the force, why isn’t it more effective?
Lennart was thinking the same thing, except that he had an answer.
Adannan went about this the wrong way, he was thinking. He should have woken her up first, because he was trying to read her muscle memories from her subconscious mind, overboost and apply them against her own alerted and confused conscious.
He was trying to do too many things at once for them all to work as planned.
I could do better, Lennart thought- Galactic Spirit prevent me from ever trying.
Aleph-3 decided to break the pattern. She held herself loose, preparing to take the next hit-
‘What,’ Adannan shouted, ‘are you doing?’
He let Laurentia go, she looked around as if surprised to be there, said ‘ow’ and collapsed. ‘I felt it. You slackened. You lost heat. You were intending to throw the fight- why did you want to lose?’ he glared at her.
Aleph-3 took a breath and decided to stand her ground. She had got herself into this mess, after all. Might as well see it through. ‘If I had pressed my advantage, and won as I had every reason to expect to do,’ she emphasised that part, ‘what would have changed?’
Adannan looked genuinely surprised by that, Lennart was trying to catch up with her train of thought and get a move ahead, and, infuriating as usual, looked as if he was managing it.
‘Not a sacrifice I would have asked of you, if you had bothered to check with me first.’ Lennart said.
Adannan rounded on him. ‘Explain.’
‘If she wins- as was likely- what happens to her sister? More torment, more pain, and maybe a slit belly after all. We, more’s the point, remain at loggerheads.
If Laurentia won- or whatever was holding her up- then it is a triumph for the Force, and we are all good. She’s been trying a lot harder than you have to get me to accept this.’
Aleph-3 spoke up for herself. ‘Lord Alric, did you deliberately make things difficult for yourself? I am not capable of wanting anything other than that which it is my duty to make happen- to win would have served no purpose.
In the larger scheme, I serve the Empire; but it is up to the Empire to decide what it wants from me, is it not? On the more immediate, personal scale- I want to see Captain Lennart become strong in the Force. My pounding the life out of someone empowered by the Force would not have contributed.’
So why did you have to give it away, rock for brains, she didn’t say, but thought fairly loudly.
‘I expected you to lie.’ Adannan said to her.
‘Why?’ she answered simply. ‘Would you respect someone who thinks you’re worth manipulating more than someone who tells you what they honestly find things to be?’
‘Who told you you were allowed to use your brain?’ he said, in surprise.
‘I did.’ Lennart said, taking responsibility- and not entirely certain why, considering which side she appeared to be on.
‘Not entirely true either, Captain. In several situations in which the choice was to think fast enough to get out in one piece or die, you and the chain of command by your will simply forebore to tell me not to.’ She pointed out.
‘Chopping the logic a little fine, aren’t you? Or do you take some sort of masochistic pleasure out of inconvenient truths?’ Lennart asked.
‘I was bred for the purpose of talking to journalists. What do you think?’
‘Probably just as well for the Empire you never did deploy in your intended role.’ Lennart said.
Adannan’s brain was still playing catchup. Yes, yes, I did make mistakes, he was admitting to himself, I did do things the unnecessarily hard way and laid myself open to failure thereby, and how badly have I misread Lennart himself?
‘What about Correct Thought? What about the New Order Party? If you allow your rank and file to think for themselves, how can you be sure that they’re going to come up with the right answers?’ Adannan asked, fishing.
‘Bugger correct thought, and all it stands for.’ Lennart said, succinctly. This was a curve-ball and no mistake.
‘I knew you were a closet Democrat.’ Adannan growled at him.
‘No. But you should be.’ Lennart added, forcefully.
‘What?’ This was just- Adannan could pick up on the louder fragments of Lennart’s surface thoughts, the ones that were actually trying to come out. He couldn’t quite make sense of them.
‘What is Correct Thought but the subordination of your will to that of the Party? And what is a dark force user worth, whose will has been broken and subordinated to that of another? You should be a passionate believer in free will- specifically the freedom of your will.’
Aleph-3 was just standing there looking at him in utter bogglement. Adannan wasn’t far behind.
‘I’m sure you say these things in the hope of making my head explode.’ Adannan temporised.
‘Why should a simple statement like that make your head explode, unless it’s desperately at variance with how things are?’ Lennart asked. ‘I had hoped we weren’t looking at some variation on the cycle of abuse, here.’
Aleph-3 made a noise that could best be described as ‘eep’; uncertain whether to laugh or scream. Adannan was wondering what it felt like to have his head explode after all.
Either he knows nothing and is coming at this from a complete outsider’s viewpoint, or he knows everything and rejects the established conclusions- and is pretending to the outsider’s approach.
‘There are only two Sith in the galaxy. The master and the apprentice. The rest of us are acolytes, agents, followers, servants.
Obliged to squabble amongst ourselves for crumbs from their table, pay in pain for each little bit of wisdom- from the medical point of view, you’re right. This is the cycle of abuse.’ Adannan said, recognising that and waiting for Lennart’s next idea.
‘So what do you actually gain,’ Lennart asked, ‘by playing it by the rules?’
‘Survival. The right to soothe my pain by revelling in the pain of others. Governance over the lesser bricks in the pyramid. Most importantly, enough of their approval to not be dead.
I suppose you’re going to tell me, you closet democrat, that none of that is worth the sacrifice of pride and independence?’ Adannan proclaimed.
‘Not exactly democrat, although the demos has some influence…biocrat, maybe. At least when it comes to the Force.’
What Adannan wanted to say was ‘for the sake of my brain, spare me.’ Not that he could, of course. Not that he could get away with expressing any such sentiment-
he had a faint idea of what Lennart meant, but really didn’t want him to say it- at least, the parts of him that weren’t listening in a mood somewhere between masochism and horrified fascination.
Lennart took Adannan’s silence for assent. ‘Where does the force come from? From all living things. So where does the will of the force come from, if not from the same place?’
Adannan looked down and envied Laurentia her unconsciousness. Where had he lost control of this? When he had allowed Lennart to open his mouth? When he had let a domestic dispute expand into a contest of cosmic conspiracy theories?
‘Vox populi, vox forti. The will of the people is the will of the Force, the logic is inescapable, whether you like it or not.
The death of the republic was so very much like what would have happened without the active involvement of the force, that the only reasonable conclusion is that the force was following the influence of the mundane. You’re the puppet of the people.’ Lennart grinned.
‘Chiefly of their negativity, of course,’ Lennart continued, ‘which was only to be expected in the middle of a time of active revolution, with so much fear in the air and the Light twisted so badly out of shape by it’s own followers.
I repeat, the death of the Republic was not only a good but a predictable thing- and there were a lot of sincere Separatists, who believed they not only had a just cause but kept fighting for it long after the Guilds were taken out.
The Empire, run by the Dark Side of the Force or not, is equally necessary for the Galaxy as a whole, and I do not expect it to be anything other than absolutely hated now- that is the natural outcome of purging twenty-five thousand years of bad decisions and misgovernment.
Five, six, maybe ten generations from now, the reforms will have shaken themselves out and sheer demographic drift will have resulted in some kind of normalisation, probably under Palpatine’s chosen successor-‘
‘You know?’ Adannan asked, wobbling under yet another twist.
‘I would not expect any man to achieve as much as His Majesty has done, in such times and in the face of such opposition, without being a lot more ruthless and devious than his public image ever was.
Accordingly, he is hiding his true nature, and in a government full of dark force users, what else could he be and remain top dog? It was obvious.’
‘Aren’t you offended? Outraged, at having been manipulated? It was sidious- Palpatine- who was pulling the Separatist’s strings as well. The man made fools of an entire galaxy.’ Adannan said, confusedly reverting to one of his earlier plans.
‘I would be very surprised if a criminal secret society that had been outlawed and nearly hounded to extinction wasn’t at least trying to play both sides against each other.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘Besides, in a civil war, what do you expect?
After millennia of neglect of the governmental machinery, centuries of abuse, enough nerf-barrelling to fill Centrepoint, somnambulent bureaucracy who elevated indifference to an art form,
toothless watchdogs and blind oversight- regardless of how the manipulations went and who did what to whom, the sith did not kill the republic. The most they really did was assist it to commit suicide, and in that I would say, again, the dark side actually served the long term if not near term good.’
Adannan stood up and collected himself. He was shaking slightly. ‘How dare you,’ he said with as much menace as he could muster, ‘accuse me of being on the side of good.’
Lennart just waited; Adannan wobbled slightly, collapsed back down on to his bed. ‘Enough. If I continue to listen to you any longer my resolution may be compromised.’ He said, glaring at Lennart and trying to dare him to contradict- but there was a weakness in his eyes that Lennart decided to…not exactly exploit, just take advantage.
‘Is that a resolution to be or a resolution to do? We have unfinished business and anther tactical option I want to explore. A unit of the squadron found evidence that the rebels’ local allies were involved in the past, and are involved now, with relativistic- bombing their neighbours.’
Adannan didn’t even react. Lennart continued ‘Murder on a scale not far removed from genocide, and very far from anything that could conceivably pass as the moral high ground. We can use that.’
‘What is it that you actually want to do?’ Adannan asked, and suspected he was going to regret it.
‘Play with their heads. Let the Alliance know we have the evidence, then watch them scramble as they try to deny it.
Try to arrange fallout between them, at least force them to choose between defending two targets, at best actually get them shooting each other. I can make that happen.’
‘Go. Just go.’ Adannan said.
Lennart turned, walked out, Aleph- 3 fell in step behind him. Hunter team Omega-17-Blue was drawn up in rank in front of him, arms at the present; as he left the chamber, they came up into the general salute.
Lennart returned it, and said ‘How did you decide whether to shoot me or salute me, flip a coin?’
‘It is clear that, once you have explored your own abilities, you will be the greater Sith.’ Aleph 1 said. ‘A question, Sir; how much of what you said to Adannan did you actually believe?’
‘Not much, to begin with. Conspiracy theories and random thoughts. Worth thinking about though, isn’t it? Oh, and I need to borrow someone who can shoot and pass for a civilian.’
Short moment of silence, then Aleph-3 said ‘Well, the least you can do is give me my flamethrower back.’
Adannan was still sitting there, brain seething, when the metal-faced woman came in. She stood at ease, awaiting her instructions. I maimed her and she serves me, he thought, because she is too terrified- and too badly damaged- to contemplate the alternative. He waved at Laurentia.
‘She saved you,’ from me, he didn’t have to say, ‘your turn to return the favour. Nurse her. Banaar,’ he raised his voice to call his other aide, ‘that fool who keeps trying to get in touch, the executive officer? Find him and send him to me.’
Before anyone condemns me as a heretic, I should point out that Adannan is right; Lennart is just trying to make his head explode. Most of it is just intellectual gamesmanship. I do think this made for a better clash of wills between the two.
Editing note; this is the version that stands, inserted over the other in sequence.
29a1
The Imperial suite did have one distinct problem; a severe shortage of furniture. In the sidechambers beside and behind, yes, but in the main audience hall, there was the plinth, the swivel throne, and not much else.
Most of it- copies of statuary and a rug- was black or sepia. If ever there was a room that needed the services of a good graffiti artist, Lennart thought.
Amongst other things. Adannan had been pacing up and down, stopped at one point to fondle the still cowering, still cringing Laurentia; how does this constitute a life? Lennart wondered.
How is this a worthwhile thing to do, to break somebody down to the point where they are ready to put a knife to their own belly at your say-so?
‘A credit for your thoughts, Captain.’ Adannan asked him.
‘Now you’re just trying to confuse me by pretending that you can’t read them anyway.’ Lennart said. ‘Isn’t it obvious, or has the force taken away your ability to guess?’
‘I no longer need to guess, with the power of the Force.’ Adannan gave the doctrinaire statement, then struggled to hide his amazement as he couldn’t read Lennart.
‘ “Power makes stupid.” ’ Lennart quoted. ‘Before you ask, pre-Republic, one of the minor dictators of Xim’s time, who conned, bluffed, charmed and wriggled his way into power with astonishing dexterity and cleverness.
Once there he turned his brain off, did everything he had accused the previous leadership of and forgot all the warnings he had left himself, and led his people to complete and utter disaster.’
‘So he proved his own argument? How historically convenient of him. Is that why you have established such elaborate mental defences against becoming powerful yourself?’ Adannan asked.
‘In terms of the Force, maybe.’ Lennart agreed. ‘In terms of the ability to make things happen and get things done, I’m a medium sized fish. Some out there with more authority and the majority of the galaxy with a lot less.
What was the point of this?’ Lennart said, waving at Laurentia. ‘Something about the uses to which power is put?’
‘Like you guessed; an inkblot.’ Adannan replied. ‘You really do think of yourself as the good guy, don’t you?’
‘I repeat my earlier jibe about cliché. Don’t you people have traditions? Any kind of collective memory- at the very least, a record of Great Jedi Hokum of the Past, so you can study avoiding it?’
‘I am not,’ Adannan snarled, ‘a Jedi.’
Lennart decided to take his hypothesis for a walk- that Adannan would accept any behaviour from himself that was basically Sith-like.
Pride and arrogance, he could get away with more easily than reason and logic, because that was what pointed down the road that Adannan wanted him to take. It was probably not a good idea to do more than pretend.
‘Weren’t most of the Sith ex-Jedi? You may not be, but the side you belong to has it’s origins in renegades and deserters from the light- and do you actually think that’s good enough?’ he said, in the tone he would have used on a junior lieutenant.
‘The Sith and the Jedi have been at each other’s throats for thousands of years, we took them perfectly seriously as enemies.’ Adannan snapped.
‘How you ever managed to take them seriously, I don’t know.’ Lennart said, more flippantly than he felt- maybe this was the better way? Keep Adannan off balance, baffle him with bullshit?
No- take that too far and the feral thing he had encouraged to live in him would emerge, instead of, as it was now, using the still human aspects of him like a puppet.
‘Not doing your basic research. Which part of “served through the clone wars” didn’t you get? Why do you think I was happy about Order 66?’
‘I presumed that you had enough sense not to object to it loudly enough to be overheard.’ Adannan said.
‘I served as part of the human professional leaven on an otherwise clone crewed ship, under successively three jedi Generals with two padawan- only one of the five of them I personally would have promoted past junior lieutenant. That chiefly because she was cute.’
‘Did you? Did you execute your Jedi General?’ Adannan said, suddenly enthusiastic.
‘Didn’t have to. Second Coruscant did the job for us.’ Lennart said, more bleakly- and truthfully- than he had intended to admit. For a moment he feared Adannan would pick up on it, but force trivia got the better of him.
‘Fourth.’ Adannan said. ‘Exar Kun-‘
‘That wasn’t a battle, that was a jailbreak- specifically a rescue attempt after the failure of the First Battle of Coruscant. Doesn’t count.
Besides which, depending on how many minor scuffles you’re prepared to dignify, you could make a claim for there having been dozens of the bastard things.’ Lennart pointed out, and was about to go on when Adannan said
‘Don’t you find it interesting, just how many of the Galaxy’s great men down the centuries have belonged to one side or the other? Were they drawn to the Force because they were great- or did they become age-bestriding titans precisely because they had the Force?’
‘None of the men and women I met who had the Force were particularly great. Most of them were downright lousy. I’ll go further than that; professionally incompetent.
You were a doctor; fairly safe bet you put in a lot of time and effort learning to be one. Didn’t you look down on those who hadn’t served their dues, people who hadn’t been through the same trials and toils? Don’t you now?’
‘Why do you think I am reaching out for every form of greatness I can get my hands on?’ Adannan said.
‘I don’t think that, chiefly because you aren’t. I prefer to judge a man by his friends than his enemies; any damn fool can be annoying enough to have noteworthy opposition, you have to put real time and effort into keeping your friends.
What have you made of the people who you have asked to work for you, and take risks for you, and believe for you?’ Lennart challenged.
‘I have made them mine.’
‘You’ve made them less.’ Lennart said.
‘I suppose you think you have a better alternative?’ Adannan asked. Of course he thinks he does, the dark jedi reminded himself. The odd man out, the licensed fool, the internal renegade.
‘I do. So did the Empire, until very recently. The convenient legal fiction; the illusion of consent. Make them think they have a say, that it was their idea, that their hopes and fears- and their pride- is being taken account of.
The most efficient exercise of tyranny is in the pretence of democracy-that worked for the Emperor with the Senate, after all.’
‘Why do you think He dissolved the Senate?’ Adannan asked, trying not to sound too interested. There was an additional opportunity here.
Probably Lennart- who was tired, after all, tired and talking far too much- would veer into outright treason which would be another useful hold to have over him.
Either that or he would go so far into treason by thought and word that he might prove a useful ally in the larger project.
Lennart was tired, it had been a long day, a long several days, but he was not yet so far gone that he was ready to waltz straight into the trap. Head for it with the intention of employing a little judo, maybe.
‘How big is Time? How long should it take to purge the body politic of fifty million worlds, and what were the chances that the senate were ever going to do it for themselves?
At least with the college of Moffs, the constitutional mechanisms- all right, administrative mechanisms- exist for greater accountability and responsibility than the sectoral Senators ever accepted.
There are better ways than having their feet cut off, I expect it’ll take four, five generations for the bugs to work their way out of the system.’ Lennart said, aware that his line of reasoning was fairly contradictory and wondering which part of it Adannan would pick up on.
‘So you did approve of that, then?’
‘It was…only explicable in the sense of a move in a political game.’ Lennart said. ‘I intended to deal with it, with you, the same way I did during the clone wars;
gloss over the more disconnected mystic rambling, not look for the logic involved because there usually wasn’t any, and try to translate the ravings of the force into feasible operation orders.
That turns out to be not quite as feasible as I thought it was going to be.’
Adannan was still deciding where to take that when there was a click of heels from the entranceway- Aleph-3 announcing herself. Iridescent armour, DC-15 with sniper sights slung over her shoulder and holding a flamer, just in case.
She took in the situation quickly, wondered whether to open with some kind of quip and decided to play it straight for now.
‘Reporting as ordered, Sir.’
‘Ah, good. Probably.’ Lennart said. ‘Kor Alric and I are having a slight disagreement…’
‘Captain Lennart has essentially bet your life-‘ Adannan started,
‘-on your own skills and abilities.’ Lennart interrupted him.
Aleph-3 noticed her sister was muttering some kind of mantra, lips quivering slightly- in pattern rather than plain fear. I am one of millions, she was chanting, there are many of me, if I fail another will succeed, where I fall another will take my place. Well, the only one of Laurentia’s sisters to hand was her.
She stopped herself just before turning to glare at Adannan. Standard drill, she thought. Usual practise for sneaking up on a jedi in disguise.
Think happy thoughts, be content of mind, let your own aggressive impulses build beneath the conscious level, so that it is almost as much a surprise to you as it is to him when you ram the stem of his crystal goblet through his eye…
That had been fun. She could do this, cope with this, whatever it was. Probably.
She wondered whether to ask for an explanation or not. Lennart decided he owed her one anyway.
‘Methodological argument.’ Lennart said. ‘Open tyranny versus the illusion of liberty, all that y’zz.’
‘I see. Because unit 6NL- 108- 554E and myself started out as nearly identical, we make a good test case. Provided you can set up some kind of control condition.
How do you intend to take account of the time before I was assigned to this ship, before she was assigned to you?’ she asked Adannan.
Adannan decided to ignore that. Somewhere in the back of his head, he was kicking himself for being ignorant enough to have forgotten about control groups- but it wasn’t as if this was a fair, or even a real, test.
So what was it, then? Why had he- the bit of his brain that was kicking itself for ignoring experimental procedure put on steel toecaps over the fact that it had been Lennart’s idea.
Why had he allowed a man who wasn’t exactly friend, wasn’t exactly enemy, wasn’t really a rival yet, partly all three- why had he let this man invite a moderately capable sniper-scout who specialised in jedi to the party, and if the careful non-presence outside was anything to go by, bring her friends?
He hadn’t actually been thinking, had he? Just feeling. Wanting to embarrass and humiliate, maybe even go some way to breaking, Lennart by putting his girlfriend on the spot.
There was a possible line of attack. Why had Lennart never married? No serious romantic entanglements in his past, no dirt to be dug up there? Worth pursuing. Working on him via her now looked less good an idea than it had sounded.
Stuff it. The force had led him to this and it would lead him through. Perhaps the force, too, enjoyed a catfight from time to time- if any part of it came from red- blooded human males, it would.
‘Your commander has declared that anything one of your kind habituated to my rule can do, one of you trained under his can do better. His method produces superior human material, he claims. I intend to take him at his word on that.’ Adannan said, leering slightly.
‘Despite the myriad moral and intellectual challenges that could involve, I presume this actually is going to devolve into sharp pointy things?’ she asked Adannan, not without sarcasm.
‘Would anything less be a complete test?’ he said, smiling nastily.
Aleph-3 looked at her sister and cautioned herself against overconfidence. This probably wasn’t going to be as easy as it seemed.
‘Backgrounds irrelevant? My unbroken front line and behind-the-lines service against her staff time, and worse? Really just come as you are?’ She asked Adannan, wondering why he was letting her get away with this, and what he expected to happen.
‘Is life fair? Why should it’s trials be fair?’ Adannan asked- and before he was finished talking, she had thrown, underhand, her flamer at Lennart and shrugged her heavy rifle off her shoulder.
Adannan was still reaching for his lightsabre when she brought the DC-15 arcing up, switched to stun, and put a bolt into Laurentia’s chest, just as she was starting to stand and turn to face.
The big gun continued to pivot, coming to a stop pointing on Adannan, and Lennart had managed to turn the flamer right side up, although it would take another second or two for his brain to switch combat modes from ‘political’ to ‘close quarters’.
That was not what I wanted to happen, Adannan thought. ‘Point your gun somewhere else.’
‘My apologies, Lord Alric. That was reflex.’ She said, lowering the muzzle of the heavy rifle.
Could he react fast enough to get them both? Who to go for first, him or her? No, this was not the time for adrenalin. This was a time to drift on the black currents of the force, to ride and steer events.
‘Sudden and brutal. I approve. How good are you at rebuilding a broken personality?’ Adannan asked.
Aleph-3 considered her answer carefully. Worst case- assigned to Adannan’s retinue. He had the authority to do so; what would stop him? Not wanting her, or needing her to be somewhere else.
Why worst? It was simply duty after all, and that was what she was for, wherever and to whatever it led.
Except in this case- no, not just this. Am I getting picky? Deviant, to the point that I should stick my own head in a blender, if my comrades don’t do it for me anyway?
Maybe. Growing, not becoming damaged- although what’s the difference? Do personalities break, or do they weather? She resorted to the default option- straightforward fact.
‘Basic field medic skills cover shock and psychological trauma, but nothing like the specialist skills I’d need for that.’
‘No? Disappointing. Then-perhaps best two out of three?’
He placed a hand on Laurentia’s shoulder, what precise power or combination he used Aleph-3 had no time to place, but whatever it was, it worked; she came up off the floor like a synthpanther.
Aleph-3 had time to turn to put the point of her shoulder towards her wild- eyed sister, take the blow; a snapshot might have missed- an if it had hit, what would it have achieved? The two collided and went down in a heap, Aleph-3 making the discovery that her sister was wearing an impact vest. Hmmm.
They rolled over each other, Aleph-3 threw her sister off- in the direction of the door; Lennart had to duck out of the way. Laurentia, or whatever vortex of hate and fear was riding her, landed on her feet and charged again instantly, grabbing for her sister’s gun.
Aleph-3 let her sister get the muzzle end, then twisted it up and towards herself and over her shoulder, trying to kick Laurentia’s feet out from under her at the same time; Laurentia leapt up and levered herself on the DC-15, kicking with both feet at Aleph-3‘s stomach.
It didn’t work; the armour took the force of the blow, Aleph-3 dropped the gun letting her sister fall with it, and snatched the magazine before Laurentia could get her hands on the trigger.
Laurentia tried to shoot, heard the ‘click’, and by that time her sister was already jabbing her beneath the ribs.
The light-armoured one doubled over, reeled back, Aleph-3 skipped out of the way expecting her sister to be faking it; Laurentia swung for her sister with the heavy rifle as a club, realised her sister had moved, slowed the move and reversed it to fend her off, tried to twist out of the way.
Aleph-3 kicked for her sister’s elbow; the old armour-piercing judo routine, go for the gaps between plates, try to dislocate the joints under them.
Successful hit, Laurentia howled and stepped back, swung up one- handed with the butt end of the rifle for Aleph-3‘s gut, managed to connect.
Aleph-3’s armour took almost all the force out of it, but she rocked back slightly. What was the point of this? Her sister had little or no chance of actually winning, unless she did something exceptionally daft. Then what?
Laurentia swung for her sister again, aiming for her head, Aleph-3 grabbed the rifle and twisted it out of her hand but by then her sister was already following it in, aiming for her throat with the point of her elbow.
Aleph-3 was already rolling beneath it, and headbutted her sister as they came into close contact.
Their eyes should have been the same colour; instead Laurentia’s were- closer to green than blue, faded somehow. How much damage had Adannan done to her?
Never mind that, how much was what she was doing now down to her and how much down to him? In this situation, what constitutes victory?
If I beat Laurentia to the extent that she needs telekinesis rather than any mental influence to hold her up, then- is that a triumph for the power of the Force?
Really? Aleph-3 thought, taking a kick on her hip and sweeping Laurentia’s other foot out from under her; Laurentia backward-rolled out of range and came back to her feet, bouncing slightly, eyes still defocused and seething.
Adannan expected to empower Laurentia with the Force, so that he would win, and either get an admission of such or force Lennart to do something stupid.
What did it matter to him that she got beaten to a bloody pulp in the process? As far as he was concerned, he had a spare. No you bloody don’t, she thought, wondering if she could get away with going for him directly.
Laurentia was doing her best to avoid giving her sister time to think, with a flying kick that Aleph-3 sidestepped- she landed on one foot and stretched the other into a back kick that Aleph-3 took and rolled with, maintaining the distance between them.
So if he is using the power of the force, why isn’t it more effective?
Lennart was thinking the same thing, except that he had an answer.
Adannan went about this the wrong way, he was thinking. He should have woken her up first, because he was trying to read her muscle memories from her subconscious mind, overboost and apply them against her own alerted and confused conscious.
He was trying to do too many things at once for them all to work as planned.
I could do better, Lennart thought- Galactic Spirit prevent me from ever trying.
Aleph-3 decided to break the pattern. She held herself loose, preparing to take the next hit-
‘What,’ Adannan shouted, ‘are you doing?’
He let Laurentia go, she looked around as if surprised to be there, said ‘ow’ and collapsed. ‘I felt it. You slackened. You lost heat. You were intending to throw the fight- why did you want to lose?’ he glared at her.
Aleph-3 took a breath and decided to stand her ground. She had got herself into this mess, after all. Might as well see it through. ‘If I had pressed my advantage, and won as I had every reason to expect to do,’ she emphasised that part, ‘what would have changed?’
Adannan looked genuinely surprised by that, Lennart was trying to catch up with her train of thought and get a move ahead, and, infuriating as usual, looked as if he was managing it.
‘Not a sacrifice I would have asked of you, if you had bothered to check with me first.’ Lennart said.
Adannan rounded on him. ‘Explain.’
‘If she wins- as was likely- what happens to her sister? More torment, more pain, and maybe a slit belly after all. We, more’s the point, remain at loggerheads.
If Laurentia won- or whatever was holding her up- then it is a triumph for the Force, and we are all good. She’s been trying a lot harder than you have to get me to accept this.’
Aleph-3 spoke up for herself. ‘Lord Alric, did you deliberately make things difficult for yourself? I am not capable of wanting anything other than that which it is my duty to make happen- to win would have served no purpose.
In the larger scheme, I serve the Empire; but it is up to the Empire to decide what it wants from me, is it not? On the more immediate, personal scale- I want to see Captain Lennart become strong in the Force. My pounding the life out of someone empowered by the Force would not have contributed.’
So why did you have to give it away, rock for brains, she didn’t say, but thought fairly loudly.
‘I expected you to lie.’ Adannan said to her.
‘Why?’ she answered simply. ‘Would you respect someone who thinks you’re worth manipulating more than someone who tells you what they honestly find things to be?’
‘Who told you you were allowed to use your brain?’ he said, in surprise.
‘I did.’ Lennart said, taking responsibility- and not entirely certain why, considering which side she appeared to be on.
‘Not entirely true either, Captain. In several situations in which the choice was to think fast enough to get out in one piece or die, you and the chain of command by your will simply forebore to tell me not to.’ She pointed out.
‘Chopping the logic a little fine, aren’t you? Or do you take some sort of masochistic pleasure out of inconvenient truths?’ Lennart asked.
‘I was bred for the purpose of talking to journalists. What do you think?’
‘Probably just as well for the Empire you never did deploy in your intended role.’ Lennart said.
Adannan’s brain was still playing catchup. Yes, yes, I did make mistakes, he was admitting to himself, I did do things the unnecessarily hard way and laid myself open to failure thereby, and how badly have I misread Lennart himself?
‘What about Correct Thought? What about the New Order Party? If you allow your rank and file to think for themselves, how can you be sure that they’re going to come up with the right answers?’ Adannan asked, fishing.
‘Bugger correct thought, and all it stands for.’ Lennart said, succinctly. This was a curve-ball and no mistake.
‘I knew you were a closet Democrat.’ Adannan growled at him.
‘No. But you should be.’ Lennart added, forcefully.
‘What?’ This was just- Adannan could pick up on the louder fragments of Lennart’s surface thoughts, the ones that were actually trying to come out. He couldn’t quite make sense of them.
‘What is Correct Thought but the subordination of your will to that of the Party? And what is a dark force user worth, whose will has been broken and subordinated to that of another? You should be a passionate believer in free will- specifically the freedom of your will.’
Aleph-3 was just standing there looking at him in utter bogglement. Adannan wasn’t far behind.
‘I’m sure you say these things in the hope of making my head explode.’ Adannan temporised.
‘Why should a simple statement like that make your head explode, unless it’s desperately at variance with how things are?’ Lennart asked. ‘I had hoped we weren’t looking at some variation on the cycle of abuse, here.’
Aleph-3 made a noise that could best be described as ‘eep’; uncertain whether to laugh or scream. Adannan was wondering what it felt like to have his head explode after all.
Either he knows nothing and is coming at this from a complete outsider’s viewpoint, or he knows everything and rejects the established conclusions- and is pretending to the outsider’s approach.
‘There are only two Sith in the galaxy. The master and the apprentice. The rest of us are acolytes, agents, followers, servants.
Obliged to squabble amongst ourselves for crumbs from their table, pay in pain for each little bit of wisdom- from the medical point of view, you’re right. This is the cycle of abuse.’ Adannan said, recognising that and waiting for Lennart’s next idea.
‘So what do you actually gain,’ Lennart asked, ‘by playing it by the rules?’
‘Survival. The right to soothe my pain by revelling in the pain of others. Governance over the lesser bricks in the pyramid. Most importantly, enough of their approval to not be dead.
I suppose you’re going to tell me, you closet democrat, that none of that is worth the sacrifice of pride and independence?’ Adannan proclaimed.
‘Not exactly democrat, although the demos has some influence…biocrat, maybe. At least when it comes to the Force.’
What Adannan wanted to say was ‘for the sake of my brain, spare me.’ Not that he could, of course. Not that he could get away with expressing any such sentiment-
he had a faint idea of what Lennart meant, but really didn’t want him to say it- at least, the parts of him that weren’t listening in a mood somewhere between masochism and horrified fascination.
Lennart took Adannan’s silence for assent. ‘Where does the force come from? From all living things. So where does the will of the force come from, if not from the same place?’
Adannan looked down and envied Laurentia her unconsciousness. Where had he lost control of this? When he had allowed Lennart to open his mouth? When he had let a domestic dispute expand into a contest of cosmic conspiracy theories?
‘Vox populi, vox forti. The will of the people is the will of the Force, the logic is inescapable, whether you like it or not.
The death of the republic was so very much like what would have happened without the active involvement of the force, that the only reasonable conclusion is that the force was following the influence of the mundane. You’re the puppet of the people.’ Lennart grinned.
‘Chiefly of their negativity, of course,’ Lennart continued, ‘which was only to be expected in the middle of a time of active revolution, with so much fear in the air and the Light twisted so badly out of shape by it’s own followers.
I repeat, the death of the Republic was not only a good but a predictable thing- and there were a lot of sincere Separatists, who believed they not only had a just cause but kept fighting for it long after the Guilds were taken out.
The Empire, run by the Dark Side of the Force or not, is equally necessary for the Galaxy as a whole, and I do not expect it to be anything other than absolutely hated now- that is the natural outcome of purging twenty-five thousand years of bad decisions and misgovernment.
Five, six, maybe ten generations from now, the reforms will have shaken themselves out and sheer demographic drift will have resulted in some kind of normalisation, probably under Palpatine’s chosen successor-‘
‘You know?’ Adannan asked, wobbling under yet another twist.
‘I would not expect any man to achieve as much as His Majesty has done, in such times and in the face of such opposition, without being a lot more ruthless and devious than his public image ever was.
Accordingly, he is hiding his true nature, and in a government full of dark force users, what else could he be and remain top dog? It was obvious.’
‘Aren’t you offended? Outraged, at having been manipulated? It was sidious- Palpatine- who was pulling the Separatist’s strings as well. The man made fools of an entire galaxy.’ Adannan said, confusedly reverting to one of his earlier plans.
‘I would be very surprised if a criminal secret society that had been outlawed and nearly hounded to extinction wasn’t at least trying to play both sides against each other.’ Lennart pointed out. ‘Besides, in a civil war, what do you expect?
After millennia of neglect of the governmental machinery, centuries of abuse, enough nerf-barrelling to fill Centrepoint, somnambulent bureaucracy who elevated indifference to an art form,
toothless watchdogs and blind oversight- regardless of how the manipulations went and who did what to whom, the sith did not kill the republic. The most they really did was assist it to commit suicide, and in that I would say, again, the dark side actually served the long term if not near term good.’
Adannan stood up and collected himself. He was shaking slightly. ‘How dare you,’ he said with as much menace as he could muster, ‘accuse me of being on the side of good.’
Lennart just waited; Adannan wobbled slightly, collapsed back down on to his bed. ‘Enough. If I continue to listen to you any longer my resolution may be compromised.’ He said, glaring at Lennart and trying to dare him to contradict- but there was a weakness in his eyes that Lennart decided to…not exactly exploit, just take advantage.
‘Is that a resolution to be or a resolution to do? We have unfinished business and anther tactical option I want to explore. A unit of the squadron found evidence that the rebels’ local allies were involved in the past, and are involved now, with relativistic- bombing their neighbours.’
Adannan didn’t even react. Lennart continued ‘Murder on a scale not far removed from genocide, and very far from anything that could conceivably pass as the moral high ground. We can use that.’
‘What is it that you actually want to do?’ Adannan asked, and suspected he was going to regret it.
‘Play with their heads. Let the Alliance know we have the evidence, then watch them scramble as they try to deny it.
Try to arrange fallout between them, at least force them to choose between defending two targets, at best actually get them shooting each other. I can make that happen.’
‘Go. Just go.’ Adannan said.
Lennart turned, walked out, Aleph- 3 fell in step behind him. Hunter team Omega-17-Blue was drawn up in rank in front of him, arms at the present; as he left the chamber, they came up into the general salute.
Lennart returned it, and said ‘How did you decide whether to shoot me or salute me, flip a coin?’
‘It is clear that, once you have explored your own abilities, you will be the greater Sith.’ Aleph 1 said. ‘A question, Sir; how much of what you said to Adannan did you actually believe?’
‘Not much, to begin with. Conspiracy theories and random thoughts. Worth thinking about though, isn’t it? Oh, and I need to borrow someone who can shoot and pass for a civilian.’
Short moment of silence, then Aleph-3 said ‘Well, the least you can do is give me my flamethrower back.’
Adannan was still sitting there, brain seething, when the metal-faced woman came in. She stood at ease, awaiting her instructions. I maimed her and she serves me, he thought, because she is too terrified- and too badly damaged- to contemplate the alternative. He waved at Laurentia.
‘She saved you,’ from me, he didn’t have to say, ‘your turn to return the favour. Nurse her. Banaar,’ he raised his voice to call his other aide, ‘that fool who keeps trying to get in touch, the executive officer? Find him and send him to me.’
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-15 10:04am, edited 1 time in total.
Very good. I liked this chapter, oh yes indeedy. Its rare to see someone get truly intellectually beaten up in a clash of minds in fiction, but its enjoyable when you do. 
Although you describe it as just gamesmanship, some of the thoughts put forward by Lennart would act as a good basis for explaining his continuing willingness to show loyalty to the Empire even as a virtual renegade, other than simple inertia or contempt for the Rebellion.
Although you describe it as just gamesmanship, some of the thoughts put forward by Lennart would act as a good basis for explaining his continuing willingness to show loyalty to the Empire even as a virtual renegade, other than simple inertia or contempt for the Rebellion.
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Hi again...
I'm far from sure how seriously to take this myself; it was a wierd notion that I dithered a fair bit over including or not, but in the end simply refused to let me go. I put enough time and energy into it that it would have left a huge hole in the update plan (such as it is) unless I did polish it up enough to make it ready to post.
It's almost an interlude; another official character/main cast member makes an appearance. I apologise in advance fro Lennart's attitude to the ISB. He really doesn't like them, but they can't be all bad.
’What I don’t understand, Skipper, is why you’re doing this yourself. Send a probe droid. Send a junior lieutenant, they’re almost as expendable. Why stick your own head into the acklay’s mouth?’ Brenn asked, worried.
They were in the day cabin, and Lennart was shuffling through his closet looking for something that could pass for civilian clothes, and finding the situation rather funny.
I go out of my way to cultivate a reputation as a scruffy bastard, Lennart thought, mocking the little things, and do I have a complete set of plain clothes that even vaguely match? No.
Bits and pieces and odds and ends, kriff I haven’t worn that since I was a student, what the bloody hell is a feather boa doing there?
In short, this is the wardrobe of a man who has worn uniform for almost all his adult life, and spent a lot of my adolescence before that playing silly buggers. Oh well. At least there isn’t a traffic cone.
‘What are we supposed to do if you get intercepted? Jumped, by the rebs or by the cops, or possibly both?’
‘You want the job yourself, don’t you?’ Lennart said, not looking up from investigating the further reaches of his sock drawer.
‘It is simply not the captain’s job to go and do dangerous, stupid things like lead an away team.’ Brenn said, indignantly.
‘If you’re trying to say that I’m too valuable to risk, then so are you, and you know it.’ Lennart told him.
‘Something this inherently dubious, anyone I could trust enough to get this done the way I need it to be done would be insufficiently expendable to send.’ He said, specifically meaning Brenn. ‘The buck stops with me anyway.’
‘At least,’ Brenn said, ‘Take one of the ATR’s. Better yet, use one of the Customs Corvettes and take a boarding platoon.’
‘I’m supposed to have the power of the force, you know.’ Lennart pointed out, sounding not remotely sincere.
‘And if it had any sense, it would be telling you to take backup too.’
‘Such disrespect. Anyone would think you’d been paying attention.’ Lennart said. ‘Then again, you weren’t just told that you were “potentially subject to the purge orders.” Who should I bring to protect me from my backup?’
‘You think Adannan would sink that low?’ Brenn asked, thinking; bugger.
‘Partly, by wandering off I’m daring him to. I’m offering him my back and challenging him to have the guts to stick the knife in.’
‘Lousy bet, skipper. Any back alley thug would have to, for his own self- respect if nothing else.’
‘I’m sure he would too, but I don’t think he’s going to react fast enough. He has enough pride in his own intelligence to resent the way I made his brain hurt, and try to win that point back.
Should mean he’s not going to resort to open violence in time. Which should mean that if I spin it properly, he’s going to take that hit to his self respect, and be another move behind next time we have to lock horns.’ Lennart said.
‘Tell me, Captain, was it a sad or a happy day when you realised some people really do have levers?’ Brenn said, with mock seriousness.
‘Mostly sad, with overtones of maniacal laughter.’ Lennart deadpanned.
‘I think you’re giving him more respect than he deserves. The ship and the squadron-‘
‘There are at least three other things I should be doing, you don’t think I’d be going to drop them and do this instead if I didn’t think it mattered?’
‘Frankly, captain, I can think of at least three people you could be trying to avoid.’ Brenn said, fairly boldly under the circumstances.
‘Well done; that’s where you come in.’ Lennart said, pulling something that looked like an athletic supporter for a creature with four legs out and looking at it in puzzlement.
The Chief, Kor Alric, Aleph-3?’ Brenn guessed.
‘Two out of three.’ Lennart told him. ‘Subtractor isn’t worth repairing in the field, she goes back to Damorian and we borrow another one from the sector group.
Repair estimates and assets required for Tarazed Meridian and Guillemot. Mirannon will go nuts; tell him not to break anybody.
Kor Alric, I want to avoid but can’t afford to. We just parted on terms that, well, I reckon turning my back on him is a bigger risk than anything the rebels are likely to throw at me.
The third person I’m avoiding is Commander Falldess. She is not in a particularly calm mood right now. It was her evidence that kicked this off, that’s what I’m going to go and wave at the Rebels.
I expect her to press for immediate action, that’s why Delvran’s handling the debrief and analysis, he’s good at recalling junior officers to their senses.’
‘You’re going off to stick it to them with evidence that your own units are still in the process of analysing?’ Brenn wondered.
‘I’m not legally certain enough to call base delta zero on the strength of it, but I am sufficiently convinced to employ it as a political weapon.’ Lennart admitted. ‘Tell Dordd to narrow-beam me with any conclusions on the way.’
‘Double standard?’ Brenn asked.
‘In politics?’ Lennart said with mock scepticism. ‘She did bend her ship pretty inconveniently badly, so if she starts agitating, point Mirannon at her.’ They both chuckled. ‘In all seriousness, though, that is what you may have to do to Kor Alric.’
‘He’s not an officer, he’s not a professional.’ Brenn stated.
‘If he understood his own limitations, that might be a valid point.’ Lennart said, abandoning the sock drawer- to what, he didn’t want to think about- and looking for something that would do as a civilian undershirt.
‘Do you actually want the job,’ Lennart continued, ‘of staring down a crazed dark acolyte of the Force, half mad with anger and only a hazy sense of the possible, ready to lash out in any direction?’
‘Piett seems to manage it.’ Brenn pointed out.
‘Unless Adannan has very well hidden depths, he’s nowhere near as good a tactician as Lord Vader-‘ Lennart started to say.
‘How do you know he doesn’t have hidden depths?’ Brenn said. ‘He might be pretending to be more of a loon than he actually is.’
‘Point for me and against you if he does.’ Lennart said, adding ‘he can do patience, but only with effort-I think his wits sometimes trip over his temper. Looking over my shoulder, I’d expect him to have reacted fairly vigorously by now, if he had any more than an armchair admiral’s training.
He’s also nothing like as far up the ladder; he’s a mid ranking acolyte at best, possibly mid to low. He’s under threat from inferiors, peers and superiors alike, and desperate enough to think that crazy stunts like this might help his career.’
‘Senior Lieutenant equivalent, then.’ Brenn opined. ‘Look, Captain, we’ve dealt with inspectors and auditors before, we’ve faced problems and overcome them- with incident, but overcome. Adannan has the force, and that may be a fairly worrying proposition, but he’s not the demigod he’s posing as.’
‘No, just a man with no legal accountability, and no sense of responsibility to make up the deficiency either. If he starts asking awkward questions, all right, baffle him with bullshit as usual- if he starts acting on them, get the Chief.’ Lennart made it an order.
‘Check. Any other instructions?’
‘Yes. Don’t initiate major offensive operations without me.’ Lennart said. ‘Sift out and interrogate any rRasfenoni among our existing prisoners, and- Dordd’s the ranking officer of the squadron, you have the ship.
You can probe in the direction of the rRasfenoni, use the sweep line and recon-A, collect data, live prisoners if you can get them without knocking over anything too big and making too much of a fuss. If the dreck hits the fan, come and get me- if it really hits the fan, call 851 for support then come and get me.’
‘Aye, aye, skipper- I still think this is more danger than it’s worth, though.’ Brenn said.
‘Tell you when I get back.’
It was a fairly typical spaceport cantina; low ceiling, dimly lit, traveller- ridden. A distinctly higher share of the odd than the rest of the planet, drinks for dozens of different lifeforms behind the bar, and everybody glaring suspiciously at everyone else.
In one corner, where he could watch it all from, there was a smuggler.
Dark haired, shirt that had maybe been white once, trousers with a prominent, flaring yellow bloodstripe, oversized blaster. There was a howl from the direction of the bar.
‘Yeah, Chewie, get two.’
He noticed a man and a woman threading their way through the tables towards him; she would have caught anybody’s eye, never mind that of a smooth rogue.
Long tied- back flaring red hair, dark green gown- about twenty social levels too high for a mynock pit like this, but she could carry it off. She walked with a fluid grace that almost, not quite, hid her physical strength and the repeating pistol she carried low on one hip.
She was a big girl, there was a lot of her and all of it was good. It took Han a couple of seconds for the gunfighter in him to get the better of the lecher and size her up as a potential opponent. She was pretty good there, too.
‘Good afternoon, Captain Solo, I need to talk to you.’ The man said. Han looked him over. Grey dewback-hide leather jacket, faded and patched, Coronet City Crushers sports-fan t- shirt, middle- aged, lean, almost black eyes.
Didn’t look that far out of place, but there was something about the way he held himself that made what he was wearing shout ‘mufti.’
A spy or a soldier, Han thought. He didn’t have to move his hand close to his blaster, in a place like this it was already there. Then again, he had dealt with a lot of shady people in a lot of shady places. And he needed the money.
‘Yeah? So, talk.’ He said. They sat down, she instantly pushed her chair back to watch as much of the cantina as possible. Chewie came back with two tall tumblers, foaming slightly blue, looked at them both and growled.
He could sense something was wrong. Aleph-3 was tempted to growl back, but decided against it.
‘You’re not exactly a rebel yet, are you? More of a freelance contractor. Which means you have little of the protection being part of an armed movement gives you, you’ve still got all your old enemies as well as some pretty impressive new ones. Is having the fastest ship in the galaxy a matter of pride or necessity?’ The man asked.
Solo looked closely at Lennart; wondering whether or not to shoot him. Lennart looked back.
Then the younger of the two Corellians grinned a wide, confident grin. ‘It has come in useful a few times. I suppose now you’re going to tell me you need something taken somewhere real fast.’
‘And that translates as ‘expensive’, does it? Optimist. I suppose you want me to lay on a blockade for you to crash through as well.’ Lennart said.
‘Your drinks, Sir.’ It was the waitress; she had come over to their table with a silvery duraplast tray, four glasses and a flask of Corellian brandy.
Lennart nodded to her, almost a bow; she set them down, darted a venomous glance at the utterly unruffled Aleph-3, and flounced away.
‘How come? I have to send a Wookie to the bar to rip people’s arms off unless he gets served, and you get a tray?’ Han said, indignant.
‘Probably because she’s met too many slick characters, she knows she can’t trust you further than the length of your own shadow. Slainte.’
‘You’re a spacer.’ Meaning, you’re as bad as I am and I want to know how you got away with it. ‘What happened to your ship?’ Solo asked.
If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me, Lennart thought. ‘Yeah, I was Old Republic regular fleet, but…’ he let that trail off. ‘Thing is, what I need transported is small enough, just a datacard, but I have no idea where it’s supposed to go.
Or rather, I don’t know where the place it’s supposed to go is. Alliance theater command.’ He pulled a datacard out of a side pocket- too small to contain a gun- slowly, laid it on the table. ‘Check it over. No viruses, no bugs, just evidence.’
‘Evidence of what?’ Solo said. Chewie picked up the card, trying the I’m-just-a-dumb-wookie act out for size; pretending to sniff it. He looked at Aleph-3 who was not at all convinced, gave it up and pulled a minicomp off his belt.
‘It’s not good news.’ Lennart said. He was about to go into more detail when he noticed Aleph-3 was unusually tense, and looked round following her gaze.
Ah. Five men, four almost nondescript- a little too flash to blend in perfectly. One public face, wearing a tunic with black sleeves, white chest.
Han had noticed them too. ‘Chewie, trouble.’
There were a squad of stormtroopers behind them; Aleph-3 was hand-signalling as demonstratively as she could without giving the game away. Bugger off, we’re on a political gain operation, she gestured.
The response was one of total disbelief, combined with an imperative to identify.
Line 6NL, batch 27c, unit 392, she replied. Warrant Second, special operations.
The stormtroopers looked at each other briefly; she noticed one, the squad comtech, shrug and gesture that it checked out.
Ah…er. Oops. Would you like us to go away now? The squad leader signalled back. For all the apparent frivolity, they both knew that he was expendable in the interests of the mission.
Cover the rear, we might try to escape that way, she replied.
They acknowledged, and started backing out of the cantina, guns still levelled warily at all the lesser scum in there. The ISB thugs had noticed, but the agent hadn’t. He kept closing in on his prey.
He had been chosen for this job, and told the plan was to apprehend a renegade fleet officer. So far, so good, and certainly an objective he could enjoy achieving.
It was the woman that caught his eye first of all. He could hardly keep his eyes off her, she looked back, proud, haughty, more like a duchess than a space bum, and the inevitable line came to mind, hey, baby, what’s a girl like you doing in a dump like this?
Which was actually a good question. He looked at the people she was sitting with; thin man in grey leather flight jacket, vaguely familiar, perhaps he had been on a wanted notice? In fact, it had been on the news.
The other two- a man and a wookie- his eyes passed over them on the way back to the woman, and then his brain did a doubletake. Solo! Han kriffing Solo, mr I-shot-Vader, the second largest single bounty in the galaxy!
Aleph-3 looked at Lennart, meaning, how do we handle this?
Lennart glanced down at his hand on the grip of his own service pistol. That was clear enough, then.
The agent quick-drew his gun- respectable but way short of galactic-class- and announced ‘Han Solo, Traitor, I arrest you in the -‘ which was as far as he got.
Han shot him, clean blast, dead centre; follow the movement across to snapshot into the chest of the centre- right gunsel, twitch back onto the left- centre, which would leave two of them, one for him and one for Chewie.
Still acting on reflex, he crouched to kick the table over for cover, then realised there was nobody left to shoot at.
‘-afterlife?’ Lennart finished the agent’s sentence for him. ‘And really, Solo, really. You’d do that to fine Corellian brandy?’
He was largely putting on his calm, Han noticed. In fact, Lennart was reciting to himself a fragment of something he had read as a student; it seems to me- he was remembering how it went- that men are of different value; and there are some who can be knocked on the head without the world being very much poorer for it. The ISB probably counted as such.
‘Would you like to wait here and see if the Marines agree with you?’ Aleph-3 said. Han was almost sure she had nailed the two on the left, she had started with the one who had been his third target, the agent had already been falling when he nailed him.
‘Good point.’ Han said, drained his glass. ‘With me.’ He started heading for the staff door by the bar
.
‘They’ll be waiting there. Out the front.’ Aleph-3 said, moving the other way. Lennart followed her, Han and Chewie shared a look then decided, what the hell.
There was a vehicle there, an unmanned Ubrikkian ground-skimmer personnel transport. No stormtroopers.
‘What do you think, add grand theft speeder to the charge sheet?’ Lennart suggested.
‘No.’ Aleph-3 said. ‘It’ll have a tracking beacon, and even if we could start to run for it-‘
‘We’d still have to talk our way past whatever they have in place as operational security.’ Lennart finished, looking at Han.
‘I’ve bluffed my way out of trouble a thousand times, and all people remember is one little screwup.’ Han said, rolling his eyes- before getting back to business. ‘Does anyone else think this is weird? No cordon, no support.’
‘Done on the quiet; they didn’t want anyone else to share the glory.’ Lennart suggested.
‘Let’s just stroll away, casual like.’ Han decided.
‘Not too far. I want to see how they react to this.’ Lennart decided, and looked around. Like most provincial starports, it was less than perfectly planned;
disused landing pads being used for warehouses, port workers’ housing, markets and cantinas, disused warehouses being converted into landing pads, a constant process of decay and renovation.
Not particularly fast, a generational thing, but there was enough cover nearby to duck into. Han passed by two cantinas and settled on a third, a convenient sprint away from where he had left the Falcon.
They took a window table, this time, where Solo could look down at the street.
‘Well, that was uneventful. I had no idea the life of a hardened galactic criminal could be so relaxing.’ Lennart said, kidding.
‘You’re legit?’ Han said, surprised and trying to place the man’s face. Where had he come across him? A face in the crowd at Smuggler’s Rest, or one of a hundred other shadowports?
‘Quasi-legitimate.’ Aleph-3 couldn’t resist saying.
‘Compared to you and the people you have after you, everybody starts to acquire a thin gloss of respectability.’ Lennart was wondering how far to ride the bluff when Han’s forehead wrinkled in an obvious a-hah moment.
‘Stang, I do recognise you.’ Han realised. ‘The only man ever to turn down a first class-‘ and then he remembered exactly what the circumstances had been.
‘Not the only one, not even the only man in the last century. Never trust a journalist’s memories. I refused the award of a first class bloodstripe, normally posthumous, because for a twenty-five man strike team, it was a suicide job.
I called for volunteers, told them they were going to die, they still agreed to go and I still sent them anyway.
The difference between being a good officer and a hero, a good officer rigs the game to give his own side maximum possible advantage, uses every lever to manipulate the odds.
The hero is the one who beats the odds, the guy the thin possibility comes up for, and that was what the bloodstripe was supposed to be about. Being a hero- or at least a successful chancer.’
Chewie howled, asking Han what was going on.
‘Our friend here turns out to be true-blue Imperial.’ Han said, bitterly, but not going for his gun, not just yet. Looking around, anyway, he had the unpleasant feeling of being watched.
‘So were you, once.’ Lennart reminded him.
‘The whiteshirt, just a sacrifice for the cause?’ Han was angry- why, he wasn’t even sure. Lennart’s betrayal? Come to think of it, he had been carefully noncommittal- nothing unusual in a place like that.
‘I have no more moral problem shooting at the ISB than I do blowing my nose.’ Lennart said. ‘Every revolution brings out it’s share of thugs and bullies and little poisoned souls.
Some stay freelance, some work their way into the new establishment. The ISB are the roaches in the ductwork of the Empire, and any excuse I can get to blow them up in the line of duty is a good excuse.’
What was he up to? Han thought. An Imperial Starfleet captain, in plain clothes, bumps into me- high on the Most Wanted list- in a bar, and helps me shoot some whiteshirts. How is that supposed to make sense?
‘So you don’t like the police, is that supposed to make you a good guy?’ He asked.
‘It worked for Airen Cracken.’ Lennart pointed out, before going on. ‘The whole good-guy bad-guy thing, criminal versus law enforcement, terrorist or freedom fighter- that’s just a way to spoil a day out.
I have a mission requirement that supersedes taking you in, all you’ll get out of trying to shoot me is a head full of blaster bolts from my covering party; when all else fails, why not attempt civilisation?’
‘You’re strange.’ Han said.
‘You’re the one who boasts about having flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and seen a lot of strange stuff. Why let this get you down?’
‘So, you find me, how? And, what, you want me to arrange your defection to the Alliance? I warn you, the pay’s dreck.’ Han said, coolly.
‘About as likely as me offering you a commission again…I’ve enjoyed the last few years. It’s been a relief to have a declared enemy to go up against, and frankly I have enough rebel blood on my hands that I wouldn’t expect them to take me. In fact, I’d be disappointed with their lack of standards if they did.’ Lennart said.
‘A senior Imperial officer with principles? There’s something you don’t see every day.’ Han said.
Lennart refused to get annoyed. ‘That’s why you’ll lose in the end. Lot of ups and downs still to happen, and you may win some tactical victories along the way, but as long as the Alliance continues to believe itself to be the sole possessor of justice and right, you’re doomed to continually misread friends and enemies both.’
A stray notion occurred to Lennart; he grinned and said ‘Are you sure you don’t want your old job back?’
Aleph-3 and Chewbacca both looked at him as if he had finally flipped, then Aleph-3 realised it was not beyond the bounds of possibility for Lennart to actually mean it.
Han was watching them both, and was fascinated by her reaction. ‘She thinks you might be serious.’ That did tug at his gut a bit. The Imperial Starfleet had been a gigantic broken promise, to him; something that had turned to dreck the moment he touched it.
Now this maniac came to him with…what? Some kind of promise to make good after all?
‘The really weird thing is, I think I actually would be able to swing it.’ Lennart said, thinking about the repercussions and enjoying it.
‘I could give you a squadron in the space transport wing, two Gamma assault shuttles, two Beta-3 escort transports, and the Falcon of course, at the substantive rank of Lieutenant- Commander.’
‘And the bounties on my head, or had you forgotten?’ Han asked. His gut reaction had settled down to ‘this is insane’ but he wanted to see how far Lennart was prepared to go with it.
‘Not a problem. Legally we could lease the Falcon from you, there’s some money towards paying it off, pay and prize money of course, shouldn’t take more than two or three years.’
Chewbacca made a noise somewhere between ‘when did they let you out of the asylum, mate?’ and ‘why are we listening to this man?’
Lennart looked at Aleph-3, nodded towards Chewbacca and asked her ‘What do you think, Flight Sargeant, or would I actually have to make him a Midshipman?’
Aleph-3 said ‘Kor Alric would want you dead after that.’
‘Probably,’ Lennart acknowledged, ‘but if I tell him about this in the right way I might push his blood pressure up so high he actually strokes out. Another fringe benefit.’
‘Half the Personnel Bureau would want you dead.’ She pointed out.
‘Yes, but the other half would be so cock-a-hoop over the propaganda coup that I should be able to get them arguing with each other then slip out the middle.
That would probably be the hardest part of the entire operation,’ he said to Han, ‘keeping the journalists and propagandists off your back.’
‘You know, I’m half tempted to go along with this crazy stunt, just to see if you can actually pull it off.’ Han said; Chewbacca glared at him. ‘Who’s Kor Alric?’
‘Special Agent and resident albatross,’ Lennart said, consciously deciding not to bring the Force into this, ‘I’m starting to refer to him as the political operations officer.
Which is excessively mild, but calling him the Kor Responsible for Intelligence and Fleet Functions would just be too obvious.’
Aleph-3 had to make a conscious effort to slip out of character and back into a neutral mode of mind, to avoid rolling on the floor laughing, it was so utterly ridiculous. That would spread through the legion and the crew- the entire squadron- like wildfire. Once she told them.
‘You talk about being a successful chancer, ever think your still being in the Starfleet is stang thin odds?’ Han asked him.
‘Sometimes, but they don’t hand out medals for being a deviant looney. Just as well; if they did, can you imagine the awards committee?’
‘I can imagine quite a lot…but not that, no.’ Han said.
‘Probably be the Ubiqtorate anyway, whichever intercept gave them the biggest unintentional comedy moment. In all seriousness,’ he said, changing tone to something far more serious,
‘my survival under Imperial colours is down to two factors; first of all the amount of rebel blood on my hands, and second, something you never were able to get the hang of, playing the system.’
‘Yeah, I joined up with this naïve assumption that the powers of officialdom would be honest about what they expected from me…’ Han’s voice trailed off.
‘I know you intended to be sarcastic there, but that really does sound pretty spectacularly naïve when you put it like that.’ Lennart pointed out.
‘I was at Raithal when some of your instructors were at Carida; they said you were too straight for your own good. Deliberately trying to break with your past and play it that way?’
‘So, what would you have done? If you’d been me.’ Han asked.
‘Made sure I went after Vader and kept shooting until there was nothing left but a cloud of hot gas, but that’s not what you mean, is it? Your court martial.’ Lennart said.
‘And what made it happen.’ Han said. Chewbacca growled.
‘I was done for usurping the lawful chain of command, back in ’17. You’re not the only one who’s been there.’ Lennart said; Aleph-3 visibly perked up her ears.
‘Speaking of which, you got given that detail because of your background. Whoever in personnel put you on to it assumed you were a street- hardened survivor, a morality- free zone who wouldn’t give a stang about anyone or anything else’s suffering. Weren’t you running drugs for Jabba?’
‘Yes, I’ve been around, but what,’ Han said, ‘has that got to do with it?’
‘It makes it look uncomfortably like the personnel office had a point. Anyway, defending yourself at a court martial’s an inherently weak position. Counterattack is much more effective.
I would have looked to see what charges I could have made against the arresting officer- start with wasting Imperial time; how long does it actually take to shave a wookie?’
Chewbacca growled menacingly, meaning there was absolutely no way they were going to find out.
‘That would have never have worked, they had the whole business sewn up tighter than-‘ Han said.
‘And there is where you could really have nailed them to the wall. You’re instinctively talking about them as if they were a criminal gang. And you reacted as if you were a low ranking hood rather than an officer of the Empire.’
‘By that point, I felt as if I was a low ranking hood.’ Han replied.
‘The Empire’s a new thing, it’s traditions aren’t set in stone, and even if it does break it’s own rules, it couldn’t afford to get caught doing so, not then, not over that. Never understood politics, did you?’
‘A lot of boring talk by a lot of boring people-‘ Han said.
‘How you ever summoned up the attention span to learn to fly I don’t know. Listen; the Empire is touchy on the subject of slavery, and facing in about three different directions, because the formal abolition of most of it was one of the big bones thrown to the ex- Separatists.
The return of so many of them from one state of servitude or other helped patch up a lot of the demographic damage. The species who got hit by the new regs,’ he said nodding to Chewbacca, ‘were those that had sided particularly closely with the old Republic, especially with the jedi order.
Which is fractionally less important than getting caught gaming the system for personal glory and profit. In the circumstances- wasting Imperial time, using Imperial resources for personal gain, the peculation and corruption- then if you ever did, you could and should have played it by the book.
Tell me this; did what you did, stunning your commander and letting a shipload of escaped slaves go, make any difference to the overall situation? Any at all?’
‘No.’ Solo admitted. ‘I had to do it, though. You weren’t there, I couldn’t sit back and let a shipful of wookies down.’
‘Just because you have to do something is no excuse for not being clever about it. Admit it; if you’d known then what you know now, you’d do things differently.’ Lennart said.
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t have stunned him, I’d have shot the lot of them, given their guns to the wookies and led an armed revolt.’
Captain Lennart shook his head, and said ‘You have to think past the merely tactical.’
There was a long pause as the two men looked at each other. ‘I helped blow up a death star. How much more do you want?’
‘That was just adding insult to injury; the military loss was embarrassing, but it was secondary to the political damage caused, by the Empire’s own hand, by choosing to rely on the damn’ thing.
That thing might as well have had a giant “kick me” sign painted on it anyway, it made so many people nervous the Starfleet would have had a go at it sooner or later, if the Alliance didn’t. Far too many moving parts, too.’ Lennart said.
‘So what the rebellion was just, unnecessary? Bit late for everyone on Yavin if we’d left it to you.’ Han said.
‘Don't blame me for your unnecessary risks; should have been more cellular and better divided than that anyway- and I do need you to take a message to Rebel regional command.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Han said. ‘Why do you want to be part of something as pompous, stuffy, tight-arsed, hidebound-?’
‘The Starfleet has to let a few Corellians in, just so there’s somebody competent around when they need a job done. Like anything galaxy-sized, there are jobs we need good men for and jobs we need disownable scum for.
My point is that by expecting it to be completely full of criminals and extortionists, we do the empire no favours- help it to become exactly that, in fact. We have to hold it to some kind of standard.’
‘I’ve still got dents in the Falcon’s plating where the bits of Alderaan bounced off- what kind of standard is that?’ Han said.
‘A pretty high standard of applied firepower,’ Lennart said, ‘but that’s not what- actually, when you look at it sideways, that pretty much exactly is what I mean.
Leaving aside the utterly low- probability events that admittedly actually happened, what was the logical way, the practical way to attack the Death Star? From the inside.’
‘When I was in there, they weren’t that tough.’ Han said.
The troopers probably mistook you for a Jedi; thought no-one else could be that crazy.’ Aleph-3 said; Chewbacca howled in agreement. ‘They fell back to a rally point, then counterattacked.’
‘So what is it you want to talk to Alliance regional command about?’ Han said, changing back on subject.
‘You know, I could go and do it myself, just give me their address…’ Lennart said, kidding. ‘Your local allies. The little guys with the too many arms.
They have some remarkably bad habits- like dropping rocks on their neighbours. Near-C velocity rocks, which is not a neighbourly thing, and does not exactly qualify them to be on the side of truth, justice and right.
Now we could sweep in, jump all over their heads, and call them a prime example of the real iniquity of the rebellion, or you could clean your own house. Hmm?’
Solo took a couple of moments to take it in. He was more boggle- resistant than Adannan. It was Chewie who howled meaning ‘I told you there was something weird going on.’
Han’s first thought was that he had been through enough double and triple crosses to recognise one when it tried to bite him.
‘You really can’t afford to walk away from this.’ Lennart said. ‘The evidence is all here.’ He pointed at the datacard.
‘If you can prove it,’ Han said, ‘why don’t you splash it all over the media?’
‘Might yet happen.’ Lennart admitted. ‘This is a Hobson’s choice. The only alternatives are to have the tale of your allies’ deeply dubious past and actively homicidal present spread, indeed, all over the media, and then have them blasted to bits in a righteous and noble act by the Empire, or to move fast, sort them out and do the fighting, and take the losses, yourselves.
Kriff it, Han, this is the Empire offering you the option; how much of a genuine positive do you expect?’ Lennart said, tacitly admitting quite a lot.
‘How serious were you about offering me a job?’ Han asked.
‘I didn’t expect you to take it, but there were at least three good reasons for making the offer. First of all, the effect on my own political officer- I know there would be problems,’ Lennart said to Aleph-3, ‘but let me enjoy dwelling on the up side, for now.
Second, the effect on your political superiors. Anything that ruins Mon Mothma’s day is all right with me. Smug, sanctimonious cow.
She was always one of our favourite targets,’ Lennart said, remembering his student days, ‘but her security was too good; what a shame the memory- metal whoopee cushion plan never came off…’
Chewbacca made a sound that Lennart guessed translated as ‘I really don’t want to know.’
‘The third reason,’ Lennart said, ignoring Aleph-3’s horrified fascination and Han trying not to agree with her, ‘is that you are an asset to the Rebellion. Theoretical idealism is all very well, but the Alliance desperately needs filters.
You know not all the stories of Rebel atrocities are just propaganda; there are more than a few criminals, extortionists, terrorists, and just plain thugs trying to make what they do sound better by hiding behind the banner of the Republic. Your local allies being a spectacularly huge example.
Any illegal movement is going to attract some people who are just plain illegal, who would be on the wrong side of any law. The Alliance needs people who can operate in the underbelly, tell the difference between the idealists, the cynics and the bit-of-both.’
‘What about the Imperial atrocities?’ Han counterpointed.
‘Comes back to the same issue- quality of personnel. The higher a standard we can establish and maintain, the fewer blots on the Empire’s honour there’ll be; you tried to do the right thing, in the wrong way. I hope you’ll try to do the right thing now.’
‘Once we work out what it is.’ Han said.
‘Good luck finding that loophole.’ Lennart said.
‘I don’t think I’ll take that job offer after all.’ Han decided. ‘It would involve shooting at too many people I’ve got kinda fond of.’
‘I thought you’d say that.’ Lennart admitted. ‘It was worth a chance. Oh, and don’t get yourself arrested now, it would be deeply embarrassing to have to come and break you out- that’s not an invitation. QX, lads, you can come out now.’
The ‘covering party’ revealed itself; four people at the next table, six came out from the kitchens, three from a table further away, four in off the balcony, five in the front door. All in civilian dress.
‘Was that all right, skipper?’ one of them asked.
‘Han, I’d like you to meet Charge Chief Vilberksohn and his merry pirates- volunteers from among my crew. Bit more discreet than a stormtrooper platoon.’ Lennart introduced them.
Right, outnumbered twelve to one. ‘You’re sure you don’t want me dead? I mean, don’t go changing your mind now.’
‘Remember that run through the iceteroids, with the frigate on your tail?’ Lennart asked; Han nodded. ‘If I’d really wanted you dead, I’d have jumped Black Prince in and simply kept firing from the main guns. Your Falcon’s a tough ship, but not that tough.’
He noticed the smuggler’s hand getting closer to his gun. ‘That’s not an invitation, either. See you around.’
Lennart, Aleph-3 and the covering party filed out, most of them walking backwards to keep Solo covered.
Aleph-3 said the same thing to Lennart that Chewbacca was saying to Han; ‘That was strange.’
‘Pleasant relief.’ Lennart said. ‘After fencing for my life with Adannan, it was wonderfully relaxing to do that for fun and profit. Almost a day out.’
‘Aren’t you worried about being quoted?’ she asked.
‘You can quote me all you like about the whoopee cushion.’ Lennart replied. ‘Come on, back to the shuttle, then back to the squadron, let’s see what’s gone hideously wrong in our absence.’
I'm far from sure how seriously to take this myself; it was a wierd notion that I dithered a fair bit over including or not, but in the end simply refused to let me go. I put enough time and energy into it that it would have left a huge hole in the update plan (such as it is) unless I did polish it up enough to make it ready to post.
It's almost an interlude; another official character/main cast member makes an appearance. I apologise in advance fro Lennart's attitude to the ISB. He really doesn't like them, but they can't be all bad.
’What I don’t understand, Skipper, is why you’re doing this yourself. Send a probe droid. Send a junior lieutenant, they’re almost as expendable. Why stick your own head into the acklay’s mouth?’ Brenn asked, worried.
They were in the day cabin, and Lennart was shuffling through his closet looking for something that could pass for civilian clothes, and finding the situation rather funny.
I go out of my way to cultivate a reputation as a scruffy bastard, Lennart thought, mocking the little things, and do I have a complete set of plain clothes that even vaguely match? No.
Bits and pieces and odds and ends, kriff I haven’t worn that since I was a student, what the bloody hell is a feather boa doing there?
In short, this is the wardrobe of a man who has worn uniform for almost all his adult life, and spent a lot of my adolescence before that playing silly buggers. Oh well. At least there isn’t a traffic cone.
‘What are we supposed to do if you get intercepted? Jumped, by the rebs or by the cops, or possibly both?’
‘You want the job yourself, don’t you?’ Lennart said, not looking up from investigating the further reaches of his sock drawer.
‘It is simply not the captain’s job to go and do dangerous, stupid things like lead an away team.’ Brenn said, indignantly.
‘If you’re trying to say that I’m too valuable to risk, then so are you, and you know it.’ Lennart told him.
‘Something this inherently dubious, anyone I could trust enough to get this done the way I need it to be done would be insufficiently expendable to send.’ He said, specifically meaning Brenn. ‘The buck stops with me anyway.’
‘At least,’ Brenn said, ‘Take one of the ATR’s. Better yet, use one of the Customs Corvettes and take a boarding platoon.’
‘I’m supposed to have the power of the force, you know.’ Lennart pointed out, sounding not remotely sincere.
‘And if it had any sense, it would be telling you to take backup too.’
‘Such disrespect. Anyone would think you’d been paying attention.’ Lennart said. ‘Then again, you weren’t just told that you were “potentially subject to the purge orders.” Who should I bring to protect me from my backup?’
‘You think Adannan would sink that low?’ Brenn asked, thinking; bugger.
‘Partly, by wandering off I’m daring him to. I’m offering him my back and challenging him to have the guts to stick the knife in.’
‘Lousy bet, skipper. Any back alley thug would have to, for his own self- respect if nothing else.’
‘I’m sure he would too, but I don’t think he’s going to react fast enough. He has enough pride in his own intelligence to resent the way I made his brain hurt, and try to win that point back.
Should mean he’s not going to resort to open violence in time. Which should mean that if I spin it properly, he’s going to take that hit to his self respect, and be another move behind next time we have to lock horns.’ Lennart said.
‘Tell me, Captain, was it a sad or a happy day when you realised some people really do have levers?’ Brenn said, with mock seriousness.
‘Mostly sad, with overtones of maniacal laughter.’ Lennart deadpanned.
‘I think you’re giving him more respect than he deserves. The ship and the squadron-‘
‘There are at least three other things I should be doing, you don’t think I’d be going to drop them and do this instead if I didn’t think it mattered?’
‘Frankly, captain, I can think of at least three people you could be trying to avoid.’ Brenn said, fairly boldly under the circumstances.
‘Well done; that’s where you come in.’ Lennart said, pulling something that looked like an athletic supporter for a creature with four legs out and looking at it in puzzlement.
The Chief, Kor Alric, Aleph-3?’ Brenn guessed.
‘Two out of three.’ Lennart told him. ‘Subtractor isn’t worth repairing in the field, she goes back to Damorian and we borrow another one from the sector group.
Repair estimates and assets required for Tarazed Meridian and Guillemot. Mirannon will go nuts; tell him not to break anybody.
Kor Alric, I want to avoid but can’t afford to. We just parted on terms that, well, I reckon turning my back on him is a bigger risk than anything the rebels are likely to throw at me.
The third person I’m avoiding is Commander Falldess. She is not in a particularly calm mood right now. It was her evidence that kicked this off, that’s what I’m going to go and wave at the Rebels.
I expect her to press for immediate action, that’s why Delvran’s handling the debrief and analysis, he’s good at recalling junior officers to their senses.’
‘You’re going off to stick it to them with evidence that your own units are still in the process of analysing?’ Brenn wondered.
‘I’m not legally certain enough to call base delta zero on the strength of it, but I am sufficiently convinced to employ it as a political weapon.’ Lennart admitted. ‘Tell Dordd to narrow-beam me with any conclusions on the way.’
‘Double standard?’ Brenn asked.
‘In politics?’ Lennart said with mock scepticism. ‘She did bend her ship pretty inconveniently badly, so if she starts agitating, point Mirannon at her.’ They both chuckled. ‘In all seriousness, though, that is what you may have to do to Kor Alric.’
‘He’s not an officer, he’s not a professional.’ Brenn stated.
‘If he understood his own limitations, that might be a valid point.’ Lennart said, abandoning the sock drawer- to what, he didn’t want to think about- and looking for something that would do as a civilian undershirt.
‘Do you actually want the job,’ Lennart continued, ‘of staring down a crazed dark acolyte of the Force, half mad with anger and only a hazy sense of the possible, ready to lash out in any direction?’
‘Piett seems to manage it.’ Brenn pointed out.
‘Unless Adannan has very well hidden depths, he’s nowhere near as good a tactician as Lord Vader-‘ Lennart started to say.
‘How do you know he doesn’t have hidden depths?’ Brenn said. ‘He might be pretending to be more of a loon than he actually is.’
‘Point for me and against you if he does.’ Lennart said, adding ‘he can do patience, but only with effort-I think his wits sometimes trip over his temper. Looking over my shoulder, I’d expect him to have reacted fairly vigorously by now, if he had any more than an armchair admiral’s training.
He’s also nothing like as far up the ladder; he’s a mid ranking acolyte at best, possibly mid to low. He’s under threat from inferiors, peers and superiors alike, and desperate enough to think that crazy stunts like this might help his career.’
‘Senior Lieutenant equivalent, then.’ Brenn opined. ‘Look, Captain, we’ve dealt with inspectors and auditors before, we’ve faced problems and overcome them- with incident, but overcome. Adannan has the force, and that may be a fairly worrying proposition, but he’s not the demigod he’s posing as.’
‘No, just a man with no legal accountability, and no sense of responsibility to make up the deficiency either. If he starts asking awkward questions, all right, baffle him with bullshit as usual- if he starts acting on them, get the Chief.’ Lennart made it an order.
‘Check. Any other instructions?’
‘Yes. Don’t initiate major offensive operations without me.’ Lennart said. ‘Sift out and interrogate any rRasfenoni among our existing prisoners, and- Dordd’s the ranking officer of the squadron, you have the ship.
You can probe in the direction of the rRasfenoni, use the sweep line and recon-A, collect data, live prisoners if you can get them without knocking over anything too big and making too much of a fuss. If the dreck hits the fan, come and get me- if it really hits the fan, call 851 for support then come and get me.’
‘Aye, aye, skipper- I still think this is more danger than it’s worth, though.’ Brenn said.
‘Tell you when I get back.’
It was a fairly typical spaceport cantina; low ceiling, dimly lit, traveller- ridden. A distinctly higher share of the odd than the rest of the planet, drinks for dozens of different lifeforms behind the bar, and everybody glaring suspiciously at everyone else.
In one corner, where he could watch it all from, there was a smuggler.
Dark haired, shirt that had maybe been white once, trousers with a prominent, flaring yellow bloodstripe, oversized blaster. There was a howl from the direction of the bar.
‘Yeah, Chewie, get two.’
He noticed a man and a woman threading their way through the tables towards him; she would have caught anybody’s eye, never mind that of a smooth rogue.
Long tied- back flaring red hair, dark green gown- about twenty social levels too high for a mynock pit like this, but she could carry it off. She walked with a fluid grace that almost, not quite, hid her physical strength and the repeating pistol she carried low on one hip.
She was a big girl, there was a lot of her and all of it was good. It took Han a couple of seconds for the gunfighter in him to get the better of the lecher and size her up as a potential opponent. She was pretty good there, too.
‘Good afternoon, Captain Solo, I need to talk to you.’ The man said. Han looked him over. Grey dewback-hide leather jacket, faded and patched, Coronet City Crushers sports-fan t- shirt, middle- aged, lean, almost black eyes.
Didn’t look that far out of place, but there was something about the way he held himself that made what he was wearing shout ‘mufti.’
A spy or a soldier, Han thought. He didn’t have to move his hand close to his blaster, in a place like this it was already there. Then again, he had dealt with a lot of shady people in a lot of shady places. And he needed the money.
‘Yeah? So, talk.’ He said. They sat down, she instantly pushed her chair back to watch as much of the cantina as possible. Chewie came back with two tall tumblers, foaming slightly blue, looked at them both and growled.
He could sense something was wrong. Aleph-3 was tempted to growl back, but decided against it.
‘You’re not exactly a rebel yet, are you? More of a freelance contractor. Which means you have little of the protection being part of an armed movement gives you, you’ve still got all your old enemies as well as some pretty impressive new ones. Is having the fastest ship in the galaxy a matter of pride or necessity?’ The man asked.
Solo looked closely at Lennart; wondering whether or not to shoot him. Lennart looked back.
Then the younger of the two Corellians grinned a wide, confident grin. ‘It has come in useful a few times. I suppose now you’re going to tell me you need something taken somewhere real fast.’
‘And that translates as ‘expensive’, does it? Optimist. I suppose you want me to lay on a blockade for you to crash through as well.’ Lennart said.
‘Your drinks, Sir.’ It was the waitress; she had come over to their table with a silvery duraplast tray, four glasses and a flask of Corellian brandy.
Lennart nodded to her, almost a bow; she set them down, darted a venomous glance at the utterly unruffled Aleph-3, and flounced away.
‘How come? I have to send a Wookie to the bar to rip people’s arms off unless he gets served, and you get a tray?’ Han said, indignant.
‘Probably because she’s met too many slick characters, she knows she can’t trust you further than the length of your own shadow. Slainte.’
‘You’re a spacer.’ Meaning, you’re as bad as I am and I want to know how you got away with it. ‘What happened to your ship?’ Solo asked.
If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me, Lennart thought. ‘Yeah, I was Old Republic regular fleet, but…’ he let that trail off. ‘Thing is, what I need transported is small enough, just a datacard, but I have no idea where it’s supposed to go.
Or rather, I don’t know where the place it’s supposed to go is. Alliance theater command.’ He pulled a datacard out of a side pocket- too small to contain a gun- slowly, laid it on the table. ‘Check it over. No viruses, no bugs, just evidence.’
‘Evidence of what?’ Solo said. Chewie picked up the card, trying the I’m-just-a-dumb-wookie act out for size; pretending to sniff it. He looked at Aleph-3 who was not at all convinced, gave it up and pulled a minicomp off his belt.
‘It’s not good news.’ Lennart said. He was about to go into more detail when he noticed Aleph-3 was unusually tense, and looked round following her gaze.
Ah. Five men, four almost nondescript- a little too flash to blend in perfectly. One public face, wearing a tunic with black sleeves, white chest.
Han had noticed them too. ‘Chewie, trouble.’
There were a squad of stormtroopers behind them; Aleph-3 was hand-signalling as demonstratively as she could without giving the game away. Bugger off, we’re on a political gain operation, she gestured.
The response was one of total disbelief, combined with an imperative to identify.
Line 6NL, batch 27c, unit 392, she replied. Warrant Second, special operations.
The stormtroopers looked at each other briefly; she noticed one, the squad comtech, shrug and gesture that it checked out.
Ah…er. Oops. Would you like us to go away now? The squad leader signalled back. For all the apparent frivolity, they both knew that he was expendable in the interests of the mission.
Cover the rear, we might try to escape that way, she replied.
They acknowledged, and started backing out of the cantina, guns still levelled warily at all the lesser scum in there. The ISB thugs had noticed, but the agent hadn’t. He kept closing in on his prey.
He had been chosen for this job, and told the plan was to apprehend a renegade fleet officer. So far, so good, and certainly an objective he could enjoy achieving.
It was the woman that caught his eye first of all. He could hardly keep his eyes off her, she looked back, proud, haughty, more like a duchess than a space bum, and the inevitable line came to mind, hey, baby, what’s a girl like you doing in a dump like this?
Which was actually a good question. He looked at the people she was sitting with; thin man in grey leather flight jacket, vaguely familiar, perhaps he had been on a wanted notice? In fact, it had been on the news.
The other two- a man and a wookie- his eyes passed over them on the way back to the woman, and then his brain did a doubletake. Solo! Han kriffing Solo, mr I-shot-Vader, the second largest single bounty in the galaxy!
Aleph-3 looked at Lennart, meaning, how do we handle this?
Lennart glanced down at his hand on the grip of his own service pistol. That was clear enough, then.
The agent quick-drew his gun- respectable but way short of galactic-class- and announced ‘Han Solo, Traitor, I arrest you in the -‘ which was as far as he got.
Han shot him, clean blast, dead centre; follow the movement across to snapshot into the chest of the centre- right gunsel, twitch back onto the left- centre, which would leave two of them, one for him and one for Chewie.
Still acting on reflex, he crouched to kick the table over for cover, then realised there was nobody left to shoot at.
‘-afterlife?’ Lennart finished the agent’s sentence for him. ‘And really, Solo, really. You’d do that to fine Corellian brandy?’
He was largely putting on his calm, Han noticed. In fact, Lennart was reciting to himself a fragment of something he had read as a student; it seems to me- he was remembering how it went- that men are of different value; and there are some who can be knocked on the head without the world being very much poorer for it. The ISB probably counted as such.
‘Would you like to wait here and see if the Marines agree with you?’ Aleph-3 said. Han was almost sure she had nailed the two on the left, she had started with the one who had been his third target, the agent had already been falling when he nailed him.
‘Good point.’ Han said, drained his glass. ‘With me.’ He started heading for the staff door by the bar
.
‘They’ll be waiting there. Out the front.’ Aleph-3 said, moving the other way. Lennart followed her, Han and Chewie shared a look then decided, what the hell.
There was a vehicle there, an unmanned Ubrikkian ground-skimmer personnel transport. No stormtroopers.
‘What do you think, add grand theft speeder to the charge sheet?’ Lennart suggested.
‘No.’ Aleph-3 said. ‘It’ll have a tracking beacon, and even if we could start to run for it-‘
‘We’d still have to talk our way past whatever they have in place as operational security.’ Lennart finished, looking at Han.
‘I’ve bluffed my way out of trouble a thousand times, and all people remember is one little screwup.’ Han said, rolling his eyes- before getting back to business. ‘Does anyone else think this is weird? No cordon, no support.’
‘Done on the quiet; they didn’t want anyone else to share the glory.’ Lennart suggested.
‘Let’s just stroll away, casual like.’ Han decided.
‘Not too far. I want to see how they react to this.’ Lennart decided, and looked around. Like most provincial starports, it was less than perfectly planned;
disused landing pads being used for warehouses, port workers’ housing, markets and cantinas, disused warehouses being converted into landing pads, a constant process of decay and renovation.
Not particularly fast, a generational thing, but there was enough cover nearby to duck into. Han passed by two cantinas and settled on a third, a convenient sprint away from where he had left the Falcon.
They took a window table, this time, where Solo could look down at the street.
‘Well, that was uneventful. I had no idea the life of a hardened galactic criminal could be so relaxing.’ Lennart said, kidding.
‘You’re legit?’ Han said, surprised and trying to place the man’s face. Where had he come across him? A face in the crowd at Smuggler’s Rest, or one of a hundred other shadowports?
‘Quasi-legitimate.’ Aleph-3 couldn’t resist saying.
‘Compared to you and the people you have after you, everybody starts to acquire a thin gloss of respectability.’ Lennart was wondering how far to ride the bluff when Han’s forehead wrinkled in an obvious a-hah moment.
‘Stang, I do recognise you.’ Han realised. ‘The only man ever to turn down a first class-‘ and then he remembered exactly what the circumstances had been.
‘Not the only one, not even the only man in the last century. Never trust a journalist’s memories. I refused the award of a first class bloodstripe, normally posthumous, because for a twenty-five man strike team, it was a suicide job.
I called for volunteers, told them they were going to die, they still agreed to go and I still sent them anyway.
The difference between being a good officer and a hero, a good officer rigs the game to give his own side maximum possible advantage, uses every lever to manipulate the odds.
The hero is the one who beats the odds, the guy the thin possibility comes up for, and that was what the bloodstripe was supposed to be about. Being a hero- or at least a successful chancer.’
Chewie howled, asking Han what was going on.
‘Our friend here turns out to be true-blue Imperial.’ Han said, bitterly, but not going for his gun, not just yet. Looking around, anyway, he had the unpleasant feeling of being watched.
‘So were you, once.’ Lennart reminded him.
‘The whiteshirt, just a sacrifice for the cause?’ Han was angry- why, he wasn’t even sure. Lennart’s betrayal? Come to think of it, he had been carefully noncommittal- nothing unusual in a place like that.
‘I have no more moral problem shooting at the ISB than I do blowing my nose.’ Lennart said. ‘Every revolution brings out it’s share of thugs and bullies and little poisoned souls.
Some stay freelance, some work their way into the new establishment. The ISB are the roaches in the ductwork of the Empire, and any excuse I can get to blow them up in the line of duty is a good excuse.’
What was he up to? Han thought. An Imperial Starfleet captain, in plain clothes, bumps into me- high on the Most Wanted list- in a bar, and helps me shoot some whiteshirts. How is that supposed to make sense?
‘So you don’t like the police, is that supposed to make you a good guy?’ He asked.
‘It worked for Airen Cracken.’ Lennart pointed out, before going on. ‘The whole good-guy bad-guy thing, criminal versus law enforcement, terrorist or freedom fighter- that’s just a way to spoil a day out.
I have a mission requirement that supersedes taking you in, all you’ll get out of trying to shoot me is a head full of blaster bolts from my covering party; when all else fails, why not attempt civilisation?’
‘You’re strange.’ Han said.
‘You’re the one who boasts about having flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and seen a lot of strange stuff. Why let this get you down?’
‘So, you find me, how? And, what, you want me to arrange your defection to the Alliance? I warn you, the pay’s dreck.’ Han said, coolly.
‘About as likely as me offering you a commission again…I’ve enjoyed the last few years. It’s been a relief to have a declared enemy to go up against, and frankly I have enough rebel blood on my hands that I wouldn’t expect them to take me. In fact, I’d be disappointed with their lack of standards if they did.’ Lennart said.
‘A senior Imperial officer with principles? There’s something you don’t see every day.’ Han said.
Lennart refused to get annoyed. ‘That’s why you’ll lose in the end. Lot of ups and downs still to happen, and you may win some tactical victories along the way, but as long as the Alliance continues to believe itself to be the sole possessor of justice and right, you’re doomed to continually misread friends and enemies both.’
A stray notion occurred to Lennart; he grinned and said ‘Are you sure you don’t want your old job back?’
Aleph-3 and Chewbacca both looked at him as if he had finally flipped, then Aleph-3 realised it was not beyond the bounds of possibility for Lennart to actually mean it.
Han was watching them both, and was fascinated by her reaction. ‘She thinks you might be serious.’ That did tug at his gut a bit. The Imperial Starfleet had been a gigantic broken promise, to him; something that had turned to dreck the moment he touched it.
Now this maniac came to him with…what? Some kind of promise to make good after all?
‘The really weird thing is, I think I actually would be able to swing it.’ Lennart said, thinking about the repercussions and enjoying it.
‘I could give you a squadron in the space transport wing, two Gamma assault shuttles, two Beta-3 escort transports, and the Falcon of course, at the substantive rank of Lieutenant- Commander.’
‘And the bounties on my head, or had you forgotten?’ Han asked. His gut reaction had settled down to ‘this is insane’ but he wanted to see how far Lennart was prepared to go with it.
‘Not a problem. Legally we could lease the Falcon from you, there’s some money towards paying it off, pay and prize money of course, shouldn’t take more than two or three years.’
Chewbacca made a noise somewhere between ‘when did they let you out of the asylum, mate?’ and ‘why are we listening to this man?’
Lennart looked at Aleph-3, nodded towards Chewbacca and asked her ‘What do you think, Flight Sargeant, or would I actually have to make him a Midshipman?’
Aleph-3 said ‘Kor Alric would want you dead after that.’
‘Probably,’ Lennart acknowledged, ‘but if I tell him about this in the right way I might push his blood pressure up so high he actually strokes out. Another fringe benefit.’
‘Half the Personnel Bureau would want you dead.’ She pointed out.
‘Yes, but the other half would be so cock-a-hoop over the propaganda coup that I should be able to get them arguing with each other then slip out the middle.
That would probably be the hardest part of the entire operation,’ he said to Han, ‘keeping the journalists and propagandists off your back.’
‘You know, I’m half tempted to go along with this crazy stunt, just to see if you can actually pull it off.’ Han said; Chewbacca glared at him. ‘Who’s Kor Alric?’
‘Special Agent and resident albatross,’ Lennart said, consciously deciding not to bring the Force into this, ‘I’m starting to refer to him as the political operations officer.
Which is excessively mild, but calling him the Kor Responsible for Intelligence and Fleet Functions would just be too obvious.’
Aleph-3 had to make a conscious effort to slip out of character and back into a neutral mode of mind, to avoid rolling on the floor laughing, it was so utterly ridiculous. That would spread through the legion and the crew- the entire squadron- like wildfire. Once she told them.
‘You talk about being a successful chancer, ever think your still being in the Starfleet is stang thin odds?’ Han asked him.
‘Sometimes, but they don’t hand out medals for being a deviant looney. Just as well; if they did, can you imagine the awards committee?’
‘I can imagine quite a lot…but not that, no.’ Han said.
‘Probably be the Ubiqtorate anyway, whichever intercept gave them the biggest unintentional comedy moment. In all seriousness,’ he said, changing tone to something far more serious,
‘my survival under Imperial colours is down to two factors; first of all the amount of rebel blood on my hands, and second, something you never were able to get the hang of, playing the system.’
‘Yeah, I joined up with this naïve assumption that the powers of officialdom would be honest about what they expected from me…’ Han’s voice trailed off.
‘I know you intended to be sarcastic there, but that really does sound pretty spectacularly naïve when you put it like that.’ Lennart pointed out.
‘I was at Raithal when some of your instructors were at Carida; they said you were too straight for your own good. Deliberately trying to break with your past and play it that way?’
‘So, what would you have done? If you’d been me.’ Han asked.
‘Made sure I went after Vader and kept shooting until there was nothing left but a cloud of hot gas, but that’s not what you mean, is it? Your court martial.’ Lennart said.
‘And what made it happen.’ Han said. Chewbacca growled.
‘I was done for usurping the lawful chain of command, back in ’17. You’re not the only one who’s been there.’ Lennart said; Aleph-3 visibly perked up her ears.
‘Speaking of which, you got given that detail because of your background. Whoever in personnel put you on to it assumed you were a street- hardened survivor, a morality- free zone who wouldn’t give a stang about anyone or anything else’s suffering. Weren’t you running drugs for Jabba?’
‘Yes, I’ve been around, but what,’ Han said, ‘has that got to do with it?’
‘It makes it look uncomfortably like the personnel office had a point. Anyway, defending yourself at a court martial’s an inherently weak position. Counterattack is much more effective.
I would have looked to see what charges I could have made against the arresting officer- start with wasting Imperial time; how long does it actually take to shave a wookie?’
Chewbacca growled menacingly, meaning there was absolutely no way they were going to find out.
‘That would have never have worked, they had the whole business sewn up tighter than-‘ Han said.
‘And there is where you could really have nailed them to the wall. You’re instinctively talking about them as if they were a criminal gang. And you reacted as if you were a low ranking hood rather than an officer of the Empire.’
‘By that point, I felt as if I was a low ranking hood.’ Han replied.
‘The Empire’s a new thing, it’s traditions aren’t set in stone, and even if it does break it’s own rules, it couldn’t afford to get caught doing so, not then, not over that. Never understood politics, did you?’
‘A lot of boring talk by a lot of boring people-‘ Han said.
‘How you ever summoned up the attention span to learn to fly I don’t know. Listen; the Empire is touchy on the subject of slavery, and facing in about three different directions, because the formal abolition of most of it was one of the big bones thrown to the ex- Separatists.
The return of so many of them from one state of servitude or other helped patch up a lot of the demographic damage. The species who got hit by the new regs,’ he said nodding to Chewbacca, ‘were those that had sided particularly closely with the old Republic, especially with the jedi order.
Which is fractionally less important than getting caught gaming the system for personal glory and profit. In the circumstances- wasting Imperial time, using Imperial resources for personal gain, the peculation and corruption- then if you ever did, you could and should have played it by the book.
Tell me this; did what you did, stunning your commander and letting a shipload of escaped slaves go, make any difference to the overall situation? Any at all?’
‘No.’ Solo admitted. ‘I had to do it, though. You weren’t there, I couldn’t sit back and let a shipful of wookies down.’
‘Just because you have to do something is no excuse for not being clever about it. Admit it; if you’d known then what you know now, you’d do things differently.’ Lennart said.
‘Yeah, I wouldn’t have stunned him, I’d have shot the lot of them, given their guns to the wookies and led an armed revolt.’
Captain Lennart shook his head, and said ‘You have to think past the merely tactical.’
There was a long pause as the two men looked at each other. ‘I helped blow up a death star. How much more do you want?’
‘That was just adding insult to injury; the military loss was embarrassing, but it was secondary to the political damage caused, by the Empire’s own hand, by choosing to rely on the damn’ thing.
That thing might as well have had a giant “kick me” sign painted on it anyway, it made so many people nervous the Starfleet would have had a go at it sooner or later, if the Alliance didn’t. Far too many moving parts, too.’ Lennart said.
‘So what the rebellion was just, unnecessary? Bit late for everyone on Yavin if we’d left it to you.’ Han said.
‘Don't blame me for your unnecessary risks; should have been more cellular and better divided than that anyway- and I do need you to take a message to Rebel regional command.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Han said. ‘Why do you want to be part of something as pompous, stuffy, tight-arsed, hidebound-?’
‘The Starfleet has to let a few Corellians in, just so there’s somebody competent around when they need a job done. Like anything galaxy-sized, there are jobs we need good men for and jobs we need disownable scum for.
My point is that by expecting it to be completely full of criminals and extortionists, we do the empire no favours- help it to become exactly that, in fact. We have to hold it to some kind of standard.’
‘I’ve still got dents in the Falcon’s plating where the bits of Alderaan bounced off- what kind of standard is that?’ Han said.
‘A pretty high standard of applied firepower,’ Lennart said, ‘but that’s not what- actually, when you look at it sideways, that pretty much exactly is what I mean.
Leaving aside the utterly low- probability events that admittedly actually happened, what was the logical way, the practical way to attack the Death Star? From the inside.’
‘When I was in there, they weren’t that tough.’ Han said.
The troopers probably mistook you for a Jedi; thought no-one else could be that crazy.’ Aleph-3 said; Chewbacca howled in agreement. ‘They fell back to a rally point, then counterattacked.’
‘So what is it you want to talk to Alliance regional command about?’ Han said, changing back on subject.
‘You know, I could go and do it myself, just give me their address…’ Lennart said, kidding. ‘Your local allies. The little guys with the too many arms.
They have some remarkably bad habits- like dropping rocks on their neighbours. Near-C velocity rocks, which is not a neighbourly thing, and does not exactly qualify them to be on the side of truth, justice and right.
Now we could sweep in, jump all over their heads, and call them a prime example of the real iniquity of the rebellion, or you could clean your own house. Hmm?’
Solo took a couple of moments to take it in. He was more boggle- resistant than Adannan. It was Chewie who howled meaning ‘I told you there was something weird going on.’
Han’s first thought was that he had been through enough double and triple crosses to recognise one when it tried to bite him.
‘You really can’t afford to walk away from this.’ Lennart said. ‘The evidence is all here.’ He pointed at the datacard.
‘If you can prove it,’ Han said, ‘why don’t you splash it all over the media?’
‘Might yet happen.’ Lennart admitted. ‘This is a Hobson’s choice. The only alternatives are to have the tale of your allies’ deeply dubious past and actively homicidal present spread, indeed, all over the media, and then have them blasted to bits in a righteous and noble act by the Empire, or to move fast, sort them out and do the fighting, and take the losses, yourselves.
Kriff it, Han, this is the Empire offering you the option; how much of a genuine positive do you expect?’ Lennart said, tacitly admitting quite a lot.
‘How serious were you about offering me a job?’ Han asked.
‘I didn’t expect you to take it, but there were at least three good reasons for making the offer. First of all, the effect on my own political officer- I know there would be problems,’ Lennart said to Aleph-3, ‘but let me enjoy dwelling on the up side, for now.
Second, the effect on your political superiors. Anything that ruins Mon Mothma’s day is all right with me. Smug, sanctimonious cow.
She was always one of our favourite targets,’ Lennart said, remembering his student days, ‘but her security was too good; what a shame the memory- metal whoopee cushion plan never came off…’
Chewbacca made a sound that Lennart guessed translated as ‘I really don’t want to know.’
‘The third reason,’ Lennart said, ignoring Aleph-3’s horrified fascination and Han trying not to agree with her, ‘is that you are an asset to the Rebellion. Theoretical idealism is all very well, but the Alliance desperately needs filters.
You know not all the stories of Rebel atrocities are just propaganda; there are more than a few criminals, extortionists, terrorists, and just plain thugs trying to make what they do sound better by hiding behind the banner of the Republic. Your local allies being a spectacularly huge example.
Any illegal movement is going to attract some people who are just plain illegal, who would be on the wrong side of any law. The Alliance needs people who can operate in the underbelly, tell the difference between the idealists, the cynics and the bit-of-both.’
‘What about the Imperial atrocities?’ Han counterpointed.
‘Comes back to the same issue- quality of personnel. The higher a standard we can establish and maintain, the fewer blots on the Empire’s honour there’ll be; you tried to do the right thing, in the wrong way. I hope you’ll try to do the right thing now.’
‘Once we work out what it is.’ Han said.
‘Good luck finding that loophole.’ Lennart said.
‘I don’t think I’ll take that job offer after all.’ Han decided. ‘It would involve shooting at too many people I’ve got kinda fond of.’
‘I thought you’d say that.’ Lennart admitted. ‘It was worth a chance. Oh, and don’t get yourself arrested now, it would be deeply embarrassing to have to come and break you out- that’s not an invitation. QX, lads, you can come out now.’
The ‘covering party’ revealed itself; four people at the next table, six came out from the kitchens, three from a table further away, four in off the balcony, five in the front door. All in civilian dress.
‘Was that all right, skipper?’ one of them asked.
‘Han, I’d like you to meet Charge Chief Vilberksohn and his merry pirates- volunteers from among my crew. Bit more discreet than a stormtrooper platoon.’ Lennart introduced them.
Right, outnumbered twelve to one. ‘You’re sure you don’t want me dead? I mean, don’t go changing your mind now.’
‘Remember that run through the iceteroids, with the frigate on your tail?’ Lennart asked; Han nodded. ‘If I’d really wanted you dead, I’d have jumped Black Prince in and simply kept firing from the main guns. Your Falcon’s a tough ship, but not that tough.’
He noticed the smuggler’s hand getting closer to his gun. ‘That’s not an invitation, either. See you around.’
Lennart, Aleph-3 and the covering party filed out, most of them walking backwards to keep Solo covered.
Aleph-3 said the same thing to Lennart that Chewbacca was saying to Han; ‘That was strange.’
‘Pleasant relief.’ Lennart said. ‘After fencing for my life with Adannan, it was wonderfully relaxing to do that for fun and profit. Almost a day out.’
‘Aren’t you worried about being quoted?’ she asked.
‘You can quote me all you like about the whoopee cushion.’ Lennart replied. ‘Come on, back to the shuttle, then back to the squadron, let’s see what’s gone hideously wrong in our absence.’
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-15 10:18am, edited 1 time in total.
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
Solo and Lennart, having a nice little talk. I loved it.
Solo and Lennart, having a nice little talk. I loved it.
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
Wow... I just finished reading the whole story so far, and I'm really impressed.
The way the characters are handled is great... the interplay among them, the various personalities, the portrayal of the "bad evil empire" as everyday people, etc.
I'm also impressed by the ship handling and battle scenes; it's a great job of putting more realistic behavior in on with the traditional SW stuff.
Overall, I'm almost getting a feeling of the old Master and Commander books... Lennart reminds me a bit of Jack Aubrey.
And most importantly, it's not a main-character wankfest. I like the stories that mostly don't involve the "big" characters, and instead show what things are like out on the normal front lines.
Very well done!
The way the characters are handled is great... the interplay among them, the various personalities, the portrayal of the "bad evil empire" as everyday people, etc.
I'm also impressed by the ship handling and battle scenes; it's a great job of putting more realistic behavior in on with the traditional SW stuff.
Overall, I'm almost getting a feeling of the old Master and Commander books... Lennart reminds me a bit of Jack Aubrey.
And most importantly, it's not a main-character wankfest. I like the stories that mostly don't involve the "big" characters, and instead show what things are like out on the normal front lines.
Very well done!
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
Now that is a very high standard of comparison. I mean, thank you, but I'm not sure I deserve it. I am an admirer (given the setting and tone, 'fan' sounds a shade tawdry) of Patrick O'Brian, but I cannot claim to anything like the same sense of familiarity with the material, of willing himself back and taking notes. I suspect that if I did, it would be a much darker story.
There is a direct quote in there from Jack Aubrey- "It seems to me, that men are of different value..." but I didn't consciously base Lennart on anyone. What my subconscious did to me while I wasn't looking is another matter, and there are definite traces of some of the people I re-enact with in there, now I come to think of it.
Some of us have already been used as story fodder by a now-published author and member of the group- who perpetrated an outrageously Mary Sue-ish self insertion, this has been mentioned to him and he has no shame whatsoever- so you can track them down, if you feel inclined to. His name's Robert Low, and I am dreading book 3 in the trilogy.
As men, ignoring the inevitable mismatch between sea and space- and between authors, as not being fit to sand Mr O'Brian's ink- there are three obvious differences between Aubrey, who did eventually make Rear-Admiral of the Blue, and Lennart.
Jack Aubrey had virtually no formal education beyond seamanship, whereas Lennart dropped out of university on Coruscant to join the Starfleet. Aubrey learned a lot of life's lessons the hard way, being rather badly at sea when he's on land, whereas Lennart sidestepped a lot of the pitfalls, and missed a lot of the experiences along the way.
Aubrey is definitely more hands- on, both in the sense of the skilled labour required to sail a ship and fighting in person. Provided you don't count running away from the police as a student, Lennart can count the number of times he's had to fight for his life on the fingers of one hand, and is normally perfectly happy to leave that to the professionals. The sense of confidence you get from being able to beat the living snot out of someone (simulated, of course, for me) with a hand weapon is a very real thing, and Lennart would be well advised to do more of it, fast.
The third problem is what I personally reckon is my biggest plot hole; Sophie, and the absence of anyone like her in Lennart's life. That is something I will need to write to, soon.
Chapter 30 should be ready sometime thursday-fridayish.
There is a direct quote in there from Jack Aubrey- "It seems to me, that men are of different value..." but I didn't consciously base Lennart on anyone. What my subconscious did to me while I wasn't looking is another matter, and there are definite traces of some of the people I re-enact with in there, now I come to think of it.
Some of us have already been used as story fodder by a now-published author and member of the group- who perpetrated an outrageously Mary Sue-ish self insertion, this has been mentioned to him and he has no shame whatsoever- so you can track them down, if you feel inclined to. His name's Robert Low, and I am dreading book 3 in the trilogy.
As men, ignoring the inevitable mismatch between sea and space- and between authors, as not being fit to sand Mr O'Brian's ink- there are three obvious differences between Aubrey, who did eventually make Rear-Admiral of the Blue, and Lennart.
Jack Aubrey had virtually no formal education beyond seamanship, whereas Lennart dropped out of university on Coruscant to join the Starfleet. Aubrey learned a lot of life's lessons the hard way, being rather badly at sea when he's on land, whereas Lennart sidestepped a lot of the pitfalls, and missed a lot of the experiences along the way.
Aubrey is definitely more hands- on, both in the sense of the skilled labour required to sail a ship and fighting in person. Provided you don't count running away from the police as a student, Lennart can count the number of times he's had to fight for his life on the fingers of one hand, and is normally perfectly happy to leave that to the professionals. The sense of confidence you get from being able to beat the living snot out of someone (simulated, of course, for me) with a hand weapon is a very real thing, and Lennart would be well advised to do more of it, fast.
The third problem is what I personally reckon is my biggest plot hole; Sophie, and the absence of anyone like her in Lennart's life. That is something I will need to write to, soon.
Chapter 30 should be ready sometime thursday-fridayish.
Adannan also doesn't really qualify as stand-in for Dr. Maturin although they have long conversations, Aubrey (or Maturin) rarely want to kill the other for a wrong word.
Regarding the education, Aubrey learnt his profession the hard way; as a trade by learning by doing, but he mentioned being prepared for it by Queeney, his cousin. So you have a preliminary educational experience also in his case.
And finally: keep writing, your admirers wait eagerly for each episode
although they have long conversations, Aubrey (or Maturin) rarely want to kill the other for a wrong word.Regarding the education, Aubrey learnt his profession the hard way; as a trade by learning by doing, but he mentioned being prepared for it by Queeney, his cousin. So you have a preliminary educational experience also in his case.
And finally: keep writing, your admirers wait eagerly for each episode
"In view of the circumstances, Britannia waives the rules."
"All you have to do is to look at Northern Ireland, [...] to see how seriously the religious folks take "thou shall not kill. The more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable." George Carlin
"We need to make gay people live in fear again! What ever happened to the traditional family values of persecution and lies?" - Darth Wong
"The closet got full and some homosexuals may have escaped onto the internet?"- Stormbringer
The biggest similarities as I saw them:
Both captains insist on skilled gunnery and good practice with said guns.
Both have a strong attachment to their ships
Both have done better in combat than one might expect
Both seem to have made political enemies
Both seem to have good relationships with the rest of the crew (certain XOs and political observers not withstanding), and they don't take particular pleasure in issuing punishment
Both captains insist on skilled gunnery and good practice with said guns.
Both have a strong attachment to their ships
Both have done better in combat than one might expect
Both seem to have made political enemies
Both seem to have good relationships with the rest of the crew (certain XOs and political observers not withstanding), and they don't take particular pleasure in issuing punishment
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Eleventh Century Remnant
- Jedi Council Member
- Posts: 2361
- Joined: 2006-11-20 06:52am
- Location: Scotland
gtg947h, I'm not entirely certain where you're going with that. Of a series which is widely praised precisely for it's sense of time and place, for conjuring up the atmosphere of the time in which it is set- what sense would it make to pluck a character out of that and transplant him to a milieu so vastly different? As an act of imitation, that would be closer to futility than flattery.
It's worth picking up N.A.M. Rodger's "The Wooden World", and pretty much anything else of his but that in particular, for a look at how common, or not, those traits were- and how the balance shifted over time, with the changing political atmosphere. Read up on that, and other services- I would very much like to know more about the Russian navy; does anyone out there have any recommendations?- and basically form a picture of the feeback loop, how the nation affects the service and the service affects the nation.
Abstract it out to first principles, and then apply those principles to the sci-fi world of your choice, in this case the Starfleet of the Galactic Empire. It is not a comforting picture. It probably should be a lot uglier than I'm painting it.
For one thing, Human High Culture was probably eagerly embraced by the naval high command, not out of genuine bigotry, but as a filtering mechanism and a move to make greater standardisation possible, by removing some of the more exotic life support- and life style and attitude- requirements. Plumbing does matter if 10% of your crew breathe fluorine. They might have regretted the rationale, but they have no reason not to embrace the results. Over time, that probably did harden into genuine bigotry, though.
Lennart is not so much one of the old school as one of the odd school; he's at home with the politics behind it, and uses that knowledge to finesse some operational latitude. Anyway,
Ch 30
Orbital space over Ghorn II was getting distinctly crowded; so much so that the squadron, and it’s cripples, had moved out to L4. Mirannon had grumbled about losing time on that, but kept working anyway.
Tarazed Meridian had followed Black Prince’s fashion by painting up the silhouette of the rRasfenoni frigate- over the sector group’s objections. Whether they were wise to do so was doubtful. Whether they were going to keep their ship wasn’t entirely certain, for that matter.
Most of the ships of the squadron had donated, whether they meant to or not, a large share of their engineering personnel.
Mirannon had just about invented the perpetual motion machine; himself. He was so busy organising, evaluating and testing and deciding what needed to be done, he was shorting the unimportant stuff like sleep and food.
Not that he actually had to; there were at least two other officers of equal rank, and supposed expertise- the chief engineers of Dynamic and Perseverance.
Then there was the committee that ran Voracious’s engine spaces, the frigates’ chief engineers, and the dozens of men- and three women and two of uncertain or variable gender- who held the post on the smaller ships of the squadron.
He had more than enough deputies, theoretically able and at least approximately willing or at least determined not to get caught out lagging behind, so the point of doing it all himself was?
Either I am not a control freak, he was telling himself as he watched the sensor data come in of the cracks in Tarazed Meridian’s hull frame, or I am the worst kind- one in denial.
I have competent deputies and juniors, men I trained myself; I know how much I can safely leave them to be getting on with. I’ve had enough time to make fair assessments of the rest of the squadron’s engineer teams.
Professional pride gone wrong? No man better than his logic, no-one more sound than the work he does- coupled to a warped imperative to maintain his position and his rank by being the rightest, by getting to decisions before anyone else, even the men whose competence he trusted to make them on their own?
Doing more than anyone else, to justify my rank and place?
Could be something in that, but it’s a fool’s act to try to do more than everybody else, Mirannon told himself, with no real expectation that he was listening.
I wonder if this force crap could actually be good for something, he thought. Does the whole increased endurance aspect, biophysical potential, work when you’re actually doing something useful, or does it have to be either ‘om’ or ‘rargh’?
No time to spare to om- to experiment with the supposed light, no staff to spare to do things- well, murder probably- with the dark. If the force is a disease, then we should treat it.
If it’s an asset, then we, the Skipper and myself, need a cost-benefit analysis, to decide how to best exploit it. A valid analysis is going to take more data- hmmm. What have we here?
His subconscious mind had been watching the survey data come in. Tarazed Meridian’s team had been sounding the hull, releasing a time-coded pattern of vibrations and monitoring how they reverberated.
It was a second-string procedure, and he was mainly doing it to check the integrity of the internal monitoring system.
Other quirk, he thought, we wouldn’t be going to all this trouble if it was bad news. That, we’d accept. Irrationally.
If the network was telling me that the hull had delaminated and had more flaws in it than a politician’s logic, then we’d grumble, try to avoid the responsibility for writing her off, until somebody snapped and agreed to do the paperwork.
As it is, the damage looks to be confined to the actual containment shell. Worth analysing, that- or recording for subsequent analysis, under the circumstances.
Which is good, because the reactor containment vessel can be removed in one piece. One badly cracked and gouged piece, but there are procedures for it.
Straightforward dockyard job, and with the priorities Adannan can obtain we can get that down from the usual three months to five or six days.
There’s another job someone is going to have to do; oversight. Keeping the locals honest, in more senses of the term than one. A panic job like that is likely to have it’s troubles anyway, even without the possibility of flanging it, contractor fraud and outright sabotage.
‘Prokhor, what do you make of this?’ he asked Tarazed Meridian’s chief engineer.
Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Prokhor Subradal was an interesting contrast; he was a Muun. So thin that if he stood side on he almost disappeared, skin dotted with acid burns.
Mirannon hadn’t quite got around to asking him what he was doing in a Starfleet uniform, in a violent occupation far from home. Time to find out.
‘Not unpredictable.’ He said, slightly condescending. ‘Given Tarazed Meridian’s resuming the action, and managing to maintain combative efficiency in other respects, why should it surprise you that the rest of the hull should show no major fault?’
‘That much is obvious.’ Mirannon said coldly. He disliked the muun’s supercilious tone- what did that mean, anyway? Something to do with cilia, feelers? Or just plain silly?
What I mean is, how did it manage to remain relatively intact? Some shock damage, mostly fixable, but the main frame withstood the concussion, didn’t dislocate.
The main reactor chamber didn’t rupture. Autosystem with a programmed shutdown reflex in some piece of legacy software?
Momentary loss of containment, long enough to fuse some of the emergent fractures? Fantastic luck if it was.
More likely the impact area momentarily flexed inward through the containment fields, they seared the shell and took most of the impact and it was that temporary contamination problem that autoSCRAMed the reactor.
Of course, I’m plucking hypotheses out of the aether here, but I think we can gather the evidence to properly put them to the proof. Ah, this should be good.’
‘With all due respect-‘ the Muun engineer began.
‘Are you some kind of warped, mutant politician? All right, that’s a tautology, but you mean ”you’re nuts”, don’t you? Might as well say what you really mean.’
‘How will this task give a return for the effort you intend to expend on it?’ Prokhor decided to say.
‘It probably won’t, but that’s not the point. This is going to be a hobby project, I need something to keep my brain ticking over while I’m not officially busy.’ Mirannon mocked himself.
‘You’re nuts.’ The Muun engineer said.
That was better. Mirannon chuckled, and said ‘Just how many normal people do you see prepared to accept responsibility for a fourteen trillion terawatt reactor set, and everything attached to it?’
The Muun’s forehead wrinkled, which considering how much there was of it was moderately impressive. ‘Did your tongue just slip there?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Mirannon grinned. Reinforced shell, thermal collectors and additional secondaries. ‘That’s the payoff for projects like this; superior exploitation through superior knowledge.’
‘Perhaps there is some point to abstraction after all.’ Prokhor agreed.
‘How did you get into this business, anyway?’ Mirannon asked. ‘I know Muuninlist is relatively strongly casted, and engineers are one of the higher castes, which normally I’d consider that social setup a massive waste of potential but the details mean you must be doing something right.’
‘It is an opportunity cost,’ the muun started to defend his way of life, ‘that society as a whole chooses to pay, and receives in these times a critical measure of stability and a useful focus of effort- ah. Humour.’
‘You can drop the we-are-rational-beings-who-know-only-logic act, to get this far in the Starfleet you have to be able to take a joke.’
‘My race is also famous as bankers, accountants and efficiency experts.’ Prokhor reminded him.
‘Point taken.’ Mirannon acknowledged- although that was a well concealed taking of the piss in there anyway. ‘Question still stands.’
‘In the chaos of the first war, the probability of personal survival seemed significantly greater behind the guns than in front.’ The Muun stated.
That was how a lot of people, including Mirannon, had found themselves in the Starfleet. ‘I stayed because of…inertia, and certain private reasons.’
‘The reason I ask is that I have a particular job in mind. What do you think happens next to Tarazed Meridian?’ Mirannon asked him, wondering if the private reasons included any form of embezzlement and corruption.
‘Obviously something other than the expected, or you wouldn’t bother to say so. A ship that has lost it’s main power plant could easily be condemned to be broken up. Is the departure from the norm you have in mind that it is not to be so?
To remove and replace the reactor module would be a 160-day,’ he licked a finger and held it in the air as if he was testing the breeze, ‘possibly 170-day job.’
That was a lot longer than Mirannon’s estimate, although presumably he knew the local repair yards well enough to have a reason for that claim.
‘That’s what I intend. If we call it in as an emergency priority override, I want it done in six days, not a hundred and sixty.’
The muun boggled slightly. Six days? To move how much matter? The seven hundred metre frigate weighed a hundred and sixty million tons, the reactor globe alone nineteen million. Not that big a deal.
Cutting it loose, fusing a replacement in place, testing it, attaching the power couplings, feeding shields, tensors, stasis and relative-inertial fields through it- the size of the job was trivial, it was the complexity.
To do it in anything like that time wasn’t a heavy lifting problem, it was a test of competence under pressure. That was what the sector repair yards might have a problem with.
‘What would you say,’ Mirannon tried not to make it sound like he was probing, which he was, ‘if I mentioned that it would be a superb opportunity to exploit the system?’ He was watching the Muun’s reaction carefully.
‘High levels of wastage are all too likely, oversight is rushed off their feet; a lot of kit and a lot of credits could go walking, in a situation like that.’
As he had suspected, the Muun was too rational to commit himself out of hand. ‘I would say that the situation required careful analysis, based on the precise conditions obtaining at the time.’
‘You probably know the numbers yourself anyway, but the usual reckoning is that the Republic fleet paid an average of a hundred and forty-seven percent of ideal market value for it’s ships. Some of the overrun was legitimate waste, but not much.
Remarkably few people want to commit themselves as to how well the Empire’s doing by comparison, but I reckon the situation’s worse.
Enforcement are less likely to be on the take themselves, true, but much less likely to spot someone who is. And there are so many more and bigger opportunities…’
Stang, Mirannon thought. If I overdo the pitch I might actually talk him into it.
‘Commander, as part of an old style formation, the bounty and prize regulations still apply to you, do they not?’ Prokhor probed in his turn.
‘As a matter of fact, they do.’ The basic rate of pay was higher than it had been in the Republic, but bounties for destroyed enemy ships and the proceeds of captures being sold off were no longer paid.
The Imperial Starfleet officially no longer needed the mercenary impulse, it’s spacemen and marines fought for the glory of the New Order; and that and three credits would buy you an ale.
Legally speaking, bounties were still paid for the destruction or capture of enemy or renegade vessels; but they went into the coffers of the organisation, not the individuals involved.
One of the more interesting organisational cockups that had befallen- in the sense of ‘carefully arranged’- Black Prince was that, because of her theoretically interim position- however firmly she actually belonged to DesRon 851- the old rules still applied.
Considering the extent of her score sheet, most of the veterans who had been with the ship for a while were fairly well off.
‘Does that also apply to the ships attached?’ Prokhor asked carefully.
Mirannon sensed an end-run. ‘For the duration of your assignment to 851-Yod, yes.’
‘That should be a substantial influx of raw credits, then. For the time being I will have enough to do working that into my existing portfolio…perhaps next year.’ Prokhor declined, fairly straight faced; hard to tell what he was thinking.
For a short moment, Mirannon actually wanted to have the force, if only to detect the depth of lie. Then again, that would deprive his brain of the exercise it took to actually work it out.
Prokhor was not honest, at least not sufficiently honest to turn it down out of hand. On the other hand, was he greedy enough to omit to consider his own personal future on a ship that had been jury-rigged back together by a gang of scheming packrats, who regarded theft as one of the perks of the job?
‘On the other side of the credchip, have you considered what, exactly, is being wasted here?’
‘If the Imperial Starfleet has so much taxpayer’s credit coming in that it can afford to be exploited thus, and continue to grow at its present rate, then the place for a cunning exploiter is clearly in the administrative branches.’ The Muun replied.
‘Point taken.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘No necessary link between greed and intelligence, though- and this is the problem; the reason for the crash priority is because Captain Lennart wants your ship back in the line before we have to deploy properly.
How would you feel about having to look after a ship that’s been rebuilt under those conditions?’
‘Ah. The demand side of the equation.’ Prokhor quipped, thinking about it. ‘What would you have done if I had leaped enthusiastically at the possibility of making a few credits off the fat hog of the Starfleet?’
‘If you go around leaping enthusiastically at fat hogs, I’d have signed you up to a Hutt dating service.’ Mirannon said, before going on to mention the stick. ‘Seriously? Had you audited.’
‘The Hutts may be a lesser sacrifice, although with their affinity for money, and the necessary investment in personal security to keep them away, there might be little difference in the long run. That would be a genuinely vile thing to do, an audit.’ The Muun shivered thinking about it.
‘Viler than sending out a half-finished, half-reliable ship? You,’ Mirannon prodded a finger at him, ‘are the key being, in the key position, to make sure it goes to plan- or not.’
‘I have to manage and maintain whatever the yard leaves us with, so I do have a direct personal interest.’ The Muun said, thinking unpleasant thoughts about being responsible for a half- botched hypermatter reactor. ‘Six days?’
‘This ship has to be ready in another nine. Take no more time than that, the real timescale is, as ever, ASAP. Your estimate was double my own; if the local yards are that sloppy, you’ll have your work cut out stopping them trying to rob you blind.
Which is secondary,’ Mirannon reminded him, ‘to making sure they do good work.’
‘Power, structure, ion engines, hyperdrive, computing, and now project manager and thief-taker on top. Does my basic rate of pay go up to compensate for the extra challenges involved?’ Prokhor asked.
‘Why do you think so many people resort to fraud?’ Mirannon asked, rhetorically, then went on ‘Ah, it’s not so bad. What other job is going to give you so varied a range of experience and such a depth of responsibility?’
‘Being the janitor in a Coruscanti skyscraper probably comes close, but with half the stress and none of the danger.’ Prokhor said, gloomily. ‘We’ll get it done.’
On board the Dynamic, Falldess was not especially impressed. She had arrived in mid exercise, apparently; the destroyer was under simulated attack, and suffering from local shield failures, ionisations, compartment breaches- all too familiar a sight.
At first she had assumed that it was hazing, out of rivalry and jealousy, and determined to take it professionally, be cool about it. Then she started paying more attention to the reactions of the crew, and noticed how close to panic some of them were.
Whoever was running it was doing a fairly good job of simulating battle damage; the sound effects over the ship’s PA, the lighting and the vent system, worst of all the compensators, all contributed.
The crew’s reactions were barely contained panic; too much screaming, too much running around, few traces of concerted, disciplined action.
As she listened to the thudding of the impacts through the deck frame- simulated- she realised what they were being hit with wasn’t actually that bad. Medium gun fire, no more.
She turned to the junior lieutenant who had met her shuttle. ‘What were the terms of reference for this?’
‘A planetary ion cannon hit paralysed the ship, she drifted out of range, we’re being pursued by system defence boats trying to finish us off before we can bring things back on line.’
‘Who’s winning?’ she asked.
‘System defence boats, I think.’
It certainly seemed that way; she looked at the chaos around her and itched to start doing something about it, take charge and tell them what do to- but it was a side of the job she didn’t understand very well herself, and it was another man’s ship.
The path aft to the bridge tower was long and convoluted, and she got to see quite a lot of what was going wrong.
One problem, she simply couldn’t stop herself getting involved with. She heard the shouting first; went to see. Two men and a droid, blue armbands, shouting at a regulatory branch PO.
‘Get out of the way, you kriffing idiot-‘ Most people thought that you had to be a computer to understand the Imperial Starfleet’s system of rates, but rank was clear enough. For an Able Spaceman, no more, to swear at a regulator PO was unlikely verging on death wish.
‘What did you call me, boy? Now shut up and lie down like a good little casualty before I rip you-‘
‘We’re exempt, don’t you know what blue means or are you submoronic as well as colour blind?’
On a damage control exercise, with confusing conditions, hostile environments and high powered tools being wielded by frightened men, there was a predictably increased risk of real accident- genuine casualties in addition to the simulated ones.
Command had prepared properly by arranging a ‘blue team’ of medics and other personnel exempt from the conditions of the exercise, who would deal with the genuinely hurt and damaged- but the regulatory branch seemed not to have got the memo.
She got there just as the regulator swung for the medic; he went down, and the other medic and the droid jumped him.
Falldess found it hard to believe; had it been staged for her benefit? A reaction test? If so, they were very good actors, genuine-seeming hate for each other, genuine shock and horror as they found an unfamiliar and fairly senior officer glaring at them.
‘You, able spacer-‘
‘Korschjleim, casualty retrieval technician, ma’am.’ The bloody nose medic said, standing up.
‘You may be right, but you’re a fool. To swear at and swing for a superior rate, even one in the wrong- you will be reported for this. Now get about your business, and fast.’
The medical team saluted and scuttled clear, leaving the petty officer. ‘Your name.’ She asked him, coldly.
‘Bosun’s Mate Second Sterdel, Commander.’ She could almost hear him thinking I don’t know her, not from my ship, don’t have to answer to her- and realising what she would do to him if he did.
‘Blue was the clearance colour of this exercise, was it not?’
‘Clearance colour?’ the BM2 looked bewildered.
No time for this nonsense, she thought. She pointed her finger at him, said ‘Zap. A rebel boarding party shot you, you are a casualty.
While you’re playing dead and waiting for your divisional officer to come and roast you, you may want to look up the terms of the exercise and work out what it was you got wrong.’
‘Commander? You can’t actually-‘
‘Lieutenant,’ Falldess asked her escort, ‘Can I borrow your sidearm?’
When she finally got to the bridge tower, she was shown into a ready room with two men already there. One officer, probably from this ship, one enlisted- interestingly wearing a uniform jacket with gunnery patches and Black Prince’s emblem.
‘Good afternoon, Commander.’ The officer- a navigation Lieutenant- said. ‘The captain’s been detained, he will be a little while.’
Falldess noticed the ranker was looking at the ceiling, playing ‘I’m not here, don’t take any notice’ so ostentatiously she couldn’t help noticing. Petty- no, recently promoted chief petty officer.
‘Explain.’ She asked him, specifically.
‘Unavoidable ship’s business.’ The lieutenant said. Oily tone.
Krivin Hruthhal ignored him. ‘Captain Dordd didn’t intend to take part in the exercise itself, just observe, but the crew managed to turn it into a grade alpha cluster- excuse me, ma’am, a major mess. He had to take charge personally, just to ensure that they would do something, and maybe learn something. Maybe.’
‘I have had enough of your disrespect. You will-’ the lieutenant snapped back.
‘The Commander asked me a direct question, Lieutenant. Sir.’ Hruthhal said, with no respect whatsoever.
‘Why are you here?’ Falldess asked the petty officer.
‘The turret team was detached from Black Prince to perform instructional duty on this ship; right now, I’m here because we were handling the simulated attack, and the Lieutenant and the Senior Chief couldn’t be spared.’
‘Chief Petty Officer, you will keep silent!’ the lieutenant shouted at him.
On one hand, Falldess thought, the solidarity of the officer corps. On the other, she wanted to find out what the petty officer had to say- and quiz him about this ship and his own.
‘Why would that be, Lieutenant? I certainly don’t feel disrespected.’
The comment ‘don’t worry, I’m sure we can arrange something’ passed across Hruthhal’s mind, but he knew better than to say it. Besides which, this was definitely not a good time.
‘This man and the rest of his team have been consistently and aggressively disobedient, cited standing orders and special priviledge more times than I can count-‘
Falldess suppressed a laugh at Hruthhal’s expression; it was true, the subassembly team chief was thinking, he really can’t count that high. Careful to keep that expression away from the lieutenant, though.
‘Have formal charges been presented?’ Falldess asked.
‘Yes. Yes, they have.’ The lieutenant said, with repressed anger. This wasn’t fair. He was here to extend his captain’s apologies, how had he got stuck between this near-rebel enlistee and a woman officer with a chip on her shoulder? He presumed she did. Most of them did.
‘And?’ Falldess asked.
‘Our divisional officer dismissed the charges,’ Hruthhal pointed out, looking embarrassed, ‘with the comment, endorsed by the gunnery officer, that a ship whose record was one of consistent failure to perform hardly deserved respect.’
‘You’re not supposed to know that.’ The Lieutenant screamed at him.
‘Grapevine, sir. And really, we wouldn’t have said anything that harsh ourselves, you know that. If it makes you feel any better, our Nav reprimanded them both for failing in courtesy towards a brother officer.’ Hruthhal reported.
‘Lieutenant, before you get thoroughly sidetracked-‘ by either drawing your blaster and executing him on the spot or drowning in your own bile, whichever comes first, Falldess thought- ‘there are certain things I would like to ask the Gunner’s Mate here.’
At that point, a flushed looking Dordd pushed the door open and walked in. He looked like he had been living on a diet of lemons, Hruthhal thought; sour, irritated expression, thinner than usual. Hruthhal and the two officers stood to attention.
‘Commander Falldess, CPO.’ He acknowledged them, waved them to their seats. ‘Thank you, lieutenant, you can go now.’
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I wish to press charges against GM1 Hruthhal, of indiscipline, insubordination and disrespect.’ He said, rigidly formal.
Falldess watched Dordd control his expression, with difficulty. He could not call one of his own junior officers a raging halfwit in front of the commander of another ship, and a senior ranker from his own old command. However much he wanted to.
Then again, Dordd thought, what was the point of being a captain if you couldn’t make your wishes felt? ‘I’ll take it under consideration. Go.’ He pointed at the door.
‘But, Captain, he really has gone too far-‘
‘Are you disobeying an order now, too? Out.’
The young lieutenant left, and Dordd turned to study the two that were left.
‘Commander, you understand that Captain of the Line Lennart has asked me to review the information you retrieved in his absence?’
‘I more than half expected to have to account for the loss of my ship.’ Falldess admitted.
‘Tarazed Meridian is going to be repaired under crash priority. As for your actions,’ Dordd said, sounding sterner than he felt, if only through trying not to appear a fraud; he had been in charge, of this- floating zoo, he thought, for maybe one percent of the time she had spent in charge of a ship.
‘You destroyed a medium, damaged a light frigate and set up another, for the cost of severe localised damage to a heavy frigate. You broke even; there are others who have done far worse.’ Dordd tried to sound authoritative; he was uneasily aware that he might be one of them before long.
‘It’s the fact that we were not previously aware that we were at war with your opponents that Captain Lennart has deputised me to enquire into. Do you have your datacards?’
‘Log? Right here, Sir.’ Falldess handed over the datacard with her ship’s sensor data on it. Dordd plugged it in to the holoprojector built into the table; they watched the incident replay itself.
Dordd felt distinctly envious. She was rough-tongued and demanding, but her crew jumped when she said to, and did reasonably well- not perfect, but sufficient. He did see why Lennart was worried.
‘You left the search pattern and moved to engage on the strength of a gut feeling. No logic whatsoever, a snap decision- that turned out to be right, but you gave yourself too little time to plan, jumped in too close and stayed too long.
It came down to you because there was no time to consult, but there was time to think it out more thoroughly. What you do may be driven by instinct, but how it is done must be thought through.
Ten seconds, even- long enough to assess the enemy and the threat they posed to you, and position accordingly. Not in the way of a swarm of planet killers would have been a good start.’ Dordd said.
‘I had a duty to my people and my planet. Perhaps I could have done it more elegantly, at less cost, but you did say that you thought I had made the right decision.’
Note to self, Dordd thought, stop leaving hostages to fortune. ‘Hruthhal?’
He had been looking at the external data, the ship’s sensor picture. ‘The fighters are familiar, they’re the key. Notice- no ejections. Under LTL fire there wouldn’t be many, but here there were none.
No survivors to be interrogated. Here, the part after you had been hit; watch the retreating ship, and the wreck.
The life pods; not all of them function. Some must have been too badly concussed. The minelayer performs retrieval, on as many as it can, then opens fire on the rest.’ Falldess looked in horror at that, then reminded herself what they were dealing with.
‘Worse,’ Hruthhal went on, ‘unless they’re using markerless turbolasers, some- these three pods here, here and here- self destruct. No-one to tell the tale.
Sir, I bet that if you were to go back to the predicted position of that wreck and the bombardment drone swarm, you’d find nothing but a cloud of plasma.’
‘That depends,’ Dordd said slowly, thinking, ‘on whether their politicians can react quickly enough to send out a clean-up crew fast enough to be done and away, before we can catch them in the act.
Com-scan,’ he raised his voice and the internal network caught it and routed his words, ‘get me Group Captain Vehrec on the Voracious. Excuse me.’ He said to the two still at the table, went into one of the side rooms to arrange it.
‘Why are you here? Falldess asked Hruthhal.
‘No disrespect intended, ma’am, but, well, I’m the closest thing we’ve got to a specialist in faking it.’ Hruthhal admitted.
‘We’ve come up with entire nonexistent battles before now, for the amusement and diversion of Rebel intelligence. I think Captain Dordd thought, well, in case the evidence had been gilded a little bit?’
‘I think I understand why that lieutenant wanted you shot.’ Falldess said, dryly. She would decide whether to let her anger loose in a moment. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that I made this up?’
‘No, ma’am- that they did. Would you really do something this inherently dubious, this likely to bring retribution, under your own colours? Would anyone with the sense and expertise to do it fail to take precautions against being caught?’
Falldess tried to think about it. I have just done a terrible thing, she imagined, of great future profit to myself and my kind. Am I going to be embarrassed? Ashamed?
Not, she decided, if I have the stomach for such a thing in the first place. I’m certainly not going to want to get caught. Badly enough to be willing to blow myself up?
These beings- why don’t they migrate? Exploit empty, unclaimed space- there are more than enough barren lands. Fear. They think the universe might be out to get them- and if it finds out what they’ve been doing, it will.
They want to move slowly, carve their way outwards. Eliminate the threats as they go. Would they resort to open war if they thought they had a chance?
Have they, in the past? I need to find out more about them.
As a military operation, it would be inconceivable to do something that momentous and bloody under someone else’s flag.
The crews would need to know that their people and their civilisation were behind them…they would probably need the full weight of service discipline to make them go through with it, for that matter.
This was not necessarily a conventional operation of war, though; it could be political, and that put it a hair’s breadth away from piracy and all it’s tricks. In that case it was reasonable to expect a false flag, and all available forms of deception.
The elimination, even the self-elimination, of anyone capable of talking was a strange pointer. In her experience a band of pirates might be that careless of each other’s skins, but not their own.
Not random hirelings. Somebody organised, a Cause that they cared enough about to die for.
Something solid enough to gain vengeance on.
‘Commander? This bit, here.’ Hruthhal caught her attention. It was one of the earlier hits, one of the MTL.
Apparently it had torn up part of the command frigate’s hull badly enough that the compensator node had failed. The area around the direct hit was melted, but there was enough loose scrap metal and fittings from the compensator failure to draw conclusions from. And a couple of bodies.
Small, about one meter thirty, asymmetric- septapodal, two legs and five arms. rRasfenoni.
‘Can you tell,’ she asked, ‘if if what he’s wearing is standard issue to their regular forces?’ Forcing herself to be calm, and to judge on the evidence.
‘That shape, I’d be surprised if anyone else made gear to fit them- checking now.’ Hruthhal started an image library search, through the sector databank.
Dordd walked back into the main ready room. ‘Why didn’t Captain Lennart arrange that himself?’ she asked him.
‘Sidetracked dealing with the political situation. He has an excuse, he’s a flag officer now, he has many duties, of which squaring things with our oversight and the sector group probably do come first. Why didn’t you or I think of it?’ Dordd asked.
‘Ah, Captain?’ Hruthhal said, trying to change the subject. ‘The other reason I drew this detail? I was deputised to pass on a message, by word of mouth only, to yourself.’ He glanced at Falldess.
Dordd was thinking about it when the com beeped. ‘Captain? Com-Scan watch officer. Operational directive incoming from Black Prince.’
Dordd looked at Hruthhal, who shrugged. ‘Just give me the gist of it.’
‘It says, Captain, in the temporary absence of Captain of the Line Lennart you are acting squadron commander, and it authorises you to make a reconnaissance run in the direction of the rRasfenoni with the sweep line and elements of recon-A. It’s issued under the hand of Commander Brenn, and authenticates.’
Falldess watched Dordd swallow his bile. He was not having a good day.
‘On my authority, terminate the exercise. Leave the damage report and the charge sheets in my office.’ He added, wearily. ‘Was that the message?’ He said to Hruthhal.
‘Um- no, Captain. It was much more political than that.’
‘Spit it out, she’s a line commander, she’ll need to know.’ Dordd said, already sufficiently disgruntled.
‘If you think it wise, Captain.’ Hruthhal said, clearly meaning that he didn’t. ‘Captain of the Line Lennart has gone off to, the rRasfenoni seem to be in alliance with, well, the Alliance.
We’ve seen them in company with rebel forces before. He’s gone off to poison that, at least break up the relationship, at best get them shooting at each other. He asked us to send on any other information we managed to extract from the data.’
‘So he does believe it was them.’ Falldess said, almost crowing.
‘Not quite, Commander, he, ah, it looks enough like them that if he uses that as a political bomb, the blast radius is big enough to do the damage he wants, even if it is a little off target.’ Hruthhal metaphorised.
‘The other part of it is, well, how did they manage to get away with it for so long? Look at the number of ecological disasters in the sector.
Goes back to the republic but it’s still happening now, we must be looking at extreme stupidity or active complicity on the part of the Sector government. We could end up shooting at them as well.’
‘Glorious.’ Dordd said, sarcastically. ‘Nine Imperators, an Ordinator, a Proelium and an Urbanus light cruiser? Black Prince might be comfortable at those odds, but not this ship.’
‘Mine in their hands for major repair.’ Falldess pointed out. ‘I suppose there is a certain advantage in conducting a cutting out operation on your own frigate.’
‘As part of that,’ Hruthhal continued, ‘and as if it was something new, we’re to avoid the ISB as far as possible.’
‘Ah.’ Falldess said. It was a ‘what have I done’ sort of ah, and Dordd picked up on it.
‘Something you’d like to tell me?’ Dordd asked her.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, meaning no, but no choice. ‘I was very rude to my navigator in particular, during the action. I apologised to him afterwards, but we thought about it and concocted a particular scheme. Tell me, Captain, have you noticed anything strange about the behaviour of HIMS Obdurate?’
‘Not strongly enough to think it worth concocting a scheme, no.’ Dordd said. He had, but he had been too absorbed in the strange behaviour of his own crew, and it was Vehrec’s problem anyway, as the line commander.
Falldess had been well off reservation in doing anything of the sort, interfering with the internal order of another officer’s command, and that could be an offence, but Dordd suspected there was worse to come.
‘We guessed that there was some form of political observer looking over Lieutenant-Commander Raesene’s shoulder, and decided to bait them. My nav, Senior Lieutenant Alurin, tempted them with the possibility of bearing witness against me- and they took the bait.’ Falldess related.
‘There is a fairly senior ISB investigation team on board that ship, we know now, here to collect evidence against the squadron in general and Captain of the Line Lennart in particular.’
‘A lunatic risk well taken.’ Dordd decided, thinking about what he could do about it. There were a range of options, stretching from having them arrested and shot to being on best behaviour and hoping they would go away.
He was thinking about the charges that could be brought against a pair of self- invited civilians and what legal cover they would have, when Hruthhal added
‘It gets kind of worse, Sir, Ma’am. There might be something for them to investigate- we have a pretty fair idea that our political overseer has a private agenda, which, ah, may not be in the best interests of the Empire. We might have to shoot Kor Alric, too.’
‘Is firing at it your solution to every problem?’ Falldess asked him.
‘Gunnery, ma’am.’ Hruthhal tapped the patch on his shoulder. ‘We usually find a way to make it apply.’
Why me? Dordd asked himself. Because you’re in charge, it’s your job to deal with this mess. Just because the buck stopped with him didn’t stop him asking ‘why me?’, especially when it felt as if the buck had decided to keep going and run straight over him.
‘Today,’ he decided, ‘has not been a good day. Tomorrow should be better, it’d have to work at being worse.’
‘Sir, in the name of the Galactic Spirit please don’t say things like that.’ Hruthhal asked. ‘We can’t shoot Fate.’
‘I second that.’ Falldess said. ‘In fact, I can think of one very real possibility; if the rRasfenoni decide to expiate their crimes and patch up their relationship with the rebel Alliance, by dropping a swarm of those planet- killers on the squadron as we sit here at anchor.’
‘Another challenge to be met,’ Dordd said, trying to summon up reserves of authority, ‘Most of your light forces are intact, we’ll need a perimeter and patrol line, Commander Falldess I think you had better return to your ship and alert your line. Don’t get arrested, don’t start any private wars. If you can help it.’
It's worth picking up N.A.M. Rodger's "The Wooden World", and pretty much anything else of his but that in particular, for a look at how common, or not, those traits were- and how the balance shifted over time, with the changing political atmosphere. Read up on that, and other services- I would very much like to know more about the Russian navy; does anyone out there have any recommendations?- and basically form a picture of the feeback loop, how the nation affects the service and the service affects the nation.
Abstract it out to first principles, and then apply those principles to the sci-fi world of your choice, in this case the Starfleet of the Galactic Empire. It is not a comforting picture. It probably should be a lot uglier than I'm painting it.
For one thing, Human High Culture was probably eagerly embraced by the naval high command, not out of genuine bigotry, but as a filtering mechanism and a move to make greater standardisation possible, by removing some of the more exotic life support- and life style and attitude- requirements. Plumbing does matter if 10% of your crew breathe fluorine. They might have regretted the rationale, but they have no reason not to embrace the results. Over time, that probably did harden into genuine bigotry, though.
Lennart is not so much one of the old school as one of the odd school; he's at home with the politics behind it, and uses that knowledge to finesse some operational latitude. Anyway,
Ch 30
Orbital space over Ghorn II was getting distinctly crowded; so much so that the squadron, and it’s cripples, had moved out to L4. Mirannon had grumbled about losing time on that, but kept working anyway.
Tarazed Meridian had followed Black Prince’s fashion by painting up the silhouette of the rRasfenoni frigate- over the sector group’s objections. Whether they were wise to do so was doubtful. Whether they were going to keep their ship wasn’t entirely certain, for that matter.
Most of the ships of the squadron had donated, whether they meant to or not, a large share of their engineering personnel.
Mirannon had just about invented the perpetual motion machine; himself. He was so busy organising, evaluating and testing and deciding what needed to be done, he was shorting the unimportant stuff like sleep and food.
Not that he actually had to; there were at least two other officers of equal rank, and supposed expertise- the chief engineers of Dynamic and Perseverance.
Then there was the committee that ran Voracious’s engine spaces, the frigates’ chief engineers, and the dozens of men- and three women and two of uncertain or variable gender- who held the post on the smaller ships of the squadron.
He had more than enough deputies, theoretically able and at least approximately willing or at least determined not to get caught out lagging behind, so the point of doing it all himself was?
Either I am not a control freak, he was telling himself as he watched the sensor data come in of the cracks in Tarazed Meridian’s hull frame, or I am the worst kind- one in denial.
I have competent deputies and juniors, men I trained myself; I know how much I can safely leave them to be getting on with. I’ve had enough time to make fair assessments of the rest of the squadron’s engineer teams.
Professional pride gone wrong? No man better than his logic, no-one more sound than the work he does- coupled to a warped imperative to maintain his position and his rank by being the rightest, by getting to decisions before anyone else, even the men whose competence he trusted to make them on their own?
Doing more than anyone else, to justify my rank and place?
Could be something in that, but it’s a fool’s act to try to do more than everybody else, Mirannon told himself, with no real expectation that he was listening.
I wonder if this force crap could actually be good for something, he thought. Does the whole increased endurance aspect, biophysical potential, work when you’re actually doing something useful, or does it have to be either ‘om’ or ‘rargh’?
No time to spare to om- to experiment with the supposed light, no staff to spare to do things- well, murder probably- with the dark. If the force is a disease, then we should treat it.
If it’s an asset, then we, the Skipper and myself, need a cost-benefit analysis, to decide how to best exploit it. A valid analysis is going to take more data- hmmm. What have we here?
His subconscious mind had been watching the survey data come in. Tarazed Meridian’s team had been sounding the hull, releasing a time-coded pattern of vibrations and monitoring how they reverberated.
It was a second-string procedure, and he was mainly doing it to check the integrity of the internal monitoring system.
Other quirk, he thought, we wouldn’t be going to all this trouble if it was bad news. That, we’d accept. Irrationally.
If the network was telling me that the hull had delaminated and had more flaws in it than a politician’s logic, then we’d grumble, try to avoid the responsibility for writing her off, until somebody snapped and agreed to do the paperwork.
As it is, the damage looks to be confined to the actual containment shell. Worth analysing, that- or recording for subsequent analysis, under the circumstances.
Which is good, because the reactor containment vessel can be removed in one piece. One badly cracked and gouged piece, but there are procedures for it.
Straightforward dockyard job, and with the priorities Adannan can obtain we can get that down from the usual three months to five or six days.
There’s another job someone is going to have to do; oversight. Keeping the locals honest, in more senses of the term than one. A panic job like that is likely to have it’s troubles anyway, even without the possibility of flanging it, contractor fraud and outright sabotage.
‘Prokhor, what do you make of this?’ he asked Tarazed Meridian’s chief engineer.
Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Prokhor Subradal was an interesting contrast; he was a Muun. So thin that if he stood side on he almost disappeared, skin dotted with acid burns.
Mirannon hadn’t quite got around to asking him what he was doing in a Starfleet uniform, in a violent occupation far from home. Time to find out.
‘Not unpredictable.’ He said, slightly condescending. ‘Given Tarazed Meridian’s resuming the action, and managing to maintain combative efficiency in other respects, why should it surprise you that the rest of the hull should show no major fault?’
‘That much is obvious.’ Mirannon said coldly. He disliked the muun’s supercilious tone- what did that mean, anyway? Something to do with cilia, feelers? Or just plain silly?
What I mean is, how did it manage to remain relatively intact? Some shock damage, mostly fixable, but the main frame withstood the concussion, didn’t dislocate.
The main reactor chamber didn’t rupture. Autosystem with a programmed shutdown reflex in some piece of legacy software?
Momentary loss of containment, long enough to fuse some of the emergent fractures? Fantastic luck if it was.
More likely the impact area momentarily flexed inward through the containment fields, they seared the shell and took most of the impact and it was that temporary contamination problem that autoSCRAMed the reactor.
Of course, I’m plucking hypotheses out of the aether here, but I think we can gather the evidence to properly put them to the proof. Ah, this should be good.’
‘With all due respect-‘ the Muun engineer began.
‘Are you some kind of warped, mutant politician? All right, that’s a tautology, but you mean ”you’re nuts”, don’t you? Might as well say what you really mean.’
‘How will this task give a return for the effort you intend to expend on it?’ Prokhor decided to say.
‘It probably won’t, but that’s not the point. This is going to be a hobby project, I need something to keep my brain ticking over while I’m not officially busy.’ Mirannon mocked himself.
‘You’re nuts.’ The Muun engineer said.
That was better. Mirannon chuckled, and said ‘Just how many normal people do you see prepared to accept responsibility for a fourteen trillion terawatt reactor set, and everything attached to it?’
The Muun’s forehead wrinkled, which considering how much there was of it was moderately impressive. ‘Did your tongue just slip there?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Mirannon grinned. Reinforced shell, thermal collectors and additional secondaries. ‘That’s the payoff for projects like this; superior exploitation through superior knowledge.’
‘Perhaps there is some point to abstraction after all.’ Prokhor agreed.
‘How did you get into this business, anyway?’ Mirannon asked. ‘I know Muuninlist is relatively strongly casted, and engineers are one of the higher castes, which normally I’d consider that social setup a massive waste of potential but the details mean you must be doing something right.’
‘It is an opportunity cost,’ the muun started to defend his way of life, ‘that society as a whole chooses to pay, and receives in these times a critical measure of stability and a useful focus of effort- ah. Humour.’
‘You can drop the we-are-rational-beings-who-know-only-logic act, to get this far in the Starfleet you have to be able to take a joke.’
‘My race is also famous as bankers, accountants and efficiency experts.’ Prokhor reminded him.
‘Point taken.’ Mirannon acknowledged- although that was a well concealed taking of the piss in there anyway. ‘Question still stands.’
‘In the chaos of the first war, the probability of personal survival seemed significantly greater behind the guns than in front.’ The Muun stated.
That was how a lot of people, including Mirannon, had found themselves in the Starfleet. ‘I stayed because of…inertia, and certain private reasons.’
‘The reason I ask is that I have a particular job in mind. What do you think happens next to Tarazed Meridian?’ Mirannon asked him, wondering if the private reasons included any form of embezzlement and corruption.
‘Obviously something other than the expected, or you wouldn’t bother to say so. A ship that has lost it’s main power plant could easily be condemned to be broken up. Is the departure from the norm you have in mind that it is not to be so?
To remove and replace the reactor module would be a 160-day,’ he licked a finger and held it in the air as if he was testing the breeze, ‘possibly 170-day job.’
That was a lot longer than Mirannon’s estimate, although presumably he knew the local repair yards well enough to have a reason for that claim.
‘That’s what I intend. If we call it in as an emergency priority override, I want it done in six days, not a hundred and sixty.’
The muun boggled slightly. Six days? To move how much matter? The seven hundred metre frigate weighed a hundred and sixty million tons, the reactor globe alone nineteen million. Not that big a deal.
Cutting it loose, fusing a replacement in place, testing it, attaching the power couplings, feeding shields, tensors, stasis and relative-inertial fields through it- the size of the job was trivial, it was the complexity.
To do it in anything like that time wasn’t a heavy lifting problem, it was a test of competence under pressure. That was what the sector repair yards might have a problem with.
‘What would you say,’ Mirannon tried not to make it sound like he was probing, which he was, ‘if I mentioned that it would be a superb opportunity to exploit the system?’ He was watching the Muun’s reaction carefully.
‘High levels of wastage are all too likely, oversight is rushed off their feet; a lot of kit and a lot of credits could go walking, in a situation like that.’
As he had suspected, the Muun was too rational to commit himself out of hand. ‘I would say that the situation required careful analysis, based on the precise conditions obtaining at the time.’
‘You probably know the numbers yourself anyway, but the usual reckoning is that the Republic fleet paid an average of a hundred and forty-seven percent of ideal market value for it’s ships. Some of the overrun was legitimate waste, but not much.
Remarkably few people want to commit themselves as to how well the Empire’s doing by comparison, but I reckon the situation’s worse.
Enforcement are less likely to be on the take themselves, true, but much less likely to spot someone who is. And there are so many more and bigger opportunities…’
Stang, Mirannon thought. If I overdo the pitch I might actually talk him into it.
‘Commander, as part of an old style formation, the bounty and prize regulations still apply to you, do they not?’ Prokhor probed in his turn.
‘As a matter of fact, they do.’ The basic rate of pay was higher than it had been in the Republic, but bounties for destroyed enemy ships and the proceeds of captures being sold off were no longer paid.
The Imperial Starfleet officially no longer needed the mercenary impulse, it’s spacemen and marines fought for the glory of the New Order; and that and three credits would buy you an ale.
Legally speaking, bounties were still paid for the destruction or capture of enemy or renegade vessels; but they went into the coffers of the organisation, not the individuals involved.
One of the more interesting organisational cockups that had befallen- in the sense of ‘carefully arranged’- Black Prince was that, because of her theoretically interim position- however firmly she actually belonged to DesRon 851- the old rules still applied.
Considering the extent of her score sheet, most of the veterans who had been with the ship for a while were fairly well off.
‘Does that also apply to the ships attached?’ Prokhor asked carefully.
Mirannon sensed an end-run. ‘For the duration of your assignment to 851-Yod, yes.’
‘That should be a substantial influx of raw credits, then. For the time being I will have enough to do working that into my existing portfolio…perhaps next year.’ Prokhor declined, fairly straight faced; hard to tell what he was thinking.
For a short moment, Mirannon actually wanted to have the force, if only to detect the depth of lie. Then again, that would deprive his brain of the exercise it took to actually work it out.
Prokhor was not honest, at least not sufficiently honest to turn it down out of hand. On the other hand, was he greedy enough to omit to consider his own personal future on a ship that had been jury-rigged back together by a gang of scheming packrats, who regarded theft as one of the perks of the job?
‘On the other side of the credchip, have you considered what, exactly, is being wasted here?’
‘If the Imperial Starfleet has so much taxpayer’s credit coming in that it can afford to be exploited thus, and continue to grow at its present rate, then the place for a cunning exploiter is clearly in the administrative branches.’ The Muun replied.
‘Point taken.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘No necessary link between greed and intelligence, though- and this is the problem; the reason for the crash priority is because Captain Lennart wants your ship back in the line before we have to deploy properly.
How would you feel about having to look after a ship that’s been rebuilt under those conditions?’
‘Ah. The demand side of the equation.’ Prokhor quipped, thinking about it. ‘What would you have done if I had leaped enthusiastically at the possibility of making a few credits off the fat hog of the Starfleet?’
‘If you go around leaping enthusiastically at fat hogs, I’d have signed you up to a Hutt dating service.’ Mirannon said, before going on to mention the stick. ‘Seriously? Had you audited.’
‘The Hutts may be a lesser sacrifice, although with their affinity for money, and the necessary investment in personal security to keep them away, there might be little difference in the long run. That would be a genuinely vile thing to do, an audit.’ The Muun shivered thinking about it.
‘Viler than sending out a half-finished, half-reliable ship? You,’ Mirannon prodded a finger at him, ‘are the key being, in the key position, to make sure it goes to plan- or not.’
‘I have to manage and maintain whatever the yard leaves us with, so I do have a direct personal interest.’ The Muun said, thinking unpleasant thoughts about being responsible for a half- botched hypermatter reactor. ‘Six days?’
‘This ship has to be ready in another nine. Take no more time than that, the real timescale is, as ever, ASAP. Your estimate was double my own; if the local yards are that sloppy, you’ll have your work cut out stopping them trying to rob you blind.
Which is secondary,’ Mirannon reminded him, ‘to making sure they do good work.’
‘Power, structure, ion engines, hyperdrive, computing, and now project manager and thief-taker on top. Does my basic rate of pay go up to compensate for the extra challenges involved?’ Prokhor asked.
‘Why do you think so many people resort to fraud?’ Mirannon asked, rhetorically, then went on ‘Ah, it’s not so bad. What other job is going to give you so varied a range of experience and such a depth of responsibility?’
‘Being the janitor in a Coruscanti skyscraper probably comes close, but with half the stress and none of the danger.’ Prokhor said, gloomily. ‘We’ll get it done.’
On board the Dynamic, Falldess was not especially impressed. She had arrived in mid exercise, apparently; the destroyer was under simulated attack, and suffering from local shield failures, ionisations, compartment breaches- all too familiar a sight.
At first she had assumed that it was hazing, out of rivalry and jealousy, and determined to take it professionally, be cool about it. Then she started paying more attention to the reactions of the crew, and noticed how close to panic some of them were.
Whoever was running it was doing a fairly good job of simulating battle damage; the sound effects over the ship’s PA, the lighting and the vent system, worst of all the compensators, all contributed.
The crew’s reactions were barely contained panic; too much screaming, too much running around, few traces of concerted, disciplined action.
As she listened to the thudding of the impacts through the deck frame- simulated- she realised what they were being hit with wasn’t actually that bad. Medium gun fire, no more.
She turned to the junior lieutenant who had met her shuttle. ‘What were the terms of reference for this?’
‘A planetary ion cannon hit paralysed the ship, she drifted out of range, we’re being pursued by system defence boats trying to finish us off before we can bring things back on line.’
‘Who’s winning?’ she asked.
‘System defence boats, I think.’
It certainly seemed that way; she looked at the chaos around her and itched to start doing something about it, take charge and tell them what do to- but it was a side of the job she didn’t understand very well herself, and it was another man’s ship.
The path aft to the bridge tower was long and convoluted, and she got to see quite a lot of what was going wrong.
One problem, she simply couldn’t stop herself getting involved with. She heard the shouting first; went to see. Two men and a droid, blue armbands, shouting at a regulatory branch PO.
‘Get out of the way, you kriffing idiot-‘ Most people thought that you had to be a computer to understand the Imperial Starfleet’s system of rates, but rank was clear enough. For an Able Spaceman, no more, to swear at a regulator PO was unlikely verging on death wish.
‘What did you call me, boy? Now shut up and lie down like a good little casualty before I rip you-‘
‘We’re exempt, don’t you know what blue means or are you submoronic as well as colour blind?’
On a damage control exercise, with confusing conditions, hostile environments and high powered tools being wielded by frightened men, there was a predictably increased risk of real accident- genuine casualties in addition to the simulated ones.
Command had prepared properly by arranging a ‘blue team’ of medics and other personnel exempt from the conditions of the exercise, who would deal with the genuinely hurt and damaged- but the regulatory branch seemed not to have got the memo.
She got there just as the regulator swung for the medic; he went down, and the other medic and the droid jumped him.
Falldess found it hard to believe; had it been staged for her benefit? A reaction test? If so, they were very good actors, genuine-seeming hate for each other, genuine shock and horror as they found an unfamiliar and fairly senior officer glaring at them.
‘You, able spacer-‘
‘Korschjleim, casualty retrieval technician, ma’am.’ The bloody nose medic said, standing up.
‘You may be right, but you’re a fool. To swear at and swing for a superior rate, even one in the wrong- you will be reported for this. Now get about your business, and fast.’
The medical team saluted and scuttled clear, leaving the petty officer. ‘Your name.’ She asked him, coldly.
‘Bosun’s Mate Second Sterdel, Commander.’ She could almost hear him thinking I don’t know her, not from my ship, don’t have to answer to her- and realising what she would do to him if he did.
‘Blue was the clearance colour of this exercise, was it not?’
‘Clearance colour?’ the BM2 looked bewildered.
No time for this nonsense, she thought. She pointed her finger at him, said ‘Zap. A rebel boarding party shot you, you are a casualty.
While you’re playing dead and waiting for your divisional officer to come and roast you, you may want to look up the terms of the exercise and work out what it was you got wrong.’
‘Commander? You can’t actually-‘
‘Lieutenant,’ Falldess asked her escort, ‘Can I borrow your sidearm?’
When she finally got to the bridge tower, she was shown into a ready room with two men already there. One officer, probably from this ship, one enlisted- interestingly wearing a uniform jacket with gunnery patches and Black Prince’s emblem.
‘Good afternoon, Commander.’ The officer- a navigation Lieutenant- said. ‘The captain’s been detained, he will be a little while.’
Falldess noticed the ranker was looking at the ceiling, playing ‘I’m not here, don’t take any notice’ so ostentatiously she couldn’t help noticing. Petty- no, recently promoted chief petty officer.
‘Explain.’ She asked him, specifically.
‘Unavoidable ship’s business.’ The lieutenant said. Oily tone.
Krivin Hruthhal ignored him. ‘Captain Dordd didn’t intend to take part in the exercise itself, just observe, but the crew managed to turn it into a grade alpha cluster- excuse me, ma’am, a major mess. He had to take charge personally, just to ensure that they would do something, and maybe learn something. Maybe.’
‘I have had enough of your disrespect. You will-’ the lieutenant snapped back.
‘The Commander asked me a direct question, Lieutenant. Sir.’ Hruthhal said, with no respect whatsoever.
‘Why are you here?’ Falldess asked the petty officer.
‘The turret team was detached from Black Prince to perform instructional duty on this ship; right now, I’m here because we were handling the simulated attack, and the Lieutenant and the Senior Chief couldn’t be spared.’
‘Chief Petty Officer, you will keep silent!’ the lieutenant shouted at him.
On one hand, Falldess thought, the solidarity of the officer corps. On the other, she wanted to find out what the petty officer had to say- and quiz him about this ship and his own.
‘Why would that be, Lieutenant? I certainly don’t feel disrespected.’
The comment ‘don’t worry, I’m sure we can arrange something’ passed across Hruthhal’s mind, but he knew better than to say it. Besides which, this was definitely not a good time.
‘This man and the rest of his team have been consistently and aggressively disobedient, cited standing orders and special priviledge more times than I can count-‘
Falldess suppressed a laugh at Hruthhal’s expression; it was true, the subassembly team chief was thinking, he really can’t count that high. Careful to keep that expression away from the lieutenant, though.
‘Have formal charges been presented?’ Falldess asked.
‘Yes. Yes, they have.’ The lieutenant said, with repressed anger. This wasn’t fair. He was here to extend his captain’s apologies, how had he got stuck between this near-rebel enlistee and a woman officer with a chip on her shoulder? He presumed she did. Most of them did.
‘And?’ Falldess asked.
‘Our divisional officer dismissed the charges,’ Hruthhal pointed out, looking embarrassed, ‘with the comment, endorsed by the gunnery officer, that a ship whose record was one of consistent failure to perform hardly deserved respect.’
‘You’re not supposed to know that.’ The Lieutenant screamed at him.
‘Grapevine, sir. And really, we wouldn’t have said anything that harsh ourselves, you know that. If it makes you feel any better, our Nav reprimanded them both for failing in courtesy towards a brother officer.’ Hruthhal reported.
‘Lieutenant, before you get thoroughly sidetracked-‘ by either drawing your blaster and executing him on the spot or drowning in your own bile, whichever comes first, Falldess thought- ‘there are certain things I would like to ask the Gunner’s Mate here.’
At that point, a flushed looking Dordd pushed the door open and walked in. He looked like he had been living on a diet of lemons, Hruthhal thought; sour, irritated expression, thinner than usual. Hruthhal and the two officers stood to attention.
‘Commander Falldess, CPO.’ He acknowledged them, waved them to their seats. ‘Thank you, lieutenant, you can go now.’
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I wish to press charges against GM1 Hruthhal, of indiscipline, insubordination and disrespect.’ He said, rigidly formal.
Falldess watched Dordd control his expression, with difficulty. He could not call one of his own junior officers a raging halfwit in front of the commander of another ship, and a senior ranker from his own old command. However much he wanted to.
Then again, Dordd thought, what was the point of being a captain if you couldn’t make your wishes felt? ‘I’ll take it under consideration. Go.’ He pointed at the door.
‘But, Captain, he really has gone too far-‘
‘Are you disobeying an order now, too? Out.’
The young lieutenant left, and Dordd turned to study the two that were left.
‘Commander, you understand that Captain of the Line Lennart has asked me to review the information you retrieved in his absence?’
‘I more than half expected to have to account for the loss of my ship.’ Falldess admitted.
‘Tarazed Meridian is going to be repaired under crash priority. As for your actions,’ Dordd said, sounding sterner than he felt, if only through trying not to appear a fraud; he had been in charge, of this- floating zoo, he thought, for maybe one percent of the time she had spent in charge of a ship.
‘You destroyed a medium, damaged a light frigate and set up another, for the cost of severe localised damage to a heavy frigate. You broke even; there are others who have done far worse.’ Dordd tried to sound authoritative; he was uneasily aware that he might be one of them before long.
‘It’s the fact that we were not previously aware that we were at war with your opponents that Captain Lennart has deputised me to enquire into. Do you have your datacards?’
‘Log? Right here, Sir.’ Falldess handed over the datacard with her ship’s sensor data on it. Dordd plugged it in to the holoprojector built into the table; they watched the incident replay itself.
Dordd felt distinctly envious. She was rough-tongued and demanding, but her crew jumped when she said to, and did reasonably well- not perfect, but sufficient. He did see why Lennart was worried.
‘You left the search pattern and moved to engage on the strength of a gut feeling. No logic whatsoever, a snap decision- that turned out to be right, but you gave yourself too little time to plan, jumped in too close and stayed too long.
It came down to you because there was no time to consult, but there was time to think it out more thoroughly. What you do may be driven by instinct, but how it is done must be thought through.
Ten seconds, even- long enough to assess the enemy and the threat they posed to you, and position accordingly. Not in the way of a swarm of planet killers would have been a good start.’ Dordd said.
‘I had a duty to my people and my planet. Perhaps I could have done it more elegantly, at less cost, but you did say that you thought I had made the right decision.’
Note to self, Dordd thought, stop leaving hostages to fortune. ‘Hruthhal?’
He had been looking at the external data, the ship’s sensor picture. ‘The fighters are familiar, they’re the key. Notice- no ejections. Under LTL fire there wouldn’t be many, but here there were none.
No survivors to be interrogated. Here, the part after you had been hit; watch the retreating ship, and the wreck.
The life pods; not all of them function. Some must have been too badly concussed. The minelayer performs retrieval, on as many as it can, then opens fire on the rest.’ Falldess looked in horror at that, then reminded herself what they were dealing with.
‘Worse,’ Hruthhal went on, ‘unless they’re using markerless turbolasers, some- these three pods here, here and here- self destruct. No-one to tell the tale.
Sir, I bet that if you were to go back to the predicted position of that wreck and the bombardment drone swarm, you’d find nothing but a cloud of plasma.’
‘That depends,’ Dordd said slowly, thinking, ‘on whether their politicians can react quickly enough to send out a clean-up crew fast enough to be done and away, before we can catch them in the act.
Com-scan,’ he raised his voice and the internal network caught it and routed his words, ‘get me Group Captain Vehrec on the Voracious. Excuse me.’ He said to the two still at the table, went into one of the side rooms to arrange it.
‘Why are you here? Falldess asked Hruthhal.
‘No disrespect intended, ma’am, but, well, I’m the closest thing we’ve got to a specialist in faking it.’ Hruthhal admitted.
‘We’ve come up with entire nonexistent battles before now, for the amusement and diversion of Rebel intelligence. I think Captain Dordd thought, well, in case the evidence had been gilded a little bit?’
‘I think I understand why that lieutenant wanted you shot.’ Falldess said, dryly. She would decide whether to let her anger loose in a moment. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that I made this up?’
‘No, ma’am- that they did. Would you really do something this inherently dubious, this likely to bring retribution, under your own colours? Would anyone with the sense and expertise to do it fail to take precautions against being caught?’
Falldess tried to think about it. I have just done a terrible thing, she imagined, of great future profit to myself and my kind. Am I going to be embarrassed? Ashamed?
Not, she decided, if I have the stomach for such a thing in the first place. I’m certainly not going to want to get caught. Badly enough to be willing to blow myself up?
These beings- why don’t they migrate? Exploit empty, unclaimed space- there are more than enough barren lands. Fear. They think the universe might be out to get them- and if it finds out what they’ve been doing, it will.
They want to move slowly, carve their way outwards. Eliminate the threats as they go. Would they resort to open war if they thought they had a chance?
Have they, in the past? I need to find out more about them.
As a military operation, it would be inconceivable to do something that momentous and bloody under someone else’s flag.
The crews would need to know that their people and their civilisation were behind them…they would probably need the full weight of service discipline to make them go through with it, for that matter.
This was not necessarily a conventional operation of war, though; it could be political, and that put it a hair’s breadth away from piracy and all it’s tricks. In that case it was reasonable to expect a false flag, and all available forms of deception.
The elimination, even the self-elimination, of anyone capable of talking was a strange pointer. In her experience a band of pirates might be that careless of each other’s skins, but not their own.
Not random hirelings. Somebody organised, a Cause that they cared enough about to die for.
Something solid enough to gain vengeance on.
‘Commander? This bit, here.’ Hruthhal caught her attention. It was one of the earlier hits, one of the MTL.
Apparently it had torn up part of the command frigate’s hull badly enough that the compensator node had failed. The area around the direct hit was melted, but there was enough loose scrap metal and fittings from the compensator failure to draw conclusions from. And a couple of bodies.
Small, about one meter thirty, asymmetric- septapodal, two legs and five arms. rRasfenoni.
‘Can you tell,’ she asked, ‘if if what he’s wearing is standard issue to their regular forces?’ Forcing herself to be calm, and to judge on the evidence.
‘That shape, I’d be surprised if anyone else made gear to fit them- checking now.’ Hruthhal started an image library search, through the sector databank.
Dordd walked back into the main ready room. ‘Why didn’t Captain Lennart arrange that himself?’ she asked him.
‘Sidetracked dealing with the political situation. He has an excuse, he’s a flag officer now, he has many duties, of which squaring things with our oversight and the sector group probably do come first. Why didn’t you or I think of it?’ Dordd asked.
‘Ah, Captain?’ Hruthhal said, trying to change the subject. ‘The other reason I drew this detail? I was deputised to pass on a message, by word of mouth only, to yourself.’ He glanced at Falldess.
Dordd was thinking about it when the com beeped. ‘Captain? Com-Scan watch officer. Operational directive incoming from Black Prince.’
Dordd looked at Hruthhal, who shrugged. ‘Just give me the gist of it.’
‘It says, Captain, in the temporary absence of Captain of the Line Lennart you are acting squadron commander, and it authorises you to make a reconnaissance run in the direction of the rRasfenoni with the sweep line and elements of recon-A. It’s issued under the hand of Commander Brenn, and authenticates.’
Falldess watched Dordd swallow his bile. He was not having a good day.
‘On my authority, terminate the exercise. Leave the damage report and the charge sheets in my office.’ He added, wearily. ‘Was that the message?’ He said to Hruthhal.
‘Um- no, Captain. It was much more political than that.’
‘Spit it out, she’s a line commander, she’ll need to know.’ Dordd said, already sufficiently disgruntled.
‘If you think it wise, Captain.’ Hruthhal said, clearly meaning that he didn’t. ‘Captain of the Line Lennart has gone off to, the rRasfenoni seem to be in alliance with, well, the Alliance.
We’ve seen them in company with rebel forces before. He’s gone off to poison that, at least break up the relationship, at best get them shooting at each other. He asked us to send on any other information we managed to extract from the data.’
‘So he does believe it was them.’ Falldess said, almost crowing.
‘Not quite, Commander, he, ah, it looks enough like them that if he uses that as a political bomb, the blast radius is big enough to do the damage he wants, even if it is a little off target.’ Hruthhal metaphorised.
‘The other part of it is, well, how did they manage to get away with it for so long? Look at the number of ecological disasters in the sector.
Goes back to the republic but it’s still happening now, we must be looking at extreme stupidity or active complicity on the part of the Sector government. We could end up shooting at them as well.’
‘Glorious.’ Dordd said, sarcastically. ‘Nine Imperators, an Ordinator, a Proelium and an Urbanus light cruiser? Black Prince might be comfortable at those odds, but not this ship.’
‘Mine in their hands for major repair.’ Falldess pointed out. ‘I suppose there is a certain advantage in conducting a cutting out operation on your own frigate.’
‘As part of that,’ Hruthhal continued, ‘and as if it was something new, we’re to avoid the ISB as far as possible.’
‘Ah.’ Falldess said. It was a ‘what have I done’ sort of ah, and Dordd picked up on it.
‘Something you’d like to tell me?’ Dordd asked her.
‘Yes,’ she admitted, meaning no, but no choice. ‘I was very rude to my navigator in particular, during the action. I apologised to him afterwards, but we thought about it and concocted a particular scheme. Tell me, Captain, have you noticed anything strange about the behaviour of HIMS Obdurate?’
‘Not strongly enough to think it worth concocting a scheme, no.’ Dordd said. He had, but he had been too absorbed in the strange behaviour of his own crew, and it was Vehrec’s problem anyway, as the line commander.
Falldess had been well off reservation in doing anything of the sort, interfering with the internal order of another officer’s command, and that could be an offence, but Dordd suspected there was worse to come.
‘We guessed that there was some form of political observer looking over Lieutenant-Commander Raesene’s shoulder, and decided to bait them. My nav, Senior Lieutenant Alurin, tempted them with the possibility of bearing witness against me- and they took the bait.’ Falldess related.
‘There is a fairly senior ISB investigation team on board that ship, we know now, here to collect evidence against the squadron in general and Captain of the Line Lennart in particular.’
‘A lunatic risk well taken.’ Dordd decided, thinking about what he could do about it. There were a range of options, stretching from having them arrested and shot to being on best behaviour and hoping they would go away.
He was thinking about the charges that could be brought against a pair of self- invited civilians and what legal cover they would have, when Hruthhal added
‘It gets kind of worse, Sir, Ma’am. There might be something for them to investigate- we have a pretty fair idea that our political overseer has a private agenda, which, ah, may not be in the best interests of the Empire. We might have to shoot Kor Alric, too.’
‘Is firing at it your solution to every problem?’ Falldess asked him.
‘Gunnery, ma’am.’ Hruthhal tapped the patch on his shoulder. ‘We usually find a way to make it apply.’
Why me? Dordd asked himself. Because you’re in charge, it’s your job to deal with this mess. Just because the buck stopped with him didn’t stop him asking ‘why me?’, especially when it felt as if the buck had decided to keep going and run straight over him.
‘Today,’ he decided, ‘has not been a good day. Tomorrow should be better, it’d have to work at being worse.’
‘Sir, in the name of the Galactic Spirit please don’t say things like that.’ Hruthhal asked. ‘We can’t shoot Fate.’
‘I second that.’ Falldess said. ‘In fact, I can think of one very real possibility; if the rRasfenoni decide to expiate their crimes and patch up their relationship with the rebel Alliance, by dropping a swarm of those planet- killers on the squadron as we sit here at anchor.’
‘Another challenge to be met,’ Dordd said, trying to summon up reserves of authority, ‘Most of your light forces are intact, we’ll need a perimeter and patrol line, Commander Falldess I think you had better return to your ship and alert your line. Don’t get arrested, don’t start any private wars. If you can help it.’
Last edited by Eleventh Century Remnant on 2009-11-15 10:46am, edited 1 time in total.
Once again, great job.
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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Vehrec
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It is very nice. Of course, due to the duration between updates, I find myself desireing a flowchart of who's who. I particularly like the dispersing of the fleet to prevent the dreaded Planet Killing Barrage from dropping on them like a ton of rectangular building things-although I wonder just how much time it takes to set up one of those-and how much energy.
Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)