Hull no. 721- a fanfic

[LadyTevar]

Maybe we should ask Stravo to put the chapters into the 'Cleaned Fiction' board.

[Vehrec]

It is certainly deserving of this honor. Make it so! *PMs the Mod of FF*

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

(Drools and babbles slightly, cut and paste from any Oscar acceptance speech, before starting to make sense eventually)-

First and foremost, yee-hah. I am certainly not going to say no to the prospect of my name up in lights.

But is this really what the Cleaned and Completed section is for? I thought it was mainly to make more accessible those stories that would otherwise slide off the front page and get undeservedly forgotten, and also on things that attract a lot of public interest- like StarCrossed, and now Armageddon???- to tidy it up and separate out the story from the commentary.

There are other stories out there that need preservation as much or more; now that The Humanist Inheritance has wandered off to murder some trees, and most excellent too, my own favourite candidates would probably be the Naked Stars trek AU from Imperial Overlord, Elheru Aran's Brother-Lieutenant Mattathias stories, and...most of IO's stuff to be honest, but those at the head of the list. Never mind Children of Heaven, which is in no danger of falling into obscurity any time soon.
Oh well. It's up to Stravo's judgement anyway, whenever real life lets him take the time and the energy.


Other things; I did put together a list of characters- accurate as of now in the story, including whoever has been named so far or important enough that they should have been, not including people who have died.



Dramatis Personae;

On board His Imperial Majesty’s Starship Black Prince, Imperator I-refit-II, hull no. 721

Captain of the Line Jorian Lennart, commanding officer Operational Pursuit Squadron 851-Yod, pathologically reluctant force user
Lieutenant-Commander (brevet Commander) Vasimir Mirhak-Ghulej, near-human, Executive Officer (suspended)
Commander Ielamathrum Brenn, human, male, Navigation Officer and heir- apparent

Air Commodore Antar Olleyri, commanding fighter forces, 851-Yod
Squadron Leader Quarin Vattiera, Alpha One
Major Kulban Levkow, Beta One
Squadron Leader Aron Jandras, Gamma One
Lieutenant-Commander Franjia Rahandravell, Epsilon One
Pilot Officer Zhered Gavrylsk, near-human, Epsilon Three
Flight Lieutenant Ardrith Yatrock, Epsilon Five
Flight Lieutenant Paludo Kramaner, Epsilon Nine
Flight Lieutenant Leirac Yrd, Epsilon adjutant
Squadron Technical Master Sargeant Billis Oregal, senior technician, Epsilon
Squadron Leader Romolano Avin, Mu One

High Colonel, brevet Major-General QAG-111, commanding 276th Atrisian (provisional 721st Armoured) Legion, ground forces 851-Yod
Captain Omega-17-Blue-Aleph-1, commander special operations detachment (Jedi Hunter Team)
Surgeon-Lieutenant BE-4413, medical officer, C coy Boarding Batallion
WO2 Omega-17-Blue-Aleph-3, investigations specialist, Jedi Hunter Team

Engineer-Commander Gethrim Mirannon, Chief Engineer and reluctant force user
Lieutenant Domolaris Ranner, power systems
Junior Lieutenant Levin Kitrich, apprentice, ion drive
Junior Lieutenant Idoni Tjalmin, apprentice, hyperdrive
Charge Chief Petty Officer Mallis Vilberksohn, hotel systems

Commander Obral Wathavrah, Gunnery Officer
WO1 Xarriyar Pernarin, ‘A’ watch local control designator officer
Lieutenant Pellor Aldrem, detached to HIMS Dynamic on instructor duty
Petty Officer Areath Suluur, tactical sensors and comms
Leading Spaceman Gort Fendon, power systems
Senior Chief Petty Officer Eddaru Gendrik, subassembly commander
Leading Spaceman Felric Tarshkavik, weapon mechanic
Chief Petty Officer Krivin Hruthhal, subassembly commander
Ordinary Spaceman Jhareylia Hathren, attached (ex Rebel spy)

Lieutenant-Commander Shandon Rythanor, Com-Scan Officer
Senior Lieutenant Ondrath Ntevi, Com-Scan ‘B’ Watch Commander
Chief Petty Officer Frevath Cormall, Signal Interpretation

Surgeon-Lieutenant Commander Zubaide Blei-Korberkk, chief medical officer
Surgeon-Lieutenant Uustinan Bergeron, medical monitoring


Parent Formation;
Rear-Admiral Stephan Rawlin, Commanding Fleet Destroyer Squadron 851
Engineer-Constructor Captain Philemon Sholokhov, Chief Technical Officer, 851


On board units attached to 851-Yod;
Captain Delvran Dordd, commanding Arrogant-class [Anon SD II] Star Destroyer Dynamic
Commander Ilarchu Ridatt, executive officer

Commander Stannis Lycarin, commanding Victory-III [Anon SD I] class Star Destroyer Perseverance
Commander Jiae Sarlatt, commanding Fulgor [Anon Star Frigate I] class Provornyy
Lieutenant-Commander Ebbirnoth Yeklendim, commanding Fulgor [Anon Star Frigate I] class Grey Princess


Group Captain Konstantin Vehrec, commander subcraft group, ranking officer Venator-class Star Destroyer Obdurate, Sweep Line
Senior Lieutenant Ludovic Caliphant, chief officer
Senior Lieutenant Garrant Kirritaine, gunnery officer

Lieutenant-Commander Karl-Anton Raesene, commanding Demolisher-class star frigate Obdurate
Section Leader of the Investigative Service (ISB) Michalis Fer Salif
Deputy Assistant Section Leader (ISB) Dorind Salif

Senior Field Agent (Interdiction) Eris Rontaine, Commander Customs Squadron 2263-H-975, detached to Starfleet service


Commander Aythellar Barth-Elstrand, commanding Meridian-class [Acclamator-II] Comarre Meridian, Recon Line A


Commander Vianca Falldess, commanding Meridian-class [Acclamator-II] Tarazed Meridian, Recon Line B
Lieutenant-Commander Prokhor Subradal, Chief Engineer
Senior Lieutenant Nakazon Alurin, Navigator

Lieutenant-Commander Conor Kovall, commanding RIF variant Strike [Verberor] Medium Frigate Blackwood


Uninvited guests;
Kor Alric Adannan, dark jedi
‘Laurentia’, 6NL-108-554E, aide/public relations
Banaar, aide/thug
Myfara Somoti, cyborg pilot
Igal, twi’lek slave brain-hacking test subject, liberated
Reni, twi’lek slave brain-hacking test subject, liberated


Vineland Sector;
Moff Edro Vlantir Xeale, Falleen sector governor
Vice-Admiral Domenic Gerlen, subsector commander
Doctor Edward Nygma, consultant attached to Sector Escort and Patrol Command (semi-retired Ubiqtorate analyst)


As far as the bombardment goes, basically, the minelayer can carry up to 40% of it’s mass as impactors.
Assuming it’s not much else on top of this than a drive, reactor and fuel setup- the civilian use/cover for such a ship would be as a high speed, high priority freight transport, clipper if you like- rough estimate, power output and acceleration of 2E23 W, Acclamator range, and 3,000 'g', but it needs an endurance at full output of at least 16,000 seconds to make it up to 80% of lightspeed and back.
Which means it’s carrying a kinetic energy of ~E27 J at deployment speed.

That kind of acceleration- burning full power for eight thousand seconds to reach attack velocity- is going to set up a massive, obvious flare, so the procedure is jump out to a surveyed area where you can get away with this, enough stellar clutter around to make the flare nothing desperately out of the ordinary- near a black hole, near the galactic core, near a globular cluster, or simply far enough away from anyone capable of putting two and two together.
Run up to speed and then jump back to a position close off your target. ‘Close’ being up to four or five light years.
Drop off the bombardment heads, which do have enough thrust for a terminal approach once you at least get the right star system, and jump back to a safe deceleration zone, burn down to normal speed, and dock and walk away whistling innocently.

Other wrinkles- like arranging the approach vector so it seems they come from intergalactic space or from someone you want to be blamed, like selling a few minelayers on the civil market as high speed couriers so you’re not the only one who can be blamed, other trickery and misdirection, all very good ideas considering.

My dubious back-of-the-envelope calculation estimated the total yield at 1.5E11 megatons, for a full speed, full load salvo. This would seem to be creditable as a planet killer.

The reason this doesn't happen more often; are kinetics necessarily more efficient at piercing a planetary shield than the equivalent amount of energy, pumped out of the guns instead of the drives? They are more likely to arrive together, overload and knock down the shield- but by the same token, anything large enough in the way of the deploying ship is going to carry so much energy. This is a complicated and accident-prone way of doing it.

It can also be effectively defended against; shooting one of the penetrators converts it from a solid lump into a cloud of plasma which should be more diffuse and more easily taken on the shields. I know there are plasma-based anti-shield weapons, but plasmas of what?

So, the advantages are secrecy, deniability, and availability- although sixteen thousand seconds at full power, plus four hyper jumps, is a shade beyond most ships, as far as I know- disadvantages are long lead time, accidents, and the time there is for the secret to leak out. It's a second rate alternative to a straightforward BDZ.

[Stravo]

I've looked things over and yes a fine story but the author himself is correct. This is an 8 page thread. Armageddon is now at 50 odd pages in a matter of a few weeks and Starcrossed got so large it necessitated a new thread creation these are the kind of stories that need a cleaned up section to make the story itself accessible. It is not meant to be "Here is the best fanfiction on SD.Net" and not having your story placed there should not mean your story is not worthy. All it means is that it's not inconvenient for your fans to access your work so here it is in one clean neat thread.

I hope you guys are fine with the decision.

[declan]

(Drools and babbles slightly, cut and paste from any Oscar acceptance speech, before starting to make sense eventually)

Eleven , not to rush ya or anything but anychance of a new chapter coming out soon.

Declan

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

As it happens, yes. At least half of one, anyway.
This was supposed to be a four-segment chapter, one two and four are ready but three isn't, so I'll edit the last two into this post, probably, when it's done.

Stravo; those are the forum rules, I'm happy to abide by them. I'll just have to write more. (I wanted to wait until I did have a story segment ready to reply.)

Lady Tevar, if you have no objection, I'd like to write you into this one in the next full chapter.


30b1;

The conference room in Obdurate’s lower bridge tower was designed for twenty people clustered round a display set; with two men there, the lights dimmed and the table off, it felt very empty.

It looked like there were two ghouls hunched over a corpse, gnawing at it- which was not that wild an analogy really, the senior agent thought. There was something ghoulish about the job.

‘What does this give us? How do we use it?’ he asked, semi-rhetorically.

‘Is this not clear proof that Captain Lennart is condoning failure, and encouraging or at least forgiving irresponsible adventurism, and disregarding of orders in favour of a personality cult? Is this still not enough?’

The senior agent sat, thinking. Why did I agree to take my sister’s youngest along? He asked himself. He’s an insult to the genetic profile, must take after his father- at least he comes in useful for good cop, bad cop.

‘You’re right,’ he encouraged his nephew, ‘it is proof, but it is all navy proof. These are all things done against the good order of the Starfleet; technically it may be enough for a court martial, but we need a civil trial.’


‘Why? I thought you wanted to take him on and beat him on his own home ground.’

‘That was rhetoric. Just trying to prod Lieutenant-Commander Raesene into a more productive attitude.’ He looked at young Dorind with exasperation. ‘Do you understand the fundamental problem here? He didn’t, to begin with. He does now, which could be a source of difficulty.’

‘If the men of the Starfleet are this reluctant to accept the authority of the New Order, then that serves as condemnation enough.’

‘One of these days I am going to have ‘ulterior motive’ tattooed on your eyelids, my young apprentice, in luminous ink so that the message burns itself into your brain while you sleep. You don’t seem able to take it in while you’re awake.’

His uncle’s sarcasm simply rolled off the young operative’s back; he had heard it all before. ‘What else do you call it?’

‘A catspaw. Why would lieutenant Alurin come to us? How did he really know to come to us?’

‘You didn’t believe him?’ The young man said, surprised.

‘Oh, I believe the details, but the circumstances seem too good to be true.’


‘How can you say that?’ the young man exploded. ‘This is exactly what we need, this is success, this is completion. This is our ticket out of here.’

‘Possibly into a Navy trash compactor.’ The senior agent said. ‘Exactly what we seem to need is being offered to us on a plate, and such gifts always make me wish I had a food taster.

Do we stand to gain anything- anything at all- from reporting Lennart to his own parent unit? Their reputation is not far short of his. Would they behave properly, or would they cover it up- which means dianogas at dawn for us? I think they would cover. That leaves higher authority, or the sector fleet.’


‘So we need to get a message out of here to Sector. Before they move against us.’ Dorind said.

‘Then what? Time for some more...tactical conversation.’ The senior agent said, avoiding the word “lies”. ‘Do we arrest Captain Lennart? Has he, in fact, done anything against the Empire as a whole?

There are rumours, but there are always rumours. Arranging a fake defection to gain tactical intelligence, that I could believe. It’s not necessarily a bad thing.

On the other hand, I can picture the scene quite exactly- we board, and make it approximately two metres across that ship’s hangar bay before he has his crew gun us down. I do not think that would be very productive.’

‘What about Falldess? She’s a woman-‘


‘Very perceptive of you.’ The senior agent commented, dryly. ‘Her crew might be willing to bear witness against her, but the Starfleet, for undermining discipline- that would cut both ways. Do you feel expendable for the greater good?’

‘Um-‘ the younger agent said. ‘Now hold on a minute here, this is family, you can’t-‘

‘Then do try to stop coming up with plans that would get you expended.’ He reprimanded his nephew. ‘We have to find- or spin up- a sufficiently drastic charge that it passes beyond the Starfleet’s competence to prosecute.’

‘What about letting the Millennium Falcon escape?’ Dorind asked.

‘On the orders of a special agent of the council. Besides which, lots of Imperial officers have done that. It’s becoming something of a tradition.’ The senior field agent said.

‘Speaking of plans that involve being expendable, have you thought who stands to gain by having this task force tied down in legalities?’


‘We’re thinking factions here?’

‘Yes. Why are you surprised? We all seek to get ahead, and who is there to get ahead of except one another? One of the reasons it is always worth thinking carefully before accepting a touchy job- balancing advancement for success against the risks, of failure and of jealousy. Have you made any enemies yet?’

‘Only the enemies of the state.’ The younger man said. Sounded confident enough, but was there a glimmer of sense starting to form?

‘You may wish to look very carefully at the people who call themselves your friends before saying that.’ The senior agent pointed out.

‘Anyway, we could drop this into the hands of the sector fleet, which would be glad of it, but- hmmm. Yes, I think that would be worth doing. As a preliminary attack.

They should be sufficiently jealous of him that, even if Region do quash the charges, the fallout would open up so many more avenues of attack that-‘ the terminal beeped at him.

‘H’m.’ he said, reading fast. An order that he had used his access to have copied to him. ‘A movement order for this ship. By the hand of- Captain Lennart is absent from his command?

Ah, now, this could matter. This could be exceeding useful. What a perfect moment for an arrest. We need to get this to Sector as soon as possible.’



‘Skipper?’ Vilberksohn asked, sounding worried. ‘Are you sure you know how to fly this thing? That was a pretty ropy takeoff.’

In theory, Lennart had every right to crush him beneath the iron heel of military discipline. In practise- he had to admit the charge chief probably had a point.

Or rather, the shuttle nearly had after it had come within a wingspan of carrying away the com antennae from the main control tower.

‘Well, I had a flight certification for Lambda class shuttles, Delta JV-7s aren’t that different.’ Lennart lied slightly. In fact, he would have felt justified to roast anyone who he caught joyriding like this.

‘Had?’ Aleph-3 asked, from the prime gunner’s seat. The Delta escort shuttles had a flight crew of six, pilot, flight engineer/copilot- currently Vilberksohn- com/scan, first gunner for the remote-steered rear heavy turret, two front gunners for the ARC-170 like wingroot pivots.

The covering party were loyal enough, that was the reason why he had picked them from the pool of available volunteers, but Lennart could sense them thinking, aha, future blackmail material.


‘To forestall any further speculation,’ he said, ‘I have a civil Grade Two private pilot’s license for YT-1210, 1250 and 1300 series, from the year 10, and a military certification for Lambda class dating from ’19.’

‘Requalification is every five years, isn’t it?’ somebody asked from the rear cabin. Requin, one of the ship’s clerks; a useful fixer and obtainer of semi-official stores, Lennart suspected he had come along in the hope of making a useful contact.

‘For a noncombat type.’ Dammernorph, technically an Imperial Army first sargeant, Alpha squadron’s chief armourer. Huge man, well over two hundred kilos, but the precision he could get out of those blocky fingers of his was amazing.

So was his energy, considering his other activities- he had at least five wives that Lennart knew of.

‘Most of you were paying attention; you heard what happened.’ Lennart reminded them. ‘There are certain advantages to not being officially capable of being here.’


It might not matter all that much, considering he had left a flight plan with Black Prince’s nav computers, and left instructions as to how he could be contacted in case of emergency.

‘I have a current civil Grade Three.’ Aleph- 3 said.

‘Not until you satisfy my curiosity on one or two points first.’ Lennart said, then noticed the discussion back in the troop bay was still going on. He listened, for a moment.

‘Considering how often professional, trained pilots bend these things-‘

‘Dam, give it a rest. You’re just grouchy because you didn’t get a chance to screw that waitress.’

‘Well, considering that would involve another landing and takeoff, would you really want to go back?’ Lennart said loudly enough to be heard in the bay.

‘No, Sir, sorry Sir.’ Dammernorph said, a shade too quickly.


‘Besides which, you heard what happened. No-one else I could send to do anything that unlikely. And unless you have really well hidden talents, there’s no-one else up to the job of taking this bucket through hyperspace.’

‘Ahem.’ Aleph-3 coughed.


‘And you are exactly the person I ought to be talking to on the subject of hidden talents.’ Lennart continued, to her. ‘You have quite a range of them- tell me, under what circumstances do they come to the fore?’

‘I don’t quite understand…’ she said, looking round at the covering party.

‘You can do a lot of things; more than I’d expect to be able to fit into your head. Interrogator, investigator, sniper, and then there are the cover identities;

second hand speeder saleswoman, deep sea mollusc harvester, crime journalist, cybermechanic, websphere coach- it’s the alternate personalities of the cover identity that fascinate me, and how you manage to integrate them all.’

‘I…’ Aleph-3 hesitated. Lennart knew he had struck a nerve.

‘You see,’ Lennart continued, probing, ‘I don’t understand how you can manage to piece them all together.’
She thought about it. Pass it all off with ‘it’s just method acting, really’- or actually give him the answer he was fishing for? What did he want to do to her? Did she actually want to stop him?

‘I do find it…easier to link the practical and the social aspects of a cover identity together.’ She admitted. ‘I don’t think I would be able to function in my designed role unless I did export parts of myself accordingly.’


‘Should we leave the two of you alone, Captain?’ Vilberksohn asked, edging away from them in his seat.

‘No- I may need you to sit on her if she loses it.’ Lennart said.

‘I do not “lose it”, as you so charmingly put it, Captain. And I am very particular about who I let sit on me.’ She said, changing tone from matter of fact to outright seduction, and eyeing him as if she wanted to eat him.

‘There,’ Lennart said, trying to remain calm, ‘that change of note there is exactly what I mean. You went from ramrod-spined to raunch in an eyeblink. Do you do that deliberately? Consciously, even?

Whenever you’re trying to think outside the box, whenever you encounter a situation in your proper persona that one of your cover identities would be good for, it tends to come to the fore.’ Lennart opined.

She shrugged, then smiled at him. ‘So I’m dynamically unstable.’


‘Knock it off, you’re not going to win my heart with dodgy aerodynamics. You’re still basically a Stormtrooper, aren’t you?’

‘Cloned and bred, Sir. But- are you suggesting that I’m deliberately repressing my wilder moments, in order to remain within the standard-issue mental frame?’

‘I’m suggesting that psychologically, you’re a deep sea mollusc’s breakfast. You’re trying to brainwash yourself-‘ so am I, trying not to stare at her breasts in that dress, Lennart added to himself- ‘but it doesn’t work. Your mind doesn’t want to do that, and unassimilated bits keep bubbling up to the surface.’

‘So…’ she said, thinking. Was that fair comment? Was that really the way things were- she was an amateur psychologist, not a professional.


No. On one level, it was obvious- and offensive- nonsense. She was a stormtrooper, and had been raised and trained as one- assuming there was some separation between the two concepts.

Training had been confused- at times it had felt as if the geonosians didn’t quite know what to do with them.

They had eventually evolved an appropriate scheme of allowing them to transgress the boundaries, but then requiring them to atone by demonstrating good behaviour, as per the standards laid down for Line One, Mod One.

Latitude and correction, like being on an elastic leash, let roam but reeled in every time- it had been an effective way of allowing them to grow in ability without allowing them to grow much in maturity.

The most dubious part of her ubringing, and the part she had most difficulty faking, was growing up. With the senior batches of her own line playing surrogate-mother, a duty she had never enjoyed or been good at when it fell to her turn- being a military clone was a stunted childhood.

No matter how capable you became, you always remained emotionally dependent on the system, never really left the nest.


Lennart sat there, watching her as she thought it through.

Is that what he’s afraid of? She thought. Playing Pygmalion? Being a surrogate father? He’s no celibate. He has taken lovers- and spawned a few illegitimate children, I’ll bet- but admit it. Isn’t that the reason I want him?

So that he can be my rock to support me as I grow, challenger, master, confessor, protector and friend rolled into one?

That’s a lot to ask of a normal man. Then again, what would I want about a normal man? He’s more than that. A leader, a man of determination, and strong in the Force.

What does he want from me? She wondered. He always took me seriously, at least as a threat. He’s not just after me for my body- any of me would give him that much.

How badly am I projecting? Misreading him, and seeing what I want to see?

On the face of things, very badly. He- if he thought in the same terms, we would have-


And who am I to think such things, anyway? Who am I to dare such? He is my captain, and he is Authority- whom I have already said some exceeding strange things to, and of.

One of the reasons I want him to have the force, so he can look at me and see how much I want him. But- am I misestimating myself? What if he’s actually right, and I am a functional dissociative, not someone he could-

‘Do you think I could have done anything like that,’ she asked him, desperately casting aside her own line of thought, ‘if I could have managed any other way?’

‘If that was what you had to do,’ he said, gently, acceptingly, and she wondered how much of that was genuine and how much a part he himself was playing, ‘then how can I help you now? I believe that you can do things differently. That you can change and grow.’


He put his hand on her shoulder, and she nearly went berserk with rage at the modesty of the gesture.

She wanted to pull him out of his seat, throw him to the deck, leap on him and ravish him; she couldn’t, not here, not in the presence of twenty odd assorted representatives of the lower deck- was that actually his plan?

Fore her to do something wild and demonstrative, make a rash romantic gesture- but she already had, in deciding to side with him after all, hadn’t she? Or was he cold blooded enough- no, part of her decided- to consider that merely duty, this over and above?

She was looking at him, looking into his eyes and trying to read them- also trying to signal ‘come and get me, lover boy’- when Vilberksohn coughed and pointed at Lennart’s panel.


‘Skipper, are those red dots anything to do with us?’

Lennart glanced down at them, ran a brief scan, said ‘Depends just how wild a coincidence you’re prepared to believe in. Sulmarr, com Black Prince, tell them destination system T-20443 in the files, RA +11, 2, 04, 254, on the ecliptic, heading outsystem, fighter support now. Everybody else, battle stations.’

‘What are we supposed to do?’ A voice from the back of the shuttle asked.

‘Hope and pray that I really do know how to fly this thing.’ Lennart said.


Black Prince’s fighter direction centre was moderately busy. One small exercise running, and a couple of dozen of the individual sim tanks in the annexe in use- mostly non-pilots playing computer games.

The duty officer was the Surface Transport Wing commander; technically a transferee from the Stormtrooper Corps, he knew a crash-action order when he heard one.

Anybody too preoccupied to specify exactly what sort of support they needed was probably in deep stang. Nu squadron’s new Sentinels were on plus five; better add something heavier.

Who was up to strength? Avenger and Starwing replacements had just come in- that should do. One flight each Beta and Epsilon. He sent out the order, turned to notify the bridge, and did not notice one of his junior temporary controllers float away quietly in the direction of the flight bay.

One of the replacement fighters that had just come in was a rather interesting variant; it wasn’t actually due to be issued for some days yet, but it had been assembled and checked out. Not easy climbing out of a hoverchair into a cockpit, but under the circumstances, possible.


The escort shuttle was significantly faster and more responsive than the Lambda; which was in itself overpowered and overarmed for the vast majority of it’s duties.

There were landers and transports based on TIE style hulls that really were not much more than cargo containers with engines, but nine tenths of the Lambdas never did anything more exciting than onboard delivery anyway.

Which was a shame, considering how easily they could be refitted into a heavy escort fighter to protect TIE bomber streams. Lennart was reacquainting himself with the type, testing how easily it pitched and rolled.

His general course was out; the planet should get what help to him it could, but the main chance was to stay out and stay alive long enough for Black Prince’s fighters to intervene.


Response time- ten minutes at least. They could run, draw it out into a stern chase that would be their best chance. Focus, Lennart was telling himself, try to stop sweating, it doesn’t inspire confidence.

If I was comfortably on my bridge, com’ing instructions to an incoming shuttle being pursued by Rebels, what advice would I give? ‘Hold still so the LTL can fire past you’ doesn’t really apply.

Head in the direction of maximum safety, but at these speeds, don’t expect to make it- at least in theory, but…the enemy were four flights strong; one of R-41s, only barely faster, three of the standard rRasfenoni types- one bomber flight, trundling along, two of fighters- which did have the speed.

They weren’t using it, though; sticking close to the presumably missile armed attack craft.


Missile salvo incoming, then. Harrass the bombers with the aft long gun, then just outside accurate gun range, start to turn to bear, expose the forward guns for point defence fire, then accelerate into the attack and go for the bombers.

‘Fire as soon as you think you have a shot.’ He told Aleph-3, swaying the shuttle slightly to confuse their targeters a little, buy extra seconds.

She opened fire almost immediately, picking the lead bomber and firing a burst of six shots in rapid succession; the fourth and fifth shots hit.

The fourth blew away the thin shields and tore one wing off- the fifth was a solid hit on the fuselage that ruptured the powerplant, that sent up the torpedoes.

‘Good shooting.’ Lennart said. Trying to remember how to set the power flow to serve the guns. Not yet. It would be time soon.

‘Beginner’s luck.’ Aleph-3 said, lining up on the next.


Think about it, Lennart told himself. I’m an amateur pilot. Hyperspace is one thing- I could lead them such a dance there, I could probably still do a course in my head if I tried, given half an hour and a slide rule. Although that was on a bet, and I did cheat.

Sublight- and if we want to kill them, that’s what it’ll have to be, my best chance is to use my superior judgement as a naval officer to avoid having to depend on my inferior skill as a flight suit insert as long as possible.

So how come I feel relatively comfortable doing this? Never mind the joystick- and a competent flight engineer to back me up- what a suicidally inconvenient time this would be to start feeling the touch of the force.

Although it was utterly absurd that so many Jedi had become combat pilots, it was an undeniable fact. An attitude of mind less likely to produce the hunting instincts of a fighter jock would be hard to find, but the dexterity, speed of reaction and foresight the force gave them seemed to make it almost inevitable.

At this range, the rebs can shoot, but they can’t land enough fire on target to push the shields below regeneration rate. If they fan out and jink to avoid our fire, that costs them time.


Concentrate; don’t be daft enough to let the force sucker you into thinking you have a chance in a dogfight.
‘Shame that there’s nothing larger.’ He said, trying to cheer the crew up. ‘Then we could at least have docked and boarded. One down.’

Aleph-3 was leaning into her board as if trying to physically bring them nearer; scattering fire across the formation to see who was an easy and who a hard target;

fired a long burst at one, who had been play-acting- made themselves look like an easy target to draw fire away from the rest and then broke into radical evasion, darting and twisting out of the line of shot.

Aleph-3 was about to change target when Lennart said ‘Stay on him, he’s probably the squadron leader.’

‘I’m wasting power, the rest of them are going to get clear shots.’ She said.

‘The percentages in killing off their coordinator are better.’ Lennart said, bluntly, noting that she had in fact kept on target. By the time she had nailed the R-41, the rest were almost ready to launch.


Eighteen concussions. Enough? Possibly- at face value, yes. At a realistic hit rate, no. Aleph-3 shot two of them.

‘Stay on the bombers.’ He ordered. Time later for that.

His hand kept twitching on the joystick; kept wanting to spin the shuttle and accelerate at them, ride them down and turn it into a proper furball. It was as bad as controlling a nervous tic. One more bomber exploded; four more missiles that would probably go wild.

Then he gave in to temptation and still accelerating, shoved the joystick forward in a diving loop and levelled out facing into the attack.

‘Front gunners, take them.’

Aleph-3 looked at him; she was positively beaming, despite the fact that he had just masked her gun. He was listening to the force- which probably meant he was doing it wrong. Crap.


Lennart flew; taking snapshots whenever the bow of the shuttle pointed directly at a target, otherwise turning and twisting to throw off targeting and break locks. The other two did the work.

One of the bombers and two of the fighters died, before they got close enough. ‘I’m going evasive, go to antimissile fire.’

The force was tickling away at the shuttle’s shields; light autoblasters useful against Clone War era fighters and Imperial TIEs, not much use against an armoured, shielded shuttle.

Tickling was the right word. They needed the R-41’s lasers to bite, or consistent missile hits.

‘I think they’ve called for reinforcements.’ Sulmarr said from the com-scan seat.


‘See whose get here first.’ Lennart said, aiming for one of the ‘41’s. Not much point flying a stable course- the shuttle’s autotrack could keep the guns in play. Better to jink, in fact.

Spraying green pulses of light, the heavy shuttle twisted into the missile swarm. Eighteen launched, twelve now relying on their own targeters. Four might hit.

One of the front gunners was picking the missiles that showed constant bearing; the other hadn’t thought of that. Six guided- four or five probable hits.

Not fun. Last split second, clearest path; malfunction, you bastard, Lennart thought at one missile as he deliberately turned into another.

Fratricide. Accelerate to meet one, touch it off, take it on the shields- and hopefully the blast would knock down some of it’s brothers. Then ride out the loose blast pattern, push though it and into the furball after all.

The warhead he had been thinking at detonated. The blast wave touched off four of them, the hit he had taken deliberately spoilt another one. Three hits, effectively.


Not enough to breach the shields. The fighters were on them, though; right- handed inverse falling leaf, twisting out of the way of most of the first shower of fire- splashes over the now-equalised shields.

The rRasfenoni fighters starbursted around them, fanning out to match velocities and englobe. As per pre-war procedure.

‘They’ve got it wrong, told you it was worth nailing the leader.’ Lennart said, hauling the shuttle round for all front guns to bear on the last of the bombers, holding it steady as it kicked under a splatter of laser fire.

‘Chaos works for them, a structured fight for us, they lost their commander so they default to the book which says structure.’


One of the R-41s swooped in to take out the tail turret; Lennart turned so he was dead astern and gave him a faceful of ion, burnt down the shielding, Aleph-3 added insult to injury by spraying him in the belly as he broke away.

Without entirely knowing why, he focused all the shields on the upper port sector, and rolled 120° to port; the outer skin of the armoured shuttle crackled and hissed as the blaster fire scarred it, but there as a mighty thump as one of the light fighters played inadvertent kamikaze.

Quickly equalise them before the remaining bomber rippled off another four missiles, continue the roll into a corkscrew. Dammit, Lennart thought, I might actually be some good at this.


Emergence flash; Lennart looked at the com/scan board. ‘Ours or theirs?’

‘Theirs. Corellian corvette and escort.’

‘They can’t do this to me, I’m a shareholder.’ Lennart said, and got a chuckle. ‘Plan; we match velocity and use the ejectable cockpit module as an icebreaker. Breach the hull, around the escape pods, and board her.’

Aleph-3 was beaming; the rest ranged from expressions of near panic to bring it on. Lennart thought it was suicidal.

There was a second set of flashes. Relief; that was their support. The new fighters curved towards the shuttle, the Imperial fighters moved to intercept.

Heavy laser fire cracked out, proton torps reached for the corvette; Starwings. Good. Except one seemed to be having trouble with it’s torpedoes.

No shot, and it was skid-turning in their direction- both the two remaining R-41s vanished. Light turbolaser fire had a way of making fighters do that.

Lennart accelerated the Delta JV-7 away from the rRasfenoni corvette, clearing the line of fire and drawing the fighters out so they could be intercepted.

The heavy gun fighter took aimed shots at three of them, one after the other, three instant kills, before breaking away to avoid the surge of Sentinels heading in to cover the shuttle.


It turned towards the Corvette; sideslipped and opened fire with a long burst, tracking across the blue-grey painted hull, burning into the shielding and drawing defensive fire away from the incoming torps. It was forced to break off and go evasive, too late for the Corvette to cover herself.

Thirty torpedoes amounted to a killing salvo; especially with the shields already weakened, the twenty-four fired turned out to be more than enough. The corvette came apart, then what must have been an onboard self- destruct charge detonated.

A blazing white point of light, and then there was nothing left.


Such of the rRasfenoni were still able to turned to flee to hyperspace; not many of them made it. The big gun fighter flew up to visual range alongside the shuttle.

PulsarWing; the thick-winged, faired gun pod version of the Starwing.

‘Rahandravell,’ Lennart commed across, ‘What the kriff do you think you were doing?’

‘Sorry, Captain.’ Franjia’s voice came back. ‘It seemed the right thing to do. How did you know it was me?’

‘I didn’t know, but you were at the head of the list of suspects.’ Lennart confirmed, dryly.

‘Did the idea that you could get away with discharging yourself from light duties, walk away from your assigned post, essentially steal a flight test article, and get yourself forgiven by going and playing hero with it – did you plan that, or was it a spur of the moment thing?’


‘Ah. I’m in trouble, amn’t I?’

‘You and lots and lots of other people, starting with the idiot- or the traitor- who leaked our position to the rRasfenoni.

All fighters,’ Lennart looked them over, three damaged, none badly, ‘form up on the shuttle and take your nav data from me.’ He started plotting the route home, to be interrupted by Aleph-3, who turned to him eyes shining.

‘You used the Force. You called upon it, and it came to you.’ She sounded high, drunk on delight.

‘I know.’ Lennart said grimly. ‘As if things couldn’t get any worse.’

[LadyTevar]

Lady Tevar, if you have no objection, I'd like to write you into this one in the next full chapter.

Bwha? Me? ... *dies laughing* Ok, if you'd like. PM me and I'll tell you about my Corellian Corvette The Fist and her kill-marks.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I said it was due fairly soon. This is the last half of 30b and what I had originally intended to be the first segment of 31.

Ch 30b1/31

HIMS Voracious and her close escort group emerged from hyperspace just behind the predicted position of the remaining debris; they would be watching it as it receded, which they had decided was better than being dead in front, because that might happen all too literally. Not the best position, but enough.

It had been sheer bloody fluke that Tarazed Meridian- now frantically having her main reactor sawn out- had come across them in the first place. A false flag would have been secondary to security though manoeuvre; they had a contingency plan, but they hadn’t really been expecting to get caught.

Sending out a cleanup crew had been an afterthought, too. It was the same combination of layer/retriever and escort, but the escort they had sent to do it was a spectacularly unlikely choice- a SoroSuub Liberator “Heavy Cruiser”;

in practise a medium-heavy frigate, well armed, massive troop and fighter complements for it’s class, but it bought them at the price of being equally massively overloaded. They were in the same acceleration range as the Dreadnaught, if not worse.


The Liberator was moving at low speed, paralleling the retrieval ship in a series of short hyperspace hops to intercept any ship approaching the area at normal velocity.

They would have been expecting light patrol forces, a Corellian Corvette, Bayonet maybe, at worst a Carrack. A Venator destroyer-carrier and escorts were not part of their game plan.

Voracious turned to bear, initially presenting her main battery. Stang, Vehrec thought. How do I handle this one? He watched the emerging menagerie of attack craft as the Liberator prepared to make a standup fight of it.

Two squadrons of old Kuat Systems CloakShapes- probably the fully uprated type with the lasers and launchers. Two squadrons of Y-wings, which meant little as any fool could get their hands on Y-wings, but that would be a possible ID problem.

One squadron of T-wings, the rejected rebel design gone third party. The last of the six squadrons were a rare breed, Starypan/Sunhui Razor fighters, the supposed successor to the R-41. Sort of like being a hereditary bin man.

Well. They, meaning Lennart, had given him a ship, and not so much a wing as permission to use what he had and the promise of more, and why the kriff not?

Time to be somewhere else; he announced to the fighter bridge in general, ‘Magnum launch. Everything we have a pilot for, we’ll sort it out when we get there.’

‘Affirmative, Group Captain. And?’ One of the flight controllers said, pointedly.

‘Stang. Forgot. Call general quarters.’


On the ship’s bridge, Caliphant was looking around for a soft wall he could bang his head off of. What were they supposed to do now?

It was a common enough procedure for Venators to be commanded by the ranking starfighter corps officer, and he had looked over the last set of standing orders from when Voracious had been a serving combat carrier, but it would be good to know exactly what the ship was supposed to be doing.

‘Group Captain Vehrec?’ he said, the com system automatically finding him.

‘Yes?’ the voice came back.

‘What are we supposed to be doing?’

That was a smenging strange question, on the face of it. What was Caliphant on about? He couldn’t be suffering from combat fatigue already. ‘Enemy. Thing to shoot at. Mass fire for fun and profit. Yes?’

He’s a group captain, Caliphant reminded himself. Two and a half grades above me. ‘How are we going to fight this? We can’t just make up capital ship tactics as you go along.’

‘Why not?’ Vehrec said. ‘Works for me.’


‘Not,’ Caliphant said, keeping his voice level with difficulty, ‘for a ship this big. What is your plan for the wing?’

‘React, anticipate, generally play it by ear. What does the situation look like from up there?’ Vehrec asked him.

‘You’re not on your bridge? Where-‘ silly question, Caliphant realised as soon as he said it.

‘In the turbolift on the way down to the bay.’ Vehrec said, to the sounds of changing into a flight suit.

Caliphant made a mental note to have display screens fitted to all bridge turbolifts. Then again, the abstract approach had borne results in the past.

There was one of the destroyer captains of the Death Squadron supposed to be there because he had taken on a rebel Dreadnaught medium frigate from his bathtub.

Nerrik? Ferral? Something like that. And there was a persistent rumour that it had been the toilet seat, anyway.


Suddenly Caliphant’s temper boiled over. ‘This isn’t some kriffing game of Clue! Is this going to be a fighter led strike? One or two phase? Bomber led, and heavy or light, close or distant CAP? Long range gun bombardment? Close quarters tumbling match? Leave you to it and pursue the minelayer?

I can kill you with friendly fire, I can get you killed by leaving your ass hanging out in the breeze, I think you can agree that those would be bad things? I need to know.’

Well, Vehrec thought, he could be on to something. He also thought he heard Caliphant mutter ‘how come I have to be the straight man, I’m not cut out to be the sensible one.’


The answer was pretty much inevitable, though. ‘I’ll take the group in, burn through their fighters on the way and try to take that thing in enough pieces for the Intel boys to have fun with. Shoot past us if you get a clear line of fire, and send- oh, Obdurate and half the escorts after the minelayer.’

‘Aye, aye, Sir.’ Caliphant acknowledged, thinking if we can win on this for a strategy, we can win on anything.

The turbolift reached the upper bay, and from there it was as intuitive a thing as remembering how to walk. Into the cockpit, abbreviated crash pre-flight; how he hated that term, but it was the official term for precisely that reason, to emphasise the danger of taking shortcuts.

All green, up and away, leading his motley assortment of instructors, trainees, retreads and wannabes.

The rebels were willing to make a standup fight of it, at least, although they must have been at least a little bit perplexed by the numbers and variety of the Imperial fighter force.

Vehrec could afford to be casual, because this was second nature to him. He mentally divided his fighters into four wings, first and second line fighter, first and second line bomber. As each squadron came out, they were ordered to join the stream.

He was leading the first line fighters himself, burning slowly towards the rebels at three hundred ‘g’, enough to separate them out, not too fast for the laggards to join up with. The first line bombers were doing the same, but slower, two hundred ‘g’, the second line fighters one hundred, the second line bombers fifty.


First line fighters were his own Avengers, the two squadrons of bomber winged proto-avenger Assault class, and the interceptor variants – probably enough in and of themselves.

Behind them, Caliphant had rotated the Voracious so her belly was showing, masking the fighter bay to prevent any shot slipping through the doors that had turned out to be the Venator’s primary design flaw.

The Liberator opened fire, a continuously adjusted ripple from six twenty-five teraton heavy turbolasers,
relatively light compared to Black Prince’s rapid thirty-twos or Voracious’ own slow-firing seventies. Still enough to hurt a thinly shielded or poorly handled destroyer, though.

Hiding the fighter bay also meant hiding the guns, which gave the Liberator an uninterrupted shot. The frigate was now broadcasting a transponder signal that identified her as the “Tiger in the Night”, not a known Rebel- well, until now.


She was making good practise at medium-long range, two hundred thousand kilometres and closing, landing four hits in her first ten seconds of fire, six in the second ten. ECM only went so far to protect a target that couldn’t manoeuvre.

Nothing beyond a Venator’s ability to take, not yet. Too much more would become a problem.

There was a minor crisis when one of the volunteers tried to open the lower bay door and use the mounted surface-artillery turbolaser.

The convergence dish meant that it wasn’t bound by the admittedly generous constraints of a physical barrel, it could channel more power than a comparable gun tube; the lack of that barrel meant that it dispersed that much faster. They were point-blank crunch guns, and using it now would be a stupid move.

Vehrec heard the screaming on the second command channel, as the gun crew were told to stop the shooter who didn’t seem to be listening.

They had to mug him to stop him opening the lower bay door, and Vehrec mentally tuned out just as Caliphant was threatening the wayward gunner with being spreadeagled across the dish of his own gun.

The rebels were coming in two up, four back; Razors and T-wings leading- what they expected from a Venator he had no idea, but a fighter strike against a ship that carried twice as many fighters as anything else in it’s weight class was never bright.

As far as he could tell, the rebel plan would be to break up the lead fighter elements, his first line, and then get in among the bombers.

Defensive, in other words- take out the threat to themselves.


The counter was equally straightforward; pick the moment, then accelerate forward into the attack with the first and second fighter wings, first at full and second at two thirds throttle to react in case of screwup, bombers to loiter and manoeuvre defensively.

Some of his pilots misheard and some misunderstood, but wolfpack instinct sufficed for most of them. The result was head on collision.

In two cases, literally- one of the old Assaults shot a Razor, it broke up, but the razor’s wingbeing deliberately rammed the Imperial fighter. One where neither side would break away.

The red and the green sheet of light passed through each other. For once, with their heavy translight fighters, the Imperials were more heavily shielded.

Armament- again, advantage the Empire. Heavier guns on the Assault, more and better on the Avenger and Interceptors, it was the Rebel formation that cracked and starburst first.


Eight of the rebel first line died in the first pass, four of the Imperial, then the imperial first line pounded into the rebel bombers and the Imperial second fighter line took it’s opportunities.

That was Actis and Nimbus types, good dogfighters, maybe a shade too twitchy, maybe too lightly gunned, maybe their shield generators were nothing more than an expensive extra, but they made a superb manoeuvring reserve.

They swarmed over the broken Rebel formation as the first line carved into the rebel bombers.
Bays empty, Voracious could dip her nose and bring her turrets to bear. The cloud of fighters in between- they, on the other hand, would be a problem.

One that was rapidly being solved, but the rebel was a lot less shy about firing into fighter combat.

It kept rippling fire at the Venator, brought it’s ion cannon on line and added them too. Caliphant was trying to manoeuvre to get a clear line of fire to return the favour.


‘Fighters Second, chase the rebs out of the way, then clear the line of fire. Fighter lead and both Bomb wings, formate on me.’ Vehrec ordered.

Course- L-shaped attack out and away, then burn in towards the Tiger in the Night, achieving relative motion, but keeping the guns and launchers bearing. Standard flypast.

Liberators were notoriously light on point defence, too; they depended on their fighter wing for that. As they closed, the bombers would fan out and englobe, threatening the frigate from multiple angles, forcing her to either take hits on unshielded hull or equalise her shields- losing her defensive focus on Voracious.

Unless they were in shock, the rebels could read a battlefield. Their opening gambit had been utterly smashed, and although the ship had been giving better than they got so far, that was going to change.

It did. The Tiger accelerated towards the Voracious, full throttle but not precisely head on- trying to duck under the light destroyer’s belly, exposing her own main guns, still shooting.

It was a move that made sense on two grounds; their ion wake probably was the most effective antifighter weapon they had left, and a close range, high aspect tumbling match was the best chance they had of doing damage to the Imperial ship.


On board the destroyer, an argument had broken out between Caliphant and Kirritaine, the gunnery officer. They had fired one full salvo; synchronised converged sheaf.

As soon as the rebel frigate had felt the mass of targeters focus on her, she had gone on to full power evasion. The full volley, all eleven hundred and twenty teratons, crashed out and seared past the reb, wild and away a thousand kilometres off.

That was a huge miss by anyone’s standards.

‘What was that for?’ Caliphant had him com’d. ‘I don’t care how pretty it looks, what matters is if it hits or not.’

‘They can do it, they did it to us; it works.’

Oh, crap, Caliphant thought. ‘They? Them? Us? Could you be a little more definitive?’

‘The squadron exercises. Converged sheaf volleys, it’s the way to go.’

Caliphant suspected he heard a ‘whee!’ in the background as the next salvo crashed out. ‘Remember what
else he said? Run the numbers. You are not a child, and that seventy teraton turbolaser is not a toy.’


The Venator shook as another salvo blasted downrange, and missed- two laser and two ion hits arriving almost simultaneously. ‘Stop pissing about and do what works. I want sequence fire, you know, the way they’re managing to hit us repeatedly?’

There was another crash and a fireball from the bow as one of the LTL mounts had a fire window open- that coincided with an incoming ion bolt. Localised; what was in that area? Bow manoeuvre thrusters.

‘We can make this work.’ Kirritaine said, not convinced. ‘Don’t you want to show them we can do it? We’re closing on them.’

Caliphant took a deep breath. He wanted to be a maniac himself, he really did. Would have liked to be able to play with turbolasers. Wanted to be able to make it up as he went along.

Somebody had to stop all the other maniacs from getting themselves and each other killed, and that meant somebody, in this case him, had to get the short straw.

Kriff. I’m the Designated Driver for seven thousand idiots, he realised. The only thing to do is hammer them into shape- so that then it can be my turn.


‘Kirritaine, the next words out of your mouth had kriffing well better be either “sequential fire, aye aye Sir” or “I resign my commission in favour of somebody competent”.

Your gun teams have had three days to practise together, Black Prince’s had three thousand. You are not that good, stick to the basics. Chief Officer out.’

There was five seconds of nothing happening; then a ragged, poorly coordinated fire began. In releasing the turrets from central control, they must have severed the link to central fire direction as well.


Nerves and high spirits- and none of it, none of it at all, was excusable. If that prat keeps this up, he might make me join the Empire, Caliphant thought.

He meant that in the sense of starting to regard the regulations as something to be enforced, even cherished- as opposed to thinking of them as something to be endured, and evaded at every available opportunity.

That sort of attitude was all right for junior officers, from whom it was only to be expected, but not from the man in charge. Which was legally Vehrec, but practically, not so much acting capacity as in loco parentis, him.

Realistically, Tiger in the Night was trying to bite off much more than it could chew- but it was working for them, and they were winning, so far.


The lighter guns were nothing but a liability; their fire windows to let shot out could also let shot in. It would have to be a fluke, but it had already happened once, fortunately only with ion shot.

One of them demonstrated it’s extreme liability by forgetting what colour of target identifier it was supposed to be shooting at. Light turbolaser fire reached out for the bomber squadrons.

Part of their planned troop complement had made it on board; good. ‘SurfCom, LTL 24 has gone renegade. Breach it, shoot the gun crew. Engineering, cut power feed to LTL 24.’ Bad.

Hopefully that would deal with the problem expeditiously and discreetly enough- what was happening to him? Big, mealy-mouthed words.

‘Get them to STKU, RTKN’ was what he meant. And fast, before the bombers decided to take offence and have a go at it themselves. He almost missed the explosion.


On Tiger, one of the rebel fighters had, improbably, survived being hit by a ten-gun Interceptor. The Y-wing’s hyperdrive module and astromech were shredded, so it couldn’t escape that way. It had to limp back to the parent ship.

Maybe it really was true that fortune favoured the foolish; because Voracious’ crew were certainly big enough fools to need it.

Vehrec, on the other hand, had ordered the fighters to leave the crippled rebels go, in the hope that something like this would happen. They had to lower the bay shields to let the cripple back on board.

The older, more experienced bomber pilots were perfectly capable of taking advantage of opportunities like that. The rebel came in on final approach with a torpedo volley behind him.

The bay crew were not stupidly soft hearted; they flickered the shields back up. Better to lose one of their own, however painful it would be, than take fifty-plus torpedoes in the hangar bay. The rebel fighter hit the shield, and exploded; the torpedoes did the same.


The capital torpedoes launched from Voracious were more than capable of spotting the opportunity too. They hit the weakened shielding in short sequence, one after the other; the first two blasted it away. The last pair got through.

Two brilliant flares shone out of the nose-spanning hangar; then a third sympathetic detonation. Vehrec was surprised to see the thing still basically intact when the flare died; well, maybe that was an exaggeration.

One side blown out of the bow, shielding down, electronics shocked and rad-blasted out, one set of main guns looked twisted off their mounts, the other set ceased fire.

‘Bomb units, take the engines out, take the engines only. Voracious, we have a boarding action to fight. Ground units now.’



The Delta shuttle and it’s escort emerged back at Ghorn, in easy deceleration run on the lagrange point; Lennart spun the Delta end for end and began approach, but noticed from the sensor data- all the ships’ powerplants were hot.

All had shields up, most of the squadron’s corvettes were deployed as an outer screen, and there were fighter patrols in the air.

‘Captain? Thank fnord you’re back. We have two major problems.’ Brenn com’d and said, sounding distinctly worried.

‘Is one of those the security leak that led to the rRasfenoni trying an intercept?’ Lennart asked. If Brenn thought he couldn’t cope, then it would be fairly bad.

‘What are the others- let me see; the prisoner transport turned up full of cosmic hyper-eels from Chater’s Dwarf Galaxy? Dynamic’s crew finally mutinied?

Ship’s computer net developed sentience and went on strike for Droid Rights? How about… exec tried to sieze command and declare me insane and unfit for duty? Vader coming to pay a visit.’


Brenn didn’t entirely appreciate Lennart’s efforts to cheer him up. ‘No, Sir. Reports are incomplete, but it seems as if the sector fleet decided to steal our thunder- they launched a major attack on Ord Corban.’

‘You sound remarkably grim. It’s not going well?’

‘We have no official word from them, no request or notification. We brought the squadron to general quarters and dispatched Blackwood and Provornyy for a direct report, but it sounds like a grade one clusterkriff.' Brenn related.

'Third Superiority Fleet were sent in- by the intercepts, it is a disaster. They’ve had least one destroyer crippled and probably lost. A second…may have defected.

We’re out of the loop on this one, they’re telling us nothing. We do have a couple of minor problems- you’re half right about the exec for one, and I wish Dynamic’s crew would mutiny so we could go over there and bang heads together properly. Do you know-‘

‘About the whip- round on the lower deck, to buy Captain Dordd his own private deluxe escape shuttle? I heard. You realise how big a breach of proper naval order and discipline that is?’ Lennart asked him.


‘I said that, but then I put myself down for a hundred credits.’ Brenn admitted. ‘I’m not sure whether it would be productive; if we could shame Dynamic into putting up some kind of performance, if they can still be reached by shame after their record, it might be worthwhile.’

‘Or it might damage what authority he’s been able to establish. I’m not sure how much worse this makes things, it means we’re likely to face stiffer opposition when we do attack ourselves, I don’t think it makes the situation any more time critical than it already is.

Hold the shuttle for now, and start hoping you or I don’t have any use for it.’

‘Aye, aye, Sir.’ Brenn acknowledged.

‘What’s the second problem?’ Lennart asked.

‘Oh, far far worse.’ Brenn said, lighter in tone. He no more than half meant it.

‘What can be worse than the sector fleet taking that kind of pounding?’ Lennart questioned him.

‘Having to explain it to the press. We’ve got an infestation of journalists incoming.’

‘Stall them, lie to them, arrest them if you have to- no, wait. Maybe we can use them.’



Blackwood, and the Fulgur escorting her, approached the battle zone slowly, scanners at full stretch. Sit nearby, watch the light cone roll over them. That had been the plan, anyway.

It collapsed when they detected the bow shock of a large warship heading their way. Exit hyperspace, scan, predict the emergence point; whatever it was, it was on a straight line to Ghorn. Both of them signalled the information back, were ordered to proceed on to the battle site- with extreme caution.

On Black Prince’s bridge, Lennart was back in something resembling uniform and going through the com intercepts when the contact report from Blackwood came in.

They were already at general quarters, nothing more to do there, just line up on the probable point of emergence. As the target entered their own sensor range, it seemed to be an Imperator- class, probably one of the older generation;

but there was one of the intercepts about an urgent order from one ship to the other, to cease fire on a friendly unit.


That was why Brenn had been thinking mutiny. The tone of the intercept was about right for it. Somehow, thinking about mutiny led naturally to the Dynamic- a ship assignment Lennart wouldn’t have wished on an enemy.

Dordd had been happy to relinquish the squadron to him, and Lennart felt guilty about that; he should be doing more to back his former exec up.

So was this a fleeing loyalist, or an attacking mutineer? Voracious had reported herself engaged- that still left three destroyers available to be used against one. They were moving into position around the predicted drop point.

Slightly closer, and there were traces of smaller craft in company. Maybe one medium frigate, one light frigate, three large and four small corvettes. About right for a new-pattern Battle Squadron that had taken fifty percent losses among the escort craft.


Battle squadron. Now there was a grotesquely overblown title for a single fleet destroyer and supporting light forces. Tarkin’s political side had struck again, there- inflation of title for intimidation purposes.

Lennart had flown escort duty on true capital ships back in the Clone Wars, and with all of the navy list to chose from, a siege squadron headed by a Mandator would be a remarkably welcome sight about now. There was one intercept that mentioned “A rebel cruiser. No, a real one.”

Did that mean Home- class? As rare as generous Hutts, the Alliance hadn’t even tried to build more than four. Imperial strikes had broken one up on the stocks, taken a deepdock with the skeleton of another. Enormously unlikely.

What else did the Rebels have in that weight class? The Techno Union could still put big ships together, it was Quarren who had the responsibility for the Recusant. None known, though. Not at present.

Clone Wars relic? Possibly even a battle grade Lucrehulk? That or a renegade Imperial type, most likely. The answers would be on board that ship approaching.


Their target reached emergence, broke through. Gleaming white, but marked, scarred in parts. She was flying the pennant- the transponder reply codes, anyway- of a flagship, but looking at her superstructure that was now very unlikely.

Shields down, some of the generators were going to need work; one of the sensor domes was split open, there was a crater in the forward hull by the secondary bay, burn marks from light turbolaser fire like freckles all over the upper hull, and a still- glowing molten gash across the face of the bridge tower.

The symbol blazoned on each side of the bridge tower identified her as the Fist.

‘Checks out, captain. Flagship of the Third Superiority Fleet, Vice- Admiral Ulbin Zavix commanding.’

‘Shouldn’t that be past tense?’ Lennart said, waving at the damage to the tower. ‘Hail her.’

The face that came up was a woman; sharp- faced, orange-red haired, long nose with wide nostrils. Probably not Ulbin, then, apart from the rank insignia- captain’s squares, glittering code cylinders that indicated a flag captain.


‘Captain Tevar, HIMS Fist. You would be Captain Lennart?’ she said; Core worlder accent. She was looking brittle, Lennart thought- not at all surprising after what had in all probability happened to her and her ship.

‘Captain of the Line Jorian Lennart, HIMS Black Prince, Objective Pursuit Squadron 851-Yod. Is Admiral Zavix alive?’

‘No.’ she said, with all due outward, formal solemnity, but from the way her face twisted at the mention of his name she was glad to see the back of him.

From the visible background, she was in the fire direction centre. It was certainly possible to do so, but why had she chosen to con her ship from there?

Lennart’s imagination clicked. ‘Was the Admiral a Falleen, possibly a trusted relative of your Moff?’ That was why he had thought ‘wide nostrils’- a strange idea on the face of it, but with pheromone-filtering nose plugs, that added up.

He was also putting Captain Tevar- his com/scan team were already digging in the sector databanks for her personnel file- on the spot, by speculating on the possibility that her former boss had been a nepotistically appointed poser who couldn’t find his arse with both hands.

Then again, most people would have difficulty finding the admiral’s arse now that it had been vapourised.


He watched her thinking, trying to weigh his reputation and decide how he would react to the various answers available to her.

‘At this precise point, I don’t think it matters.’ She settled on. ‘There has been a disaster; we were assigned to attack a world of apparently minor importance- it was a rebel major base.’

‘I know.’ Lennart said. ‘Ord Corban, the target we were here to hit.’ He decided not to spell it out any further. ‘How much else is left of Third Superiority Fleet?’

She looked bleak at that, seeing in her mind’s eye again just how much had been lost.

‘Com/scan,’ Lennart asked, ‘Any word from Blackwood and Provornyy?’


‘I don’t know.’ Tevar said, and just then her personnel file popped up; Trysandrena Illyria Tevar, family of the minor nobility, joined the Starfleet five months before the end of the Clone Wars, promoted Captain 226- 32.

Four years’ seniority, more or less. Had her current ship for two. Several reprimands for “inappropriate relationships with the crew”; that was the sort of comment that could dog a female officer’s career.

Lennart knew exactly what it was supposed to imply but looking at her bearing, and the list of recommendations, reprimands and commendations she had issued, he doubted it.

Far more likely that she had been playing mother, taking a relatively close and supporting interest in her crew’s personal as well as professional lives.

Nothing wrong with that; as Lennart had tried to beat into the heads of four years’ worth of trainee officers, the problems of the people you command are the problems of command.

Of course, her enemies and rivals had written it up in the most insulting way they could manage- and she had come out at the end of it with a destroyer of her own anyway.


‘Admiral Zavix-‘ she was arguing how to phrase it; just before he could give her permission to speak freely, she did so anyway.

‘If he wasn’t dead I would beat him to death with his own scent glands, he botched the attack so badly we had no chance. He was a fool, and he took a great many good ships and good men with him.’

She said, with a mixture of anger and relief at having vented her feelings. Possibly also guilt. As the flag captain, if it was anybody’s job to stop him it had been hers.

She suspected that was what he was thinking; Lennart intended to suspend judgement until all the facts were in, but she forestalled him by saying ‘I know the rules. For success, no questions asked, for failure, no excuse accepted.’

‘Are you asking to have a court of inquiry convened on you?’ Lennart said, understanding but considering it inappropriate.


‘First things first; is it necessarily over? Would there be any useful military purpose served by an immediate follow- up attack?’ He asked.

‘We thought it was a live exercise. We had no reason to expect them to be there at all.’ She said, still half stunned by the incident- no explanation for failure accepted, she was right about that, but she wanted to find one, wanted to answer the question of what went wrong.

‘No, there would be none of Fourth Superiority Fleet left.’

‘Skipper?’ Rythanor. ‘Sensor feed from Blackwood. No Imperial IFF showing, a lot of wreckage in low orbit, one Imperator, two large contacts, one highly energetic. Planetary shields are up, first-line military grade. Count thirty plus smaller ships.’

‘So the gloves, and some of the masks, are off. Any ID on the large contacts?’

‘One of them is an old Imperial type. A Shockwave.’ Tevar said. ‘That was the ship that tore the bridge module apart.’

‘Makes sense.’ Rythanor agreed. ‘That would make the other prime target a Lucrehulk. Combat carrier, if not full battle refit.’

‘Ah.’ Lennart said. ‘I think Third Superiority sprung the ambush that the Alliance were intending for us.’ He thought about it for a further second.

‘Com/scan, line commander’s conference, on board, now. You too, Captain Tevar. We have a lot of fast thinking to do.’




Lady Tevar; the bit about the nose plugs was pure coincidence, I swear. As for Voracious' action, I had in the back of my mind the 1914 Battle of the Falkland Islands. A Venator was simply too much ship for the opposition; Voracious would ahve ground her down eventually. They only chance the rebel had was a fluke- and I actually did it with dice. There was a fluke, but it was on the side of the Empire.

[Vianca]

Nice.

Welkom to the Fleet, Lady Tevar.
Bet a few people are wanting to

[LadyTevar]

It's ok, hon. Thanks for adding me in

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Next element. It's already 1.42 am, April 1, here; excuse me while I hibernate for the next 22 hours, 19 minutes.

31a2/b

Raesene was playing chase with the rRasfenoni frigate, and not enjoying it. The slippery little thing was jumping ahead of him, behind him- it had an extraordinary amount of energy to spare.

There had already been two near misses, one as it had emerged from hyperspace behind him, dropped off a sequence of ram-drones, and hypered back out, one as they had returned the favour with a remote flown TIE right in it’s predicted path- both times, a last second, full power evasive move had been barely enough.

Third time would be the charm.

Vehrec was hovering, close off the port side of the slowly tumbling, drifting Liberator- class. What were they missing? He thought. Well, Voracious had missed. Lots.

They were evidently not particularly good shots, or gunnery tacticians- overambitious, trying to run before they could walk.

Outgunning the smaller ship six to one and beating her four to one in depth of shield, they should have won eventually anyway. It wasn’t really good enough.


The minelayer- hold on a moment. It was still out there; still moving at better than 0.8c; still with something, maybe enough to be dangerous, in it’s payload bays.

Voracious and Tiger were moving slowly, drifting predictably. The rRasfenoni ship had already made one attack run, on Obdurate, and missed by metres.

The old, fragile Venator was a far more obvious and rewarding target.

‘Voracious, this is Vehrec, recommend you take precautions against hyper-drop missile attack.’


Precautions? What precautions? As if he expects me to know what that means, Caliphant thought. How well does pre-emptive dodging, against an attack that hasn’t been aimed yet, work?

Ah. Aiming. There’s the wrinkle. The layer frigate has to time it’s emergences far enough off the target to get a manoeuvre cone big enough to compensate for nav error, and also with enough time in hand to do a sensor sweep and decide how to act.

They made one attempt to achieve surprise by short-circuiting that process, it nearly got them killed. So this time they’ll likely do it properly.

So- project their base course, and manoeuvre so that a straight line reciprocal leads through Tiger in the Night. Use the rebel frigate as a shield to intercept any carelessly dropped kinetic kill weapons.

Oh, and lob a couple of spreads of torpedoes in semi- dormant mode out beyond her, just for a laugh.

He needed to manoeuvre closer anyway; Voracious had picked up her full complement of ground troops, and a mixed salad they were, but she had nothing like her full complement, Clone War or Civil War load, of transports and dropships.


A fully laden Liberator carried three full regiments. Tiger in the Night had not been at full strength to begin with, and after having two heavy torpedoes detonate in the small craft bay adjacent to the troop decks, it was possible Voracious’ Composite Battlegroup of Detachments outnumbered them four to one.

That included Stormtroopers, Naval Infantry, Imperial Army- two regular and three reservist battalions- two battalions of CompForce who had caught which way the wind was blowing and were protesting their loyalty every five seconds, and a gaggle of Sector Defence Voulnteers- quasi-militia with a serious xenophobia problem.


Normally, he would have led with the Stormtroopers; bearing in mind the casualties usually incurred by the first in, Caliphant had sent the local volunteers.

He needed to manoeuvre closer anyway, to shorten the turnaround cycle for the shuttles he did have. May as well use the manoeuvre to take shelter at the same time.

Who was next most expendable, if that thing did take a hit? Probably the naval infantry.

The object of the exercise was not to take the ship, it was to extract information; live prisoners and unfried computers. They didn’t need to have it to keep. The frigate was a constructive total loss, probably.


Interstingly, the first reports indicated that there were relatively few rRasfenoni on board, and that it was probably not a regular forces rebel ship either; wide variety of kit, several races- rRasfenoni hirelings.

‘Nav,’ Caliphant said, ‘plot us a short-jump course; straight ahead will do, just get the base points so we know what we’ve done and can map from, call it a light minute out. Something we can go with PDQ as an escape route if we do get jumped.’

‘Aye aye, Sir.’ Voracious’ nav acknowledged.

‘Chief Officer?’ one of the pit crew. ‘Ground force contact- they say that the crew are surrendering, and requesting to be taken off at once. Something about bombs.’

Stang, Caliphant thought. Bombs? What would- ah. It’s not rRasfenoni regular service, competent enough but basically a hotchpotch of rebel advisors and freelancers, half of them ex pirate.

If I was the five-armed guys’ chief tactician, I wouldn’t have trusted them as far as I could spit them. I’d have wanted the ship back, hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but I would have fitted that thing with a self destruct mechanism just in case.


Time and distance, what was going to happen next- ‘Tell our grunts to get out, if they can. Take the locals with them, use life pods, use shuttles that are there, use their own landers. I think that ship’s going to blow.’

‘Hyperspace emergence.’ Com/scan reported. ‘It’s the minelayer.’

‘Let’s see how well this works.’ Caliphant said. ‘I don’t think they’ll give the militia much time-‘

Tiger in the Night started to come apart from her reactor outwards, the ugly horned slab cracking and bending, the separated parts hovering in place for a millisecond before the overloaded powerplant’s blast melted them.


Voracious was still distant enough for her shields to take it. Cracking and flaring, though, diminished and reduced. So much for cover. ‘Weapons, bring the torpedoes to full active.’

Caliphant ordered as the first of the penetrators began to cascade loose from the minelayer’s bays. ‘Nav- get us out of here.’

Eight torpedoes in the air; the minelayer frigate detected them, started spraying fire at them. It lost it’s target when Voracious went to lightspeed with fourteen seconds to spare.

Three of the torpedoes got close enough to detonate.

Enough of the frigate survived to make it’s own jump, but the retrieval operation was blown beyond recovery- and if they were exceptionally lucky, especially after nearly being self destructed, there might be some of the survivors from the Liberator willing to talk.

Orders had come through, anyway; tidy up there, take whatever they had found, and return to Ghorn for a command conference.


An honour guard of Stormtroopers escorted Captain Tevar from the landing platform in the secondary bay to the turbolift. She kept waiting for them to arrest her, and was surprised when it failed to happen.

One thing in the large personnel lift caught her attention; an electric noticeboard, that seemed to be cycling through the local newspaper.

Some ships had such things, some did not- it depended on the newness of the commanding officer. Men and women formed wholly by the New Order tended not to permit such things, believed, or held to the party line and then were forced to live up to their statements, that such a sense of community was subversive of real discipline.

The Fist’s scansheet was basically a digest of fleet and galactic news, articles copied from official publications. By the inexorable laws of extremely bad punnage, this ship’s was headed “Black Prints.” Someone deserved to swing for that.

There were subheadings; Home News- seeming to mean the ship’s crew’s home planets; most of them seemed to be from the mid-rim, as many outer rim as core worlders. Local News- where they were and what they were up to at the moment. A heavily edited version, she suspected.

Sports and Entertainment, Rumour and Speculation- apparently the letters pages- and Births, Marriages and Deaths. Peculiar was not the word.


She started leafing through the sports section, looking for a handle on the crew’s morale and state of mind.

They had a four-division websphere league, which was being held up at the bottom end by Financial Wizards (paymaster’s office); the league leaders were Proton Turpitude (fighter ordnance handlers), closely followed by Possibly Are (com/scan) and You Think We Do This For Fun (first walker batallion). That was a surprise. The stormtroopers joined in?

Smashball, on the other hand- the teams included Tentacle Sex Monsters (medical-nonhuman), Duct Divers (deck division- maintenance), Collateral Damage (gunnery), The De-Breathers (life support)-

but it was basically the black gang’s game, with the Sheeple Crushers (regulatory) being the only non- Engineering team in a top ten that included Unlimited Power (reactor), Bodgit and Scarper (damage control), Mad ‘Mechs (structure), Now Then, Now Then (stasis tech), and The Bigger Hammer (engineering-command).


There was a pod racing (simulated) league in which two of the teams, Speed of Heat (fighter pilots) and Zig-Zag Wanderers (scout bikers), had been suspended for “insufficient simulation”.

There was a holochess ranking list and a sabacc leaderboard, and also something called Kalvanball that she had never heard of. She looked at the league tables; the scores, in points, runs, goals, tries and limbs, were all in irrational numbers.

Only ‘Rules Arguments Won’ was in plain arithmetic, and Long Drawn Out And Excruciatingly Painful (legal office) were in second place there behind Every Move You Make (com/scan).

It all spoke of high morale, but a deeply warped sense of humour. Rumour and Speculation were even worse. There was an item from Coruscant that she was sure was a joke.

One skyscraper tower had apparently decided that it was a sentient being in it’s own right, the local network absorbing old datasystems and apparently reaching critical mass.

Not wildly unlikely; what gave it away was the editorial comment that it hoped the building hadn’t been listening to too much propaganda, because if it tried to join the Starfleet they would have hell’s own time fitting it through the corridors.


The executive officer was apparently the winner of a “sponsored hiding contest”- with an attached opinion piece purporting to be from a protocol droid assigned to him; apparently the exec was a near human with metallic-appearing skin, which was the only way comments like ‘oh my aching joints, lube me’ and ‘ah, so strict’ could be made sense of.

It was clear that he was spectacularly unpopular, and widely viewed as ineffectual; would they have mocked him like that, otherwise? Possibly; but would they have felt they needed to?

There was a personal ad, which was almost certainly a sick joke in it’s own right; ZB to GM, why do you never come to me any more? How I long for the squeeze of your hairy arms, the rough tickle of your beard on my breasts. I yearn for you, to explore your strength and immolate myself on your power.

Good grief, Tevar thought. It’s a big galaxy, true; but is it big enough to contain anyone still capable to taking turgid purple garbage like that at face value? She doubted it.


She was almost relieved when she finally reached the conference room, and found a dozen officers there waiting for her.

Captain of the Line Lennart was at the head of the table, in a state of uniform that would have given a drill sargeant nightmares; his own senior officers, including a man the equal in mass of any two others who was having difficulty staying awake and another with a face full of chemical scars, were next to him at the head of the table.

Next to them three officers with the highlight under the rank flash that marked them as formation commanders, one still in a flight suit, one woman, one alternating between putting on a brave face and wanting to hide.

Then there were the individual ship commanders, one who seemed to have brought a pair of police with him. They were looking very nervous. Around the walls of the chamber, a squad of exotic-variant stormtroopers.


‘We will begin,’ Lennart said, standing and leaning on the table, ‘with the events of today.’

‘Begin what?’ the huge, hairy engineer asked, slumping slightly.

‘It’s exposition time, Gethrim.’ Lennart said. ‘Who else apart from you and me knows what’s going on?’

Mirannon looked up, meaning the imperial suite. ‘I’ve been too busy to be fully in the loop, but I do know we’re still missing one piece.’

‘Motive? Good point. We’ll fill in the rest of the puzzle and come back to that. Captain Tevar, would you now talk us through the events of this morning?’

It was so weirdly phrased, it took her a second to realised she was being asked to explain herself.


She plugged the log disc into the table’s display unit, the lights went down. ‘Third Superiority Fleet was a paper formation until two days ago.’ She admitted.

‘My ship was on a flag-waving tour of the ninetieth circuit- trading worlds along the local spine- when we were reassigned. I had never met Admiral Zavix before.’

The table of organisation for Third Superiority Fleet came up. A full sector group would have had four superiority fleets, built around six line destroyers each and possibly a heavy destroyer leadship; the fleet had one superiority systems force, the three destroyers, and an awful lot of paper attachments.

Somebody somewhere was drawing pay and allowances for a high count of nonexistent personnel.

‘My ship was chosen as the flag because of our readiness rate.’ Tevar explained. ‘I knew the others only by reputation- there were private contacts, but no command conference. Proclamations only.’


‘Did you know Admiral Zavix by reputation- had you, in fact, ever even heard of him before?’

‘No.’ Tevar said. ‘His file showed that he had been an administrative officer, some experience in escort command, but mainly logistics. Very young for his rank. And falleen.’

‘Up and coming young nobleman- speaking of which, your family were related to the pre-Clone War sector governors, were they not?’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’ Tevar asked, irritated.

‘Quite a lot. He was supposed to seduce you because of your family connections.’ She flushed, stood up, and looked about to swing for him; the stormtroopers took a step closer to her.

Lennart carried on, ‘Right then, because things were starting to come apart for them, they needed the help and support of the sector’s old nobility. You may have achieved your position on merit, but for this job it was your kin that mattered.

Care to offer an alternative explanation of why you were conning your ship from fire direction, with filter plugs in your nose?’

She sat down again.


‘The reason this matters,’ Lennart explained, ‘is because the situation is complicated enough that we need to understand it all, in order to decide who to shoot and in what order.

How did you get a Falleen moff in the first place? How did they get, and why did they choose to use, the political clout to force your kith and kin out of the loop?

The target system’- Ord Corban came up on the display- ‘was a fleet base during the Clone Wars, that was deleted and expunged from the records for reasons which it would be hazardous to know, and which I will discuss if there is absolutely no alternative.’ Lennart said; Mirannon nodded, looking solemn.

‘It was mothballed more or less intact,’ Lennart said, ‘and someone, one of those people who are always responsible because you can only be given the opportunity for a crime this big if you are a trusted member of the inner circle, put their credit balance first.

Someone, in COMPNOR or the Ubiqtorate, sold out the back door access.


Legal niceties be damned. It’s more or less common knowledge that Prince Xizor is one of the most corrupt beings in the galaxy and the public face, if not the actual head, of Black Sun.

Think about it. A full fleet yard, capable of constructing craft up to destroyer class and repairing and maintaining cruisers at least, under a security blanket that made it untouchable by Imperial forces.

I can prove very little, I have to admit, but it hangs together too well to be very far from the truth. What political assets they cashed in to do this we may or may not ever be able to reconstruct.

The upshot is that Black Sun, or the Falleen race as a whole, managed to get one of their own put in here and in charge of the sector specifically in order to exploit Ord Corban. The normal perquisites and priviledges of rank were simply icing on the cake.'


'You know,’ he looked around the locals, ‘how very little territory patrol and escort command actually covers; how much of the sector is barely policed, and how under-reported piracy and space crime are.

Not coincidence, not accident. Some of you are further in this than you realise; Group Captain, how many of the pilots you trained do you think found their way into the Imperial Starfleet- and how many into Black Sun and other pirate fleets?’ he asked Vehrec.

‘What a load of utter nerfshit…’ Vehrec’s voice trailed off, remembering some of his cadets.

‘The real requirements were the highest possible professional standard, and low enough political reliability that the grads could be seduced away. Who better than you for that?’ Lennart said, smiling precisely because it wasn’t a joke.

‘That doesn’t mean it happened, just because it’s plausible.’ Vehrec said, indignant.

‘The numbers say it did. Your and other flight academies passed out two hundred and fifty percent over and above the requirement for the sector; the excess are supposed to have been transferred to other sectors- as Regional units, we have the access to prove that only another one in seven actually did.

As many as four in seven of your trainees went to private contractors, and a high proportion of them would not be legitimate. I’m sorry, but all the evidence is that you were used.’


‘Then-‘ Vehrec was still trying to assimilate it all in his head- ‘Why me? Why pick me for this outfit?’

‘I reasoned,’ Lennart decided to say, ‘that you would be sufficiently annoyed to want your chance at revenge. That and, truth be told, I don’t want to see someone who went through the same crap as I did back in the Clone Wars to get himself shot without at least the chance to clear his name.’

‘A courtesy from one old retread to another?’ Vehrec said, not best pleased at having to be helped and accepting it with poor grace.

‘You could put it like that.’ Lennart said, glossing over the details.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘the criminals buy their way into the Imperial hierarchy in the sector, and set out to make that investment show a profit. The sector has other problems; two alien races already here, one with some extremely unpleasant habits, as Commander Falldess and her home planet know all too well.

What happened between the rRasfenoni and the Falleen I do not know, nor do we have enough to go on at this stage- but it’s complicated enough for a quintuple cross.


Initially, the rRasfenoni must have gone along with the scam, agreed not to rock the boat in return for a cut of the actual proceeds, but it must have dawned on them that they could be very easily hung out to dry in such a position, so they threw in their lot with the Rebellion.

The Alliance are too short of well-armed friends to vet those they do have sufficiently closely; who in their right mind would trust the Bothans, for instance? The rRasfenoni accepted the help, and proceeded to implicate the Alliance in their crimes.

Something I took considerable pleasure in pointing out to an Alliance agent I happened to look up, in case anyone was wondering where I disappeared to there. I threatened them with full disclosure.

The rebels have no positive choice- stand by the rRasfenoni and proclaim themselves guilty of the crimes they accuse the Empire of, disown them very publicly, which for my purposes suits well enough because that only leaves the sector government to blame, or pass judgement on them themselves- two sets of our erstwhile enemies shooting at each other would be a pleasant sight indeed.’


‘What the rebels don’t kill of them, we finish off later?’ Falldess asked, tone daring him to say no.

‘I don’t want to have to, the vast majority of the civilian population, even of the rank and file, can’t be implicated in this, but I doubt anything less would prevent them from doing it again. An eye for an eye, a world for a world.’ Lennart confirmed.

‘Anyway, through either arm of this deal, the Alliance bought their way into access to Ord Corban, which was a major miscalculation on Black Sun’s part.

The Rebel Alliance has a few things going for it; it has a ready supply of romantic idiots, more than it can gather, train and transport, and there are enough small- scale, quasi- legitimate means of securing funding from the grass roots that men and money are not the Alliance’s primary problems.

What they are desperately short of is heavy metal and it’s essential prerequisite, yard space. Ord Corban must have been a gift from Destiny herself to them, and the falleen underestimated how far they would be prepared to go to gain access to and hold on to the planet.

You pair,’ he said to the two ISB agents standing behind Raesene, ‘anything you’d like to add?’


The younger of the two agents looked about to break out in defiance- that the elder thought would be extremely ill judged. How to play this, vel Salif was thinking. The innocent pawn, just a policeman, honest, not my fault my boss was corrupt?

Truth be told, Lennart’s case hung together terrifyingly well. A certain amount of profiteering was expected, even acceptable. Self administered performance related pay was one of the acknowledged rights of being a moff. This went well beyond anything that could conceivably be called legitimate.

Might they not be better off trying the other approach? Too valuable to kill outright?

‘How would you like to be able to prove that? Enough of it, at least, to stand up before the Council?’ vel Salif said, trying to look approximately trustworthy.

‘I am impressed by how instantly you managed to believe that.’ Lennart said, dryly.

‘We were told to gather evidence against you, by officers who we had no proof were not legitimate authority. Your whole plan, your selection of these people, is based on the idea that most of the mid to low ranks of the sector group are legitimate servants of the Empire. Is it not obvious?’

‘Not really, no.’ Lennart said. ‘Too glib. As soon as a more proper authority reveals itself, you swing lodestone-like to point on it? Remember; at the very least, you were abusing your authority to score points in an internal faction fight, by attempting to compromise a Starfleet officer- me.

Professional malfeasance; and unfortunately for you, I don’t have to wait to take that to trial.’


The younger agent, Dorind Salif, stood up and went for his gun. It was a lunatic, if I’m going down I’m taking you with me, sort of move; his uncle, knowing he was under the guns of a dozen stormtroopers, decided to save his life and his nephew’s- by punching him in the groin. A simple backhander from the sitting position.

The young man collapsed, screaming, it was made worse by four stun bolts slamming into him before he hit the ground.

‘Well,’ Lennart said, ‘at least that didn’t sound rehearsed. Take them away,’ he told Aleph-One, ‘let Eleven-Indigo have them. One stipulation; he’s to remain at least basically sane when they’re done.’

Lennart tried to avoid looking vel Salif in the eye as fire team Gimel dragged the pair of ISB agents out; eleven-indigo were the deep probe team. They were political police, they deserved no better. That was what he was telling himself, anyway.


‘SFA(I) Rontaine scooped up some of the wounded from Free Gravity For All for immediate treatment, did she not? Rebels and some of the crew.’ Lennart put to Vehrec.

‘Yes, we got Space Major Overgaard, the one the rebels were using as their mouthpiece. Senior survivor, actually- Rontaine says that the rebs left him in bad enough condition, the only security job he’s likely to get now is if Darth Vader needs a body double.’

‘Don’t,’ Mirannon yawned half way through, ‘give me ideas.’

‘Don’t make me have to tell you what to do with them.’ Lennart said to his chief engineer. ‘In any case, he is someone else who should have useful local knowledge.

Which brings us back to this morning. Captain Tevar?’


‘Give me a moment. This is a lot to take in.’ Tevar said, trying to parse her thoughts.

Most of the rest of the locals were similarly boggled. He had just told them they had been living a lie, and a remarkably monstrous one at that. In consideration of that he had the holotable start cycling through the evidence.

Patrol route map, actuarial data, previous clashes, rRasfenoni attacks and ecological disasters that could have been attacks, police arrest rates on the key worlds of the sector, promotions and transfers of government officials.

‘One question.’ Elstrand raised his head and asked. ‘When did you know all this?’

‘I first suspected something was very wrong when I noticed a naval depot system marked on the sector map as a place of no importance. That was not long after the capture of Grey Princess and the destruction of Syurdraev.

Since then I’ve been figuring it out a strand at a time, and looking for the loose threads that I could use to unravel this without causing a complete political crisis and security disaster in the process.’ Lennart stated.

‘We’re settling for a partial crisis, then?’ Mirannon yawned. ‘Comarre Meridian can be ready to move in six hours plus the time it takes to ship twelve million tons of duracrete, but the only way Tarazed Meridian is going to be battle ready in less than two days is if we tow her on an extension cord.’

‘That’s a lot less than your original estimate.’ Lennart said, wondering.

‘That would be the ‘Brutal but correct’ estimate? This is missing trials, calibration, integration- six hours and two days, if I stop even pretending to try to do a proper job that won’t blow up or fall off half way through the fight.’


‘So whether the tactical situation gives us that time is the important question, isn’t it? Captain Tevar?’

The tactical display changed to the Corban system, Ord Corban being the second planet out on the inner, hot edge of the life zone.

There was a smaller mining world, close enough to the sun that the surface temperature must have done half the work of smelting for them; it too had shielding and defensive emplacements.

Outwards, empty orbit, cold rock, small gas giant, asteroids, large giant with a glitteringly bright ring system- most of them with sensor watch platforms if not gun turrets.

‘If Vice-Admiral Zavix knew that the system was supposed to be heavily defended, he only hinted at it to us.’ Tevar stated. ‘We were given orders to aim for an emergence point here.’ She pointed it out on the system map. Frighteningly close to the planet.

Knife-fighting range, in fact. ‘Interestingly lunatic.’ Lennart decided. ‘There are very few circumstances that would justify a move like that- hit and run raid, maybe.

That or so heavily outclassed that what the enemy do to each other from the crossfire as you appear in the middle of them is more effective than anything you can manage yourself; neither of those ideas should apply, with three destroyers.’


‘He wanted to appear suddenly, right in their faces, for intimidation value.’ Tevar said.

Lennart stopped himself from heckling, this time. Let her tell this in her own way.

‘We were briefed to conduct a combat drop; flyby attack then decelerate and return to high orbit and release the drop craft. All three fleet destroyers were in stepped line astern, the Fist trailing low, Riever high and leading, Tomor centre.

We were told that it was a derelict facility, none of us expected to come out under the guns of a fortress world.’

‘An early open period depot would have been designed around the expectation of attack by a battle division of four, possibly six Lucrehulks. With three Imperator class…’

What Captain Tevar wanted to hear, not that she would admit it or that he would insult her by saying it in so many words, would be that it wasn’t their fault.


It would be good for the morale of her crew, and the survivors of the fleet escorts, to hear that they had been given a basically impossible job, and done well to come out of it. Give them some of their pride back, and someone useful to blame. It still wasn’t yet certain that it was true, though.

That, and he didn’t want to tell the Pursuit Squadron that they were doomed.


‘It’s do-able in principle,’ Lennart continued, ‘but it needs the technique of the rapier. Long range, highest possible relative motion. Jumping straight into the fire- you did well in getting anything out. Go on.’

‘It took us several moments to realise what we were up against.’ Tevar said. ‘We were expecting a stolen garrison base, maybe a grounded starship; superheavy turbolasers- Tomor took three hits in the belly in the opening salvo, shattered her bow, started fires and secondary explosions in the small craft bay.

The Admiral didn’t seem to understand; maybe he was just projecting calm, but- he ordered the drop continued. Send the small craft and escorts down after them.

Tomor was wallowing, she was taking ion fire as well; I rolled the Fist to present our guns, and managed to pick up Tomor on our tractor beams to help tow her out. Reiver scrambled her fighters and dropships, but the air was alive with LTL and point defence laser fire.’


‘That fits.’ Lennart said. ‘The point defence grid needed to keep off a swarm of droid fighters was always impressive. It wouldn’t have been healthy for the escort corvettes.’

‘It- I didn’t have time to think about how dangerous it would be for them, I ordered the Fist’s escort lines in to strafe the defence turrets, the Admiral countermanded that and ordered us all to break for high orbit.

I didn’t want to fight it out under their guns any more than he did, but I ended up arguing that if we simply turned our backs on them we would be torn apart.’

The action was playing itself out as she spoke, holodisplay following her words.

‘Scissors, paper, stone.’ Lennart said. ‘The big ship guns go after the anti-corvette defences, the corvettes shoot out the point defence, that opens the way for the bombers to take down the heavy defence lasers. That is, at least, the theory.’

By the display at least, the theory wasn’t working. Perhaps they could have done better- but it was basically every ship for themselves. There was a reason ‘run for it’ was not in the official order book.


The Fist was zig-zagging as well as she could, trying to tow a cripple, but the snowstorm of laser fire around her made it almost impossible to launch tugs, or for the Tomor to launch life pods.

‘We took shield hits, Tomor took another superheavy laser to the engines, I don’t think she would have been repairable even if- I remember being baffled by the fact that we weren’t dead.

Riever’s shields were down and the ion cannon were angling for her, Tomor had some drift velocity outwards, still had power in her gun capacitors.

We were taking hits ourselves; four-hundreds I think, and the shields were crumbling, Reiver had accelerated straight ahead and then turned to bear, so we were separated; the Admiral ordered her back into line to cover him, and- Reiver’s captain, Daszeti, tried to surrender.

Fighting broke out on board, what of her stormtrooper legion hadn’t been deployed tried to retake the bridge and continue the action.

Admiral Zavix ordered ourselves and the escort group to fire on her in preference. He ordered my arrest when I refused to do so.’ Tevar admitted.


‘Your rationale?’ Lennart said, calmly.

‘They weren’t shooting at us, the planet was.’ She said. ‘I didn’t have time to think of any more sophisticated reason there and then.’

Carry on.’ Lennart instructed.

‘That was when the other jaw of the trap closed.’ Tevar said, and there were a series of flashes as ships exited hyperspace.

Two large ships, Shockwave and Lucrehulk, emerged, the Shockwave in close proximity to the Fist and Tomor, the Lucrehulk- which identified as the One and Indivisible- in proximity to Reiver; she began to discharge landers and assault boats.

The Shockwave identified as Admonisher; remarkably Imperial-sounding.

Mirannon glanced at Lennart, who nodded; that had been the former flagship of the 118th Republic Fleet. He was too tired to conceal the gesture as well as he thought he had.


Shockwave- class were fearsome beasts; not overwhelmingly efficient, sprawling, flabby ships in some requests, but they were genuine heavy destroyers, barely this side of light cruiser.

They mounted twelve eight-cell gun banks for the same seventy-teraton turbolasers mounted on the Venator.

Admonisher rolled to bring her guns to bear, the Fist got off the first shots, but they sparked off the larger ship’s shielding. The return fire carved a crater in the Imperator’s bow, blasting out the power lines to the tractor beam cluster towing Tomor; the second salvo crashed into the fore superstructure, and ate a glowing hole in it.

‘Admiral Zavix died in that salvo; we had lost contact with Tomor, Reiver was being boarded- I could have kept fighting. I could have tried to take one of them.’


Lennart decided she actually meant it. Guilt, to some degree; disappointment; but what more was there to do? Did she actually deserve to be punished for her actions? Did Falldess, for failing to get out of the way of a swarm of planet killers?

Did Raesene, for inviting along a pair of snooping security men? Did Barth-Elstrand, for misreading the actions of a rebel ship and putting his frigate in line for a concrete bow cap?

Did he, for misreading the situation badly enough to think it was in no-one’s interest to force the issue, and therefore he had time? What simplicity it was to punish failure, to be able to fall from a great height on the unfortunate. Lennart wished he could do things that straightforwardly.

Past a certain point, being able to dispose of incompetent junior officers was a privilege of rank; at Rear-Admiral or better, say, you had enough people under you that you could afford to hire and fire.

As a junior officer, make do and mend was the order of the day. It was necessary to make the best of the personnel available to you.


I could have stayed on the appointments directorate, Lennart thought, but it would have driven me round the bend before long. Never mind career prospects.

So doing essentially the same now- I could make a case against any or all of them, probably manage to have them broken, if not actually shot.

How much fun would I have in front of a court of inquiry, defending my own actions with respect to the exec, if nothing else?

We have more officers hungry for command than we have ships, so anybody who screws up usually doesn’t get a second chance. They get shouldered aside by the men behind them.


Which procedure litters the galaxy with failed and burnt-out officers with nothing better to go and do than fight for our enemies, and no better aim in life than to give us grief.

Then again, a real failure does deserve it, and we have more than enough spare disintegration booths. All of us have got people killed.

Except, actually, Raesene, who is feeling guiltiest of the lot.

What to do? Who deserves to have the hard hand of the system descend on them- who was guilty of lack of forethought, lack of intelligence, who can no longer be trusted with the lives of Imperial spacemen?

Falldess? If that little twitch was anything to go by, she would never admit to her crew, and very seldom to herself, how much losing them hurt. She would be unlikely to make the same mistakes again.

Vehrec and Caliphant- running that madhouse of a ship? Not yet. Vehrec had some tactical sense, when he let his adrenalin glands give his brain a chance.

Barth-Elstrand? He was too busy punishing himself. If he didn’t stop, it might be necessary to replace him, and there was little time left to put him to the proof.


As for captain Tevar- ‘Tried is the operative word. Whichever you turned your back on, the other would have pounded your ship to pieces- if the planetary defence batteries didn’t get to it first.

Mistakes were made; suboptimal decisions were taken, suboptimal actions were carried out; yours was not the prime responsibility. Technically you might even be guilty of allowing a traitor to escape, aiding and abetting, disobeying an order, we might have to clone you to carry out the full sentence. So what? It would have made no difference.

Your ship would have been destroyed before you managed to lay enough fire on Reiver to deny her to the enemy. Following through on the Admiral’s instructions would have cost the Empire three star destroyers, not two.

The way we’ll write it up, the decision of the court is that the charges against you are technicalities without foundation, based on a difference in tactical understanding of the situation, and should be dropped.’ She tried not to look too relieved.

‘Which leaves the question of how do we proceed from here.’ Lennart continued.


‘I misread the situation myself, by assuming everyone involved was a rational actor.’ He admitted. ‘It was not in our interest to charge in before repairs and group integration were complete, it was not in the Rebels’ interest to pick another stand-up fight, it was not in Sector’s interest to advertise what fools they had been.

I made the assumption that everyone would pause and apply spin, so that they would be more likely to get the political outcome that suited themselves from the inevitable military action.

The situation is too delicate and too important to piss around with, and I acted on the expectation that everyone involved was smart enough to realise that.

I was wrong. There are five parties involved, not three- the illegitimate elements of the sector government, who I had intended to separate out later, took senselessly drastic action to attempt to conceal their crimes;

and the rebels’ local allies, who also turned out to be a more separate faction than they had any interest being.


The Alliance presence here is now more exposed than-‘ he dropped the joke he had been intending, remembering the presence of two female officers- ‘never mind the analogies.

Large rebel ships are so rare that every independent hunting group in the galaxy will be baying for the privilege of coming here. For the rebs, to stay is to die.

They’ve already risked and lost too much against us, so I reckon they are going to cram every available cubic nanometre of those ships with as much of the machinery of the yards, and the defences of them, as they can manage, and run.

The rRasfenoni, I have to admit I don’t know what to expect from them, whether they will turtle up, blame their ancestors, make a sacrifice of a few chosen conspirators, go down fighting in a blaze of hatred-

I am far from certain what is to be expected, how much of the rationality to plan something like their expansionist policy and how much of the madness to choose to do it in the first place.


We have an infestation of journalists,’ Lennart said, ‘the only element of the political process more corrupt than the politicians themselves, so I am going to go and lie like a bastard, apply some spin to buy us as much more time as I can.

Gethrim, send for that duracrete, then get some sleep while you wait for it to arrive.

Captain Tevar, take the remaining escorts of Fourth Superiority and attach yourself to 851-Yod as the fifth line of the group. Reckon on having six hours to make what repairs you can.

While I’m having my tongue forked, I want plans drawn up for the last round of the mid game- three kidnappings.

Vice-Admiral Domenic Gerlen; as I reckon it, he is one of the highest ranking officers in the sector not up to his eyeballs in the Moff’s little scam. We need to leave someone alive to rebuild afterwards, he’ll do.

Doctor Edward Nygma, consultant attached patrol and escort command; he’s a Ubiqtorate plant, he has a useful load of evidence and I don’t reckon he’s going to last long with it unless we get him into protective custody.

Third thing. Commander Falldess.’

‘Captain?’ She replied.

‘Your ship’s too badly damaged to commit to action as soon as we need her. Find something somewhere else in the sector group that you can steal, and plan a cutting-out action accordingly.’

Aye, aye, Sir.’ Falldess said, smiling. She had been afraid she was going to be left out.


‘Then-‘ The hairs on the back of Lennart’s neck stood up, there was a surge of tension in the air; he wondered if any of the rest of them could feel it. An approaching presence.

The door slid open, and Kor Alric was there, looking strangely energised, like a ballistic man. He was on his path, with the speed and the power he had set off with behind him, but drifting now.

‘Captain Lennart, I have been turning your words over in my head, and I have come to a conclusion.’ He said, in a slightly detached tone, a man infested by the Force- not absolutely rooted in reality any more.

The stormtroopers raised their guns, Mirannon tried to shake some life back into his head, the bridge team and the rest of the squadron shrank away from him; he looked at them all as if noticing them for the first time.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked Lennart.

‘Conspiring against the sector government. Care to join us?'

[LadyTevar]

YAY! I get to Live!

[Vehrec]

A toast to Lady Tev, and to me, here's hoping we'll clean up this sector and hunt down those kids I trained that went Pirate. I have to wonder what kind of shape your ship is in right now though. And what kind it's going to be in after we do this attack.
Well, you don't have to help me clean up my own mess anyways. I'll shoot those kids down myself if I ever catch them.

[declan]

Next element. It's already 1.42 am, April 1, here; excuse me while I hibernate for the next 22 hours, 19 minutes.

Awesome chapter, get your sleep I can wait a few days for the next.

Declan

[Raesene]

Excellent, my two problems got taken care of - I do feel sorry for them (well, almost).

[gtg947h]

Great chapter! I loved the team names and the "newspaper" display.

[LadyTevar]

The personell ad was just horrible bodice-ripper tripe.

[Vianca]

Do I have to steal another ship???
Lets hope it isn't for if (and when) we have to split.

ps: Hope I can keep her (the both of them).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

(Yawns, wakes up early.)
Of course it was; it was supposed to be. You didn't think I meant that, did you? Somebody is being mocked, and how else would a young officer, not all that keen on doing things the official way, tell his or her (or, for that matter, its) departmental commander that they were spending too long staring at one particular file and sighing?

GM, in case you were wondering, is Gethrim Mirannon; as soon as Captain Tevar points this out to him, someone's air conditioning privileges are going to be severely modified. The ship's chief medical officer- ZB- always did have an attraction to him, something I should have been signalling from much earlier on.

However, given his usual working hours and the amount of his brain that's taken up by his work and work- related hobbies and finagles, he simply hasn't noticed, or at least not taken it on as serious. As far as he's concerned, there is a small overlap in their duties over the subject of paramedics on damage control parties, occasional technical issues in life support and biomechanics, and from time to time she has to patch up those of his people who prefer to learn the hard way rather than the easy way.

It is an inherently mushy situation, suitable either as tragedy or as farce, and someone in the medical department is being jovially callous in pointing out, through purple bodice-ripper drivel, that she is spending far too long thinking about the force and it's implications for one individual in particular. Yes, this constitutes a plot point.

The reason they've never really hooked up is that they're running too much in parallel for their destinies to ever really cross; she's almost as much of a workaholic as he is. Lennart's comment, incidentally, would be 'Why are you taking this so seriously? You thought we got to have all the fun to ourselves? Our example doesn't count for nothing, you know, we're not short of onboard piss artists. Oh, and don't hurt the perpetrator badly enough to render him unfit for duty.'

[Enigma]

I wonder how you'll manage to kidnap my namesake? Will he have to be persuaded or will you outsmart him and find his location?

[Vehrec]

"According to Comscan, you are located at XX'YY" because we traced your calls. Also, you're listed in the Blue pages." Come on man, you're a civil servant, it's not that hard to find you when you're on light duty. I think.

And Bodice-rippers make for excellent parody fodder, so I had assumed that the add was part of someone's joke and simply written it off as a throwaway line. Nice to see there's deeper thought involved.

[Enigma]

"According to Comscan, you are located at XX'YY" because we traced your calls. Also, you're listed in the Blue pages." Come on man, you're a civil servant, it's not that hard to find you when you're on light duty. I think.

And Bodice-rippers make for excellent parody fodder, so I had assumed that the add was part of someone's joke and simply written it off as a throwaway line. Nice to see there's deeper thought involved.

But he's also like the Riddler. He probably bounces off any communications through thousands of satelites before reaching its destination.

[Vianca]

"According to Comscan, you are located at XX'YY" because we traced your calls. Also, you're listed in the Blue pages." Come on man, you're a civil servant, it's not that hard to find you when you're on light duty. I think.

And Bodice-rippers make for excellent parody fodder, so I had assumed that the add was part of someone's joke and simply written it off as a throwaway line. Nice to see there's deeper thought involved.

But he's also like the Riddler. He probably bounces off any communications through thousands of satelites before reaching its destination.

Don't forget the hacked surfers, so they don't remember his pc's uplink code or any other importent info.
Probably with somekind of time differents in it, just to be sure.
Got many droide's, Enigma?

[Enigma]

"According to Comscan, you are located at XX'YY" because we traced your calls. Also, you're listed in the Blue pages." Come on man, you're a civil servant, it's not that hard to find you when you're on light duty. I think.

And Bodice-rippers make for excellent parody fodder, so I had assumed that the add was part of someone's joke and simply written it off as a throwaway line. Nice to see there's deeper thought involved.

But he's also like the Riddler. He probably bounces off any communications through thousands of satelites before reaching its destination.

Don't forget the hacked surfers, so they don't remember his pc's uplink code or any other importent info.
Probably with somekind of time differents in it, just to be sure.
Got many droide's, Enigma?

If you see one with a question mark......

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Slightly behind schedule, I know.


Ch 32

‘Do you think you can say such things, and walk away from them? Do you think you can attempt to unravel the logic of the universe and not have it whiplash round and bite you?’ Adannan demanded of Lennart.

‘Trust me,’ Lennart said, deciding to be silly to keep Adannan’s attention focused on him, ‘the very last mythological entity you are qualified to stand in for is the logic of the universe. Is this something you want to discuss for all to hear, or would you rather talk about it, whatever it is, on the hoof?’

‘Clear the room.’ He gestured, with an unlit lightsabre. ‘All of you.’

Some of them stood, but Lennart shook his head. ‘Very backwards way of doing it. We have operational planning that needs to be done, and it would be more efficient if you and I wandered off while they stayed here.’

‘I couldn’t care less about-‘ he started to shout, angrily. Then realised how well that would go down with the assembled navy officers. ‘You devious bastard. Will you ever stop trying to trap me?’


‘Will you ever stop extending pseudopodia of the will that are just too tempting to ignore?’ Lennart fired back. ‘Now, I could start going on about rationality, and maybe you would be irrational enough to take up the opposite position and maybe not…’

Adannan, wisely, did not rise to the bait this time. Instead, he looked around the room at the assembled officers. The one to beware of was the chief engineer, he saw at once.

Dog tired, half asleep, but in his daily work and subconscious way, he made far more use of the force than he thought. He would be a credible enemy.

‘Perhaps this would best be conducted in private.’ Adannan admitted. One thing; from the way the members of the squadron were reacting to him, not all of them had even been aware that he was on board. Which, from the command point of view, contained more than a little truth.


Lennart toyed with the idea of announcing ‘Why not? I already have you on record conspiring against the Empire anyway.’ And telling the command team about all the private discussions Mirannon’s backscatter tap had intercepted. Perhaps- but there was still that final piece of the puzzle missing. Motive.

‘Well, I’m late for the press conference anyway, and you may want to be there. If I ever do snap, embrace the dark side and start butchering people with a lightsabre, it’ll probably be a room full of journalists.’

Adannan nodded, strode out, trying to look menacing. ‘Carry on.’ Lennart told the assembled officers, then strolled out in the same general direction; the stormtroopers all followed behind.

‘What was that about?’ Tevar asked the command team.

‘Skipper recently got diagnosed as a force sensitive.’ Brenn stated. ‘Kor Alric’s an agent of the privy council; he’s here trying to kill three birds with one stone- adopt him as his apprentice, and political oversight dealing with the situation.’

That was only two possibilities. Tevar was about to say so when she remembered Mirannon’s ‘missing piece of the puzzle’. That would be it. Instead she asked ‘Diagnosed when?’


‘A week- no, it was only what, two days ago.’ Brenn stated.

‘The Jedi Order used to recruit virtually out of the cradle.’ Vehrec pointed out. ‘Captain Lennart’s what, mid forties, late maybe?’

‘Four years at Raithal, too.’ Mirannon pointed out.

‘So…’ Falldess considered. ‘Being a guardian of peace and justice is one thing, but I thought the Jedi were illegal?’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’ Brenn said. ‘He hates the idea. That time as an instructor means he knows, maybe not everything, but more than enough about how to be a problem pupil.’


Time to be bold. ‘Kor Alric Adannan has tortured two of his own staff and attempted the murder by slow torture of two more. He is scum of the first order, no better and maybe worse than the criminals we’re trying to kick out.

The reason you haven’t heard much from him is that Captain Lennart’s been shielding you from him, so far.’

‘So where does this go?’ Vehrec asked.

‘For you, nowhere unless things go catastrophically wrong. You’re naval officers, doing the Starfleet’s work, in the Imperial interest. That’s enough. Let the flagship sweat out the politics.’ Brenn said.

The ship and line commanders of the rest of the squadron looked at each other, unconvinced.


In the turbolift heading down to the briefing room in the troop bay where the journos had been herded, Lennart was studiously looking at the ceiling.

‘You’re making a mistake there.’ Adannan said. ‘You should have taken somebody’s head.’

‘A lot of Imperial officers I know would have.’ Lennart admitted. ‘As it is, Guillemot’s commander, Skardin, is going to be broken and dismissed the service.

Sometimes, the enemy just wins. Has more power, is quicker on the draw, or has fortune on their side. I don’t see the sense in killing off someone, theoretically one of our own, who did an otherwise skilful job but was beaten by brute force or dumb luck.’

‘Skardin?’

‘Could have done better. If you want to know what my criteria for failure are, there’s the living example. He blundered in, twice- failed to warn a friendly ship of an enemy, exposed himself carelessly to attack, got his ship unnecessarily damaged and some of his crew unnecessarily killed.

Arrogant, clumsy, unworthy of trust and unlikely to learn.’


‘Yet Lieutenant- Commander Raesene, who virtually sponsored a personal attack on you, goes unpunished? I can just comprehend not using your authority for personal gain, but not using it to defend yourself passes belief.’ Adannan said.

‘What’s to defend against? Those agents were meant to pose a political risk that has been overtaken by events, which is why I can have them filleted if needs be. Raesene backed the local, and losing, side- so far- which means he is depending on me not lowering the boom on him as well.

I don’t know what he thought he was doing to begin with. He is a good ship commander, he could probably have made his own way anyway- one of the reasons I chose him for the squadron.

He shouldn’t have needed a desperate gamble like that to push his career on. I haven’t rubbed it in, because I don’t want him to be pushed towards doing anything reckless in order to try to get back into my good books. Same with barth-Elstrand, yelling at him would be counterproductive.’

‘I don’t think so. That’s not enough. They are not sufficiently afraid of you; they look to you for wit, for experience- as if to an elder brother, in fact. That is something which you are not, and cannot be.’ Adannan stated.


‘Your traditions are the traditions of a wolf among sheep; believing that others need to be driven to war. I am a Starfleet officer, and so are the men and women of my command; they have chosen this path, worked hard to get as far along it as they have. I chose the path of a wolf among wolves.

Oh, pride and ambition and the knowledge that I could do better than many, but at the root, as an organism, I never aspired to be more than primus inter pares.’ Lennart admitted.

‘The force will not permit you to remain merely that.’ Adannan challenged. ‘You must strive to be prinzip uber alles.’

‘I’m far from certain of that, linguistically or as a matter of the art of command. War is confusion and madness; it’s bad enough that the enemy want to kill you without feeling that your own comrades want your blood as well.’ Lennart said.


‘There is still far too much of the teacher in you,’ Adannan said, ‘as well as a frightening amount of optimist. What about your worst failure? Your executive officer. You destroyed his mind by being kind to him.’

‘I tried to make him grow, and it’s not over yet, unless you’ve assassinated him in the meantime.’ Lennart said, looking carefully at Adannan to try and tell if he had.

‘You’re going to tell me that if I had kept up pressure on him, reinforced the rigid self-control he held himself under, his internal problems wouldn’t have got out of hand and he would still be a functional officer?’

‘That man trained himself, accepted life’s wounds and turned them into a strength in a manner that did him nothing but credit, a most useful minion- and you chose to waste that.’ Adannan charged.

‘You intend to draw parallels between your treatment of your underlings and my treatment of mine, trying to prove to me that I’m no better than you are?’ Lennart said, and meant to go on.

‘Do you really think you can only descend to my level? Do you think there aren’t more and greater monsters out there? You want to know why I’m plundering the dangerous past- do you have the nerve to stand and listen while I tell you?’ Adannan challenged him.


Aleph-3 could hardly contain herself. This was, would be, her job Lennart was going to do, the task she had been bred for- and she couldn’t, because she thought the team would have to stay here to get between them and stop them tearing each other apart, if necessary. Or would that work?

Perhaps it was essential to do exactly that, now, distract them because otherwise- she had no idea what Adannan was about to say, knew that it would be dangerous to hear.

‘Kor Alric, Captain. May I- could I…’

‘What?’ they both said.

‘This is my original purpose, what I was born and brought up for. If you had something else to discuss, I could handle the conference.’ Kriff it, she hadn’t meant to sound enthusiastic.

‘You don’t know what lies I’m planning to tell.’ Lennart said.

‘No, but you don’t exactly have a prepared speech either, and if you give me the bones of the argument I can make it up as I go along.’ All right, maybe he had a point, she thought. She wasn’t supposed to be actually enthusiastic about this.


‘I’m still going to need to be there, to field questions.’ Lennart pointed out.

‘Not unusual. I do the part about telling them what we want them to think, you have all the fun of the creative response required to head them off before they start thinking too much.’ Did she lean too heavily on that? Glance inadvertently at Kor Alric when saying that?

Probably. Kor Alric was about to invite him to speculate on the behaviour of- invite Lennart to join him in turning against- the Privy Council, and just possibly their ultimate superior, His Imperial Majesty Palpatine the First.

If he does that, she thought, his head is mine. Well. Assuming I can actually take him, that is. What if he’s telling the truth, though? What if he can prove that higher authority has betrayed our trust?

What difference would it make? She told herself it would make none, and knew she was lying.


The republic had betrayed the trust of it’s citizens, she and her kin had had that drilled into them as an article of faith- by people who, if she was right, had every incentive to lie to them.

And it had lasted, up to a point- and then collapsed in civil war. In a quieter time, it might be put up with, or at least there might be no alternative. Now? Chaos and rebellion.

What if that proof is on Ord Corban? Of course it is. That’s what Kor Alric wants, for us to go and dig it up for him, take it, implicate us- and have no choice in turning against His Majesty with him.

And now that I have taken counsel of my own fears, she cautioned herself firmly, I refuse to believe that it is so. More importantly for my own immediate survival, I refuse to behave as if I believe it to be so. Damn, this conference is going to be harder than I thought.


Lennart looked carefully at her, she still had her helmet down so there were no facial expressions to give her away, but he was looking at her as if she must be revealing something. Fortunately he had enough sense not to ask. Or he was thinking in that general direction already.

‘Right. You do the opening and standard blurb. Admit that the sector group screwed up, we’re here to cover for them because that’s exactly what a regional support group does.

Mistakes were made and are being fixed, it’s a real war, occasionally the enemy does something competent, no soft centre crap. We can’t take them with actually that would work perfectly.’


‘What?’ Aleph-3 and Adannan both said. He had picked up the sudden switch in direction in Lennart’s surface thoughts, the blur of implication that meant the captain had had an idea.

‘How do we explain Ord Corban away? It’s not supposed to exist. This is the bright idea; we hide it in plain sight. We explain the place away as an Alliance base, built up with alien help on the site of an old fleet depot from the Light and Darkness War.

The minerals and the holes in the ground would all have been still there, that much makes sense, and best of all, nothing to do with us.

No dark secrets, no classified experiments, no lost one of a kind technologies, just a useful shovelful of blame. Play it right and we can even afford to take them with us to see it.

We can embed them- never mind what I’d actually prefer to embed them in. Play up the problems with Sector, and play down the issue with the rebels- imply if they had any sense they’d all be long gone. Go with that.’

‘You’re making this fairly difficult for me. Press conferences usually aren’t supposed to be this improvised.’ Aleph-3 took off her helmet, and said.


‘From sniper-scout to jedi hunter, and you’re telling me you want it easy?’ Lennart said, joking. He handed her a wafer. ‘Images to work with, background, stuff like that. You’re up.’

‘Shouldn’t have been daft enough to volunteer, I suppose.’ She admitted.

‘I suppose that you expect me to loom at the back, and add a useful air of intimidatory menace to the proceedings?’ Adannan said.

‘You have the authority to go wherever you choose,’ Lennart was careful to say, ‘but I don’t think you want to miss this chance for me to self- incriminate.’

‘Now if that were only a promise.’ Adannan bounced back.


The chamber was a ground forces briefing room, flat ranks of chairs around a raised platform, and there were the official escort and a group of interested spectators from the air wing. Most of them armed.

The journalists themselves were an interesting bunch, most of them simply representative of the type, but four seemed worth more notice, one way or the other.

There was one absurdly well-dressed old man, with long white hair and beard, who had clearly been around; one tall, slightly stooped middle-aged man who dressed like a retired soldier. Both print journalists, used to analysis on the spot. They could be dangerous.

Two holojournalists, both female, who seemed to have got their jobs on the basis of looks; one cream-skinned, green eyed blonde, posing and bubbling for the camera, the other black- haired, trying to look cool and poised and powerful like a proper serious journalist- and more or less succeeding.

Lennart and Adannan walked in first and sat down behind the lectern, Lennart largely ignoring and Adannan darting venomous looks at the questioners, then aleph-3 strode in as if she owned the place.


She was not unaware of how catastrophically stupid this was, from the point of view of operational security- her main job depended on disguise and lies, so fronting a holovised press briefing could be said to be quite mad.

It had been a spur of the moment choice, a necessary sacrifice to keep the two of them apart- and may not even be working. She was here now. Game on.

She made her entrance and slotted the datacard into the lectern; the first image that came up was 851’s unit crest.

‘Ladies, gentlemen- members of the press-‘ the old reporter at least got the joke- ‘welcome on board HIMS Black Prince. I’m Warrant Second Aleph-3, and I’ll be conducting your introductory briefing.'


‘Excuse me.’ The stooped man put his hand up. ‘You are actually a member of the Stormtrooper Corps?’

Aleph-3 looked down at her exotic variant armour with the breastplate that had obviously been moulded for breasts. She grinned, looked at him and said ‘After consideration at certain levels of command, it was decided that dealing with journalists probably does constitute an infantry task.’

That got another chuckle, and Lennart started to relax. She was nervous, but obviously up to it, and she started to relax as she played herself in. He was only half listening as she laid out the situation.


None of it was especially new to him, although he had to struggle not to raise an eyebrow at her version of events.

She handled questions fairly well, too; when the old journo stood up to ask what the sector authorities had done wrong to allow the situation to deteriorate to this stage, she actually managed to condemn them with tact and grace.

They had held on to a small problem, the alien presence and their links to the Alliance, believing they could deal with it, until long after it should have become obvious that they couldn’t. At which point they had tried to cover it up, deceiving most of the rest of the sector.

Who precisely ‘they’ were, she was careful to avoid saying; but she did mention that although fundamentally a political, even an intelligence problem, there were definitely changes, and charges, to be made.

She looked very pointedly at Adannan as she said that, clearly implicating him in that side of things, and he glared back as if he was considering frying her on the spot.

Actually, a plan B had just popped into his head, and he had her to thank for it. Which he might do with lightning anyway.


She put the finger on failures within the sectoral administration, with the comment that their most devastating failure was one of trust, to believe that authority could and would help them with the problem.

This was not the devious past, it was the new Order, and she said that with such a deliciously innocent expression on her face everyone, especially the old soldier, knew what a pack of lies it was and that she was in effect daring them to say so.

It hung together exceeding well; there were a couple of nasty moments when the old, white haired one asked about possible collusion to keep the ugly little secret.

Lennart stood up to take that one, but Aleph-3 managed to read his mind. She gave the response, couldn’t have been better with a script, that it certainly looked that way.

On preliminary investigation, it looked very strongly as if a lot of the evidence was fake; the rebels had manufactured evidence of collusion between themselves and the sector government, in order to implicate and destroy otherwise trustworthy servants of the Empire.

It was a good cover for all sorts of strange behind the scenes manoeuvring, and an interesting piece of double think in it’s own right, and naturally, those who understood it didn’t need to speak up.


Which left the ex- model airhead. ‘So, the rebels are using stuff that’s, like, a thousand years old? Eww, dust.’

‘You live,’ Aleph-3 said coldly and cuttingly, ‘in the world of fashion, don’t you?’ There was a quick chuckle of laughter from the dark-haired one, and most of the other journalists. ‘

The technology hasn’t changed much, and use matters more than time to the machinery. It’s all too practical, unfortunately.’

‘If I can ask you a more personal question’, one of the journalists from the floor said, ‘It can’t be easy being a woman in the Imperial military, especially not the Stormtrooper Corps.’

‘It’s not supposed to be easy for anyone, being in the Corps.’ She snapped, then softened it with a smile. ‘There are few of us, and mostly in specialised roles, but we still have to meet the same high general standards.’

‘Being surrounded by fit, strong men…’ the blonde said, under her breath.

‘How did I know you were going to say that?’ Aleph-3, who had overheard.


‘In all seriousness, in the chemicals of our lives, adrenalin outranks testosterone and estrogen, and Tibanna gas has the measure of them all. The enemy doesn’t care, and we all have to be able to do our share of the task, and trust our fellow troopers to do the same.

A poor comrade gets very little slack cut and even less mercy, no matter how pretty her face might be.’ She added.

‘I think I can safely say that if that ethic applied in our profession, we would all be dead by now.’ The ex-military journalist said, and got several venomous glares that said he would have been one of the first on the chopping block.

‘Haven’t sector group behaved like very poor comrades towards you, though?

By my count, regional support units and elements of Sector seconded to them have been responsible for the destruction or capture of two light destroyers, one heavy frigate, four medium frigates, two light frigates, and numerous smaller craft, whereas the one operation the Sector fleet has undertaken seems to have cost them heavily for little return.’


Aleph-3 was still wondering how to take that when Lennart stood up and said ‘It’s all right, I’ll field that one.’

The joiurnalists took note- how could they not?- of his rank, a forest of flashbulbs went off; for a moment the order ‘Shoot the next man who fires off a flash’ hovered on the tip of his tongue; Adannan would probably approve, though.

‘As the commanding officer of the pursuit squadron, it should be my job to tell you what happens next. To put it simply, sector saw the situation as just that kind of rivalry between Imperial units, and took a large gamble attempting to regain their reputation and their honour. They forgot what the rebels had to say about it.

As any of you who remember the clone wars will know, it is perfectly possible for men- and women- to fight with conviction and imagination in even the most lost and unjust cause. The rebels set an ambush that I expected, and intended to deal with in my own time, in my own way.

Sector believed themselves to be in a race with us, saved time on operational analysis, and jumped straight into the trap. Again this comes back to key elements’ failure to trust in, and coordinate with, higher authority.


The reason I’m here talking to you, instead of chasing down the Alliance elements and capitalising on what damage Sector did manage to do to them, is that I have every reason to expect the alliance knows the score as well as we do.

The most powerful weapon in war- rumours of new superlasers notwithstanding- is the initiative. Force the pace and place of the action, and you can force the enemy to react to you, and use what he has less than fully effectively.

In one of the incidents just passed, I took an enemy destroyer-carrier by forcing the action so that it seemed not to have time to deploy it’s full fighter wing, for instance.

The rebels have won a defensive victory that was probably as much a surprise to them as it was to the sector group, but remaining in place, against the heavies of a regional support group, would be suicidal.

They know that major force units will chase them, so I expect, and we are in the process of confirming, that they left the theatre about ten minutes after the last shot was fired.
Our next move is to reorganise and pursue.’


Was that believable? Did that sound like an overconfident Imperial officer who was sure he could deliver success where others had failed, failing to think critically enough and putting too much trust in his own logic?

Would the rebels think that he thought they had done the obvious and rational thing, and therefore they had room to accomplish the risky but profitable? Hopefully. Looking at the journalists, they were an odd mix of the indoctrinated-to-the-eyeballs and the deeply sceptical- but enough of the former.

‘Any of you who are willing to take the risk, give your names and your publication to my press officer, we’ll see if we can find somewhere to embed you.’


Lennart pushed the door of the conference room open, manually; most of the assembled officers realised how long it had been since their commander had got any real rest or sleep.

‘You’re not going to be much good if you’re too shattered to think straight, Captain.’ Rythanor pointed out.
‘Funny, that; dealing with Kor Alric, warped and twisted seems to do more or less all right. What have you managed to come up with?’

‘Well, we couldn’t come up with any plan that would take less than three years of computer time to track the Doctor down; so we came up with this.

We know where Admiral Gerlen lives and works- we have a standard smash and grab planned, but instead, a special ops hit team goes after him disguised as Rebels; they kidnap him, and threaten to kill him unless the sector group hands Dr Nygma over to the Alliance.’


‘Right. That’s it? That’s the best you could do, get someone else to do the head-hurting part for you?’ Lennart said.

‘Well,’ Brenn said, ‘it does have the merit of economy of effort.’

‘True,’ Lennart admitted, ‘but it trades that for the supreme disadvantage of taking too stang long. Think about this, think about the target. He has taken elaborate and highly competent precautions in the realm of data, not to be found; what will he have forgotten? Where do the limits of his preparation lie?

He doesn’t have an unlimited attention span, there are limits to how far ahead he can plan-‘ unless he’s coded up simulations of his own personality and allowed them to do some of his thinking for him, Lennart thought. Crap.

‘Skipper?’ Brenn suggested. ‘We did think of just asking him.’

‘That might work. Unless he’s already gone on the run. Do that, but prepare for the worst as well. Look for traffic flow; I don’t care how many randomisers and anonymisers he uses, it all has to make it’s way back to him eventually. He’ll be covered somehow, business as a front.

Check for more going in than comes out. Check for ridiculously overloaded mobile comms accounts, too.

Assuming he’s being pursued, by Black Sun, use sector’s data net to watch them watching him. The physical pickup should be easy, the detection is hard.

Which is the opposite situation for Vice-Admiral Gerlen. What’s the plan for that?’


‘Customs corvettes.’ Vehrec said. ‘Send the group in, their sensors can do interior scans of the base- it’s a twin garrison tower; conventional garrison emplacement and hollowed out one in use as a command facility. Straight hit and run with the customs troops and platoons of the boarding batallion.’

‘Alternatively,’ Raesene suggested, ‘we do have two highly authentic ISB warrant cards.’

Interesting that he was the one to bring that up; in pre-emptive self defence. Before anyone else could mention the fact, and trying to gain some credit by it.

‘Customs unit’s probably more believable in that role than the Starfleet. 17-Blue are too busy, one of the other scout teams- 06 Blue, they should be able to pull it off. Them and a platoon from the boarding batallion just in case.’

Commander Falldess was grinning, so Lennart just had to ask.


‘All right, you may as well admit it. How far does your ambition stretch?’

‘Hialaya Karu.’ Falldess said, pointing at the open image on the ID manual in front of her, which the system recognised and displayed on the main viewer. She looked quite surprised, checked to make sure it was, then said ‘That one.’

‘I know what a Karu- class light destroyer can do, thank you.’ Lennart said. ‘I also recall their crew complement is around four thousand. You don’t have that many warm bodies available.’

The Karu- class were a pre- clone wars design, but one which had not been produced in numbers until well after the foundation of the Empire.

A consortium design, several minor shipyards led by Damorian having a go at Kuat’s market share, it had been an open question which side it was going to end up on. In fact, it was one of the ships the Victory had been designed to counter.

They had almost a thousand ‘g’ less acceleration than an Imperator, which made them merely average, but a healthy weapon load. Not many fighters but a decent intervention outfit.

Interestingly, when they had been produced for the Starfleet, it had been Kuat who had done so, buying the consortium out and using their own bridge module type.


‘Delvran?’ Lennart asked. ‘Have you got two thousand crewmen you can afford to lose?’

Creditably, Dordd did not say what crossed his mind- that he had eleven thousand he wanted rid of. He did glare at Lennart, visibly thinking; you bastard. Why do you tempt me like this?

‘They are tripping over each other’s feet. Leaning down might encourage them to take more individual responsibility and sharpen up. I can spare two thousand. Three, if you need them.’ Dordd said, trrying to make it sound as if it was a gift rather than a curse.

Two problems, one solution. Synergy in action, Lennart thought.


‘Right, an engineering detail will stay with Tarazed Meridian, the rest of the crew, transfer to Dynamic who will do the boarding action.' He gave his orders. 'Platoon BD32 and team 06 Blue to ‘The Silent Bugler’, go after Vice-Admiral Gerlen.

I-‘ yawn- ‘find Nygma, fast. Oh, and signal for assistance to 851, we are definitely going to need some backup on this. And did the Chief remember-‘

‘Tankers are on their way, Skipper.’ Brenn confirmed. ‘Duracrete, too.’



There he was, all two metres twenty-two of him, more if you included the haircut. Sitting there like a half- collapsed wall, over a bowl full of little bitty green, yellow, orange and red fingernail- sized cubes.

Diced peppers for breakfast? She had to talk to him about his diet, at the very least.

‘Commander Mirannon?’ she said, tentatively.

‘Ah. Z B.’ he said, raising his head then nearly letting it fall back into the bowl.

She blushed. ‘You noticed that, did you?’

‘Had it brought to my attention. Surgeon- Lieutenant Omar who scripted that, wasn’t it?’ Mirannon said.

‘Yes, it was.’ A junior member of her department, who had quite possibly been put up to it by someone else, but he would do. She had been very angry with him, so angry that she had done something quite unofficial. Mirannon seemed to be amused by the whole business, more than anything else.


‘I’ve already taken measures against him. It won’t happen again.’ She said, sternly. Was that what he wanted to hear, the presentation that would get through to him? The cool, effective professional?

Was that the best way for her to get through to him- what did he want, really? A mate, a partner in crime? Someone cool and distant, to place on a pedestal? Fire and passion?

‘Ah. Mirannon said. ‘What was it you had done to him?’ he looked disappointed in her; why?

‘I administered unofficial punishment.’ She said, trying to convey the message that she could break the rules too.

‘I rigged the airsystem to flood his room with crowd control D.’ Mirannon said, casually. Unofficially known to most of the security forces that used it as ‘Bad Trip Gas’, it was a mild incapacitant and potent hallucinogen.

It filled would be rioters with a feeling of advanced paranoia shading to total dread, the sense that something terrible was going to happen to them very soon- which, faced with imperial riot police, was usually the case anyway.


‘Oh, dear.’ She said, trying not to grin, knowing that it was terribly wrong.

‘Problem?’

‘Yes. I, ah, had him dosed with a hyperaesthetic- boosts peripheral, particularly sensory nerve function.’

Which would magnify the skin- crawling feeling, the sickening sensation of plummeting out of control, the auditory and visual phantoms that hung at the edge of your vision like nightmares waiting for you to close your eyes and become prey.

Mirannon grunted, probably in amusement. ‘Anybody even capable of faking that writing style probably deserves it.’

‘I have to ask- why are you eating that multicoloured melange? Has it been nutritionally balanced?’ she said, not really what she had intended to say at all.

‘No. Brain food, for when I’m asleep.’ Mirannon said, taking another forkful while she puzzled over that. She called in a minor emergency- asked someone to check in on Lieutenant Omar, while he was eating, then said
‘There are easier ways of stimulating dreams.’


‘Not trying to.’ Mirannon said. ‘Keeps my brain ticking over, so I can think about problems while I’m asleep.’

‘That is quite strange.’ She said, puzzled. ‘You’re able to control your dreams?’

‘Subconscious calculation. More or less. Wild ass guesswork, actually, but filtering out the crudely, obviously wrong possibilities means I waste less time when I’m awake.’ Mirannon watched her as that sank in. ‘And you haven’t twigged that I’m making this up as I go along yet?’

‘You’re what? Oh. I suppose it was silly of me to believe a known practical joker.’

Well, she thought, one rise deserves another. Let’s see how he takes this. ‘The tricks you could play, with the power of the Force-‘


‘Would be impressive and hard to trace, but that in itself would spoil most of the fun.’ He said.

‘Fun?’ she said, mock-incredulously.

‘I haven’t put very many people in hospital…’

‘From your perspective, maybe.’ She reminded him. ‘Actually, I was thinking abut the force. I’m fairly sure the Jedi missed a lot of what there was to know.’

‘Unlikely. They existed almost as long as the Republic; they couldn’t have been fools for all that time.’ Mirannon said.


‘You are a rationalist. So much of one that you have to vent from time to time, in elaborate and dangerous jokes.’ She was watching him closely, to see if he agreed with her assessment of himself. ‘So much so that you expect rationality from what must have been the most disconnected group in the galaxy.’

He didn’t. ‘Maybe I just like really elaborate practical jokes. There was enough time, and there must have been enough competence, not least in order to last that long, to fill out the envelope of possibility.

Even if there were quasi- religious objections and limits to what was done, they must have been aware of what could have been done.’

‘I don’t think they did. We have a – two body problem.’ She stumbled slightly, trying to speak his jargon. ‘A force using man consists of two parts; the force, and the man. One of those, I can make a difference to.

I think I can make you more powerful.’ Blei-Korberkk said, and realised she had said something very wrong from the look that spread over Mirannon’s face.


‘If you value your own life,’ he said, deliberately, ‘do not mention the possibility to anyone who Kor Alric might be able to find out about it from. He was a trauma surgeon; give him the sign of a medical problem to do with the force, and he will go straight through you to get to it.’

Actually, Mirannon thought, that might make a cover story…but who would they need one for? Who were the middle ground between those who needed to know nothing and those who were allowed to know everything?

She was disappointed by that. ‘I thought you would need all the advantage that you could get. That with what I’ve managed to ferret out of the neurochemistry and biochemistry of the force, I could give you an edge.’

Mirannon put one hand over his bowl, just in case. ‘To do that would attack him with his own strengths. Pointless. Take years to learn, and I can’t do that kind of time compression.’


‘This is a new thing. If anybody’s ever done this before, they left no records.’ She meant to go on and say, and I have made the breakthrough; but Mirannon countered with

‘Everyone who tried this before either found nothing to report or got themselves disappeared without trace, and that makes you think it’s a good idea?’

‘When you put it like that…’ she admitted.


‘Maybe it’s logical. There are more than enough legends and records of the force influencing the organism, and there are more than enough indications of feedback loops in the force, but the overwhelming majority of the previous researchers either had it suppressed by the light or ripped out of their bleeding hands by the dark.

Find something else to worry about. Concentrate on that, fill your mind with it, and ignore this until well after we’re rid of him. And you’d probably do better to ignore it then, too.’

‘You’re actually worried about me…’ she said.

‘Where else can I find a medic willing to help me torment junior officers of her department?’ Mirannon said, standing up.

‘If I had asked you not to, would you have left him alone?’

‘Probably not, but I might have used a lower concentration.’ Mirannon admitted. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to go and have some of those nightmares now.’


Detention cells were never happy places. Generally, even less so when the staff knew what they were doing.

There hadn’t been time or resources to process the mass of rebel prisoners properly, but normally a jailbird would be stripped, scanned, decontaminated, and given an Engineering- castoff boiler suit, degree of itchiness directly related to degree of offence.

That and some other things, like the flickering of the deliberately old-school lights, the smells, the noisiness of the plumbing, and the mind-rotting qualities of the ‘soothing’ background music. A really unwelcome guest might arrive at interrogation from the holding cell half- broken and three quarters mad already.


Squadron Leader Rahandravell seemed to be having good care taken of her, but she had still been tethered to the cell wall by her ankles, just in case. She couldn’t get as far as the cell door, so there was no reason not to show her visitor in.

‘How are you doing?’ Aron asked her, worried.

‘Annoyed.’ She said. ‘Cooped up like this-‘ she clinked one cable- tied anklet off the other. ‘Waiting for a decision. To find out if I get a slap on the wrist, a transfer to the penal infantry or just a few thousand volts. I-‘

She winced and doubled over, curled up on the bed and let out a low moan that turned into a long, bubbling cough.

‘Do that too often and they may not need to execute you.’ Aron said, but draping her blanket over her as he did. ‘What the kriff were you thinking?’

‘Thinking it was a quick, straightforward way of getting back in the saddle. Ow.’ She winced. ‘I didn’t even steal it, I just borrowed it. Ungrateful sod.’


‘Is that any way to talk about your commanding officer? Look, what you did was ludicrously nuts, for several different reasons. Taking that bird, which seems to have been earmarked for you anyway, is the least of your problems.

What you did with it- and that puts you another three kills ahead of me, damn you-‘ he grinned, trying to inject some humour into the process, and failed- ‘well, you gave it a fair shakedown and nothing broke.

Helping save the Captain’s butt when he dangled it out in the breeze isn’t going to earn you too many black marks, either.

No, what he’s really annoyed about, and what you should be blazing mad at yourself over,’ Aron told her with some authority, ‘maybe will be once your brain starts working again- are two things.


What the kriff did you think you were doing checking out of a hoverchair into a cockpit? You weren’t fit, you were a danger to yourself. How did your judgement lapse that badly, and are you going to be crazy enough to do it again?

Second- most pilots are a bit mad. All of the half- way decent ones, anyway. Sometimes you get pilots who take all the risks they can get away with, and have the sense to body-swerve the ones they couldn’t, and they go on to be group captains and air commodores.' Aron paused, took a deep breath, then carried on.

'You know how much of the fresh meat we’re getting out of the academies now is a lot crazier than it’s earned any real right to be. On average, they’re nowhere near as good as they think they are.

What kind of example was that to set? How are you ever going to enforce discipline, slap someone down for nearly getting themselves or their mates killed, when they can look at you and point to this?

Kriff it, Franjia, were you actually trying to make up for a lifetime of good judgement in one lunatic move?’


‘I…think I might have been.’ She said, sceptically. ‘It would be a wonderful excuse if it was true, but I really felt very strange doing that. Sort of as if I was watching myself do something that was already a habit, that slipped past below deliberate thought.

Even if I was,’ she shook her head, ‘it was probably the medication. Something so normal and to be expected that I didn’t need to think consciously and rationally about it.’


‘Could have been the effects of the Force.’ Aron suggested.

‘Aron? “A Jedi made me do it” isn’t a valid defence any more.' Franjia said. 'It would be- an excuse definitely worth having. In a way, it would make perfect sense. I felt as if nothing was out of place, while I was doing something that was ludicrously nuts.

But that sounds too good to be true. So much like a perfect way out that, if I were passing judgement on me, I’d suspect me of making it up.’

‘Why?’ Aron asked. Not why make something like that up, why would anyone do that in the first place, what would the motive be?

Given that there were only three force users on board, one of them was too busy, the other two- ‘The only people who could have done that are the Captain himself, and Kor Alric.’

‘Shoot me now.’ She said, and more than half meant it.

‘Fifty- fifty chance.’ Aron stated.

‘No, it’s worse than that. He was here, the Captain wasn’t, and I don’t think he’d do that anyway.’
‘I don’t know, the force is supposed to be able to do some damn’ funny things.

One of the ideas the captain hates it so much. Subversive of all real discipline, and that. Subconsciously, he might have wanted you to come and save him.’ Aron speculated.

‘It’s a lot more likely that Kor Alric was responsible, trying to destroy my career so he can have me transferred to his retinue, to replace the last pilot he murdered. Kriff it, Aron, how do things like this happen?

How do men like him exist, and how do they get to be important enough to torment people for fun?’ Franjia said, strain in her voice.

‘I don’t know.’ Aron said, and tried not to think about the next obvious question- what do we do about it?