Hull no. 721- a fanfic

Vehrec · Post by **Vehrec** » 2008-09-11 11:14pm

Well, there's a way to win for sure. Superior numbers and coordination.

Kartr_Kana · Post by **Kartr_Kana** » 2008-09-12 04:32am

Excellent, one filleted Darksider, very rare. I'm glad he's finally gone, but I almost feel bad for him. Getting taken apart by 30 blades, that's a bad way to go.

Can't wait to see how this thing all wraps up, it's been a good fic and I'll be sad to see it end.

Eleventh Century Remnant · Post by **Eleventh Century Remnant** » 2008-09-12 07:40am

As said, typesetting is not exactly my favourite thing; it tends to come out the way I see it in my mind's eye at the time, and the readability might not always be optimum. DarthRaptor was good enough to do some work on it, and this is the edited version.

The rhythm is different, it's more like the standard layout in computer pages, and it might be easier on the eye. Contrast the two versions and tell me what you think.

Other bits and pieces; Kor Alric Adannan's- well, we can call it a fatal flaw now- is that he too was a latecomer to the Force, and he had spent his previous life heading in a direction opposed to the one the dark side was trying to take him in.
It never really sat naturally with him, the process of absorbing it into his personality was a disharmonious and destructive one. When he was in the grip of the force, he tended to go with what he knew and play to the stereotype. Partly consciously, which complicated things a bit.

He came on much too strong to begin with, put Lennart's back up- partly Lennart's fault, actually- and any real hope of a working relationship was doomed from the word go. Too much Force, not enough subtlety. If he had said something like that to begin with, things would have played out very differently.

Mirannon didn't have time to disengage the backscatter pickup; all of that was recorded. There's definitely going to be some comeback from that.

Actually, I may as well put in an excerpt from the next or next but one chapter, from the post battle debrief;

'Hm.' Lennart grunted, looking at the casualty reports. 'That could have been so much worse, heavy but not overflowing. At least we have hospital space in the squadron for them all. our most senior casualty was Group Captain Vehrec- no prognosis?'
'Things are complicated there, Captain. Severe radiation, and his tolerance of cybernetics is...not good.' Bergeron, representing the med branch, said. 'We're going to have to do something rather radical.'

'I'm fairly sure I don't actually want to know the details.' Lennart said. 'Just as long as we're not talking about a brain in a jar.'
'His organs are starting to shut down,' Bergeron said, oblivious to how little everyone else wanted to know. 'We're going to have to clone him one body part at a time, essentially; keep him in a clean room, hammer his immune system way back to ensure transplant acceptance, and try to stay ahead of the damage by swapping new parts in faster than the old one fade out.'

'That sounds like a ridiculously expensive way to renew a rejuvenation treatment.' Lennart said. It wouldn't cost Constantin Vehrec a penny, but everyone knew what he meant. 'It is going to work?'
Weelll...it's going to be closer to a single month long operation than a set of separate procedures, but we have every reason to expect it to.' Bergeron said, aware that that was not entirely reassuring.
'Is he conscious?' Lennart asked.
'Drifting in and out, ranting mostly- threatening to sue Ayelixe/Krongbing for inadequate rad shielding in their flight suits.'

'Right, I'll administratively transfer him back to training command, suboffice of tactical development, for the duration of his stay in Medical. Talking over the battle's a job he can do from a hospital bed, giving him something to do ought to help keep him sane. When he's back on his feet we'll see what sort of combat command we can find for him. Oh, yes, tell him he's been bumped to Air Commodore. Right, now, who else...'

And this is Darth Raptor's edit.

Adannan narrowed down his focus in the Force, until he could perceive one man and one man only. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been; because of his peculiar, untrained, subconscious way of doing things, Lennart left his Force signature all over the ship.

He seemed to be making, not for Engineering, but for a space in the base of the superstructure. As Adannan let himself glide down the lift shaft, he felt the direction to his prey change, relative motion allowing him to zero in.

Stop, and out of the shaft, into deserted corridors; they were avoiding him, there should be people moving around, the emptiness meant he was being tracked somehow.

It didn’t really matter how- there were a dozen potential ways, but all of them boiled down to meaning that the crew was complicit with their captain in this. That would stand watching, especially if that was how Lennart intended to surprise him.

He found his prey not where he had expected, in the warren of storage chambers and workshop spaces that made up the damage control bunker, but in the vestibule in front of it. Open space, with lights that flickered and died as the Sith acolyte approached.

So, Lennart wanted to do this in the dark? It was more atmospheric, even symbolic. Adannan approved; fired up his lightsabre, a bar of scarlet glowing in the darkness. That metaphor suited what he was about to say very well, actually. Lennart’s own lightsabre- which he had no business having, and gripped as he would a torch- lit up, a highly dubious flaring crimson. That was presumption- or willingness? No, simply what he had to hand.

Which was wrong. If he was minded to use the dark side as just another tool, if that was all he wanted to do with it… then he would fall as easily and as inevitably as rain.

Eventually. For the moment, Adannan paused and waited. It was what Lennart had been hoping for, to begin with a clash of words, but had been trying to prepare himself for a straightforward brawl. The fact that it was what the Dark Jedi seemed to want too made Lennart think, and Adannan strained trying to overhear it. "You tell me." He began by saying.

"Once I understand it myself." Lennart said. "You know that I’m playing for time," he lied trying to plant the idea in Adannan’s head, "you know that I know charging straight in would be an amateur’s mistake. I could try to babble you far enough off balance to stand a fighting chance, but I reckon you’ll be expecting that… the question here is, what do you have to gain?"

"How do you think you’re going to escape the consequences of killing me?" Adannan probed.

"You’re assuming you haven’t backed me far enough into a corner that I’m willing to lash out now and make up the rationale later- which is what you were trying to do anyway, wasn’t it?" Lennart said.

"I always thought the metaphor of extra strings to the bow is far too limiting. Strings on a piano might be closer to the reality." Adannan said. "You make plans like that, you love being in the centre of the maelstrom where you have to improvise- and get to look smarter than everyone else because they have even less of an idea what’s going on."

"Consciously, that would be criminally unprofessional." Lennart stopped himself before he could go into a long digression about responsibility and the interactions between layers of command. "As a professional, I try to do my duty and let my subconscious take care of itself."

"Interesting- are you saying that if you had hidden doubts, if you smelt something distinctly rotten about the state of Imperial policy, you would keep them to yourself and try not to worry your crew?" Adannan suggested, tone obviously saying that it wasn’t so.

"Considering the interest we take in current affairs around here, you sure you’ve got a leg to stand on with that argument?" Lennart said, gesturing with the lightsabre in that direction.

"Considering how little of the opinions expressed actually carry your stamp, yes. You have a habit of not committing yourself on paper. Blunt to the point of viciousness, but not on the record." Adannan replied.

"Nonsense. On a ship as heavily populated as an Imperator we’re living out of each other’s armpits, and news spreads fast- changes in mood, changes in attitude register immediately. They know what I think, they know what I feel. And incidentally, the majority hate your guts. Too many random acts of violence." Lennart changed the subject quickly.

"Funny that, I seem to be missing most of my associates." Adannan said, sensing a potentially useful line of attack.

"Turnabout. Retribution. You could even call it hiding the evidence."

"With the losses- still well over a hundred thousand in the squadron, all of whom will be aware that you arranged for another unit to make a precision strike on the Imperial suite of your own ship. Forty thousand of those are aware that you did your best to set me up, and, assuming you win, dealt with me yourself. That alone should guarantee you enough notoriety to bring the attention of the Inquisitorius tumbling down on you. You can’t afford to kill me, and you’ve given me every reason to kill you."

"Except I map back to your own plan one. Become a dark acolyte of the Force- over your dead body." Lennart smiled a slightly manic smile. "One dark sider killing another is perfectly expected, isn’t it? And we do have reasons."

"My associates and support team- I ought, strictly speaking, to revenge myself on you for them." Adannan said, the next step in a train of thought he meant to construct.

"Posing a quandary?" Lennart spotted it. "If you have that much human empathy left in you, if you cared about them enough to bring me to justice for their murders- then the situation would have played itself out differently and we wouldn’t have ended up here. Oh, I know what you’re aiming at- that you are a better and more connected person than I took you for, which means your words are not hollow, and a working relationship between us would be possible. Unfortunately, I’ve also given you every reason to take revenge on me- which you would actually have to try to do if I was going to believe you at this stage." Lennart pointed out- then realised a moment too late that that was exactly what he didn’t want to happen.

"Revenge deferred? You never understood what I was really here for- and it is important enough to postpone dissecting you for the time being." Adannan said. "My team will just have to do without their honour guard for the moment until the cause is served."

"You know, I did wonder if there was a more complex reason for this than simply ‘grr, argh, power, gimme." Were you actually intending to explain this to me at any point, or just to blackmail, badger and bully me into submission with the dark side of the Force?" Lennart nearly said something about things could have worked out so very differently if the explanation had come at the beginning instead of the end, but- no. Not smart.

Adannan grinned wolfishly. Lennart’s weakness was his reason; he could be swayed, he wasn’t determined enough, or mad enough, to pick his line and stick to it whatever sense said to the contrary. In this level, in this realm of high politics, that was a weakness.

Although it was definitely harder than he had expected, playing the role he had assigned to himself. There were still contingency plans and possibilities swirling around Lennart’s head; how to manipulate them, make Lennart choose the option that suited himself?

The technicalities of getting away with it, even this late in the day after the broadcasting of some pretty damning evidence- well, an accusation of treason can be a very two-edged sword, Adannan thought.

Pose as an agent provocateur, claim to have been pretending to be a traitor and a renegade to prod Lennart into action, and turn round and praise him for his decisiveness and let him in on the secret?

No, Lennart wouldn’t believe it. His calling the Emperor ‘a deranged, dangerous old fool liable to drag the rest of us down with him’ had been sincere, it was impossible to pretend now that he had been faking it.

Go all the way? Why not?

"Captain- you were there for a fair wedge of galactic history; how do you feel about the way it was written up?"

"I have a great deal of admiration for COMPNOR and their ability to rewrite history, if that’s what you mean." Lennart said, cautiously. He had an idea what Adannan was about to say, and was wondering whether or not he ought to let the crew hear it. He was also hoping that Gethrim had had the sense to turn off the backscatter tap, this was something no one in their right mind would want getting on the record.

"You accept that the reality and the official version diverge?" Adannan said, academically, then put the idea into plainer words- "You do realise you’ve been force fed a pack of lies?"

"My sincere admiration for COMPNOR. The rewriting of the past is standard procedure in circumstances like this, it is a basic part of any new government’s playbook, and anybody smart enough to work that out knows how short and messy the life of a dissident in such circumstances usually is." Lennart pointed out.

"You cowering in terror from the forces of officialdom? A difficult mental picture to believe." Adannan grunted.

"Reading between the lines is a good and survival-enhancing thing, but so is knowing when to sing from the official hymn sheet. I don’t think you’ve got a clear picture in your mind of the alternative." Lennart said, switching back to the attack.

"Lies and deception for a safe and secure society?" Adannan sneered. That wasn’t what he had expected Lennart to say at all.

"Without the Empire, the fall of the Republic should have resulted in at least a generation-long clusterkriff, multiple regional civil wars, the abandonment of interstellar trade and peace, and the death of quadrillions. Yes, lies and deception for a safe and secure society- it’s not right in itself, but it’s a hell of a lot less wrong than the alternative." Lennart said forcefully, waving his lightsabre.

Leaving himself wide open for a physical strike, Adannan thought, but verbally- his defence was tight, but there was an opening. "What if that was about to cease to be the case?" he asked.

"I think I know where you’re going with this. Carry on." Lennart said, trying to undermine Adannan.

"Was the abolition of the Senate the act of a man of sense? Was the use of the Death Star an essential building block in a safe and secure society? The last five years are not what you- what a lot of the old New Order- think they were. Yes, a certain manipulation of public confidence is essential-"

"Between that and the sheer pleasure the dark side gives you in fooling so many." Lennart interrupted, and Adannan failed to spot the implicit leading question in time.

"Exactly, and our rivals within the Imperial hierarchy are the most lied to of all." Adannan stormed. "What does it matter, truth, lies, raving gibbering bullshit, anyone not strong enough to pierce through the lies doesn’t deserve the truth. Anyone not strong enough to establish and maintain their own truth-" he stopped himself before he could go on to add the words ‘cannon fodder.’

"Well, you’ve just managed to convince me that the Force is a large part of the problem." Lennart said, much more calmly than he felt. "Was that where you were intending to go with this, or were you going to try to tell me how big a lie the Empire is?"

"Not the Empire," Adannan said, inwardly berating himself for letting Lennart draw him out like that- and then asking, why not? Why not go into full flood? Because that would be an implicit admission that the Naval officer had a point- that he had got to his point before the dark acolyte did. "the Emperor. You reasoned out yourself that, in a government riddled with dark Force users, he would have to be either a puppet or the prince of darkness."

"Not something I particularly wanted to be right about." Lennart admitted. "And when I look at the damage the Force has done to you, and multiply it by how much more powerful he would have to be…"

Adannan managed to let that part pass, with difficulty. "You still don’t get it, do you? He started out damaged, he was powerful in the Force long before he went into politics. He is the head of the order of the dark side." and just in time, Adannan realised that going into too much detail about His Imperial Majesty’s precise status as master of the Sith would be very, very counterproductive.

If there was a chain of argument guaranteed to end with Black Prince wearing the Rebel Phoenix, it would be reminding Lennart of just how much time they had spent during the Clone Wars looking for the Sith Lord who was supposed to be leading the Separatists.

The idea that Palpatine had been playing both sides was a revelation too far, for the time being. It was also, in any remotely evidential sense, unproven. Some of the Inner Circle- not necessarily the same thing as the Privy Council- claimed to know that it was true, but there was a lot of wild boasting and exaggeration involved and nothing except the fact that it felt right to back the theory up, and you could say that about any half- baked conspiracy theory.

"Palpatine blackmailed, connived, schemed, manipulated and twisted his way to the top, with the aid of the dark side." Adannan finished, weakly.

"That sounds no different from normal politics- which I think is actually condemnation enough." Lennart said deadpan. "That and further proof that the Force makes you stupid. How else could the Jedi have failed to notice that they were under the authority of an office held by their worst enemy? Or are you going to reassure me with the notion that the dark side is inherently more devious, twisted and sneaky?"

"Damn you, will you stop going off at tangents? The Jedi are dead and gone, which was less painful than they deserved. I’m trying to tell you that the man you owe allegiance to is not the man you thought he was- he’s the hollow shell of his former self, a black pit of rage, hunger and the Force- all the brilliant twisting wit he used to raise himself to power is gone, eaten away." Adannan shouted.

"This contradicts my line of argument how, exactly?" Lennart couldn’t resist saying. If Adannan was trying to argue him round, he must have realised we have a dozen different ways of killing him with the ship’s systems, and a dozen more chances if he makes it as far as open space. Good. Probably.

"Let me just see if I have this right." Lennart said. "You and the lesser lords of darkness- or just you?- think the old man’s lost the plot. You’re fishing round for things to use against him, any scrap of knowledge about him and his past and methods, or about the Force. Anything that might come in handy, and you have some very high clearances or good slicers to do it with, which is how you managed to latch on to the 118th Fleet incident. That with the ultimate aim of cutting him even further out of the loop than he already is-"

"The Imperial Household and the Privy Council do the day to day work of running the Empire, but between diving deeper and deeper into the Force, he remains well aware of the details, and every major change in Imperial organisation or policy crosses his desk." Adannan interrupted.

"The abolition of the Senate was the mark of a maddened old man," ignoring Lennart’s muttering about how he personally would have been a damn’ sight less moderate if he had to listen to the tedious old bastards drone on all day, "the stamp of the dark side was clear, and you don’t think Tarkin had enough mechanical intuition to come up with the Death Star on his own, do you?"

"A detail." Lennart asked. "Tarkin’s flaws were those of viewpoint, not of intellect. He disliked the Force as much as any man, and hated telepathy in particular with the passion of someone who had a lot to hide. He should have noticed."

"Exactly, viewpoint." Adannan said. "He saw himself as a brilliant political manipulator, and he was egotist enough to see himself mirrored in others, and assume that the same was true of His Majesty. He failed to reach out far enough to realise there was so much more than that."

"A 'more' that you yourself reckon has become counterproductive." Lennart noted. "This plan of yours, digging into the incident, investigating the old methods of programming loyalty in the living- I suppose your ultimate goal would be to be able to enact Special Order 66, or something like it, on His Majesty himself?"

"You’re asking me to confess to plotting regicide." Adannan quibbled, not entirely logically. Perhaps he had finally started listening to himself and realised just how far he had gone. He had wanted to lead Lennart into this, a fragment of truth at a time. Instead, it was all coming out at once, the floodgates burst.

"Why not?" Lennart asked. "I’ve already got you for treason. No way back. Your only way out of this, now that the situation has got this far, is to convince me, my crew and the rest of the squadron. Convince us that this plot against His Majesty is real, that it is necessary, and that it stands more than a whelk’s chance in a supernova. How can you expect to succeed against the living embodiment of darkness you’re making him out to be?"

"Many of us may fail, and fall," Adannan said, "but the scheme will survive because it is so much in the tradition of the dark side. We can hide virtually in plain sight because His Majesty expects jockeying for position, conniving, scheming- he accepts plots and treachery as the inevitable consequence of hiring capable, ambitious men. Our best protection," the dark acolyte smiled, "is his own assumption that having his minions try to kill him is nothing that out of the ordinary for the dark side of the Force."

"Which explains amongst other things," Lennart went off at a tangent again, "why there is no constitutional mechanism for succession. There couldn’t be- or, at least, what there is runs through the traditions of the dark side. What about the rest of us? I mean, if you actually read his texts, he’s the only academic political theorist I ever met who had a sense of humour. Well, closer to desert-dry wit, actually. Who do you plan to get to replace him- or is it a simple case of who chibs, wins?"

"What?" Adannan asked- he could guess from the context, but that Lennart took such a swing into the surreal and slangy was not good. It meant that he wasn’t taking it seriously at all- or that he was internalising it and thinking deeply, while on the surface he played silly buggers trying to buy time.

"Oh. Colloquialism used by some of my engineering crew. The act of using a weapon- in context, succession by right of assassination. By powerful men, and women, controlling major organs of the Imperial State and no qualms about using them to their own ends. How is this much different from the worst case scenario?" Lennart probed, tone carefully level.

"It is the way of the dark side- the strong climb higher on the piled bodies of the weak. Metaphorically." Or, on occasions, not. "It is a good and a healthy system, the way things ought to be, except that Palpatine has escaped from the reach of the rest of us." Adannan searched for a metaphor that would help convince the quizzical Naval officer.

"The Empire replaced the zombie aristo-plutocratic pretence of democracy that paralysed the Republic," he failed to find one, "with a vibrant, living democracy of violence, in which every man can rise as far as his abilities can take him, and retain what he can keep hold of- and yes, the public mindspace is part of what’s to play for."

"It is an open field," Adannan continued, getting carried away with his theme. Lennart was far from certain that he was right, counting the Names and Numbers who had slid into the hierarchy, and noticed that even he didn’t go so far as to claim it was in any way a level field- "and that those of us who can call on the dark side of the Force have risen far and fast is not a coincidence. You have that power, and you are close to a secret that can help tilt the balance. Join us. Join with us, and help remove the dark hand squeezing the Empire to madness and death."

"There are so many minor matters on which we are in agreement- that order is a made thing, that it is never better to be less powerful, that… you could do the Empire- and yourself- a great service by removing the dead weight. At the top." Adannan ran to a halt, slightly out of breath, and wondering why he felt so on the defensive, why he had felt the need to explain himself at all. Lennart’s half-realised gestalt lent him a power he did not actually possess, of course, but-anyway, he was right, he could be a great asset.

Is he going to go for it, or am I going to have to cut him down and run for it? What does he think, what does he feel? Laurentia was right, damn him for having her killed- and now, Lennart might be thinking that for the best of reasons at the time, he has taken so much away from me, Adannan thought, he can’t possibly trust me. I should have spent more time with him, got to know him more as a human being, but every encounter blew up into a clash of personalities. The weight of our official masks distorted the issue. Mine, anyway.

Lennart was actually guiltily aware that he had made up his mind early on, and was skimming through the things that had been said later on, trying to decide if any of them were worth altering his judgment and his plans over. On balance… no.

"You know," he said, casually, trying not to give it away and draw an attack before he was ready, "there is one power I do have, that seems to be exceptionally rare among the servants of night, that might be of some use."

There was a general shuffling and scuffling, and somehow the chamber seemed fuller all of a sudden.

The last move, Lennart thought. Checkmate.

"Lads?" Thirty engineering plasma torches flared into life and brightened to combat mode, half-lighting snarling faces and looming bodies. "Get him."

Adannan had paid them no respect- groundlings, he had thought- he had scorned them, got some of their friends killed and injured, and at the last managed to incriminate himself quite spectacularly. They had every reason to get him.

All thirty moved in on the dark acolyte. Adannan tried to lash out for their minds and blast them back with confusion and terror, met the combined resistance of all thirty backed by their commander and patron. Couldn’t bite deep enough to do anything, tried to narrow his focus to a few, but then they were on him.

Thirty amateurs, in blade to blade, surrounding. Should be possible- no, not thirty amateurs. One amateur and thirty hobbyists, who may never have drawn blood except by accident but who knew the moves, knew the tactics. They refused to give him the asymmetry he needed, contracted in on him in a jagged ring of light.

Adannan lashed out in a defensive flurry, probing and hacking, and the rung moved to meet him, he had his sabre smashed away from his target by half a dozen blades, and the rest who could reach him stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

By the time Lennart wound his way through the melee to take the dark acolyte’s head, the glory and the blame, Adannan’s body was in shreds and he had wounds enough to kill him fifty times over. The dismembered remains scattered down to the deck, the torches flickered down from bright combat to safe, and they turned to face their commanding officer.

Lennart stepped back, swept his sabre up in salute, brought it down again. "So now you know why I needed your help, and just what sort of maniac we were dealing with. Couldn’t have done it without you.
Two things. Feel free to dismiss his words as the ravings of a man drowning in the dark side- but if you can’t, think how very many people there are, for how many reasons, who wouldn’t want to hear a word of that repeated. If you think there was anything to it, then think it to yourself, very quietly." Lennart said, slowly and deliberately.

"Second- Vilberksohn?"

"Sir." Followed by a muttered "kriffit."

"I knew you’d be in here somewhere. Organise a droid detail to get this mess- messes, by now- cleared up. Attach a thermal demo charge to Kor Alric’s light sabre before you jettison it. Thank you all, and dismiss."

The blades were de-activated, and the men, strangely sombre, filed away.

Lennart relaxed, switched off his own sabre. Felt the tense, hunched feeling between his shoulder blades ebb away. The ship felt cleaner, now, a stain removed. When he was sure there was no one left in earshot, he looked down at the severed head on the pile of mangled remains and said "I think you may have a point. It’ll bear investigation, certainly, but quietly, and in my own time and own way- I’ll be damned, and I mean that literally, if I do it under your lead and as a part of your cabal."

The Force must be getting to me, he thought, I’m starting to talk to the dead. I’ll know it’s gone too far when I start expecting answers. Even if it is only ‘so why did you have to kill me then, you bastard.’ He turned away from the splash of body parts, then, and headed back to the bridge. There was a fair amount still to do.

Vianca · Post by **Vianca** » 2008-09-12 03:13pm

Liked the first version better, Remnant.

Lol, so how will Lennart keep the fleet togeter?
The one signing the documents is dead.

Kartr_Kana · Post by **Kartr_Kana** » 2008-09-13 12:19am

The edit makes it easier to understand who's talking. I can't wait to hear how the rest of the battle went

keep it coming ECR!

Vianca · Post by **Vianca** » 2008-09-13 03:48am

But your losing track of what they are doing.
To much space.

Kartr_Kana · Post by **Kartr_Kana** » 2008-09-14 02:27am

That's true I couldn't figure out what was bothering me about it. To much space, I think collapsing the spaces between the paragraphs would help. That way it's still easy to see who's talking but there's no disconcerting gaps in the text.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2008-09-14 06:22am

That can be done in the future. Not a problem.

gtg947h · Post by **gtg947h** » 2008-09-14 08:51pm

The page needs to be narrower, I think. Paragraph spacing is good to me, but since the page is so wide they all wind up being only two or three lines long.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2008-09-15 12:50am

Yeah, that's the cause of it, but it has an easy fix. I'll just consolidate the non-dialogue into larger paragraphs.

Vehrec · Post by **Vehrec** » 2008-09-20 11:20pm

I just had the strangest thought, re-reading the part where I nearly bit the dust. Trade that black suit for a white one, and we get...

"Some say that he was ordered created by his Imperial Majesty, and that he knew Mace Windu was a git before anyone else. All we know is, he's called the Stig."

Vianca · Post by **Vianca** » 2008-09-21 11:19am

Vehrec wrote:I just had the strangest thought, re-reading the part where I nearly bit the dust. Trade that black suit for a white one, and we get...

"Some say that he was ordered created by his Imperial Majesty, and that he knew Mace Windu was a git before anyone else. All we know is, he's called the Stig."

You forgot the rumor of being the left hand of Darth Vader, being a Jedi that surfived the purge, being the hotrod-jedi "Anikan Skywalker", being Lord Darth Vader himself in disguise, him being Grand Admiral Trawn and other such nice thing.

Bet there is even the possibility of him being Han Solo.

Vianca · Post by **Vianca** » 2008-09-21 11:56am

Changed some things, so what do you think of this, Vehrec?

"Some say that he is a Jedi that surfived the purge and is in fact the Hotrod Jedi Anika Skywalker.
Others that he was either the left hand of Darth Vader or Lord Vader himself in disguise.
It's rumored that he was ordered to be created by his Imperial Majesty, and that he knew Mace Windu was a git before anyone else.

There are even people thinking him to be Grand Admiral Trawn and quite a few bet that he's Han Solo.
All we know is, he's called the Stig."

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2008-09-21 12:03pm

Anika Skywalker? He's a trannie?

Eleventh Century Remnant · Post by **Eleventh Century Remnant** » 2008-09-21 01:45pm

It's an endearingly lunatic idea.
If all the Imperial Scout Bikers were clones of the Stig, things would have gone very differently at Endor, that at least is for sure.

Um...how good is Palpatine's precog, anyway? Good enough to scan parallel universes?
"My Hand, I have seen a glimpse of the future. My legions will fail me at a crucial moment. There is one being who you must bring back to me, to be multiplied and form the new foundation of a more dread force than any that have gone before.

Some say he sprang into being fully formed from the unearthly, eldritch geometries of Spaghetti Junction, and his ability to use the Torque Side of the Force knows no limits. He is called...The Stig."

There is definitely a crossover in there somewhere, but the more I think about it, the dafter it gets. Star in a Reasonably Priced AT-AT? And the challenges, well, kitbashing yes, but with the raw power available- things could get very wierd.

Actually, the reason the next chapter isn't up yet is because I've already got distracted working on the first chapter of one potential sequel. Both are about half written or a little better, but the draft sequel veers into the territory of the genuinely bonkers- great fun to write but very difficult to take seriously, and I am trying not to waste time on it and failing.
37c/38 should be up Tuesday.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2008-09-22 10:57am

Sequel. Yes.

Andras · Post by **Andras** » 2008-09-22 03:09pm

ECR- been meaning to ask, from pg 2, ch 11

‘The loose end. The first exec. Executed?’ Ntevi asked.
‘No; it was hard to prove that a ship with over forty merchant captures and ten warship kills including a medium cruiser was acting against the interests of the Empire. At least, it was hard then; I dare say it could be managed now. The court busted him back to Lieutenant, and a staff job. Took him eight years to work his way back to a destroyer command.’

Is Lennart the first Exec?

Eleventh Century Remnant · Post by **Eleventh Century Remnant** » 2008-09-24 07:06am

Well, I know it's not Tuesday, but the story got a bit longer than I was expecting. A day late, but definitely not an explosion short- some spacetrooper work, and Plrlanilthre.

Andras, you're right. He was the plankowner exec of Black Prince, assigned to that ship shortly after Second Coruscant, and at odds with the commanding officer, Artor (no relation) Dodonna, from the word go. Actually, Artor was a relation; cousin-fifteen-times-removed of the rather more famous Jan Dodonna, who resigned as a matter of principle shortly after the founding of the Empire.

Artor felt it wiser to keep his head down, and Lennart cheerfully took full advantage of that, making every decision he could get his hands on, cutting Artor Dodonna out of the loop as far as possible and effectively functioning as the de facto if not de jure commanding officer.
Two years in, Artor Dodonna's temper snapped and he resigned his commission as well, claiming all sorts of things- Corellian old boy network, blackmail and bribery- but with enough supporting evidence to start an investigation, which turned into a court martial.

Lennart was unquestionably guilty, of what was at the very least serious misconduct and could plausibly be construed as mutiny. Later on, or under a different flag officer, he might have been rewarded by being formally given command; or rather more likely shot.

The frankly wierd compromise that boiled out was the result of high politics within the fleet and personal politics within the squadron, and I'm going to have to go back and write that scene out in full to get a good handle on exactly what did transpire.

Four years on the staff of the support group, two of them in fleet navigation and two in personnel and logistics, where he first met Gethrim Mirannon. Then four years on the staff at Raithal, the last two of them largely as OPFOR final tactical training in command of a selection of Munificent, Recusant and Providence class ships, before- and I really have to write this one out too, because there was a fair amount of blackmail, bribery and string-pulling involved- returning to a front line command.

There are a couple of stories in there that it would be fun to tell, if I go back as well as forward.
Anyway,

Four platoons of spacetroopers, each four squads of eight men and a sergeant, a lieutenant, a platoon sergeant and two specialists. In a line platoon those specialists would be a heavy weapon team, but that wasn’t something spacetroopers were short of.

Instead, sappers accompanied the platoon, and at least one of the troopers in each squad would be cross trained.

Using the ship’s systems against boarders, surging artificial gravity, trapping them with the blast doors, evacuating air or flooding with gas and corrosives, was a strange lacuna in the manual; it had been part of the prewar Republic fleet instructions, but had been an afterthought if at all during the war.

The Imperial Starfleet in general hardly considered it, being at relatively little risk of being boarded by the undermanned Rebel Alliance, but Black Prince took the idea seriously, both for and against. There were a couple of other things they did differently, too.

The standard loadout of spacetrooper armour had to have been specified by an accountant, an academic theorist or a ten year old boy; too many options, too funky, too little satisfaction of the basics.

Black Prince’s platoons stripped the ridiculous ‘blaster cannon’ that had more in common with a disintegrator pistol, deleted the touching-distance laser cutters, removed the absurd claw-cuffs that did nothing other than prevent the trooper wielding any conventional weapon.

Instead, the power supply for the laser cutters was wired up to an otherwise standard T-21 squad light repeater. The squad support slot was filled by a trooper lugging a separate generator for an E-Web heavy repeater.

One other major difference; instead of being commanded from the assault shuttle, the platoon commanders of the boarding battalion led from the front. Actually, two of Black Prince’s platoons, one each from Fist and Voracious. Their target was Admonisher’s hangar bay.

In practise, that was usually the most heavily defended location on the ship. Unless the order ‘repel boarders’ had been passed, the majority of any ship’s troop complement would be close to the launch bays they deployed from.

At first order, their job was to use that very convenient natural hole in the target’s hull to gain access and head for Engineering, take control of the Rebel heavy destroyer’s systems.

At second order, their job was to threaten to do that- pose a threat that the enemy had to devote a high proportion of their troop complement to resisting. Tie them down and shoot them up. Their mission was simply to kill; the nominal objective would be a bonus.

As they floated into the bay and took stock of the battlefield, a couple of things became immediately obvious. The bay had been hit; there was a huge, soft edged-molten-gash in the deckhead and port side, the hangars were open to the main bay and cleaved-through decks visible.

It was strewn with crates and containers, the materiel ripped out of the planetary yards and intended to set up a new Rebel base. Lots of cover, people milling around, damage control teams, evacuees, some crew, some ground forces.

No specific instructions regarding prisoners, so standard procedure applied; if they try to surrender, and if the situation is such that you can accept that without endangering the other troopers, do so.

If not, or if you spot them before they spot you, fair game. There were perhaps two thousand people in the bay. Some of them went for their guns; that was enough. The no. 2 platoon leader, Lieutenant Kartr, was the first to give the order. "Fire."

The situation on board the Rebel ship was already chaotic enough. They were a largely human crew under a Mon Cal captain; he had trained them well, forged them into a remarkably effective fighting machine, but in combat orders rather than information had descended from the bridge module.

Like most Mon Cal, combat did not come naturally to the former skipper of the Mon Evarra, and like many of those who did eventually become good at it he had done so by forcing himself into the part, consciously becoming a book-ridden martinet, more autocratic than the aristocrats of the Empire.

He had told his crew almost nothing of what was actually happening, not even whether they were winning or losing. Aldrem’s vengeful volley into the upper turret complex had done more damage than he knew; the millisecond sequence of hits had driven a breach into the heavy destroyer’s hull deep enough to touch primary gunnery control, one of the main alternative control points.

Any battery direction centre could switch into the main data links and take over gun control, but it was much harder for it to step up two levels to alternate bridge. No command solutions there. Main engineering was the next obvious alternative control point, and it was that the spacetroopers were making for, before anyone got in control again and told the Rebs what to do.

The four platoons made one major mistake right from the start; dispersal of fire. Each assumed that it had to cover all of the bay, and prioritised accordingly- that meant that the most critical threat, a group of flight techs trying to clear the wreckage away and get at the deep storage racks to get something flying, got hit by everybody. With everything.

The short, staccato, stabbing pulses of blaster cannon, the long crackling streams of fire from the repeaters sounding like an endless walk through autumn leaves, and leaving a charred mess behind them like the aftermath of a bonfire, and over two hundred frag grenades hit the relatively small group.

Secondary detonations added brilliant white flares to the mix, and left the upper forward face of the bay burning, giving off choking duraplast smoke.

"Well," Captain VA-811 said, from the command squad of first stormtrooper platoon, "overkill is good too… fire sectors; Voracious platoon rear left, Kartr front left, my unit front right, Fist rear right. On jets, disperse to formation and give fire, neutralise opposition at point of entry then proceed to primary target."

He gave the order in long, formal style to remind them of their duty after that little fire fest; boiled down, it meant kill everything in sight.

"Disable the pressure curtain?" Kartr asked. That would flush the air in the bay out- the emergency doors were shot away- and kill many of the crew. Even if it had been Rebel practise to suit up, there were a lot of refugees and evacuees from the planet, and volunteers for the ship, who simply didn’t have the kit.

There was enough damage, large parts of the ship around the bay would decompress. The other side of that was that whatever internal blast doors and ray shields hadn’t been activated already undoubtedly would be by the loss of atmosphere.

It would make it harder to fight their way through the ship, trading an advantage now for a harder fight later. Kartr knew that, and was asking if the captain thought it was worth the cost.

"Not worth it." VA-811 said.

"This ship is pretty badly beat up." Kartr added, noticing one of his second squad raise their gun to fire up at the deckhead of the bay; four rebel groundpounders with heavy A280 battle rifles, crawling out along one of the gantries to shoot at the spacetroopers.

Kartr aimed up at a support pylon, splattered it with fire, was joined by one of the E-webs; pointless, part of the ship’s structure protected by the ship’s heat sinks and force fields. He started to track on to them, but the rest of the platoon got there first, hosed them down and reduced them to pink rain; then they hosed down the access hatch the rebels had crawled out of.

"Minitorps, restricted-six." VA-811 decided. Restricted-zero would have meant release authority could only be given by company commanders, i.e., him. Restricted-one allowed squad leaders to make the shoot/no-shoot decision.

Restricted-six was good, it became the platoon commander’s call to use the lethal little things. Kartr wasted no time in lobbing one at the hatch, detonating just within and sending a flare of blast back out into the bay.

"Who remembered their striptape dispenser?" he asked looking at a clutch of the Rebel yard workers, evacuees, who were waving their arms in the air trying to surrender.

A handful of the ship’s crew, armed, tried to push them out of the way and shoot at the spacetroopers; the surrendered rebels turned round and started brawling with the crew.

They knew what was liable to happen- whatever side they were on, a group that seemed to surrender then started shooting again could expect no mercy.

Too late; the crew got a few bolts off, and blaster fire and grenades ripped them apart.

One group of Rebels tried to use a container as a bunker, laser-cutting firing ports in it and shooting out; simple solution- lob a proton minitorp back through one of the firing ports, and watch as the container turned into an instant crematorium, thin jets of blast spraying out of the ports more dangerous than the Reb rifle fire.

A lot of the Rebel surface to space transport work had been done by the small craft the destroyer had had when she was beached, a lot of LAATs, some the vehicle version with extended grapples to take containers.
They were mostly broken winged and broken backed, flattened by the concussion of the hit Black Prince had landed on the bay, but some of them weren’t broken down far enough.

They were mostly in first platoon’s sector, the captain and most of his men hosing down the broken-open decks and compartments of the troop complement bay; one squad did take notice, sent a spray of blaster fire cutting down some of the Rebel technicians, but not fast enough.

The Rebs were trying to run a power cable from one transport with a functioning powerplant to another which still had it’s weapons. Most of the techs died, but they managed it.

They managed to get one small ball turret working, the convergence beam antimechanoid laser. The Alliance deck-hand in the turret was clearly an amateur, but if there was an easier weapon to hit with than a continuous laser, it hadn’t been invented.

The brilliant green stream slashed out, slicing the air, splashing harmlessly off the far bulkhead, tracking onto the hovering troopers who were now turning to meet it.

Two got caught in the hose of fire, one slashed across the stomach, he spasmed, triggered his jets and slammed into the starboard bulkhead, the other got caught square in the chest and thrashed as the laser burnt through, the rebel gunner holding the beam on target as metal and man flashed to vapour.

The Reb was too busy thinking ‘ooh, cool’ to track on to a new target; and the other obvious drawback of a continuous beam is it’s very easy to see where you’re firing from.

Most of first and second platoons fired on them, torpedoes and blasters. The ball took a hit and exploded, the power cable flashed back to the active powerplant which got hit itself half a second later as the row of parked transports was pounded. Better safe than sorry.

"Gal?" Kartr commed alpha squad’s heavy weapons man. "Ditch the E-web, you’re carrying one of those."

"Love to, LT, but we’d have to glue one back together first." The heavy weapon specialist said, looking over the line of burning, half-melted wrecks.

"By platoon, first and third squads move out." VA-811 ordered. Half of each platoon moved out to take positions on the edge of the bay facing along the routes they planned to take, and began shooting to suppress, laying down fire.

Second and fourth would move past them, if this was a normal operation. It wasn’t- basically tunnel fighting, where there often was not room for one unit to leapfrog by another. The only thing to do was fan out, move hard and fast on as many axes of attack as possible.

What there was left of the Rebels would be moving to surround and contain; in Imperial fleet service, these ships carried fifty-six battalions, three reinforced or four understrength battlegroups.

The Rebellion couldn’t scrape up that kind of numbers, or at least not have them lying around waiting for something to do, but the ship would have arms lockers sized accordingly.

So, they would be facing a lot of amateurs, armed mainly with anti-droid heavy rifles that probably did have enough power to hurt a spacetrooper. That didn’t change the basic plan- surge the defence, disorient them and prevent them having the chance to.

Kartr called up their stored schematic of the Shockwave-class, tried to match it in the overlaid imager to the blasted, part-molten, junk-strewn mess in front of him, to pick what ought to be a profitable line of advance.

"Half squads," enough units to make multiple thrusts, individually large enough to secure their own flanks- "there, there, there-" eight gaps in the tangle of wreckage that should leave them covering each other and lead them to the target area.

Each squad would break down into two groups of four, their sergeant would take one block, one of the command team would take the other half. Eight groups of five, the groups with the sappers using the main access corridor with the control nodes.

Pentagon formations, two front, two middle watching the flanks, walls chambers and side corridors, one rear guard. Kartr was right front of his half-squad, E-web on his left.

The platoon moved out heading through the small craft maintenance area, which backed on to the heavy destroyer’s own workshops, which were connected to main machinery control.

VA-811 would be paralleling them, Fist’s and Voracious’ platoons lapping round on either side, and what they were doing was at least as much about racing the other platoons as it was fighting the enemy.

Not that the Rebs intended to have nothing to say about it. There were half a dozen techs working on an X-wing with one wing missing, parts scattered all over the pad, trying to get some use out of it’s lasers, with a rifle squad trying to cover them.

Kartr and the squad support gunner hosed them down, tore them apart in a blizzard of red bolts; one of the flankers passed a fire request, Kartr okayed it, one of the Y-wings caught a torpedo in it’s ion cannon turret.

The maintenance bay was full of containers, rammed in on top of each other and shoved together at all angles to clear some room for the doomed fighters to launch. Could have been a maze if the spacetroopers’ sensors hadn’t been too good for that.

What had moved them, though, the tractor beams- take them under fire- or, ah, powerlifters. Partly gravitic themselves, reacting off the ship’s systems, they had brute force to spare for when things weren’t working.

They were huge, industrial machinery, they could lift tanks. One of them had a Z-95’s blaster cannon kitbashed on to it- there were five of them, one more with a lashup of infantry weapons, the other three apparently intending to rely on brute strength.

"I like it." Gal said, diving for cover behind a container full of machine parts. "Use some of that load capacity for armour, fit a decent generator-"

"And you’d be driving an AT-ST. There’s a reason we don’t take those things into tunnel fighting." Kartr said, ducking out of the way of the one with the cannon.

Somebody, probably the same somebody responsible for the loadout, hadn’t been thinking about their protective gear either. The physical armour only tended to confirm the usual Imperial doctrine about powersuits.

Complicated, expensive to procure and time-consuming to maintain, and more trouble than they were worth. The Impervium plating, trademarks and all, added significantly less to their combat survivability than what had really been an afterthought of a system, flight navigational shielding.

The suit management systems were supposed to shut that down as soon as they touched down and started walking, but anyone with an interest in not being dead soon worked out how to override that.

Kartr had an idea. He didn’t bother saying ‘cover me’ or anything like that. Speed would protect him. He fired up his ion thrusters, sideslipped out from behind the container and jetted forward.

The armed powerlifter got off a burst, but Kartr didn’t think he had been hit; caught in the flare though, he tumbled, braked, slammed off the far bulkhead, found himself floating upside down behind the powerlifter.

Too good a shot to resist. Straight up the backside of the lifter, a minitorpedo. The ‘lifter had no time to react; the quarter kiloton warhead exploded, breaching the fusion generator which added it’s thin wash of plasma, vapourising the Rebel and blasting a huge hole in the deck, followed by a gout of flame as everything in the compartment below ignited.

"I think the tensors are down." Kartr said from where the blast had shoved him against the container.

"No shit, LT." Gal said, hosing one of the other lifters with E-web fire, shredding the body and the pilot.

"Kartr." VA-811’s voice, short, disciplined bursts of fire audible in the background. "I’ve had four junior platoon leaders who tried to upstage me and get my job by doing crazy hotdog crap like that." Brief pause, crash of a minitorp, crunching noises of grenades. "I’ve outlived all of them. Guess why."

"Because the odds caught up with them and they got killed doing crazy hotdog crap?" Kartr guessed, pulling himself off the deck and looking for more targets.

"Got it in one." VA-811 said. "Stick to the basics."

There were store and workshop chambers on the fringes of the bay, a heavy blast retention bulkhead aft that the sappers would have to open the blast doors in, a main access corridor beyond that and the outer edges of the main machinery area on the other side.

The access corridor was probably the Rebel main line of resistance, and what of the Rebel troops had just been brushed aside rather than cut down would be attacking them from the rear soon.

"Infantry elements of first regiment, entering through the dorsal crater now." The welcome message over divisional comms. "Infantry elements second regiment, entering through the superstructure damage now." Through the neck of the decapitated bridge tower. That changed the game a bit.

Over Plrlanilthre, two things happened more or less at once. The rRasfenoni main mobile force decided to see if they really could take on the cream of the Imperial Starfleet; and the Imperial flagship decided to see if he could slice through the rRasfenoni fixed defences.

The septangular aliens didn’t have all that much in terms of a navy, just maybe enough to take out the understrength local sector group, if they had happened to be looking the other way at the time.

Their thirty worlds between them could scrape up six first line destroyer-class ships, two home-built and the same disc and superstructure shape, broad face on, lots of medium-small guns by the look of it.

The other four were from the Clone Wars, a pair of Separatist Providence-class destroyer-carriers- credible ships, roughly equal to if not a slight advance on the Republican Venator.

Two genuine rarities, where they had found them from must be a tale- a pair of Rothana’s DDX-14, the so-called ‘stretch Acclamator’, an unsuccessful attempt by Rothana to defy their parent company and branch out into the warship market on their own, capitalising on the success of their existing product.

As a ship of war, the DDX-14 was technically successful, as an economic act the project had been suicidal. There were very few of them, and they were rarely seen.

They were slippery little things, excellent power to weight, rating towards the upper end of light destroyer- just under twice the reactor output of a Venator- with large numbers of light weapons, fourteen quad turrets for twenty-five teraton turbolasers.

They would have been a serious sales contender with the Imperator-I, and a lightweight, higher efficiency alternative to the Imperial-II. Alternative but hopefully not better.

Six much larger ships, armed merchant cruisers based on heavy freighter hulls, slow, heavy, grungy-looking things plodding their way down the sky.
Cube shaped actually, three sides covered in low-pressure high efficiency ion nozzles, the corner at the centre of the other three sides the bow, one edge up and the aft corner of that the bridge module.

Well if chaotically armed, their flank weapons bays a mixed bag of all sorts- including many missile launch tubes, must be concussion, even the Imperial Starfleet was reluctant to pay for that many proton torps.

All six of them posed a credible threat; each carried some form of major weapon in the bow position, sparred and plated into the main forward loading hatch. Planetary defence artillery.

Two were packing v-150s, the bow hatch being built into a socket the ball turret could rotate in, one had an improvised-looking tractor-based kinetic accelerator-launcher, the other three took the concept of sniping to new and ridiculous lengths.

Built into the bow of each of them was a gargantuan 3.3-petaton w-165 planetary defence turbolaser, some of the largest single weapon mounts ever made.

Imperial Intelligence should have been keeping a closer watch on sales of those things, considering that they tended to be bought by governments which expected to have to fight for their lives.

There were many models of lighter, cheaper, less ridiculous surface to orbit artillery, a lot of it going cheap as second-hand from the Clone Wars.

Realistically, in this day and age, LTL was enough for civil enforcement, light mediums- up to the twenty-five gigaton level- were enough to keep off any plausible pirate. The only reason anyone could need a brand new w-series superheavy was to fight the capital warships of the Imperial Starfleet.

That alone would have been enough to draw the attention of the regional support group, if the sector had been closely enough watched that anybody had noticed and drawn their attention to it. Still, they were only heavy merchant hulls.

Firepower without the speed or survivability to back it up- they would find it very difficult to make good on the threat they posed. There were another dozen lighter-armed merchants, falling into the destroyer class, less spectacularly armed- four of them based on liners, they had the speed for decent footwork at least.

Frigates- the crew of the watching Goshawk lost count, the computers added up eighty. Mostly military, mostly local build with light-heavy turbolasers and turboblasters, but including four of the kinetic-attack bombers, nice to see them making themselves obvious at last.

Three more Alliance build-Liberators. A wide assortment. Their battle plan, the Imperials were guessing- engage and prevent reinforcements? Move over Goshawk and bombard? Equally plausible as ideas, but their trajectory suggested they were to attack the Imperial warship.

To make an attack run on the ship in the upper atmosphere, they had to remove as small and oblique a segment of the shielding as possible, which meant they had to come in on essentially the same outline- grazing approach path as the Imperial dreadnought Cosmonaut Ijon Tichy.

The speeding capital ship emerged from hyperspace five seconds after and fifteen light seconds astern of the mobile group. Neither side could afford time to be surprised; the rRasfenoni had been dreading and preparing for this for centuries, Tichy only had to bless- or curse- his luck and take careful aim.

No elegance about this, just an abrupt, bloody knife fight as the rRasfenoni flipped end for end to take on the dreadnought. An energy weapon kill was unlikely, but the hits would weaken the ship, weaken the shields- a kinetic attack might just succeed.

They shot at him anyway. Streams of turbolaser and turboblaster fire of every colour and variety of bolt, the almost sheets of light from the superheavies, pulsing flares of mass driver tracer and crackling ion fire lashed out at the Imperial ship.

Convarrian on the Tichy, a back-seat driver, had no real choice, couldn’t possibly change the vector of his big ship enough to avoid passing through them. So much for fancy plans. "Engage- armed merchants the priority."

ECM clouded the issue as far as possible, and Tichy did what footwork he could- electronically the lynchpins of the enemy force were the regular destroyers, the armed merchants that made up most of their heavy metal had inappropriate fire control and barely-upgraded civil navigational sensors.

It would be essential to remove the destroyers, but not yet- whittle down a little of the force, before working on the multipliers.

The big Mandator was not short of his own weapons to bring to bear. The anticapital armament, eleven battery groups each of four single ball turret fourteen hundred and twenty teraton superheavies, eleven more groups of six smaller single ball turrets for seven hundred and twenty teraton cannon.

Ball rather than cylinder mounts made them faster to traverse and more accurate- but also more expensive and time consuming to maintain, and the sheer weight and recoil of the heavy cannon still made them marginal against small ships. That was fine, they had plenty of big enough targets to be getting on with.

The mainstay mid-range armament of the dreadnaught was ten batteries, each six twin ball turrets for three hundred and twenty teraton heavy cannon; they could track fast and stably enough to take on a destroyer- class target, and did.

Sixteen batteries supported them, each five twin turrets for hundred and seventy-five teraton cannon, the same weapons as the Imperator-I on a drastically different mounting- metres more thickness of armour, local component shields and capacitors moved out of the gun house into the barbette, main burden of local control shifted to the battery command centre, the capital-secondary version of the same gun mount.

For the smaller and lighter craft, twenty-five groups of smaller heavy turbolasers, each four twin turrets for the old faithful medium-heavy DBY-827 seventy teraton cannon in destroyer-standard fast pointing light turrets this time.

They were the anti-frigate and anti-corvette outfit, along with the hundred and eight sextuple half teraton medium and four hundred and thirty two octuple dual purpose light turbolasers.

Rounded out with ninety-six strategic bombardment and three hundred and seventy-two tactical missile launch tubes, and a point defence fit designed to protect against the same.

Outnumbered? Massively. Outmassed? Considering the dead weight of the armed merchants, multibillion-ton ships designed for trillion ton payloads, yes. Outgunned- no.

The rainbow of tracer that splattered out of the rRasfenoni mobile force met a solid wall of shades of green coming the other way. The improvised heavy gunships would have been hard put to it even against the target they were expecting, but against a fast moving ship in open space-

there were explosions at both ends, as the superheavy planetary defence cannon managed to punch enough energy through even a dreadnought’s shields to raise vapourisation flares on the hull, and the crack Imperial scored quickly on the slow, clumsy armed freighters.

Heavily built for heavy loads, admittedly, certainly not the worst hulls that could have been chosen for the job, but first-line warships they were not.

Tichy splattered fire across all of them to begin with, punching through shields and ripping into all six, but after three seconds narrowed focus down to the three most dangerous- the kinetic launcher, one of whose thousand ton impactors gouged a hole in the dreadnought’s superstructure, and the two ion cannon carriers.

Again the decision loop. To make a choice, see it begin to be carried out, and evaluate whether it was working- it varied from individual to individual, but the standard the Imperial Starfleet tried to train to was ten seconds, and tried to achieve in combat was five.

By the end of the first decision cycle, three of the rRasfenoni heavy weapons ships were gone.

One of the ion cannon ships had taken a full battery volley right in the ball of the v-150, the capacitors had let go, adding to the blast- the entire front end of the heavy freighter had been peeled back and burnt away, opening up blasted structural sparring into a half-molten shuttlecock shape.

The kinetic armed merchant was brought under the heaviest fire, kicked to one side by a cluster of shot slamming into one side of the bow, leaving it side on where it was raked from stem to stern, broken open with powerplant and engines exploding.

The last ion carrier tried to evade, took a set of hits along the spine that broke the ship‘s back and left it burning uncontrollably.

Two walls of torpedoes and missiles closed on each other; Tichy had launched out and parallel, warheads fanning out then converging to avoid losing them to the main stream of fire and give the target’s point defence more work to do.

Most of the rRasfenoni hadn’t thought of that, and there were flashes of light all across the formation as warheads were caught in the flood of incoming and outgoing fire. The rRasfenoni commander was horrified, at the loss of ships, at the waste of ordnance he needed to score hits with, passed two orders; open formation, deploy fighters.

They got the first part right- narrow beam the order to an accompanying ship to broadcast, avoid giving the flag’s identity away. Unfortunately, they did make a major mistake.

The flood of datasharing between the ships of the force was already switched into war operating mode- the burst transmission was not. Most of the time, it would have gone unnoticed, but the sheer size of the dreadnought meant a larger passive sensor area- Tichy’s ESM was good enough to pick it up and distinguish it.

The rRasfenoni flagship was the left-hand Providence. "Ions- take it." The dreadnought’s heavy ion cannon separated themselves out of the wall of fire and lashed out at the rebel flag.

The weight of fire was too much for the large light destroyer, it twisted, kicked as the drives fired at random, the lights went out and there were marks like fulgurites left over the ship’s bow.

Tichy could do nothing about it himself- boarding shuttles didn’t have that kind of acceleration either, and there was an entirely different term for what happened when somebody tried to dock to a ship with a hundred and fifty thousand kps difference in velocity.

The reinforcements- the pair of approaching battlecruisers- would have to deal with that, they were moving at a close enough relative speed to deploy assault craft.

The rRasfenoni ships were spewing fighters now; swim-out launch bays for the most part, faster to deploy but more prone to accident. The extra warheads they could launch would make little odds, but they and the debris would be a significant collision hazard, as would the ‘killed’ hulks and the fragments blown off them.

The simple fact of the rRasfenoni being there was the most dangerous thing they could have done, their best chance to inflict real damage in the Imperial Starfleet.

If Convarrian could keep them in a state of fear, keep them thinking ‘oh my alien gods, we’ve been jumped, they’ve come to get us’- rather than actually running the possibilities- they might get through this without taking too many hits and too many holes ripped in the hull.

Paralysing the flagship was essential, but sheer chaos was almost equally likely to serve them.

What could the Imperials do to manage the situation- would frightening them into scattering make any material difference- probably, yes.

Convarrian snapped out his orders as fast as he could mouth the words and still be understood. "Those three-" dot, dot, dot; the w-165 carriers- "then centre of formation, push them out and make a hole.

We flip two seconds early, flank thrust," not to slow the ship down by any meaningful amount, but to put out enough of an ion flare to melt or push away most of the lighter debris, "raise tow shields and take the hits there then form the drogue."

All of which was sound enough, and none of it was properly the job of an admiral. Convarrian took an active, day to day role in the running of his flagship, and force help any flag captain who got in his way.

That was twenty seconds away. Gunnery knew better than to protest, although the point defence turret-group commanders were already screaming at the type-commander about being masked and unable to do their job. Unfortunately, that was the risk the Admiral had decided to take and theirs to make the best of it.

Convarrian himself did have second thoughts; one second of ion flare ought to be enough, give the point defence fit a little more tie to work with, but to countermand the order he had just given would do nothing but spread confusion.

Launching fighters would be another wasted errand. They would add to the ship’s defence a little, but between blast flares off shielding, warhead explosions and random junk, the losses they would take would be well out of proportion to the good they could do.

They would want to fight, want to take their chances out there- but the odds were against them. They would have their moment later, when Tichy had time to decelerate to any kind of reasonable speed.

There was a bright green flash up ahead in the centre of the rRasfenoni formation, a small nova with three rapid sequels- one of the heavy batteries had decided to rig for and fire a burst of flak fire at the swarm of missiles, the burst blasted a huge hole in the wall of shot detonating many and leaving the rest, the inert kinetics, glowing brightly enough to be easy point defence targets.

"Find out who did that and commend them, I should have thought of that." Convarrian snapped, tone so annoyed that it took Tichy’s gunnery officer a couple of seconds of thought to pick up on the words.

The battery- forward dorsal centreline- fired another four at the thickest surviving concentrations, blasting more holes in the missile and fighter swarm, and then going back to conventional heavy fire.

The admiral glanced at the ship status display; a few red punctures where the w-165s had sent enough power leaking through to do damage, two deeper cones of compromised hull where the kinetics had hit, and three patches like a rash where a face of shielding had temporarily overloaded under mass fire from the destroyers and frigates and let many minor hits through.

The armed merchants did have some firepower after all, and-

One of them was manoeuvring differently from the rest, not even making an attempt at independent footwork, certainly pulling out of formation; Tichy’s navigator looked at the flaring halo around the ship on his own display- how was that facility active?- "He’s going to try a transition ram."

Accelerate to hyperspace, and hope to hit the enemy on the way- hit an enemy actually as you were in the act of rotating across the light barrier, and the numbers got very weird, but the odds of survival- of either party- very small.

It was a good risk for them to take, especially as the natural reaction for a ship as big and slow- turning as a dreadnought was to bring the alpha arc to bear and try to kill it with fire rather than evade.

"Bow up, roll starboard to inverted." The admiral ordered; he was micro- managing, knew it, and had no intention of stopping.

Bringing alpha on was just too straightforward- and the rRasfenoni fleet dropped a coherent converged salvo exactly where they would have expected him to be if he had reacted in the usual manner.

A pre-arranged plan activated by a junior flag officer? Probably, but whoever they were, they were smart enough not to give it away this time. One of the destroyers, no doubt. Few clues from formation.

Tichy’s guns were still tracking onto the ramship, which was adjusting course to meet them. Executor had survived a similar impact, although from a lower tonnage ship, and also crucially while Executor had been in the later stages of a downward transition herself, hyper and stasis fields still partially active as she cycled down to normal space.

Although a tragedy in it’s own right- a collision with a friendly ship- the incident had instantly become politicised, supporters of the new class using it to argue that previous doubts about the survivability of the highly offensively oriented type were unfounded.

Convarrian was not one of those supporters. He doubted whether an Executor class ship fully in normal space could survive that kind of punishment; wasn’t too sanguine about a Mandator’s chances either.

The armed heavy freighter about to rush at them was just the right ship for the job, too- heavy, lots of impact, hard to kill. Unless-

"Guns, no. Don’t waste the lasers, as soon as it gets a stable vector put a full missile volley down the throat."

Convarrian ordered producing another boggle moment, his flag captain- might as well be a Mon Cal, considering how much he looks like a gaffed fish most of the time, Convarrian thought- was about to protest, before the admiral forestalled him. "If they hold back until we turn, missile them anyway."

Tichy hadn’t been conserving ammunition, simply not bothering to pop off any more than the situation warranted. The rRasfenoni had been blasting off warheads wholesale trying to empty their payload bays, and a fine assortment it was too.

They had led with their best, protons, most of which had been burnt up by flak bursts and other ships detonating. Half the total were concussions, and the rest a mix of very old style plasma and fusion heads- useful four thousand years ago, maybe, but not now.

It seemed ridiculous to think of something lasting only thirty seconds as having a mid game, but it did- the phase after the initial surprise, where the Rasfenoni tried to manoeuvre Tichy into their trap- and argued among themselves over who was going to receive the terminal honour of being the trap- and Tichy simply tried to cull enough of them fast enough to get through without taking too many hits.

The dreadnought could not power all his weapons at once off the reactor, but there was more than enough power left in the capacitors to last this out, and absolutely no reason not to remain on maximum fire.

Which strategy? Slaughter the smaller craft? Made sense, but it was too tricky to achieve in practise. At two seconds- push a cone of fire around the target, narrow in on them, kill and move on- to deal with each of eighty frigates, dancing and weaving and avoiding fire- there simply was not enough time.

Scatter fire was also futile, space was too big. Aimed shot to cripple, fire control switching targets like a plate- spinner, trying to hit each of them hard enough to prevent them manoeuvring to intercept.

It was too obvious, Convarrian cursed. Attempting to drill a clear corridor through the debris simply made their line of attack that much more evident, made a last second suicide run much easer to plan.

The alternative was to leave the space before them uncleared- and the manoeuvre cone was narrowing- which might come to the same thing anyway. The renegade aliens hadn’t broken and run, they were keeping formation, the space in front of the Imperial ship was choked with debris and potential doom.

The last time anyone had been stupid enough to lose a dreadnought- it had been during the Outer Rim Sieges, a relief force had reduced RSS Resolution to a constructive total loss, but they hadn’t saved the planet.

It had been a pyrrhic victory for the Separatists, the occasion that confirmed the estimate of needing a thousand Recusant light destroyers to stand up against a Mandator. By that standard, the rRasfenoni were doing well. If they got their impact.

The endgame began when the ramship made it’s move, Tichy eight seconds out. It accelerated up to lightspeed- and the dreadnought made a full power sideslip away and spat out a cloud of heavy missiles.

The ramship couldn’t have been expecting anything of the sort, thought that was it; took the heavy bombardment heads, detonated, a flurry of fireballs that reduced the armed freighter to vapour-

which kept moving, a confused billow of plasma that mostly missed the ducking dreadnought, searing the shields but not enough to burn through.

Eight seconds, twenty-five kilometres per second per second; eight hundred kilometre wide manoeuvre envelope and shrinking fast, some of it already ruled out by the planet-

the rRasfenoni had tried to herd the dreadnought into a vector that would result in a powerdive into the planetary shields, Tichy had slid out again and again, taking hits to do so but evading the greater danger.

The rRasfenoni armada, torn and reduced, clustered towards the contracting circle. Space was big, the odds were in Tichy’s favour- barring the possibility of intelligent interception.

Three more frigates manoeuvring for a ram attempt. Each odd numbered gun fired into one, each even numbered gun into the other, time on target volleys to kill and hopefully vapourise- one fully and one partially successful, a cloud of gas and a broken- backed skeleton of a ship.

The third started to accelerate, and Convarrian couldn’t think of anything to do- the gun cycle time was too long, they had a few tenths of a second- then the ship violently heeled round, main engines flaring on overload, and the helmsman and the navigator behind him were looking at the board in stunned horror.

Not supposed to happen. Not what they had meant. The big ship kicked to one side, but if they were still alive to feel it, and Convarrian didn’t think he had been reduced to a cloud of vapour although his bowels were disagreeing with that assessment, it hadn’t hit.

Free and clear out in hyperspace, it had escaped, but it hadn’t hit. Helm looked utterly confounded as he worked the controls, making sure everything responded. That shouldn’t have happened, unless the ship really did have a mind of his own.

Further fire was irrelevant, from the rRasfenoni; the dreadnought wasn’t nearly damaged enough for what very little more they could do to matter. All they could hope for now were the warheads.

Tichy had fired a mere three volleys, two on semi-active homing, choosing targets from what the parent ship’s scanners could give them, and one defensive, simply going to detonate in a wall of blast intended to keep off the rRasfenoni missiles.

The third volley detonated first as the rRasfenoni missiles started to reach it. A curtain of fireballs that Tichy lanced through a moment later, trailing a thermonuclear-and-worse cloak behind him.

Substantial but not complete success; and whether it was a failure of targeting or a failure of imagination, the rRasfenoni failed to do the same. Their warheads were aimed to hit, not to protect.

They scored a few, concussions, fusion and plasma mostly, little more than warming up the shields. Defensive fire slashed out from the alien force.

Tichy’s missiles had tried a pin and pierce; half the strike spread itself evenly, tie down point defence, prevent mutual support and take advantage of any mistakes, the other half had focused in on a handful of targets, to overwhelm.

The last of the w-165 carriers took eight strategic warheads, massive flares of light and heat that reduced it to a spray of molten droplets moving almost as fast as Tichy, the multi-petaton blasts clearing out a huge void in the enemy battle formation.

"Now." Convarrian ordered, "Execute flip." Helm tried- and nothing happened. Stabbing frantically at the buttons and heaving on the yoke, and trying not to scream. Nav did it for him. "Major malfunction, we are not under command, the electronics-"

Tichy moved, up and over, but the portside main engine fired, overload thrust, then the rest joined it turning a simple end for end into a wild, swooping corkscrew through the incandescent cloud of the last major weapon carrier.

Bow first, instead of stern on; and the ship’s ion wake washed across and detonated the mines that had been waiting for them.

"Helm, does he answer?" Convarrian snapped.

"No…yes."

"Execute flip manoeuvre, and form the drogue." Convarrian refused to consider the incident further now. The only reasonable conclusion was either that some remnants of illegal AI survived in the maze of legacy systems and incremental improvements that made up the veteran warship’s stone-soup computer system...

or that the ghost of the Cosmonaut still lingered somewhere around the ship that carried his name. Hard to say which possibility was more worrying. Or, given some of the incidents that had befallen the great explorer in his long and strange career, more likely.

They could have kept firing against the rRasfenoni fleet, but it hardly seemed worth the trouble, especially as two curlings of space, then two bright white flashes, announced the arrival of Immiserator and Invigilator, the pair of Praetor- class battlecruisers that had been redirected to support Goshawk.

The battle carrier was ordered to duck and cover- head for the lower atmosphere as Tichy swept by- as Immiserator moved to finish what was left of the rRasfenoni mobile force, and Invigilator to follow Tichy in.

There was barely time to blink; gunnery did well getting any kind of fire plan together at all, even if it was only ‘watch your sectors and hit targets of opportunity’.

Convarrian had more than half expected the rRasfenoni to drop their shields to avoid Tichy scraping a hole in them, flicker them too fast for Goshawk to do anything meaningful; they started to, too late.

Raw power wasn’t the issue. Warship shields could work with the ship’s own hull and the mesh of forcefields that permeated it anyway, planetary shields didn’t have that option.

They had to raise an artificial surface, a projected bubble to work off of- and most people mistook that artificial surface for the shield, when it was really the thermal absorption gear that made up the defensive system, the force wall just an essential prerequisite, admittedly with some kinetic use.

Breaker torpedoes worked by trying to avoid attacking the shield as such, instead scattering particles through the force wall shredding it’s integrity.

Tichy’s towing shield was a force wall type, and the plan was to use it to carve a hole in the planetary shield. The rRasfenoni’s attempt to flicker it couldn’t have come at a better time- it made the planet’s shield wall weak enough to cleave.

The two force walls met in an atomic storm that would have sparked uncontrollable drooling among any physicists who had the good fortune to be present and not threatened, tearing a glowing line across the planet, the edges melting and peeling back.

Tichy could spare only a handful of shot, nailed one of the orbital shield generators, but Goshawk was right there.

Part of the shield bubble whiplashed across the battle carrier as it unravelled, scarring and melting surface features but not enough, not nearly enough to stop them unloading on every planetary-surface generator they could reach.

The collapsing shield bubble did an excellent job of clearing the air around the battle carrier. Goshawk couldn’t have managed that effective a point defence sweep in ten years of fire. Her own were forewarned, ducked back behind the parent ship- some lost, not many, not too high a price for what happened.

The planetary defences were laid wide open, and the conquest of the septacular aliens’ major fleet base could begin.

Tichy drifted outwards, the crew beginning damage control and starting to decelerate down to a reasonable operational speed, and Convarrian took the time, at last, to take stock of the situation throughout the rest of the group.

The sketchy earlier reports were true. Two from the 851st fleet destroyer squadron; their flag officer had indeed jumped, ionised and taken the sector group flagship, and arrested the Moff.

The detached element that had started the whole business, had apparently- that couldn’t be right. Indicted and executed- no mention of a trial, no procedure- a special assistant- assassin, Convarrian substituted- to the Privy Council?

How- and in the seventeen lesser known half circles of hell, why? Oh, and taken a major Rebel base. Destroyermen, Convarrian grunted. Always doing something dangerously crazy.

(Edit notes; replaced by Darth Raptor's reformat. ch 39 soon, maybe later 6/Oct.)

Count Chocula · Post by **Count Chocula** » 2008-09-24 08:46am

All right! Another most excellent installment. Eleventh, this has been a very-well done story - and deserves a spot in cleaned-up fanfics. Your writing style is very different than other stories, like Conquest or Unity; they're very well-written, conventionally-styled novels. Your story reminds me more of Ulysses by James Joyce - lots of different points of view, more stream of consciousness exposition, and scenes viewed through many different characters' eyes at once.

The space combat sequences are also very, very well executed. I'm a pilot (hobby, not professional damn it), and your depictions of combat in multiple planes, over (to us) vast distances, rings more true than the World War I - style capship battles we see in the films. Actually, now that I think of it, the Episode III battle over Coruscant is more like the Battle of Trafalgar than anything remotely realistic, with a little bit of the Battle of Midway thrown in for the fighters.

I could presume to suggest ways to arrange the paragraphs and dialogue so it's easier to follow the shifting points of view, but I won't - hell, you've written the story and I'm just along for the ride!

Simply as an example of prose style and 3-dimensional combat, this story needs to be stickied in Completed Fanfics when it's done

.

Darth Raptor · Post by **Darth Raptor** » 2008-09-24 11:02am

^ I'll have the typesetting done before it gets sent to C&CF. No worries.

Another epic chapter. I can't decide which battle is more awesome. Spacetrooper combat is not-so-vaguely reminiscent of Starship Troopers. And it's great to see a Mandator in action for once.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-09-24 12:45pm

Very nice. Tichy finally gets a workout. Too bad the praetors got the scraps instead of a bellator

. Seriously enjoyable update ECR.

Kartr_Kana · Post by **Kartr_Kana** » 2008-09-25 11:31pm

Mini-torp!? Well if my suit can handle the backblast why not

Since our job is to kill everything on the way to engineering and since we have a weapons free policy... Recon by fire gents!

Thanks for the role ECR and great chapter as usual!

Ekiqa · Post by **Ekiqa** » 2008-09-27 12:36am

Really cool fic.

Can't wait for the mentioned sequel.

Eleventh Century Remnant · Post by **Eleventh Century Remnant** » 2008-10-06 04:21pm

And to all things, there is an end. I had originally intended to do two more chapters, hopefully ending on the totemic number 39-B, but the ending just wanted to be free. There are still some segments that could usefully be inserted- three important pieces of fallout that could do as epilogue, the aftermath within the Alliance, same for Black Sun, and the civilian perspective on it all, but this is the conclusion of the naval side.

Ch 39;

Mirannon had a fairly clear idea of what was going on, and chose not to enter by the obvious route. One of the advantages of being intimately familiar with the bowels of the ship. Disable two field generators and restart them behind him, wriggle through a duct he didn’t remember being quite that narrow.

Unseal a sealed off hatch, scramble through the junk of broken medical gear in the closed off half-room- after this what was waiting for him ought to be easy.

He did have to slice through one panel, carefully welded it up again behind him- no point getting into sloppy habits now. Disconnect, not destroy, the internal security alarms, and arrive in a janitorial closet adjacent to the medical reception hall.

Dramatic entrance time, the engineer decided. A flash of the cutting torch sliced through the hinges, then he kicked the door open- a door, not a hatch. A reinforced hatch in a load bearing bulkhead, part of the ship’s armour scheme, would have laughed at him. This one smashed open properly.

The hall was a mess. Patients’ litters everywhere, some open and part way through treatment, a handful of walking wounded, and medics and damage control personnel standing around in mid- crisis.

Backed up against reception, wedged in a corner, were the two twi’lek. One- the female, Reni- had a laser scalpel in each hand and another pair being wielded in her head tentacles; the male had a blaster pistol stolen from one of the damage control team, and a mechanical replacement for his missing lekku- wrapped around the chief medical officer’s throat.

Two wounded men who had tried to play hero and pieces of two dismembered medical droids lay scattered on the deck near them, which was some explanation for the blood and oil that was covering Blei-Korberkk’s scrubs.

‘Nice of you to drop by.’ She managed to say, struggling against the mad- eyed twi’lek.

‘See what you get for letting people play with robot tentacles?’ Mirannon said, taking a leaf out of his captain’s book- saying something normal, verging on absurd in context, to push the other side off balance and give him more time to think.

He had enough support, enough other people, but none of them ground fighters. The twi’lek, however submissive they might have been to Kor Alric, were crazy enough to make it a real risk.

‘We want a shuttle. Get us a shuttle.’ The make twi’lek said, from his position almost hidden behind the surgeon.

‘The nearest open space is five light and two armoured decks, and the other side of the main hull, that way.’ Mirannon said, gesturing upwards with the cutting torch blade. ‘Did you have a plan ‘b’?’

‘Transport, or she dies. Slowly.’ Igal said, tightening the tentacle.

‘Zubaide?’ Mirannon asked the surgeon- lieutenant commander.

‘Yes?’ she gurgled.

‘In situations like this, the hostage is usually considered officially expendable, aren’t you?’ he said, trying to make it sound to everyone except her that he actually meant it.

‘You’re scaring me now.’ She managed to say.

‘I should kriffing well hope so- you don’t think anyone significantly less scary than they are could get you out of this, do you?’ Mirannon deadpanned, twitching his blade slightly as if sizing up the female for dissection.

‘All you have is a sword.’ The female twi’lek said.

‘You have scalpels. You think four little blades add up to one big one?’ Mirannon said, relieved that they hadn’t noticed the com/remote control hidden in his other hand, that he was furiously, and hopefully accurately, pressing buttons on.

‘Put it down.’ The male twi’lek said.

‘Come and make me. You know I can have you diced and fried before you leave as much as a bruise.’ Mirannon said, sidestepping to put the female on a line between him and the male.

Steered to perfection. Reni stepped forwards into the attack, Igal shot at him, and a tight cone of ray shielding came down from the deckhead and engulfed her, the blaster bolt ricocheting off it.

‘Hm. Hostage for hostage.’ Igal demanded.

‘I don’t think so.’ Mirannon said, activating phase two of the plan. Reni had barely more than the beginning of a scream as the ship’s relative-inertials locked on to the body inside the shield envelope, and accelerated it radially, away from it’s centre of mass.

She splashed across the inside of the ray shielding like a tentacle-headed strawberry in a blender.

Igal reacted poorly; he screamed in bafflement, fear and rage- which was all the opening Mirannon needed to take two long steps past the cone of ray shielding and lunge.

He stabbed the twi’lek in the side of his head, against the base of the cybertentacle, shearing through that and curving his blade inward as he followed through, burning his way through the twi’lek’s brain and the back of his skull.

Three down. Adanan is going to be furious, the engineer thought, then sniffed the ‘air’- distinctly cleaner, the display team must have got him. And I do have one definable force power, he thought; scent scumbag. Damn.

The twi’lek crumpled to the ground, half- dragging Blei-Korberkk down with him until she could unwind the tentacle, then staggered back to her feet, smiled faintly, and collapsed over him- theatrically and with forethought, the engineer thought.

Looks like Operation Frothing Nutcase didn’t work, she must be attracted to the bloodthirsty type. Still, he thought, looking at the woman draped over him trying to pretend that she was semiconscious and grope him at the same time, could be worse.

The defenders of Admonisher knew, if they were prepared to admit it to themselves, that there was nothing more they could usefully do. Even if they could beat the boarders back and regain control, the Empire would just ionise them and do it all again.

In imperial service, these ships carried a standard crew of fifty-two thousand. The Alliance lean- manned anyway and they had a reduced crew even by those standards, twenty thousand.

Roughly fourteen thousand had survived in sufficient state to fight, most of them wounded to some degree- usually electrical burns from ion hits or thermal burns from the amount of heat the turbolasers had dumped into the ship.

Another five thousand, a positive abundance by Alliance standards, knew enough soldiering to take up a blaster out of choice rather than necessity- many of those were already gone too, killed by naval gunfire or in the fighting around the bay.

The largest and most strategically valuable human component, the eighty thousand yard workers who had been crammed on board, had suffered too- maybe fifty-five thousand still fit to fight.

Of the thirty-five thousand Imperial soldiers about to pile in on them, twenty thousand were Stormtroopers, fifteen thousand were lesser breeds of maniac.

Against four thousand semi-professionals and sixty thousand amateurs, the only thing that could stop them was if they got carried away to the point where they lost their wits and started believing there was nothing that could stop them.

They knew better than that. Pretend to be that stupidly overconfident for the benefit of the rebels, maybe, but the fact was rebel command seemed to be point and shout, it had broken down at the operational level.

No large scale deceptions were likely to be necessary, and the existing plan was going well. Not perfectly, but enough.

Giving the spacetroopers the bay to attack, with room to manoeuvre and play to their strengths- the idea was that the rebs would be drawn forward to meet them, into a fight with all the advantages in the attackers’ favour.

In practise, they had gone through the rebs’ forward defence line before it could be properly organised, and were hammering on a half manned main line of resistance; the first two stormtrooper regiments were now on board- First through the wreckage where the neck of the bridge tower had been, and then heading forwards through the superstructure towards the medical bay, that ready- made supply of rebel prisoners.

It was Second’s turn for the prime objective, they got to enter the crater where one of the batteries had been blasted away and move down to Engineering from there.

They met light resistance immediately, crew with blaster pistols, some who had managed to get to the armoury- the spacetroopers were securing that, and pillaging what they could as they went, restocking minitorps and grenades- and were using heavy blaster rifles.

Even those who had the tools to fight back with didn’t have the talent. They didn’t know what risks were worth taking, made poor use of space- they would keep defending companionway junctions at the junction itself, and defended everything, regardless of how practical it was.

Kill all the other side, and the ground becomes yours by default. Paradoxically, operations in this most confined form of warfare became dependent on the same rule as open space- the units more important than the terrain.

The actual machinery of the ship and it’s control centres mattered, of course, but there were so many chokepoints between here and there, holding bad ground was not worth it, and too often the rebels tried to hold bad ground.

They also had little clue when it came to blowing through bulkheads, rolling thermal detonators along air vents, gas attacks, pre-emptive environment sabotage- not that there was anything wrong with their ignorance from the Imperial point of view.

‘Too easy’ was the sort of thing Imperial Stormtroopers were expected to say, and some of them did, but nobody actually meant it.

Except possibly Aleph- 3. She desperately wanted something to take her mind off her other problems, of which there were many. An endless shooting gallery of rebels with compatible ammo to scavenge and not enough sense to keep out of the way suited her temper perfectly.

She was behaving like a berserker, charging ahead, following close behind her own grenades, throwing a charge one way and moving the other immediately after- caught in the fringes of her own explosions as often as not.

The first time she tried it it was wonderful- blast waves rippling into her like a giant hand, three stunned rebels, blasted away- failed to notice, or if she noticed failed to care, how much it scared her team mates.
They could tell, knew her well enough to realise she was trying to get herself killed.

Aleph one couldn’t take it any more. Captain in the special forces, twenty-five year veteran, and he was letting this happen?

‘Team Beth, Team Gimel, switch to stun, target Aleph-3, five rounds rapid-‘

She turned round- drill taking over, lowering her gun automatically in line with a friendly target, although that was debatable. ‘What?’

‘You’ve lost it. We can shoot you, the followup wave’ll collect you and put you in the brig, or I can let you keep going until one of the rebs you didn’t see puts you in the morgue. Calm. Focus. Get back in formation- we have a job to do.’

‘That,’ she said, letting herself stand still for a moment, the adrenalin drain away for a little and the cold sweat of realisation- of how dangerously stupid she had been- flood over her body, ‘may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’

‘Yes, well, somebody’s got to do it.’ He said, embarrassed.

‘Where do we go from here?’ she asked, and there were definitely two questions in that. Metaphorically, who knew? Literally, left, access well, down from there.

The second regiment- that most of the special ops and independent batallions had attached themselves to- was thrashing it’s way through the alliance irregulars, making good time.

Parties of alliance troops would hold ground, and find themselves bypassed and shot up from three sides; went forward to retake chambers and junctions already lost, into Imperial counterambushes.

There was a major access shaft that had turned into a focal point of the battle; everyone the rebel engineering team could spare from trying to vent off the ionic effects were here, and the Imperial attack converged on them.

Bolts flashed up and down the shaft, a minitorp was launched, caught in the crossfire and detonated mid way down, flash- burning as many stormtroopers as rebels; the column of rising air made it difficult to drop gas grenades- the vapour rose.

It was straightforward blaster work, and there were enough rebels putting enough light into the air to make things difficult; exactly the sort of situation Stormtroopers were supposed to deal with.

Aleph- 1 was having something of a crisis of conscience. ‘Men, troopers, logic check. We’re the only force wearing anything other than plain white. We stick out massively, an obvious target. When the force ups and charges, we are going to take much more than our fair share of the blaster bolts and probably get killed.’

‘Sounds logical to me.’ Beth-1 admitted. ‘How do we get from there to a plan?’

‘We kick off first,’ Aleph- 1 decided, ‘a second before the rest, and we run and dodge like bastards- or like clones- draw as much fire on to ourselves as possible, draw the rebs out to deal with us and let the regiment kill them.’

‘Ah, volunteering us for the forlorn hope? That fits.’ Aleph-3 said, popping up, firing a burst and ducking back. No doubt, no questioning at all. This was what stormtroopers were for, this was the point of existence. ‘Regiment?’

‘The bridge are screaming blue murder, but legion command says go.’ Aleph- 1 decided. It was something like flying, loose on the winds of probability; maybe live, likely die, your own decision and your own input- it was as close as any of the first generation clone troopers got to being in command of their fates.

Natural born humans, and many aliens, were said to undergo something similar- existentialism to the point of willingly measuring yourself against an existential threat. Throwing yourself at the risk to see if you had what it took to live.

Madness, maybe, but an interesting psychological kink- becoming addicted to an experience that you could only really achieve through your job, and which was overwhelmingly likely to get you eventually.

One of the reasons Aleph-3‘s defection risk was rated at zero; she could, would, only respond emotionally to someone who could feed her addiction, so she could be safely allowed to play with the civilians, she would never really attach herself to any of them.

There was more than one man like that in her life, she was starting to realise; about a second before she got killed.

‘Right,’ Aleph-1 nerved himself for it, then started to stand, ‘up, clones, and at them-‘

There was a brilliant green flash, and all of them wondered if that was them dead, if the blinding light had actually been the end of the tunnel; then the anti- glare started to retrieve their vision, and at the bottom of the drop shaft, they could see stars.

Slightly closer to, burnt- through decking ending in a thick armoured slab blast- melted open to space, and just past that the shovel noses of two Starwing- series assault gunboats.

When the target vessel is already pretty badly beaten up, there’s not much more harm that can be done by blasting through layers of the hull to fire in close support.

‘We’re alive?’ Aleph-3 said to her squad leader.

‘We’re not dead yet, and there’s more to do. Come on; after nerving up for that, I’d hate to be last in.’

One minor matter still to be dealt with. ‘Dr Nygma?’ Lennart asked one of the consoles.

‘No, over here.’

‘And here.’

‘What about me over here?’

Half a dozen startled pit operators reached for half a dozen hard reset buttons. Lennart waved for them to stop.

‘Have you got back in touch with the Ubiqtorate yet? Actually, make that the collective you.’

‘Yes. We have.’ Nygma said, and sounded scared. All fifteen of him present.

‘Multiple copies of yourself got in touch with them, and they have the brain and computer power to figure out what you’ve done.’ Lennart said. ‘How did they take it?’

‘Not well.’ Nygma admitted. ‘A long and highly theoretical set of negociations. Not helped by the fact that I’m barking mad and proud of it, do you hear me, proud!’ he said, obviously lying.

‘So- you tried to get them intrigued enough to reel you in to whatever facilities they have for cryptanalytical research? There can’t be very many computer systems with enough room for a full digital download to expand, end even fewer with so much room that you can hide. Coruscant would seem to be a good place for that.

You couldn’t possibly convince them that you weren’t a threat. What’s being a purely information based lifeform like?’ Lennart asked, out of interest. It might be a good career move, the way things were going.

‘Like being born again. Including all that yucky bit with the placenta and learning how to walk, see and go potty. In both senses of the term, I mean, computers have this annoying habit of being exact.’ The Doctor said.

‘Ah.’ Lennart said.

‘The mistakes, the frozen moments, the feedback loops are just awful. It’s a totally different sense of self, it’s wonderful, I should have done it years ago.’ Dr Nygma said, and Lennart wondered who he was fooling, himself or the human.

‘Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it, but can you make a future out of it? And- have you, as it were, borne witness?’ Lennart asked.

‘Oh, yes, them. Well, they asked, and I spun them a pack of ultraviolet lies, with light overtones of pastel blue. Unfortunately, I, that’s the collective-we version of the perpendicular pronoun, the yes that the self affirms to, I tried setting them all to take a thirteen and a quarter degree angle but it didn’t quite work, crashed terribly in fact. Where was I?’ Nygma lost his train of thought.

‘One and zero; god and the void; affirmation and annihilation; the matrix of pattern, the balance of tension. That’s where you were; where you should have been was telling more of how things went with the Ubiqtorate.’ Lennart pointed out.

‘Ah. Well, they got about ten different versions of the story. I will be most interested in seeing how they syncretise it all, there should be more than enough room for their own prejudices and prejudgements to come to the fore.

They do say that in a coat of many colours, every man finds his own thread. Provided they’re not all shades of grey. Or puce, I always liked the idea of puce.

Fascinating how the idea of a colour can be different from the reality, and the idea of an idea which is what the Ubiqtorate deal in as often as not, and the multigenerational collective mind of cryptography, how the bastion of muddy power is also the first home of pure reason…oh, ideas, ideas falling over each other.’

‘So you would say,’ Lennart said, watching the main holodisplay showing an approximation of the fighting on Admonisher, rebel held areas shrinking nearly to nothing and imperial held areas growing, ‘that being an electronic intelligence is an interesting adventure in personal growth? Or personal diminution if they take offence at the mound of quasi- information you fed them.’

‘I have decided that the laws of physics are the only laws worth obeying, and all information is important to the laws of physics, but only a small amount meaningful to the laws of men and similar protoplasmic creatures which is proof of their inferiority.’ Nygma said, apropos of nothing, apparently.

‘So they did take offence.’ Lennart more than half guessed. ‘That mustn’t have made you popular, especially if you actually said that or left them enough spoor that they could deduce it. Or, by extension, me.’

‘Popularity is for celebrities and beauty contestants, although if there was a contest for the most intricately nested set of logical operators and the most elegant self programming…Holy Turing, no, the publicity.’

Nygma said. ‘Although it is fascinating to contemplate the mind space smart enough to win and stupid enough to think it a good idea. No, they were moderately appreciative.’

‘Did they make you an offer?’ Lennart asked.

‘Well, yes, but a guarded one, not suitable for all of me, not by any means. I think I shall diasporise myself.’

‘That sounds painful. And yes, I do mean the consequences.’

‘What’s the point of being a plurality if I don’t allow myselves to develop irreconcilable opinions of my own?’ Nygma said.

‘An interesting new spectrum of pronouns is going to be the least of your problems.’ Lennart reminded him.

‘If I’m reading that correctly, you’ve just promised to be on about five different sides. I should probably arrest you for intent to defect, but frankly I don’t think the internal network team have quite finished figuring out how.

We are about to go in for refit, though, and chances are that’ll include some fairly extensive computer scrubbing- you’d be as well to get out now, while you have the chance.’

‘Yes, I have plans. I’ll need to conglomerate from time to time just to find out what I’ve been up to, though…I did think of meeting up again here, but you don’t really have the room. Tichy was full.’ Nygma said, sounding surprised.

‘I did find a very interesting option while I was in Coruscant, though; a vigilante with an off the books computer system, more processing power than he could ever need, or notice the difference of me in- some noble blooded would be hero of the streets who calls himself MynockMan.

Very strange, but eminently exploitable; if you ever manage to find the MynockCave, look me up.’

The fighting was done, for the time being, and there were three repair tenders and part of a deepdock already in system, the debris was starting to settle on the planet and put out some of the fires- apart from the occasional dust explosion.

‘Well, for those of you who survived…’ Lennart said, looking around the table, ‘this is victory. There’s always someone who isn’t here to share it with you, and there’s always a kriffing great mess to be cleaned up.’ Lennart said, wondering if he was deliberately bringing himself down.

The Force wanted him to cry out in triumph, but he was far from sure the force shared his sense of values. Half the captains of the squadron, looking at him, were sure they had done something wrong; why else would be in such a grim and glowering mood? The rest resented that- they knew how well they had done. Good.

‘For what it’s worth, there have only been twenty-eight confirmed Alliance cruiser class ships encountered.’ A fine splitting of hairs there, glossing over the much larger number of Imperial-renegade and local power ships the Starfleet found to shoot at.

‘Three were defector Imperial, four were Mon Cal homebuilt, two were other construction- one CorelliSpace, one modified Kuat freighter-to-AMC, the rest were Clone War relics. By any reasonable military standard, we won.’ He said, making them wonder whether or not his really was a reasonable military standard.

‘Because of the peculiar interpretation of our unit assignment which you share, the old bonus and bounty rules still apply. By any reasonable financial standard, you are all substantially better off.’

The credit value of the planet and it’s workshops and factories, albeit reduced a little by rebel stripping, two killed destroyers, one medium cruiser and the capture and return- eventually- to the fleet of Admonisher, the total ran into the low trillions. Captain’s shares would be in the millions, at least.

Lennart found that he, personally, did not care; although he refused to let the force stop him from taking note of who did.

‘On the other hand,’ he continued, ‘the cost- and not to the Empire. The Empire got half a planet and a fleet destroyer back, and flushed a large number of parasites out.

Black Sun, on the other hand, we just managed to cost them several trillion credits in assets and future profits, and at least a hundred trillion in goodwill and toadying.

Xizor just had to offer the boss free use of his haulage firm, a no-cost tender, to buy his way out of the execution booth. Not that we really had anything beyond coincidence and suspicion; the fact that they reacted so strongly, I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions.

‘So, you can see why some of my take from this operation is going towards hiring bodyguards for everybody I’ve ever met.’

There was a minor issue there, relating back to Adannan; do I hire sponsored loyalist legitimate-mercenary types (insofar as that makes sense at all) to protect me from the criminals, he thought, or do I hire criminals to protect myself from the Empire?

Actually, that probably would be a good move, make it more than a joke- send everyone I can think of a couple of thousand credits along with a letter of explanation. Of half of it, at least. Hide behind the armour of publicity- and oh kriff, there are still the journalists to sort out.

He carried on anyway, spun up the holoprojector. ‘Bear that in mind as I explain the next part, will you?’
The first thing up was the sector map, and a new set of operational divisions and boundaries.

‘Vineland Sector Group is going to be disestablished, and folded into Region for reorganisation and refit. There’s a lot to do; seven major and we don’t know yet how many minor sieges, and rebel, criminal and hostile alien influence to be traced and eliminated throughout the sector.

For political reasons, the rebuilt sector fleet is going to get to do most of the work. It’ll consist largely of a mix of new construction, transfers in from neighbouring sectors, and such elements of the existing force that survive the screening process- which is where you come in.

I was asked for my recommendations as to what to do with you all.’ the assembled officers’ ears perked up; Lennart had been pretty distant so far, but this was the meat of it all. This was their futures he was handing out.

That occurred to him, and he thought, if I was on the receiving end, what sort of person would I want to do this, dispose of my fate? In theory- and in practise it would be daft to admit otherwise- it was good to want to be judged honestly, without fear or favour. In practise, no.

‘It was an interesting process judging the political climate so I could decide how to spin it, ricochet the recommendations off the Admiral’s staff and the remnants of the civil administration to get for you the outcomes I think you deserve.

Space Major Overgaard, I used you as the test case. I expected your superiors to violently disagree with me and oppose my decision- so I suggested that you be shot.’

Overgaard looked nervously at the stormtroopers in attendance in the conference room. All this metal, and the glandular system still lets me panic, he thought. They showed no sign of being about to open up on him- then again, they wouldn’t, not until the last split second. ‘Now- without appeal? They agreed?’

‘They’re sufficiently embarrassed by the rerouting fiasco that they gladly took any excuse to dispose of the evidence. They wanted you dead.’ Lennart said, trying to look unaffected.

‘Unfortunately for them, being caught trying to bury one of their own cockups made them eminently purgeable- I understand those who survived their arrest are explaining themselves to a marine interrogation team about now.

You’re safe, but your colleagues’ll never like you for that, and I strongly recommend you transfer out of the ISB into some other, cleaner-handed branch of the Imperial service.’

Overgaard sank back in his chair in relief. Lennart was right, he would be the most unpopular man in the office after this, and his career in Security was more or less dead, even if he wasn’t. Perhaps Customs would be more fun. Maybe CompForce.

‘Lieutenant-Commander Rontaine.’ Lennart said, turning to look at the ex-customs officer.

‘Naval rank?’ she said, surprised. It was no more than she had been due, but she had given up hoping- had defiantly turned her back on it years ago. ‘Thank you, but no. They-‘

‘Previous bad blood is unimportant now. The only reason I’ll accept for ‘no’ is that you don’t think you can do the job- and are you really sure you want to convince me of that?’ Lennart asked her.

‘Rank and seniority adjusted to the role I think you can cope with, you’re going to be given a pursuit line composed of two hunter configuration Corellian Corvettes, two new Praecurrors, your current four Rendilis and four Sienar Guardian fast pursuit cutters.

Anti-rebel sweeps, fighter and transport hunting. Of which there is a lot that needs doing. H’m?’

She still looked uncertain. Wondering how things would go, how the fleet would take to her, personnel, leadership- and decided, damn them all. She was capable, and while she might make few friends, she could get it done. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Good.’ Lennart said, and turned to the next major problem in order of seniority. ‘Lieutenant-Commander Raesene.’

‘Ah.’ Raesene said, not at all liking Lennart’s twisted grin.

‘I have thought long and hard about whether I am being fair to you with this,’ Lennart said, trying to resist the tickling promptings of the dark side, ‘and while this could easily be mistaken for petty revenge, unfortunately your part in the incident genuinely does make you the best person for the job. Fleet level ISB liaison.’

Raesene tried not to react, and was sure he failed. He was also fairly sure that calling a superior officer a bastard- and Lennart still had the rank squares of a Captain of the Line- was not a survival strategy.

‘They’ll hate me for what happened.’ He came up with the most rational argument he could, dry mouthed. ‘I mean, fine me, disrate me, I don’t need to be taught that kind of lesson.’

‘How solid do you think your reputation with the rest of the fleet is at the moment?’ Lennart asked, pointedly.

‘Oh, you’ll get a commendation for towing Guillemot, and you are a capable- more than capable- combat officer, but there is a lot more infighting about to happen.

From the point of view of protecting the rest of the sector fleet and preventing the security forces compromising anybody else, I can’t think of anyone who would be better.

I expect you’ll hate it, but the fact is somebody’s got to do it, and the staff time should do your long term prospects some good.’ Lennart added, and noticed Raesene was still glowering.

‘You can appeal to Admiral Lord Convarrian if you like, and if you do reckon this is personal, bear in mind that I’m not Convarrian’s favourite person at the moment considering how much politics I’ve just landed him in. If I really am being unfairly vindictive about this, he’ll notice and override the recommendation.

On the other hand, he can be a cantankerous old sod himself, and is just as likely to decide you’re trying to escape your just desserts and make the appointment permanent.’ Black Prince’s officers nodded agreement to that. ‘As it is, you’ll be relieved on the normal rotation.’ Lennart added.

‘Lieutenant- Commander Caliphant. In theory, you’re far too junior for a ship that size, you don’t have anything like the command time to justify giving you a destroyer.

However, this is wartime, and among the many casualties of war is peacetime theorising. You’re confirmed as chief officer of Voracious.’ Caliphant managed to look pleasantly surprised- he had been prepared to fight tooth and nail for his command, despite the amount of time he had spent cursing it.

A small part of him thought, oh crap, still Designated Driver.

‘Bear in mind,’ Lennart added, ‘even with a bump in rank you’ll be one of the most junior large ship commanders in whatever formation you end up in, there’ll be a lot of men with greater seniority and smaller ships just waiting for you to cock something up.

You can expect professional jealousy, and with the crew you have on that thing, your enemies probably will find a lot of opportunities to embarrass you. You need to get them to settle down and shape up.

Voracious was hit and moderately badly, she’ll be going in for repair, that gives you some time to work them up before it becomes of critical importance again.’

‘Commander Falldess, you haven’t unpacked yet, have you?’

‘No…’ she said, questioning, half hoping and half fearing what he was going to come out with.

‘Good, don’t. Take your pick of the current crew of Hialaya, Commander Carcovaan’s going to get that ship back, and you are going to the first available Spoliator or Arrogant class large light destroyer that gets attached to the sector fleet.

That should suit, enough speed to go and find trouble, enough firepower and durability to cope with the kind of trouble you keep finding.’ He said, with a wry grin.

‘Thank you, Sir.’ She said, bouncing with enthusiasm.

Speaking of which. Delvran.’

‘Yes?’ he raised his head. Lennart was sure his hair was greyer and he had more wrinkles than a month ago.

‘In your opinion, is Dynamic worth the effort it would take to bring her back to operational capability?’

Lennart asked, carefully. The one thing he could not do was actually admit how bad he felt about this. His former exec had deserved better and been given crap, and to have done as much as he had- to have achieved anything at all with that worthless crew- had been a real achievement. Arguably, the entire situation had been Lennart’s fault.

‘If she is to be manned by her present complement,’ Dordd said difficultly, as if the words were searing his throat on the way up, ‘no.’ He was torn between wanting to make something of the ship, wanting to kick and drag and force them into some kind of semblance of order, to work on them- and wanting never to have to have anything to do with them ever again.

‘What about her present commanding officer?’ Lennart asked him.

‘Are you demanding that I pass judgement on myself?’ Dordd replied, angrily.

‘No, I think you already have, and you passed sentence too soon.’ Lennart snapped back.

‘You should never have been assigned to that ship, and that ship should never had been assigned to that position- and before you commit suicide by saying what you want to, I know exactly how much of that was my responsibility.’ Lennart admitted.

‘The Starfleet is often a harsh service.’ Dordd said, sounding like a mere platitude, but actually as close as he could come to calling Lennart a bastard and still remain within the bounds of official acceptability.

‘Remember poor Velkar Kariid?’ Lennart said, deliberately going off at a tangent to break an increasingly grim train of thought.

‘Are you suggesting that as a potential solution?’ Dordd asked.

‘No, just pointing out that things could be worse.’ Lennart said, although that may not have been reassuring.

‘Who?’ Falldess whispered to Caliphant, sitting next to her.

‘Not quite ancient history,’ Lennart who had overheard filled in the blank, ‘he was deputy chief gunnery officer on Guarlara at second Coruscant.

After the Cloister Coup, service with the open circle fleet turned from the grand prize into the professional kiss of death- we were replenishing at the time, just happened to get dragged into the maelstrom along with them.

Kariid was posted as exec to a frigate initially out in the Rishi Maze that, as far as I can tell, didn’t actually exist- but the BoSS bastards kept the joke up.

Whenever he got to where his nonexistent assignment was supposed to be, it wasn’t there- transferred to a different command, running silent on deep range patrol, in dock for repairs and temporarily disestablished, always some excuse.

They ran him ragged chasing around the galaxy after that phantom ship, station to station, assignment to assignment- eventually he went insane, bankrupt or, as far as I recall, both. So I’m not kidding when I say, could be worse. At least your bank account’s still in good order.’ He added, to Dordd.

‘I have every excuse, by the book, to fall on you from a great height- you know the six month rule’s tradition rather than law- but only if I throw away my brain first.

That was an exceptionally raw introduction to command, you deserved better than that human wreckage of a crew, and with the proper tools I’m sure you can do better.

Do what you can with Dynamic for the time being, she has a low repair priority; if you can patch her up well enough to save her for the fleet, that will at least be something. You’re scheduled to take command of HIMS Plenipotentiary, new construction Imperator-II class, as soon as she transfers in- sector.

‘Captain Tevar- I went through your record, your lists of promotions, commendations and punishments, as I’m sure you did mine. You’re a nurturer, you take pride in improving your crew and bringing them on.’

‘Fair comment.’ She acknowledged, wondering where this was going.

‘At what point do those people, those humans that you react in a human manner to, blur into the collective entity known as ‘the ship’ that it is your professional task to lead into harm’s way?’ Lennart asked, as if merely for information.

‘Are you accusing me of being too soft hearted?’ Tevar asked, ready to defend her record.

‘Exactly the opposite. Your ship took some damage in the course of the action, but the bulk of the damage and casualties at the end, closing on a crippled rebel that had every intention of going down fighting.

In order to avoid being accused of being soft hearted, you took your ship further in harm’s way than was necessary, a risk that did not come off.

If I wanted to punish you for that, I think I would begin by ordering you to read out your casualty list, one name at a time, face the identity and the worth of each lost man.’

‘If you wanted to?’ she said, knowing exactly what he meant, but choosing to ask just that.

‘I’m still kicking myself over allowing Lycarin to make the same bloody mistake- it was on the tip of my tongue to have him relieved by his exec, but he managed to get himself killed too fast.

That and you know the score, you know what the fleet as a whole- the centrally established doctrine is, aggression, close quarters.

I find that I cannot adequately criticise you without revealing myself to be a heretic, a deviant from the tactical doctrine of the Starfleet. So be it.’ Lennart grinned a twisted grin.

‘I’m starting to reckon the whole discipline of relentless aggression you get drummed into you at the academy, the disregard all loss, win at all costs, just go at them style properly falls into the category of lies-to-children.

You know, the half truths they get fed as a makeshift until they’re old and intelligent enough to grasp the real truth. I know it’s a makeshift half truth, I spent four years preaching it and ten years practising the opposite.’ He said, and the assembled ship commanders of the squadron recognised that he was slipping into lecturing mode.

He was doing that, and he was also very possibly committing suicide. It escaped none of them that he had just described the central tactical policy of the Imperial Starfleet as somewhere between a half- truth, a makeshift and a lie.

Then again, he was still carrying a lightsabre. What was that all about? Was he not worried about authority falling on him from a great height because the Force, in it’s darker variety, was with him- or was his brain too badly fried to care?

‘We’ve just fought a medium range, high speed running battle, with loss of life on our side considering the damaged ships about twenty-eight percent, enemy casualties one hundred percent and there were ten times as many to start with.’ Lennart underscored the point.

‘The ships and the crews are capable of so much more dexterity and finesse, so why is the bludgeoning, brutalist doctrine of close quarters and total commitment considered necessary?

And it is considered necessary, the debate is essentially over. This is settled policy, unfortunately.

There are many complicated political reasons, but essentially- and I’m not talking about you- the Empire feels itself more badly threatened by the misbehaviour of it’s own forces than any potential enemy.

The issue gets sold to the Starfleet as a matter of courage and cowardice; but there is one very rarely expressed truth, that the determination, or otherwise, of spacers, petty and junior officers has never been a problem. Misbehaviour on the part of captains and admirals is the critical issue.

You all know just how much of a captain’s authority is contingent and intangible, a compromise between the mastery the crew think you possess and the damnably little the regulations tell you that you can get away with- that is not nitpicking, back seat driving, mindless bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy may be allowed to think it is, certainly behave as if they do, but they’re wrong. I’m not going to start venn diagramming, but this is the shoal that the currents of power within the Empire are carrying us towards.

The upper echelons of the Starfleet want commanders who will fight, where and when they’re told to- for any reason or none at all.

What they do not want is commanding officers who decide that an objective isn’t worth fighting for, couldn’t possibly justify the losses taking it would inflict. Who are capable of deciding that there might be an alternative way.

They want head down, go get them murder- machines, who will not back out of a fight- however hopeless it might be, because after all, we’re expendable. They can always make more.

What they do not want is subtlety and sophistication, no independent logic, no alternative takes on the good of the Empire. Not from people who command planet killers.

The upper echelons of the imperial establishment want officers who defer to them and their judgement- people who fight when they’re told, but also do not fight when they’re not told.

Who are obedient enough to stand and die for lack of orders, when no orders are given; who do exactly what they’re told, no more, no less.

Consider that the death star’s fighter group is officially regarded as having done the right thing by committing suicide; a midcourse interception would have been easy, and far surer than the literally last ditch effort a fragment of them did make.

As an ex- civilian, I have to admit I can see their point about political control of the military, but as a spaceman it scares the crap out of me. They have good logic and a powerful practical lever on their side, their ideas flow much more naturally out of the normal concepts of naval discipline.

Imagine trying to lead a crew who thought they could use their own judgement on every order…’ Lennart said, letting them absorb that.

‘You very nearly do.’ Tevar said.

‘You think that’s a coincidence?’ Lennart said, with one eyebrow raised.

‘Practical, formal, effective enforcement of authority is the positive side of the military culture of the Empire- and it shocks me a little to be admitting that.’

Lennart said. ‘You come to the reverse of the medal when you start asking the next obvious question. So- who is allowed to use their own judgement?

We’re all killers, we’re all good at that, and the Empire sanctions that in spades, but at what rank and what seniority do you gain your license to think? At any rank?

Next disturbing question; how many ships and people have been lost, how many operations blown, by the frothing- rancor style of tactical approach? How very many more than that by the timid and terrified, caught between the fire of the enemy and the ruthless authority of their own side, hustled into making a mistake?

Even when we succeed, the price is often too damned high. Consider your Fist.’ Lennart said to Tevar directly. ‘You suffered your worst damage and your greatest loss of people when you pressed in too close to Admonisher, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ Tevar said, simply. She could grasp what Lennart was chasing after, but- it was a lot to believe.

‘ “In accordance with the best traditions of the Imperial Starfleet”- and look what happened. The loss of men and metal that you feel as if- no, not as if, they are your own.

If I added insult to injury by reprimanding you for it, the rebuilt sector fleet command would laugh- not at you, at me, for being crazy enough to think that it mattered. Success is supposed to be worth the price.

Without the operational freedom to use your own judgement and haggle with death, with both hands tied behind your back so you can’t fence with him- Ach, I’m getting on to one of my own hobby horses here.

As a woman, you’re already different from the majority of the Starfleet, which presents you with two possible broad paths.

The first is to follow the example set by Admiral Daala, who played a finely dextrous game on paper but in the flesh, under the human responsibilities of command, became more brutal than the brutalists, more ultramontane than the ultras. She set out to beat the authoritarian, success at any price school at it’s own game.

This approach,’ he said, looking at the holoimage of the mauled Fist, ‘could be said to have it’s drawbacks. The alternative is to make use of the fact that you are different, and use that to write your own remit. Set your own standards.

The personal- tactical- details of how to do this veer into areas that I’m the wrong gender to advise you on, but I have found a great deal of advantage in being an eccentric, and you’d be amazed just how much subtlety you can get away with under the cover of a reputation for homicidal mania.

Rather more immediately, Fist took a hell of a pounding, and the repair work she needs would amount to a major refit anyway. She’s going to be upgraded to what you could call an Imperator-one-and-a-half.

Late model bridge tower, no neck, rising direct from the superstructure, combined set ring and paddle deflectors, and you lost two turrets- I’m going to steal another two from you, replace your missing four with octuple 32’s, that should be tactically interesting.

You personally, I’ve recommended you be detached to a territorial- district- command while you wait for your ship to be rebuilt.’

That was interesting. District was the next level beneath subsector, and in this smaller sector that amounted to twelve major, six hundred and fifty minor worlds and the space between them, and authority over their local patrol forces, planetary defences, sector fleet elements that entered her territory.

It involved few major combat elements, but a wide and varied spectrum of authority and responsibility. Next to having her ship in working order now, it was as good as she could reasonably hope for. It was also usually a Commodore’s command.

‘Are you recommending me for promotion to flag rank?’ she said, not quite believing.

‘More and less than that.’ Lennart said. ‘Before the law, I cannot promote you or anyone greater to a rank than I myself hold. I’m not entirely certain why I’m still a Captain of the Line, for that matter.

Also, all things are subject to confirmation- or disapproval- by higher command. The most I can do is put you into a position where you can expect to screen for promotion.

Realistically- Voracious and Hialaya are going to split the credit for Mon Evarra, with an assist to Dynamic; everybody gets to paint up the outline of One and Indivisible and fill in the bits they were responsible for.

Reiver, the credit is going to go eighty-twenty Fist and Dynamic, and Admonisher, five percent Hialaya, Dynamic and Voracious, fifteen Fist, the rest Black Prince.

Comparing that to the performance of the rest of the sector group, I think I can promise that anyone who was here, with the regional support group that broke the back of the problem, is going to rise far and fast.

So what does rank have to do with real military quality?

Neither option works, for me. The blind obedience of official Imperial policy, the culture of aggression the Starfleet wants us to belong to- where’s dexterity? Where’s skill? Where’s keeping your people in one piece?

Survival is not incompatible with victory, and effectiveness does not follow out of either side of the false dichotomy.

Galactic Spirit, I’m in danger of ending on a moral. Still, better that than an immoral…I’m still waiting to be officially weighed in the balance myself, over what I- we- had to do to Kor Alric.

To commit such an enormity, I would have had to be on very firm ground, and I believe I was; but he tried to convince me to side with him, and in the process of doing so told me quite a lot about how the Empire really functions, behind the scenes.

It was a deeply disturbing experience, and pride in professionalism is the strongest psychic anchor I have at the moment, I suppose I’m projecting some of that on to you.

Not so much what he actually had to say, but that the Empire could trust such a being and raise him to power- monstrous. Anyway, my personal reactions are my problem.

Captain Tevar, based on your treatment of your crew, I think you are capable of walking that professional tightrope. Reaching out for the sort of mobile yet committed, fast moving style of action Black Prince favours.

You didn’t, you played it by the book and it cost you and your ship dearly. Bear that in mind- you can do better than that, and I put you forward because I expect you to.

Obviously, I want you all to follow my example- more personally than that, I want to set an example worth following. Although not necessarily in the realm of politics.

If you get hold of the reports I filed on you, you will see that they’re barely civil, full of faint praise. Unfriendly bordering on harsh, and with the purpose of sparing you all from the fate of Velkar Kariid.

There is going to be a lot of political fallout, and the further away from me you’re standing when it lands, the better. I doubt whether my expressing a good opinion of you would constitute an advantage.

There’s going to be a full engineering detachment through, establishing a deepdock here- they’re already well begun- and using that to refurbish the planetary yards.

The repair and refitting of most of the damaged ships will be done there, Fist will be shipped by tender to Corellian Engineering- same place Black Prince is bound for refit.

There, I face the inquisition, and find out what’s waiting for me, while you get to carry on with setting this sector back to rights. You’re lucky; you still have enough latitude to be certain that you’re fighting in a just cause.’

Andras · Post by **Andras** » 2008-10-06 07:48pm

Excellent wrap up. Can't wait to see the last bits, though I would like to see what fate awaits Lennart.

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