Hull 721, plot arc the second

[Andras]

As Simon says, the Ewoks and Rebels were losing until Chewie hijacked the AT-ST.

Also keep in mind the scene was written with Wookies in mind, before Lucas had to switch to the vertically impaired.

[Captain Seafort]

As Simon says, the Ewoks and Rebels were losing until Chewie hijacked the AT-ST.

The rebels were guaranteed to lose the moment the door closed, regardless of how many stormies they killed.

Then some idiot opened the door. If they'd kept it shut until the battle was over, regardless of claims from outside (given that the rebels had a long track record of masquerading as stormies), the alliance would have died at Endor, regardless of what happened to the Emperor.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

They might have been able to blast their way in with the AT-ST.

[Captain Seafort]

They might have been able to blast their way in with the AT-ST.

"Might" being the operative word. Blowing up trees and frying Ewoks is one thing. Punching through a foot of armour is quite another. If they thought the AT-ST could have punched a hole in the door, then why did they resort to bluffing their way in?

[Crazedwraith]

I'm always amazed at the tangents this thread goes off on. Anyway if the bluff didn't work. They were still carrying large quantities of explosives you know. And every dead stormtrooper has a thermal detonator right there on the back of their belt.

Why would they try to bluff instead? Because if it was successful it would be a much quicker and bloodless way into the bunker and time was off the essence?

---

Anyway, good chapter ECR, I've asked about Franjia before so it was good to see her in action again. But that administrative punishment? Yeah, like Lennart's never done any dodgy bureaucratic tricks before. lol. I think Franjia and her attitude remains her own worst enemy.

I wonder what the story was here? The Black Prince lot don't seem to have much trouble dealing with the rag tag attack freighter fleet. So the mystery remains, just what the hell did they think they were doing? I mean just typical rebel gung-ho-ness or diversionary action or some nefarious plot? It'll be interesting to find out.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

They might have been able to blast their way in with the AT-ST.

"Might" being the operative word. Blowing up trees and frying Ewoks is one thing. Punching through a foot of armour is quite another. If they thought the AT-ST could have punched a hole in the door, then why did they resort to bluffing their way in?

What Crazedwraith said, bluffing was quicker and cleaner, and if it doesn't work they could still try blasting. The other way around? Not so much.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Endor, the thing is- used this as a joke earlier, stormtrooper field medic pointed out that given the accelerated aging of the clones, and this in a profession notorious for physically wrecking it's members, some of Vader's Fist (501st Legion)were biologically in their seventies by the time of Endor and should have been suffering from all sorts of stress related ailments- "fitter to ride a wheelchair than a dropship." That couldn't have helped.

Andras- that stretch Starwing; Mirannon's counterproposal, currently nicknamed Chromedome because it has no hair, goes in more or less the opposite way- shrinking the glasshouse and moving to a tandem bubble, something like a LAAT (or a Hind, really, which was the source of inspiration) cockpit actually sitting higher on the nose so there's less transparisteel, more solid metal and more room lower in the nosecone for avionics and interpretation.

Tramps cover a very broad spectrum; there's the simple hauler, the long obsolete and falling to bits, then there's the masively uprated drug hauling hotrod like the Millennium Falcon- both prime example and outer marker of the type. The Falcon manages to survive quite a lot of fire, including multiple LTL hits, manoeuvres fairly impressively- can't quite dance with fighters but seems able to outrun and out-turn bombers- there are other rebel users of the idea, and it does seem possible to uprate a civil craft to the same standard- or better- as a purpose built warcraft of the same size like a Customs Frigate.

There is a lot that's wierd about Endor- the mystery of the disappearing AT-AT for one thing. Probably have to write it to figure it out. See what they're doing about then, anyway.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Tramps cover a very broad spectrum; there's the simple hauler, the long obsolete and falling to bits, then there's the masively uprated drug hauling hotrod like the Millennium Falcon- both prime example and outer marker of the type.

In the case of the Falcon, you have both examples at once.

[InsaneTD]

The Falcon also requires serious, continous maintenance to perform at the levels it does too.

[Simon_Jester]

Endor, the thing is- used this as a joke earlier, stormtrooper field medic pointed out that given the accelerated aging of the clones, and this in a profession notorious for physically wrecking it's members, some of Vader's Fist (501st Legion)were biologically in their seventies by the time of Endor and should have been suffering from all sorts of stress related ailments- "fitter to ride a wheelchair than a dropship." That couldn't have helped.

Hah.

Incidentally, I'm familiar with the EU source that cites the 501st as being all-clone, all-original: the video game Star Wars: Battlefront II. Low-standing enough that you could ignore it if you liked. Would there be a viable alternate explanation, if not for the accelerated aging?

There is a lot that's wierd about Endor- the mystery of the disappearing AT-AT for one thing. Probably have to write it to figure it out. See what they're doing about then, anyway.

Before worrying about the AT-AT: what kind of terrain can they handle, really? Obviously anything where the feet can crunch down to bedrock without getting stuck, including two-meter snowdrifts. But might Endor have places an AT-AT can't go, or can't go without using a LOT of danger-close energy weapon fire to clear the vegetation in its path?

The Falcon also requires serious, continous maintenance to perform at the levels it does too.

So does Black Prince. Another point of commonality between the Corellians.

[InsaneTD]

My question would be, why would you build an outpost like that and not have ready access for your heavy armour even when trying to keep it low key to throw the enemy off. Although I suppose the empire might expect it would always have space superiority.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Next chapter, including a take on the guard rail problem. Oh, on another matter, recently got a kindle- it works quite well for typing on, basically saving half the process of writing and typing up; but the thing is basically braindead, deeply underwhelming in file control, access, connectivity, and generally doing what I tell it to- and Waterstones' return policy is very poor if not actually in violation of statutory rights. They are not my current favourite people.




Shulmar was starting to think things were going tolerably well until the moon declared itself for the Alliance. Granted there was a fair amount of blood being shed, evaporated, vaporised, or drifting about the place in little frozen globules;

Most of it was the enemy's though, a much higher toll to the red- dot transports, in absolute numbers and in proportion, than he had actually expected- under such crossfire from the looping, weaving fighters and transports.

It wasn't really a military action, not against such opposition- but all of whom had selected themselves as targets by doing something to earn a class one warrant or by turning out in support of those who had. All excusable, all with a certain defendability, politically speaking.


Who was it- Iota or Epsilon one- who had made the comment that there must be some really good mechanics down there to support this zoo of types? Maybe they were on to something- a shadowport, was that it?

Was this place being operated as a cloak of legitimacy for Alliance logistics and privateering, repairing and maintaining smugglers and raiders? That made partial sense of what they were seeing, although genuine rebels should put up more of a fight, but not at all of what they were hearing.

After the initial Rebel rant- death to the Empire long live the Republic, the preamble to the treaty of wherever the Alliance had been signed- the channels dissolved into loud, angry crosstalk, many literally and in significance conflicting messages.

Some denied the first message, some said Death to the Management- there was much agreement over that- there were some long ranting screeds in there, a mercifully large number of which ended in combustion sounds, but much of it was personal.

Kerian where are you, Space's sake Adira talk to me, this is no time to keep up a quarrel, please Garrideph please answer, tell me you're alive, anyone seen Monder I'm going to cut his heart out with his kidneys, stuff like that.


What was going on?- in either case, in any case, there would be chaos, madness, panic, fear, confusion. In a case of active organised Rebellion, there would be more than that, there would be propaganda, broadcasts, more than peer to peer chatter; there would be a pattern that was totally missing here.

This seemed more of a revolution, a rising against the company and a poorly organised, spontaneous one at that. There had been a few- rerunning a few seconds of the sensor log- there had been five red blips that had turned back, ducked behind the planetary shield before it had come fully online, and there were wobbles in the shield that could be stray shots hitting the inside of the energy dome.

Sidescatter from planetary channels, too- something that came through in fragments but sounded like senior management ranting and raving and throwing a major wobbly.

It was actually a relief when an instruction came through from Black Prince to forward it all, unfiltered and uninterpreted, to them. That meant he could get back to his primary job of blowing people up.


Which I'm not doing all that badly at, he congratulated himself, even if I was flattered by the opposition. There was nothing there- not even the normally expectable quantity and quality of armed lunatics you usually get in light freighters.

Certainly hadn't been without incident or cost, but it had been fairly creditably done- the possibility had been barely noticed in time, too late to get a third of the fighter force involved in it, but he had also anticipated a countermove, an attempt to break out of the cyclonic swarm.

The counter- countermove, after the enemy had sent their most robust craft through the side of his formation and opened a way for the rest, would have involved a complicated looping and swirling of trajectories that would have been a task to coordinate- but it hadn't been necessary.

Any effective and experienced guerillas among them must have been among the first out, hadn't really tried to rally and lead the rest at all; grant effective jamming its' place, it was still ridiculous.


Now the entire planet, population a couple of million most likely including traffic control ground stations, tech support, service industry, and management, who would normally all be pulling in different directions anyway, had raised the starbird banner of rebellion, in the silence of any actual rebels?

Very little about the whole business made sense. Filtering the target records for genuine, card carrying rebels rather than sympathisers and fellow travellers, there were...that one probably, and that one maybe.

There should have been more than this by sheer random chance, given the likely prevalence out here on a small promonotory extruding into the far back passage of nowhere, exactly the sort of place that found- or made- rebels. What did it mean that there weren't? All busy supporting the evacuation and relocation of rebel GHQ, wherever it actually turned out to be- so who were this lot?

Pass the data up, as requested and required, and go back to thinking tactically. What more needed to be done- where was traffic control physically located? There, that station that looked like a bunch of flat grapes or a bare branched tree full of birds' nests orbiting just outside the planetary radiation belt and dangling cables down into it for power?

Signal intelligence said no, it was just a transfer point, but it might do as a forward operating base. Somewhere to tow their captures and cripples, and to organise a blockade of Veren Porphyr V-a from.


There was only a little tidying up work left to do; the three thousand and thirty-five hundred 'g' blockade runners were long gone, mostly intercepted by the fighter squadrons. What was left was the mere thousand- and fifteen hundred- 'g' scheduled haulers, the two thousand 'g' priority couriers and the slower reacting of the twenty- five hundred 'g' urgent response/ high speed personnel shuttles.

Some of them had taken some little killing, but on the whole, looking at what they had had to fight with at the start of it all, it could have been a damn' sight worse. It wasn't the hardware that had let them down. It was the fact that they hadn't really been a coherent side at all.

So much for space. We need to get down there and start collecting stories and taking names, putting people to the question. Can't do an assault through a planetary shield- wait a moment, was that a proper planetary defence energy envelope or had they just bent a large theatre shield around the less than planet sized moon?

A corner cut was an opportunity waiting to be taken. Speaking of which system traffic control had finally been identified- by optical scan, it was the cylinder with 'traffic control' written on the side, which made it a little easier to spot. Somebody should be kicking themelves for missing that, which if they were would at least save Shulmar the effort.


On their parent ship, with datalinks still out (and technicians and astromechs trying to fix them discreetly without coming to the Captain's attention)- they had noting to do but study the intercepts, try to divine the logic behind them, shuffle the data about until it started to take shapes that made sense.

'What do you reckon?' Lennart asked, not liking what he was starting to see.

'Intelligence action.' Rythanor said, like a man who had recently retrained himself to think purely with his head. 'The sequence of events doesn't make sense as legitimate rebellion. As a distraction, it does.'

'Distracting us from what, though- or to what? Take a closer look at the runners who actually made it out of the system- could this be a strategic diversion, are they going to start making noises like Rebel GHQ?' Lennart said, trying not to give vent to his own suspicions, on the grounds that if it was just him then it probably was paranoia talking. That it wasn't a rebel intelligence operation at all.

Wathavrah had a thought. 'Why has no-one, outside the extremely obvious, dissented- if they're not genuine rebels? Do they think that they're so thoroughly doomed that they might as well go all the way- that their only recourse is to try to sign up with the Alliance and hope for aid?

That's about all the sense I can make out of it- if they're not the real thing then they've just made things so much worse for themselves there can be no reason to that.'


Brenn was left to play Commander Obvious, looking quite disgruntled about it too- said 'Part of our own corona of madness. It was never more than tactically classified that this was our target, the intelligence services could easily have known. If we have friends in the Ubiqtorate we have damn' few in the ISB. This could easily be a set up.'

'That was my gut reaction,' Lennart admitted, 'which is why I want to look carefully at the alternatives- in case we are suffering from a temporary overdoes of paranoia. Not every cockup in the universe has to do with us- and for the other tentacle, the people we've annoyed certainly are smart enough to run a double, or triple or quadruple, bluff.

Anything from the probe droids? Any sign of verifiably rebel assistance? Early yet, but-'

'I think you're right.' Rythanor said to Wathavrah.' A sting operation would play out something like this. The management told to go along with it and make it sound good, the workforce- this far out in the wilderness, largely outlaws and starbillies anyway- reacting more or less uncued, like this anyway.'

'Or it could just be a clusterkriff.' Lennart gave the null hypothesis. 'We need data and prisoners, and if Shulmar isn't moving to raid traffic control- ah, he is.'


The obvious choice for the job was a flight of the -1930M, two companies might be enough to get the job done- if they could be spared. Word came down, the frigate and the tender- under protest- were sending all the small craft they could, but who and what would they have on board?

Easier to fold them into the main body and separate the reaction force out of those he knew could get the job done. Pick up their own cripples on the way, go to the ground and start figuring out what was going on. Hadn't actually lost all that much, two of the Lambdas, one of the STR's, one escort shuttle, dents and gored shielding on many; one shot down Avenger, three Starwings, four Hunters. Retrieve en route.

System Traffic Control was still in a state of shock, which could go either way- they could put up little resistance but their obstructionism might be terrible. Best to keep the ball rolling, go in hard and fast. The boarding battalion was good at that.

Nothing to land on, as such- they operated out of an absurdly old school looking colony cylinder of a type obsolete thousands of years before the invention of hyperdrive, heavy, kilometres long, designed for spin gravity. Docking clusters at the ends, free flying sensor platforms accompanying.


A truly ruthless commander, infused with the Imperial Way, would see a simple solution. Warm up the tractor beams, burn a hole in the hull of the thing, prevent the people from having a chance to damage the electronics; snag as many of them as possible as they were blown out, tractor them on board and interrogate while they were still suffering from decompression shock.

On the other hand it would make a hell of a mess. Probably best to go in through the airlock as per, intimidate and keep intimidating. Normal operations had come to a juddering halt anyway, disruption wasn't much of a concern.

The place would be guarded, of course, but who by? Who worked in traffic control? Bureaumen, control freaks, neatness oriented types- not the same kind of people as flew the things. The kind who made good gunmen? Unlikely, but dangerous to make that kind of assumption.

Mechanism shorted with ion fire and the doors pried open with tractor beams, no permission needed for that. They had vaguely modern atmosphere retention fields at least. Inside was a dock complex that would have suited a dreadnaught, concentric rings of platforms, islands made of parking and servicing bays, storage bays and control towers and container racks. Big enough to hide a Destroyer in?


A thought for later. Zigzag through the spider- girders on very low ion power, repulsors useless here of course. This place would be a paradise for spacetroopers, it was practically made for them, or they for it. They were all busy doing suppression and rescue work on the casualties of the space action. Rocket packs it was then.

There was no presence in the docks, which was suspicious- should have been someone there at least. The main body of the station, and a small world rolled out before them, coriformed, landscaped with hills and streams and a helical spiral of urbanity, habs and hydroponics and all the normal industrial works of living, around three large tower complexes.

Those towers would be the business of the place, big multiple peaked things, in the benign controlled environment of the cylinder almost unwalled; it was a peculiar thing that, it was cultures that had handrails and food warning labels and safety distances and things, that valued their people and wanted to stop them being hurt, that never went...anywhere, really. Waited for the Galaxy to come to them.

Willingness to take risks, take casualties, an acceptance that life was dangerous and often cheap, to let the weak and the poorly coordinated suffer and die- accepting that progress came at a high price in blood, pus and bits falling off- that was the attitude that might, if all else fell into place too, the wit to meet the challenges and the courage to bear the casualties, take you to the stars. Safety wouldn't. Imperial warships had no handrails.


Risks other people imposed on you were another matter. One of the towers was on fire, and there were little glitters of blaster shot. That was where everyone was. Including the enemy. With the survivors from the damaged and disabled transports, there were seven platoons to do something with.

Did take a moment for weighing the situation, to plan and scan; macrobinoculars pointed on, bets laid- 'Storm Commandos.'
The evidence and the witnesses were being erased by Imperial special forces? Not what they were expecting. Eventually this was bound to start getting simpler. At some point. Surely.

The tactical moves were clear- stop them, to begin with. Try to take some prisoners to ask them what the kriff was going on.

More rocket pack work. Black Prince's boarding battalion was a fairly odd lot anyway, all the variants they could get hold of and a few reinforced suits to round it out when the spacetroopers were busy elsewhere. They could move fast when they had a mind to, and this space was big enough to use all the things they had difficulty with in corridors- the missile and grenade launchers and things like that.

One of the biggest problems, from a certain point of view; most imperial forces had no moral difficulty at all fighting other Imperial forces. Fratricide was built into the system- shouldn't have been, but it was. Perhaps the entire galaxy was too big a thing to serve, and real, buck stops here loyalty could only find focus closer to home.


Anyway, being fairly good troops, the Storm Commandos had a watch out, and it had time to report that they were being attacked by line stormtroopers before they were hit with a PLX-2 missile. Didn't have time for the detail that it was one of a flight of seven.

Were actually lucky that it wasn't a flight of twenty-eight. That was enough for the initial counterforce strike, aimed and programmed to home on the Commandos' support weapons, knock them out and give the boarding battalion their edge. Probably missed a few, ; it the medium repeater on overwatch and four grenade launchers, two missile launchers, gone.

The Commandos were expecting opposition, but the timescale of it was an unpleasant surprise. Should have had time for this, to destroy the evidence- had not expected the space action to be so decisive and so abrupt. The crims were supposed to scatter, starburst, give the limited hyperspace assets of the renegade destroyer too much to chase to react this quickly.

Mistake. The sort that got operations blown, whose it had been- no matter. Retrieval- the best thing they could do would be to keep killing the victims. Breaking off to form a defence line, outnumbered seven to two, maybe.

Running for it, leaving the job undone, unconscionable. Inflicting casualties, confusion and chaos by drawing the renegade into a hostage rescue operation, that was where the best chance left lay.


There were three towers, though. The side with mobility superiority could play a shell game, shifting forces between them, to locally outnumber. That could have been the side with lightened, toughened armour who trained for hours a day to the peak of physical fitness, but it was more likely to be the side with the rocket packs.

Two squads of storm commandos did try try to make the run, but the white boarding troopers were closing the distance as fast as they could, and that was fast enough to bring weapons to bear. Land and set up the two man medium repeaters, the Commandos saw the move, knew they had lost the race and looked for cover themselves.

No chance of getting out of line of sight, not in a colony cylinder with the landscaped, grassy sky curving up and around, and precious little to hide behind; easy to fire over the heads of your own troops, too. Both sides had "never give in" practically engraved in their DNA, started skirmishing towards each other, but fire ascendancy belonged to the boarding troops.


Then, two attempts to change the rules in quick succession. The airlock at the far end of the station opened- there had to be a way to get heavy things in and out of the inside of the cylinder, to admit craft, and this was it. Disguised YT-series, looked much too well looked after to be a tramp freighter; and sporting laser bolts.

Briefly, before one of Black Prince's transport pilots had the same idea, with less time in hand blasted through the inner lock, pointed on and kept shooting. Light capital ion cannon hit; the commando transport would drift slowly away from the axis, accelerating as it passed through stronger spin gravity, until grounding.


Odds were only getting worse, particularly as the boarding battalion troops took the hard decision early. Unlikely to get a clean result either way, so smash them and pick up the pieces afterwards. Normally the fire advantage would have been with the commandos, as they had their choice of weapon- one of the few branches of the corps where you did.

Today, the boarders, normally carbine armed, had known they were likely to be operating in a more open environment- had expected it to be planetside, but meh- and gone old school, the heavy old clone trooper rifles.

Heavy bolts far reaching, blasting holes in the walls of the tower, blasting panels off the walls of the tower, inevitably doing some of the commandos' job for them but also opening them up to be killed.

There were snipers among the storm commandos, of course, and the first shot fired did draw a rocket response, but not the second. That was too much of a good thing, did possibly too much of the commandos' work for them. Slowed the boarders down, bounding overwatch instead of a covered close to contact, men falling on both sides but the white troopers had numbers on their side.


The tower itself, there were better places to fight from than a wall-less fort, although it did make internal mobility easier, running from one chamber to another; movement drew fire, but with the sensors they had being there drew fire anyway.

Shoot and scoot, where to? Around the structure of the tower, maybe, but in the long run- stop dreaming, the storm commando team leader demanded of himself, there is no long run. The transport' s burning, they're between us and the exit, there are no ways out. Best we can do is die expensively.

Under, through the service accessways? Thought of that- there aren't any large enough to fit through. 20cm pipe might be transitable if there was a very, very good surgeon waiting at the other end. Push past them and steal their transport? Maybe- no less certain death than being the targets in a cross between whack-a-mynock and the old moving target range.

Finish the job we came for, kill off all the controllers and melt their computers? We'll take higher- no, faster- casualties doing that, we're all dead anyway. It is the objective. Massacre the bystanders, how is it that the work of the New Order so often comes down to killing off the witnesses?

Today that includes us, too. That turns it into a straight race between the white hats and us, which we might actually win. 'Serve the objective first- finish the job.'


This was detected, of course, and the rocket troopers moved to close the range, snipers peppering away at what moving black they could see, squads moving out to open new firing angles, all bobbing and sine- waving to avoid counterfire. Pushing in to carbine range, expecting to be shot at.

Nothing much happened. A small covering party should have been there but mission took precedence. There were escapers, fleeing from the lower levels of the tower- shot being fired after them- laser and repeater fire answering.

Storm Commandos made themselves noticeable to fire on the escaping locals, and were shot at accordingly- armour that could take pistol, at a good glancing angle even carbine fire, meant little against heavy rifles. They were good at avoiding fire, but there was too much of it and the white hats were willing to hose down the area to get them.

Riot foam grenades and missiles were the next move, some of it to pin the commandos but most of it to protect their victims - including the computers. Then it was classic suppress and assault.


Some - the weapon fireteams and every second squad- went on overwatch as the rest grounded and charged in, looking for black suits. Some were found, and a dozen small actions broke out over the tower- fast and brutal, both sides too deep in the culture of aggression to do anything but.

The storm commandos were picked beings, hardened, tough;not at all easy to kill. They won some of their fights against odds, but that meant the process repeated itself- suppress by fire, move assault troops in, blast and grenade and vibrobayonet again. Truth be told, the storm commandos were very good at it.

If the enemy had underestimated them, they may have been able to draw enough blood to win free free and make their way to the docks, steal a ship and run. The enemy was of their own kind, and took no chances. Parts of the tower were so shot riddled even in this fractional gravity they creaked, swayed, ready to collapse.

None were taken intact; some were, with bits missing. Casualties about even. Truth drugs duly administered by the elements of deep probe team Indigo-9 present. Stormtroopers had little resistance to interrogation; too extensively trained to obey. They could die to avoid it, but the medics were troopers too, they knew and were determined to prevent.

In the process they came across some of the original victims, confused and terrified- and right to be, some of them went straight under the Bavo-6 truth drug too. The boarding troopers suspected there was no time, that events were moving. That seconds counted.


The picture that started to emerge suggested they were right- but they were inside the loop. Maybe. It had been a fraud from the beginning, nothing more than a setup- there was an utter absence of genuine rebels for a reason.

The special operations group the commandos were part of had been sent to simulate in radio- electronic combat the appearance of a rebel cell, to create a fake target for Black Prince to overreact to- to crush and suppress and do enormous local economic damage that would rebound on them.

They had succeeded in fooling the local disgruntled, to the extent that some of the miners and longshoremen actually had started to shade towards rebellion, and the management had started to crack down on them- a cycle of provocation that had ended in revolt, slaughter and blame.

The mistake had been in underestimating the striking force and speed of the destroyer, in trying to slip out in the chaos rather than before. It had been a period of high suspicion and tension, everyone watching for tricks, they might have been noticed and that would have blown the plan.

So much for theory. In practice their opportunity was strangled by the speed of the assault; they were left uncovered, vulnerable. Caught.

The operations boat was reeled in- the gunner who had shot it was a disciple of the Gospel of Firepower, had hit the cockpit module repeatedly, searing the crew as well as the computers, preventing them erasing or self destructing anything. They were quite informative, once a little persuasion had occurred.


It was all sent back to the flagship, of course, where there was little enough analysis needing doing, it was bare and clear enough.
'Well, how do we react to this?' Lennart asked, rhetorically. 'I don't think covert will serve, not this time. Should we add some visibility to the invisible war?'

'Broadcast that- exactly as is, without embellishment, without editing.' Severian was clear. 'Relay it somehow, convey it on fleet bands- send it to the Executor. They're not willing to bribe or co-opt you, us, keeping this covert serves no purpose except theirs.'

'There's an originator, but whether it's authentic is anyone's guess.' Rythanor pointed out. 'We can unscramble the ops order, we suddenly have more friends in the Ubiqtorate than we used to- professionals who are tired of all the arsing around of high politics. We think. As far as we can verify anyway.

The particular pawn we had down as being responsible for this was one Loam Redge, an inquisitor and sensitive- hunter and a known associate/subordinate of Hethrir.'


'It's interesting that it's the procurator of justice who seems to have mistaken me for someone incorruptible.' Lennart said, making a gag out of a necessity. 'Or is it simply that we're too touchy about it all- that they want us to deal from a position of inferiority? Screw us over first, then bargain?'

'The Empire doesn't really exist, does it?' Brenn said, gloomily. 'It's the same old patchwork of competing regions, competing feudal loyalties, backstabbing as usual, constellations of cannibal carnivores- what the kriff are we fighting for, anyway?'

There was a long pause, then Lennart said 'For that sense that things should be better than this. For a a better future, and to see if we can't make the Empire keep some of its' promises. And I think you've just written the core of the speech to go with it.'

Rythanor- having recent and extensive experience of broken Imperial promises- asked 'What are we going to do when the answer comes back "No"? Because you know there is an excellent chance it will.'

[Vianca]

And things degrate(?) even furture, before you know it.
Why do I think the moment they think they got a handel on it, the hammer will fall on their heads.

I can see why the squad is happy they can go back to their shooting game, the other stuff is headack inducing.

[sropike]

Well some sort of dickery from the ISB was way overdue. Lennart and co should start looking for the possible plot for which this was only cover. Why do iget the feeling all players will go "in confusion, there is opportunity" ?
The best they can do is really forwarding everything unedited to Executor. Let Vader deal with all that

[Crazedwraith]

Interesting chapter ECR. I though the previous chapter had most of them tagged as Rebels? Only this chapter it says only one or two are rebels? Or was it for a different value of 'rebel' ?

I got confused at the start of the chapter I momentarily thought that Shulmar was the fett clone on Aldreem's gun-crew rather than the new CAG. Lol.

And boarding actions are always fun.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

The penal code for spacefaring crime runs in categories, counting down from five with the penalties getting progressively harsher, from things like fines for lacking backup hyperdrive and firefighting gear through impoundment for smuggling, jail time for modifications, some of them even sensible. Category one is for capital offences, including piracy and armed resistance to the law.

As Franjia thought, in some places on the rim shooting the sherriff isn't a song title, it's a popular hobby. Most of the people who came up as red dots were wanted for category one offences or collusion in same, but those offences were overwhelmingly evading or firing on customs patrols. Being a card- carrying, sworn and committed member of the Alliance to Restore the Republic is certainly enough to get into category one, but it's a long way short of being the only way.

Many of the light freighters there had warrants against them for category one offences, but only an actual two, possibly three (they missed one), were full fledged Alliance, and at laast one of those was also there trying to figure out what the kriff was going on.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Short update this time, start of a new chapter, the first of the fallout;


On board the flagship of the Death Squadron, maybe a couple of the sanitation technicians were feeling calm and at peace. Possibly also a couple of patients in the sick bay, under sufficient anaesthesia.

For everyone else, there was more than enough fear to be shared around them all, as the hunt dragged on without a beast in view but nearly visible, so nearly. The crawling terror lay with especial viscosity on the bridge, where the dark presence lurked. It was just as well Vader had not quite ascended to the heights of twisted humour of his master and went around killing people for being afraid of him, because then it really would have been left to the mop- pushers and the pill poppers to take the ship home.

Not that it might be very much loss. Piett had just received two reports that made extremely uncomfortable reading, both more or less from the same source. One that his own chief engineer had acquired by a very indirect and roundabout route more or less for the purposes of being able to say 'I told you so';

confirming that Executor, and presumably all the rest of the class, were to all practical purposes unprotected. Shielding with the reflexes of a sleepy dewback, armour that was well enough in itself but the supporting subsystems terribly thin on the ground, too many frames between support points.

His ship's defences were her speed and agility- for which much conventional protection had been sacrificed, to very little avail because if structural considerations did not prevent them manoeuvring that wildly, doctrinal concerns certainly did- jamming gear, and above all her guns. A glass sledgehammer.

It was not the sort of thing to brighten his day. Now this. A holo record of a storm commando lieutenant confessing under interrogation- by line stormtroopers- that the detachment had been ordered by authorities traceable to high up in the Imperial state structure, to create an appearance of rebellion in order to distract the line forces.


Granted that he is a complete and total lunatic, Piett grumbled, Jorian Lennart is a credibly capable one. Capable of faking this? Very probably- but not if he didn't need to. Unbelievable in itself- no, unfortunately, it is not. It is entirely feasible that one arm of the Empire might take such a dislike to another as to pull something this ridiculous, time- wasting and disloyal.

With my despicable half- brother's drunken madman of a friend involved, Vader's flag captain decided, it was largely a matter of messkit and boiling vessel. Did this have any substance to it at all?

Never mind the truth, was there any relevance to it? Did any of it matter? This is the delusional rambling of a man in his political second childhood, Piett decided. Someone who has become disillusioned with cynicism, who has gone from believing as an adult in a world of adults, the sensible truth that self interest is real, valid and a positive force, to believing as fools, children and idealists do.

Too much being shot at and not enough honest bribery and corruption, that must have been his problem- a fine fighting record but very little rank and estate as a result. Or simply the fact that he was Corellian. So many of the fleet's maniacs hailed from there, in addition to a high number and very high proportion of heroes of the Alliance.


Now he was out to cause trouble, in ways which apparently defied sense. Sending an official action report was one thing, annexes on electronic warfare, rebel misdirection- in both senses- and traffic analysis, but this plays more like something for release to the press- oh kriff on a grobule, he has. He's publicized the entire business, washing the Empire's stained underwear in public, openly naming and calling out a high official- this is not how you make friends and progress up the career ladder.

Better leave Ozzel to present this to His Terrifyingness, just in case- deal with the uncontroversial, tactical part myself, leave the politics to the flag officers. It's what he's paid for, after all. If Lord Vader explodes in rage at this, best leave him to catch the shrapnel.

Tactically speaking, what would someone who has been or is being that heavily shafted by the system do? Option one, go renegade. I would never be in his position so I can't say precisely, but so many other misfits seem to find their way to the Alliance. Kriff- that report came from, was signed by, his chief engineer. They know everything Kuat left undone, and this ship is now in serious danger. Or need of refit, but Vader would never allow us to withdraw, not now.


As a possible matter of personal survival, then, consider his plan B, and how to encourage him to take it. How will the dark Lord react? He hates politics, which is extraordinary considering there is an accretion disc of it around him. Or that is confusing cause and effect. Hating politics because one is surrounded by it makes more sense- he will be most unhappy with Captain Chaos here.

Lord Vader is a cynic, with a natural contempt for idealists, one of the reasons he is quite so ruthless with his followers; assumes that we all seek power and position, wealth and place, we are all willing participants in a very dirty game with lives for playing pieces and rules made to be broken.

Thinking of my wardroom, Piett considered, it's far more true than otherwise. Service, fidelity, integrity- or is it supposed to be duty, honour, country- are ultimately no more than the pitch used to get the marks, the pawns, the fresh blood and raw meat, to the table.

This dangerous man, this raving lunatic and, unfortunately, tactical wizard, used to believe that. He was safe, formerly, because he was a rational player of the game. Idealists are not rational. Or has he not actually lost it at all- is this simply a tactical move in the great game of being? Scoop up support among the raw, the foolish, the believers? For what little they are worth. Considering that his target works for the department of Justice, it may not be an entirely inappropriate weapon.

Most of us did not so much lose our innocence as jettison it as unwanted on voyage, a burden making survival harder. I wonder if Lord Vader did? Or considering the armoured suit, if what we have is what's left of the man after he failed to survive...he would object to my thinking that. Lennart must simply be pretending to recover his innocence as a weapon to use against a political enemy- a dangerous, volatile, unpredictable weapon.


A perfect fit for a volatile eccentric, in fact. Where the hole is Ozzel? The one time I really need him to take the blame for something, he is nowhere to be found, avoiding the bridge and the temperature just dropped twenty degrees, and everyone's hair stood on end. He's here- and I'm holding the datapad.

'Good-' what is it? - 'morning, Lord Vader; two escort destroyers run dry of probe droids and returned to Point Homestead to replenish, one rejoined; four unregistered mining outposts discovered, one abandoned pirate base, one rebel listening outpost found and destroyed, examinations and interrogations proceeding aboard the Stalker. Fuel state eighty- four percent, squadron average seventy- six, no major mechanical issues.'

So much for the morning report. Perhaps I have got away with it, Piett thought- then realized Vader was staring at the datapad in his hand. Kriff. There was nothing that you could assume that the black giant wouldn't notice. Much of the time he simply didn't care, but he was always aware.

To be so damaged and so conscious of it was as good an explanation as any for his temper, actually- and I can't afford to let it look like I'm stalling. Kriff.

'This is a report from one of our attached destroyers, a spoiling action uncovered and suppressed, a fake rebel base eliminated- much of it is politics verging on gibberish really.' With any luck...no.

That caught the dark Lord's interest. 'Faked how, by whom? To what end?'

'Imperial special forces, my Lord, pretending to be a rebel cell to lead the locals into revolt. It appears to be an attempt to create a disaster to settle a personal political grudge against the commander of the destroyer in question.' There, said it. Gingerly extended the datapad, as if he expected his hand to be bitten off.


Vader looked down on him with some contempt- a man operating at this level needed more spine- took it, and flashed through the contents at high speed, taking it all in and making his own correlations as he went. Where had he come across this eccentric lunatic before? Ah, the falleen moff who had to be shot for being an agent of Black Sun.

A born killer with a long string of tactical victories and technical- tactical innovations behind him, he could be useful if he could be cured of his delusions and brought to a sensible belief in the superiority of the Dark Side. Who was the fool who had tried to frame him? A member of the Inquisitors, one Loam Redge, who had just been publicly- this had been broadcast, on open media, uncensored?

Piett had been thinking of this as a game, Vader knew- and games were ultimately meaningless. If that was how he squared his own internal feelings with the nature of reality, why interrupt him when he was making a mistake? The Dark Lord knew far better than he did that power and meaning were the only real thing and everything else was accident, froth and trivia.

What the Executor's flag captain saw as the act of a madman, Vader saw as a bid for power. An interesting one, too, insane indeed but sometimes that simply meant well adjusted to something that hadn't happened yet. In fact, the Sith Apprentice realised, his reasons are the same as some of mine were for joining the Dark Side- I wanted the power to put the galaxy to rights. To save people. Padme, first and above all, but everyone else would have been good too.

This maniac has issued a challenge to everyone and everything Imperial, that I think I approve of. He'll fail, of course, but he may do so in interesting ways- and in either case, while he is playing irritator of the collective consciousness and later once he has reconciled himself to the Dark Side, he may be of use to me.

If all goes well, if Skywalker's son- my and Padme's son- sees sense, if he can be brought to realize, if I can have his power with me when I turn on the wrinkled old tyrant...

In my empire, such a man as the maniac here may have a place. It is a shame he emerged too soon. In theory I should have him shot for revealing secrets, but I may be better starting with the idiot who allowed and demanded the destabilization units to be so carelessly employed.

Let the man run with this, then, see how far he can or is willing to take it. He handed the datapad back to Piett, and terrified his flag captain by saying 'No action.'

Piett looked poleaxed for a moment, before showing that he had correctly interpreted the look earlier by daring to question. 'The number of rules and regulations he has broken, My Lord-'

'As has everyone else in this ridiculous business. When there is time I will correct their existence, but the destruction of the Alliance and the capture of Skywalker come first.'

Having one's existence corrected sounded like it might involve multiple bite size coffins, so cursing Ozzel for managing to avoid the burden, Piett said the only thing he sensibly could. 'Yes, Lord Vader.'

[Simon_Jester]

I like the contrast here between Piett, who for all his competence is at heart a jackal- and Vader, who for all his personal ruthlessness and evil, is more of a lion.

[jpdt19]

Hehehehehe!

[RecklessPrudence]

Oh man... seriously, you only spent a couple of short paragraphs writing from Vader's perspective, and somehow they are among the best, most on-character, full of depth portrayals of him in the OT-era I have ever read.

A lot of people write Vader either as a one-dimensional rage machine, or a two-dimensional rage-and-denied-regret machine. Both are important aspects of his character, but not the entirety of it, and he is often written almost as a Khorne beserker, or as a Khorne beserker who every so often breaks down blubbering. This... is so much better.

And Piett... the contrast between him, Lennart, and Vader... This may be one of my favourite updates you have ever written, from a character point-of-view. Don't get me wrong, I've read and thoroughly enjoyed every bit of your three main stories (counting this and Plot Arc I as one story) - hell, they're the reason I signed up to this site! - and they are all so multi-faceted, with technical, character, combat, realpolitik and practical aspects interwoven, but for my money this is one of the best character-focused updates. If nothing else, I always love getting a glimpse into the main character from another's perspective - that, plus how you depicted Vader and Piett...

I doff my hat to you, good sir.

[Raesene]

We definitely need more Vader from you.

It read like you used the scene after the Falcon escapes with Luke onboad from ESB as inspiration.

Don't be mean to the Executor, she'll be having a sad end, so keep her happy for now and let her smash things

[Rem 12]

I echo the approval of your multifaceted Vader. He did seem just a little too forthcoming at the end, though.

'As has everyone else in this ridiculous business. When there is time I will correct their existence, but the destruction of the Alliance and the capture of Skywalker come first.'

I can't really see Vader commiserating with an underling about state politics (or anything, really). Just leaving off the "in this ridiculous business" maintains his air of utter untouchability and still gets the point across to Piett.

But I'm nitpicking. At very tiny nits. Keep up the good work, ECR!

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Vader often gets short shrift from the EU, little credit from the prequels and downright slander from fanfiction (although there is some good stuff out there under all the dross), but the fact is he's the number two man in the Empire, and should be credible as such. Now I have to maintain that standard.

Rem, that was more of a warning than commiseration- there is a character, who Firmus Piett refers to here, who is actually not from Star Wars at all- Max Pyat, from Michael Moorcock's Cornelius Quartet. The near coincidence of names and the utterly disparate personalities let me find comedy in the assumption that they were half brothers, and Pyat went on a notorious drunken rampage across the inner rim with Jorian Lennart (just after his court martial) some twenty years ago. Piett despises his half brother, and dislikes Lennart largely because of this connection. Vader was warning him not to let that draw him into the politics.

Executor herself- considering Endor, and some of the bits in between, there is something for which the design doesn't get enough credit- speed and agility. Given that she seems able to keep up with her escorting destroyers in most circumstances including hot pursuit, they should be a lot better at the footwork than the class are usually given doctrinal leave to behave according to. They may not be the fastest large ship, if you define large as greater than destroyer there are a few pursuit cruisers and battlecruisers, but she outweighs them all- definitely the largest and most heavily armed fast ship. For a high speed running battle, ideal- Endor could have played out very differently
if they had been allowed to attack when sighted, and make a chase of it instead of a trap.


One purely canon character thing I would like to try one of these days, probably be a one shot, and it would basically be a time travel piece, younger self meeting older self; one of those "My gods, what have I become?" type things- centred on Palpatine.
What would the brilliant manipulator, political grandmaster, galactic- class dissembler and mastermind of the downfall of the Republic, say from the middle period of the clone wars, make of the wrinkled, crazed, cackling, scenery- chewing Emperor of the Galaxy in the run up to the terminal mistakes of Endor? Maybe later.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

A long "middle" update, looking back on and progressing a few long running threads of plot, and some techno bits; I'm not massively proud of this chapter, in terms of journeys in plot it is definitely the scenic route. Some nice lines, but, well, here it is anyway.


They had no spies on Vader's flagship, apart from what Piett gave away. Which might be something, eventually, but probably not soon enough. What reaction their move had aroused was still a matter of speculation, although on the broader scale it actually seemed to be meeting with some approval.

Much hate mail, most of it from the authorities- most of the people either didn't care, had suspected something like it all along and were too jaded to object, just thought that was the way the universe worked, or had already joined the Alliance. It was the Imperial officials who were complaining. And the mail servers at the fleet destroyer squadron they were part of.

The servers were just complaining about the load, but the whimpering from various moffs around the Empire that he had just made their lives much harder was more interesting.

Several of them wanted him to relinquish his command and report to stand trial; he was seriously considering doing so by proxy- sending some of the droids who were awaiting memory wipe for their part in the the great polysyllabic discombobulation.

It would be a more impressive gesture to stand by my views and take my lumps, but that would end badly, Lennart thought, watching some of the first reactions come in- disgrace to the uniform, unruly and unworthy, dangerous idiot.


That one I might just agree with, he thought. My crew contains a hell of a lot of shiny, loyal white- hats.

I hope they trust me. That I haven't gone too far for them. The odd thing is, this is compromise. Really, it is; albeit with an impossible illusion of debatable justice in itself.

Seeing if we can't make the Empire live up to it's promises implies believing, or functionally believing, in them- which considering Dark Lord Palpatine, and that they were utterly dishonest to begin with, is an interesting delusion. I'm trying to make astroturf grow. Turn the con into the reality.

Isn't that a reasonable operating definition of leadership? Military rather than political, true, and there is a sense in which all political promises are lies. It's only the ones they get called out on, threatened with, that ever come even vaguely close to being made truth.

Made truth, now there's an interesting phrase- the idea that it is in some respect a manufactured artefact, a product of civilization- of culture, anyway. Like law and justice, honour and worth.


Maybe we should form a company to manufacture them. Hasn't that already been done though, or am I thinking of a book, a speculative fiction? Intangibles Incorporated, that rings a bell.

Telling truth from fiction, with the news these days and the agendas driving it- no, I choose to believe (hah), that the difference between fiction and nonfiction is not absolute, that fiction has to be at least comprehensible to the Real to be effective fiction, and there are few truths that aren't at least embellished and tarted- up a bit.

On the other hand, the scale of that continuum had better be logarithmic if society and civilization are to be much worth living in. Not that it usually is.

Is not the theory that these days, people are so heavily deluged with information from all over the galaxy- even without the backbone HoloNet, there are still the subspace repeaters- that it actually impairs their long term memory? That apart from personal turning points in their lives, most people's "long ago" is actually less than a year?

After that the next big break point is generational, what it was like for my parents at the same age. Which is why so many of the too young to remember have an absurd attraction to the dead Republic.


I wonder if anyone will ever look back to the good old days under Palpatine? Hope not. This is just bloody maundering, which had better not be the best we can do with politics these days.

How does any of this turn into action, and more than that into the actions I need to take? What do I need to do to survive, win and prosper? We have a fairly good idea, now, who is moving against Palpatine. Joining that would be a dead loss. Exposing it or helping to do so may be essential to win room to do what I actually want, which is to nibble at the Empire in my own way.

Vader would be of no use- he's a target of course, but a hard one, and has his own plans. If anything I'd expect him to approve, as a distraction for Palpatine and cover for his own bid for power, as well as possibly the only form of entertainment he's actually capable of appreciating.

That bid will come if he finds and crushes rebel GHQ, that'll give him a psychic fair wind and as much support among the college of Moffs as he's ever likely to enjoy.

It won't kill the rebellion, but it would leave it beheaded and bewildered, directionless- the strongest leadership elements left would be the breakaway Corellian faction and the Mon Cal- which would constitute a definite improvement.

With luck and careful mopping up of the survivors, we might kill off the sour grapes, forward to the past ex Senate and aristocratic elements entirely. The Alliance is dead, long live the Rebellion? Might just be.


Stand square in line as far as that objective goes, then. As far as saving my own backside goes, I have information, and people to reveal it to. Hmm, perhaps not that last part. It's not the public that matter here.

Rear- Admiral Thrawn, perhaps- but not directly. Not if I want to do anything useful for the family. By which I really mean Rafaella. Saving Alrika would be an interesting bonus objective but hardly close to my heart- I probably should mourn her more than I am, but I've never been been particularly spiritually generous to those suffering from self inflicted wounds.

Which merciless approach helped me drag my own backside out of the mud the (first?) time I managed to cock it all up, a useful trait even if an ugly one. Bringing me back to Rafaella, and what to do for and to her. Can't hold the data hostage for her security, not and take the stand I have been. Hostage situations don't stand on their head that easily.

Oh, of course. Turn her loose on the data we have. If she makes useful correlations, so much the better- a useful job of ferreting would be best of all.

In that case some of his data would depend on the work of a convicted criminal, a highly dubious source that could compromise it all and leave it unusable- leaving him with little productive choice but to drop the charges, or enough of them to leave the rest within settling distance.

Would he go for that? Is he, in fact, expecting it? Do I just go for plan C and a noodle incident? I could probably swing a job for her as a lignyot, actually. As long as she could control her tendencies to televisual assault.


Which she may not be able to, that could be- will be- a problem. Vader had, has, perhaps will have again, a son, who is an outright light- sider, which is one big argument against committing to his side entirely. He will not have such a one near him, and will have to convert Skywalker junior.

In fact I don't know how I'm getting away with it at the moment myself, possibly because watching me wriggle is also covered by his idea of entertainment.

Neither of them are the kind to appreciate being played off one against the other, which means that I would- will- have to do it very carefully. What I want from Thrawn is largely negative, at most a fair return on what I have to offer him. What he wants from me is to smooth his passage to high rank and authority, which isn't helped by my being a dangerous looney.

I'm reasonably certain that he he has no spies in my organization, but then I have none in his. He may not need them- it's not as if I'm hard to find, just turn on the news. I need to do more on the domestic front, this is why executive officers exist. Balls. Ah, light relief in the offing, the chief.


'Slow day on the bridge, really. We're just besieging a shielded world with a collection of gunboats, all quite mundane. Apart from mad scrambling under consoles and network- server's already an adjective really so what do you use to describe what they do?'

'Link codes, obviously.' The chief engineer said. 'Got a few ideas for the gunboat zoo, and the pilots are probably right, the place was effectively a shadowport.'

'Thinking of getting them to build stuff for us as a survival tax? Could be premature- they don't seem very survival oriented so far.' Lennart said. It was unfortunately not entirely true. 'What have you got?'

'If they have no sense of self preservation, that could be an asset for the actual construction. Got several, actually- is this console working? Sort of. Right.' A holoimage appeared, and it looked almost normal.


'This is actually one of the fleet's rejects; a proposal to upgrade the Delta- DX9, the standard stormtrooper transport, dropped in favour of a high-low plan and a separate design, assault transport. Probably because it would have made all the other stormtroopers jealous. Basically split down the middle and widened, two extra sets of thrusters and power coils.

The DY4A's faster and more agile, heavier shielding and structure fields, the stepped hull gives you more forward guns, but the big change was the dorsal- aft turret, perched right on the corner of the structure so it could cover aft and above. About as good as could be expected from a single mount, their actuator design I'm not convinced it rises to the heights of elegance, but I'd at least call it slick.'

Lennart looked at it, thinking tactics; not much more internal space, the thing still basically fitted half a platoon, so operate them in pairs for mutual coverage, the thing padded neatly, not much more deck room than the standard transport. Why had it never been officially taken up? Just a matter of politics?

'So far so good, but you did say several. What else do you have in there?'


'Our own B plan for the armed transport slot we filled with the YT's. They were going to be the upper end backed by more conventional craft, after all. One we considered was this.' The image of a long, thin and clearly civilian tramp freighter came up. 'CorelliSpace Gymsnor 3. Unsuccessful competitor on the open market, for reasons which can be made to work for us.

Too much structural mass- inefficient and difficult to modify, but absurdly tough, LTL resistant off the factory floor. Multiple subdivided bays, which made general and bulk cargo handling a pain in the arse but basically found the thing a niche in the hazmat trade. I spotted a couple of them in the action which brought them to mind.

The plan is to shorten it by ditching the existing turret complex and reducing the cockpit stalk, down to thirty metres total; rebuild the stern so you have three military engines, shuttle mounts, in a gamma configuration between the cargo pods, turret mount similar to the DY4A at the aft end of each pod, attack weapons anchored to the forward end of each pod, we're thinking of a couple of options for that.

Basically two, inboard and outboard, heavy and light, probably a light capital ion cannon and a couple of drum launchers, two twin fighter lasers and a twin fighter ion cannon. That should replace the Lambda and the escort shuttles; more carriage, it's a platoon transport if they breathe in, under heavier armour with more firepower.'

'A platoon transport if they breathe in?' Lennart said skeptically. You could cram stormtroopers into remarkably small spaces if you really tried, they were an uncomplaining lot, but it did tend to reduce their fighting efficiency.

'Have the legion actually been consulted about this, or are you just assuming they appreciate fine design? Get them to do the actual troop pod layout. I like it but you had better plan on two to a platoon. What was that file labelled 'round things'?


'The biggest waste of bay space we have is the legion's ground vehicle complement. This is one answer to the problem.' Mirannon said, and called up the file.

'I hope it's based on more than geometric elegance.' Lennart said looking at the, indeed, images and cross sections of round things that came up. Where was the scale, two versions, seven and ten metres in diameter; both fusion powered, unlimited operational endurance or at least not by that. Legs that could fold out of the lower part of the sphere, part of the outer heavy armoured shell with primitive in principle but robust hydraulics behind it.

More a waddler than a walker, not great ground clearance, but that was a repulsor unit in there amongst them. Dual mode walker/hoverer. Not a new idea but it seldom worked, why would this one succeed? Apart from that there was a maniac in charge. What usually happened was the combination of the two usually went spectacularly wrong.

Control pod right at the centre, in the middle of the power torus, interestingly mad- was it independently gyro stabilised? The thing could probably roll with a little contragravity, and that brought up images of stormtroopers playing live-action action pinball in the corridors. No wonder the thing's armoured shell was close to a metre thick.


Five different versions, alternative fillings for the doughnuts of death. Two based on the ten metre body, the artillery types. A composite beam dish for the energy artillery that would make the thing look comically, possibly parodically, like a small penguin- esque death star. May have to change that so it doesn't look like we meant it.

The physical artillery piece was an expanding grid magnetic flinger, with a kind of reverse ramscoop wireframe barrel. It could lob anything that could hold a charge, including boosting guided missiles, hypervelocity penetrators, shells of any size and content. Lennart looked at it and wondered, why has this not been done before? It's so obvious. Looking down from the point of view of space technology it is, anyway. Ah.

The seven metre types were the combat engineering vehicle, with a payload compartment full of tractors and pressors, giant robot tentacle- claws, cutting and fusing beams, and as the captain looked at it he found it very easy to imagine the sound of maniacal laughter. The loonies are going to enjoy themselves with this one.

The infantry fighting vehicle, which still managed to mount rather a lot of guns in amongst the room for two squads squished in a bit or one reinforced squad and, apparently, a large number of smashballs. No, droid auxiliaries, which looked a bit like those lightsaber training remote things scaled up to mount real weapons, probably heavy pistol class.

The tank version was positively sane by comparison, being almost conventional with a heavy cannon on a central turret, coaxial and side- blister heavy repeaters. The vertical launch missile grid was merely mildly deviant.


Lennart thought of the politics of it. Most ground combat gear was based on personal technology, the sort of thing which an untrained amateur may be able to look after- and most importantly, which didn't devastate what was being fought over too badly. Products of the domestic, ground level, demotic economy.

In theory if you used more primitive physics to measure it all, a similarly sized warcraft generated enough peak engine power that if material existed that was strong enough, the same power put through an AT-AT's legs would make it able to run so fast, it's toes would be cracking the light barrier. It was only slightly more ridiculous a thought than a running AT-AT anyway.

Ground and space gear was so far out of parity, products of opposite ends of the economy, that the rational solution to making the individual soldier as effective and survivable as possible would actually look a lot like a starfighter.

Droid war- swarms were a solution a lot of military computers advocated, too. Frequently just before they were dismantled. They did work, could be made to very effectively, given human controllers for problem solving and legal oversight, but there was just so much hatred for the option, not least among the Imperial forces.

Anyone seriously prepared to be offended by the energy artillery thing's resemblance to the death star was probably nuts anyway, but the thing looked as if it was missing an opportunity.


'For something that looks so perfectly structured for all round fire, I'm surprised this thing has so definable a front and back with that fixed mount. Not a dish on a dorsal turret?' Lennart asked.

'That was the second best option- doing it this way has a lot more raw power, and electronic beam switching on a fixed mount has faster and smoother targeting and tracking through the arc it does cover.'

'Second best among the options you considered- nowhere near good enough as a point defence turret.' Lennart said, and Mirannon got it at once.

'Snime. I thought out of the wrong side of the box. Of course there's a better solution, I can use a two stage turret with the beam deflection as the second stage, how did I miss that?'

'Exactly. You thought out of the wrong side of the box. Remember Pel Aldrem's nuclear hand cannon?'

'I remember being told, by yourself amongst others, that it was utter lunacy. Is it now the kind of lunacy we need?'


'Space weapons, space economy power. That thing was odd, and horrifying, precisely because it was so far out of expectation, because it entirely detonated the box.' Lennart said.

Mirannon had an awkward answer. 'Which means we may be back to droids, because even if the difficulty of maintaining high power gear isn't linear, the consequences of cockup are. Droids are easier to program than men are to retrain.'

'Most of the stormtroopers are useful enough about the place, they probably assimilate more information about the energetic and dangerous than we think they do.' Lennart pointed out.

'Consider Aldrem's nuclear hand cannon as a reductio ad absurdum though- there are clearly lengths we can't go to without looking like dangerous maniacs. Space firepower in squaddies' hands may well be that far. There are reasons pointing the other way, but until it really is us against the universe, best not.'

'The spheres don't; they just incorporate a lot of good ideas. No reason at all why multimodal walker/repulsor drive isn't viable, just that the designers do exactly that- don't have the determination to shake the boundaries a bit. How closely did you look at the repulsor motors?'

'Enough to spot TIE standard hardware.' Lennart said. When you lift ninety percent of the thing's weight and leave the hydraulics under a tenth of their normal load, what happens?' He was imagining them riocheting all over the landscape like rubber bouncy-balls.

'We did actually simulate that.' Mirannon said, deciding not to admit he had had the same idea. 'Tricky engine management issues, but the best of both options tactically, high speed, terrain cover, high traction. With TIE atmospheric drive, they should be faster and more agile than most existing repulsortanks, never mind Old Stumpy.' He meant the AT-AT. 'Probably still need naval maintainers, though. Astromechs shouldn't be controversial.'


'Hmm. I've just had exactly the sort of idea we couldn't possibly get away with- from a children's cartoon, yet. Must have been repeated from who knows how many thousands of years ago, but it had round war robots.

The interesting part was that they plugged into the ship's outer hull when not deployed, they were actually the point defence grid as well as popping out of their sockets and going to, I think they were basically paramilitary police, arrest the bad guys.' Lennart reminisced.

'Even if we could swing the politics, as you say, not to mention figuring out who to arrest, I'm not convinced any of our droids rate upgrading to what would have to be an LTL- armed heavy fighter chassis. One of the reasons behind these spheres is deck space, actually- make room for a larger collection of fighters and gunboats.' Mirannon stated.


'I suppose choosing a design on the basis of how it stacks is no madder than Palpatine choosing one on the basis of his childhood phobias.' Lennart agreed. 'Depends on getting that shower down there to capitulate so you can run up the prototypes, though. This is going to end with live action pinball in the corridors, you know.'

'Only the hard patches. Deckheads are too low in most of the ship.' Mirannon stated.

'As long as you have the problem under control.' The captain said dryly. 'I can also say that they are absolutely not allowed on the smashball field.'

'There are a lot of people going to be disappointed by that decision.' Mirannon said, in a pretend tooth- sucking way. 'We'd almost finished arguing about the rules.'

'You have noticed we're operating in association with the Death Squadron?'

'That's a simple one; if Lord Vader is on the field we just treat him as a natural hazard.' Mirannon said. 'Everyone else would have to take their chances, though. More seriously, construction and training time for all this lot is on the order of a hundred and five days. If the politics play out to give us that time, all good- if not, all bets are off and we'd be on the run anyway.'


'Things will happen faster than that, I think. I can irritate Piett, but I doubt that does much good. Politics of it all- I'm disappointed that Thrawn hasn't been pushing me harder for results. Other plots afoot, other duties, perhaps.' Lennart looked at the main com speaker.

'You could call him, instead of relying on tricks of fate?' Mirannon suggested.

'I may need tricks of fate to get me through it. When we fenced with words, it was more or less a draw, but I do it for fun and for exercise, for the craftsmanship of thought, he does it because he enjoys drawing blood. For all his love of art, I wonder if he's ever produced so much as a pencil sketch in his life; he has a deconstructivist's soul. A born critic, in fact.'

' He was put in charge of investigating a conspiracy, so that sounds about right.' The chief said.

'I can't claim to be all that close to my biological family, not to most of it anyway, but he has hostages. I am disinclined to cooperate with someone who thinks that is a positive means of ensuring cooperation, and I hope I would be even if they weren't mine.


As it is I can't think of an efficient way of crossing him and saving them. Even if I could it would only be for half of them to stand trial anyway.

Rafaella is the only one who is vital to the future, my genetic terrorist father is, well, duty says otherwise, but my instinctive reaction is that I'm not going to burst a gut trying to save a species as smug and malevolent as the Falleen. I know we cannot, but the temptation is there to let them reap the consequences of their loathing.

He's a bit old to be a mass murderer, but the bacteria would be doing most of the running around. Perhaps they do have their innocents, but- hmm. How would you go about making a bug specific enough to attack a particular status? Leveller Bugs, to bring down the rich and powerful?'

'There have to be defences against that, It must have been tried. It's far too good an idea not to have been. I know you can do it based on metabolic rate, identify and eliminate the lazy, there are a couple of cultures who were bloodyminded and bad tempered enough that they did have a go at that.

What you tend to end up with at the end of it all is a lot of dead people and a population of rapidly mutating killer bugs who get less discriminatory as the generations pass; not many of those cultures, even the ones that were still semi coherent, were dumb enough to try it twice.' Mirannon gave a potted precis.


'Genetic war against a dissimilar species?'Lennart questioned. 'More feasible, surely- and unfortunately. Does the reduced chance of a backfire make specificity easier? More likely to be attempted, anyway. How is he going to go about it, and what chances for us to stop him is he going to give away?

I'm beginning to think he never left the system at all. Everything he would have needed is there. Above all a full genetic work up. Targeting legends and prejudices is one thing, but the medicinal chemistry of it has to be right. He'd need slicers for that if he was lucky, an old friend doing a favour if we're not.

I wonder if something mind affecting, a neurovirus or parasite like toxoplasma gandhii, would be feasible? Something that cracks the facade of that damned superiority complex and makes a more amiable race out of them. We might not actually want to stop that, but I don't think genetic engineering for good stays that way for longer than, hm, two base pairs.

In the system, in the five sisters, he has everything he needs. Except the actual target,which means there has to be smuggling involved somewhere. Unless- what legitimate reasons would the falleen have to import something you could hide a virulent plague in?'


'They're pretty thorough about not doing that. In principle, anything biological- a binary?' Mirannon suggested. 'Two bugs individually below the detection threshold, but whose combined secretions add up to the toxin?'

'Only feasible with a lot of careful chemistry. Hm. I wonder how good their defences against that actually are. We've got military filter- scanners that do run tests to a depth enough to pick up on binary, indirect and precursor chemicals, and I hope we still do on the new airlocks, and a very good civil spaceport scanner might do the same- if it has a skilled technical team running and maintaining it.' Lennart said.

'Most planets only have the illusion of security. Falleen imports, hmm. Don't know in detail. Have to check- luxuries and exotics for the well off, of course, but they'll be subject to the most scrutiny. I think he would though. The hard approach that comes closer to the chosen target, wit against wit, rather than an easier way around.'

Mirannon wondered how far to push it. Decided tact was probably not worth it in the long run. 'I think he would likely do exactly what you would in the same circumstances.'

'That's what I'm afraid of.' Lennart admitted. It really wasn't a subject for tact. 'He could be very sneaky if he tried. Not as if we're short of troubles, is it?'


One of them was doing her best to become worse. To be fair most of the people who had anything to do with Pel Aldrem tended to be made worse by the experience, if it wasn't disintegration it was eccentricity.

Rafaella and he were sitting at a table in the dorsal gunnery department wardroom. Sloping off into a quiet corner would have drawn more attention than doing it openly, and besides, he thought he might need the backup.

She had wanted to meet with him, and was now far from sure where to start and what to say. Had met him before, but hadn't really encountered as a personality rather than one of her father's men.

Big, sandy haired, seemed amiable enough if you looked at him sideways, but she had done a little research, as she would have done at any institute, and found that to put it into her own terms, he easily qualified as a Research Fellow in Advanced Mayhem, Faculty of Applied Carnage.

He should look more like a monster. People who did terrible things like fire very large guns at other people should show it, look more terrible, shouldn't they? Instead he looked more like a competitive sportsman, .

What he thought was often dubious enough, she was given to understand, but- he dressed and moved like a man untroubled, comfortable in his own skin.

Uniform was something that appeared to be largely theoretical on her father's ship, and Aldrem was actually scruffier as an officer than he had been as a chief. In fact he now considered he had standards to live down to.

He was also supposed to be respectably pair bonded and trying to raise a family, but he had decided that respectability was best approached one small step at a time.


He'd actually had a good old fashioned rant about it with, of all people, Severian. 'You've got the best of both options.' He had said. 'And to be honest I thought I was actually doing well enough at this officer gig until I read the Instructions. I know we're an exception to a lot of rules here, but what the system actually expects of an officer is just poodoo.

In one line, in practically one breath, it tells you what an officer is supposed to be, in terms very much like this is the meaning of your life now, then goes into the most egregious drivelling bullcrap about what you're supposed to care about on a routine basis that it just defies belief that any fighting service can organize itself so stupidly.

Looking down from on top it gets worse. As a chief, looking at what the rule books and manuals of spacemanship expect of the rank, I wonder why they didn't just issue us clubs and whips and have done with it. Or rename the rank petty tyrant.

Seriously, I'm expected to be responsible for the maintenance and employment of enough firepower to make small planets cry, and I'm not allowed to decide what colour of socks to put on in the morning? Or allowed to allow others to do the same?


I know I've broken a lot of these rules myself, and I'm tempted to go back and fill in the blanks. It can't work like this, around here I know it doesn't and for damn good reason. The terrifying part is that there are trainees coming up now who actually believe it, every word.

Starships just don't work on the sort of discipline that the doctrinaires believe- kriff, it isn't even true, it wasn't that way in the palaeolithic, it was a myth even then.

Now I'm being asked to stand as zookeeper over the beasts who are my friends and comrades, as guarantor of a system I know is barbaric, futile, pointless- whose only redeeming feature is that it's suicidally dangerous.

I know we don't work to the manual around here, and I am truly thankful for that, and if I hadn't come up in the school of doing what's right rather than what the official regulations say, I wouldn't be so appalled by them. I knew a lot of the details well enough to play silly buggers and space lawyers with, of course, but the source code of the system-' He shook his head.


'I don't think you're the rule breaking maniac you present as.' She said. 'In fact you come far too close to exactitude at times, I'd appreciate more clearance in orbital fire support.

I sidestepped the chance to become a senior noncommissioned officer,' she said it out in full for emphasis, 'because I think I could smell coming what you're in the process of having your nose rubbed in. It's not about rules for rules' sake, authority or anarchy, slobbing out or measuring up; it's about what does and doesn't work.

Because of the path I took, I was an exception, got an early look at the system from the outside, then the force more or less took me out of the line, and I was as bad as any brainwashed jobsworth lifer with no purpose but the rulebook for a long time; then other things started to fall into place and I was made to remember...

One of the things was realising what utter contempt those who wrote that version of the book have for the people they intended to live by it. Have you got to the stage of dissecting the rulebook yet? Taking the logic of it apart to figure out how and why it got that way?'


'Avoided it so far.' Aldrem admitted. 'Mainly because I can tell that the usual casual bitching starts in the right direction, but nowhere near far enough, and at the end is a decision that amounts to yes or no. The decision the system wants isn't the one that it looks like a good man could make.' He admitted.

'I think you're right about that, too. As a chief, I'm not supposed to be a bloody anarchist- people like that don't get picked for the job and they certainly don't get turned into it by the job, I'm supposed to be a man of authority and under authority, but the system didn't come from natural roots, it isn't made up of people like me- and there must be some, I'm not that far out, am I?-'

She wisely said nothing to that, and he carried on, 'I know I'm a misfit and an oddball, and I thought it was just me, but now I hope it isn't. There are a lot of people the political system doesn't believe in, but where do we go after telling it to kriff off?'


She thought for a long moment, then said 'I'm better at brainwashing myself than you are. For a long time I simply didn't have enough self outside the rulebook to even look at that answer, and as what I had did grow I was wary of it- kept persuading myself to stay in line, to go back, that there wasn't sure ground to leap to. What do you think the captain's answer is?'

'I know, but that makes it all the less likely we are here. He's got his own version of the rulebook- that I prefer, but it's not the official version. anyway there was something else too- Rafaella asked if she could talk to me. I'm not sure what about.'

She laughed. 'This could get complicated. Her ex boyfriend did a bit of spying, recorded a conversation Jorian and I had about what to do with her, and your name came into it as a potential alternative to him. apparently they had an argument about it, which is when she hit him with the vidscreen.'

'Wonderful.' He said, choosing not to go into the implication that he had nearly had her as a mother in law of sorts right now. 'am I going to need fire support for this?'

She stopped enjoying herself and took the question seriously. 'It is possible that she might have a life endangering loss of temper accident, yes. She's not good at holding back from or improvising other answers to the ugly questions. I wish I hadn't had to give you that answer.'


With that in mind and doing a better job than he thought of not showing it, Aldrem was now sat opposite Rafaella in a space that he hoped would give him some home field advantage. She was young, but not that young- his personal dividing line was, could she be my daughter? Actually, biologically yes but only by a couple of years. Practically, no.

Morally- I think her boyfriend's well out of it. There is an unstable look to her that if I saw it on any of the lads, I'd think it was time to take them off high energy jobs and put them on itemising the parts bin. I'm the one she chooses to turn to, which says a lot about my reputation. Violence won't fix this.

What will? Nothing conventional, that's for sure. 'I think you were looking for someone to talk to,? Pull up a chair.' Now, she may be crazy but she's not stupid. Unlike me who fits into the category of definitely crazy and maybe stupid. Acknowledge that.

'I thought of saying I'm strange around here myself, but it wouldn't cover it. No matter who agrees with me...where do you want to start with your troubles?'

'I have so many I'm not sure where to begin.' She said, trying to fight the mixture of butterflies and acid in her gut, wondering if she knew him well enough to be any help at all. 'To start with, who am I?'

'You mean, what do we think of you?' Aldrem restated the question, and she bristled at first before realizing he had a point. 'Starting with the obvious and factoring in the rumour mill, everyone knows you're the skipper's daughter, almost everyone knows you're in deep drakh, very few people know why.

I think you know that the blue man sent you here to be a burden and a danger to your father. Only the inner circle have got that far, though.'


'I meant it exactly the way I said it, too.' She said, not exactly happy with his answer. 'Are you happy being who, being what you are?'

Having thought about it recently, there were a lot of different answers of varying degrees of detail he could have given, but he actually picked the one most likely to be useful under the circumstances. A psychiatrist would have praised him for helping her confront her issues; a sensible person would say he had blundered.

'Yes. The rest of the universe is often unhappy with me, but I do a skilled job very well, outside that I don't let myself be stopped trying to do the right thing, and I have friends and comrades who know that.'

If he had added "and you don't get all that by whinging about it", he would have made things slightly worse. It was bad enough- he could swear her eyes flashed red for a second, she half stood as if ready to strike him; he just had time to think this was not how he wanted the day to go, before deciding there was no way, in honour or in duty, he could let her go down that path.


'Sit. Down.' He snarled at her, thinking of her as a target, coldly and deliberately. 'Someone who takes offence so easily and shallowly has no business even pretending to wonder why she's not trusted. You do need to put a lot more effort into becoming something we are less likely to see as rabid.'

There was a long moment when she could hear her pulse pounding in her ears, until she asked herself the sensible question; what can I do about it? Start by asking for help, for one thing.

'I can't control it. These flashes, these flushes, just come to me- it's like being in heat, like going through puberty all over again. It doesn't matter what I think about them afterwards- I think something snapped, in me, when I hit him. I gave in to it once, and now it won't leave me be, if it doesn't destroy me it'll get you to kill me for it. '

'If blood means anything at all,' Aldrem said looking for a positive, 'You can put up more resistance than most, more than you think- "it" is basically the dark side here, is it not?'

'It would be, yes. Everything I know, everything I've read and learnt, says redemption from the dark side happens once in a hundred generations, if that. It takes, it grows in the mind, and never lets go.'


'Balls.' He interrupted her. 'Start believing things like that and you might as well stick your head down a gun barrel, because you've let the enemy, the dark side, dictate your thinking and your emotional response.

Hm. There's a causal loop here, fear makes you jumpy, snappy and hostile, that makes it less likely for anyone to empathize with you, that leads to being isolated and feeling threatened, which feeds the fear.'

'The blue man. You're right, and he made sure I would start down this path, become a wreck and a ruin- but even knowing that, what's the answer?' she asked, knowing it would be harder in practise than in theory. Perhaps too sure of that. 'Where does it end, how does the loop unravel? I am all those things. I can't be a jedi, not in this day and age.'

'We've met a few, or at least people who claimed to be- they tended to come to bad ends, mostly via us.' Aldrem said. 'That aside- I'm getting most of this from the skipper by the way, it sounds about right to me- the dark side is wrong, and evil, in the things it does; the jedi order is wrong and evil in the things it doesn't do, or didn't.

Entirely apart from the fact that we might be able to tell you how to be a jedi but then we'd have to kill you,' the old joke did not go down particularly well, 'there's very little point, because it's not a thing worth being. Your mother, I know, but if she had been a perfect jedi you wouldn't exist. There's a reason Anakin Skywalker's kid is famous, and Yoda's aren't.'


She didn't bother saying that the little green troll didn't have any, because that was very much the point. 'So even plan B is poodoo?'

'Almost as bad as plan A. Actually there's a lot of crud gets talked about that as well. I reckon an archaeologist must know something about second order, third order effects? That's what a lot of plan B's are.

We start doing A, which they'll probably react to like this, so we do B, or if they do that instead we go to C, but if they do that then we do that, they'll do something else which means we need plan D, so- you get the idea; it's all very confusing, and it only comes to an end and your head stops hurting when you win.

In the medium term, we're probably, all right, the people on the spot with the rest of us propping them up, are going to have to learn to be able to fake the dark side. Don't tell me that's impossible because you're going to have to do it.

The odd thing is, I had a training and supervisory job for a while, and one of the things I surprised myself by hating so much was confidence- cockiness really- that hadn't been properly earned. People who thought they were better than they were, people under the influence of positive thinking. They were almost always too smug to put in the sweat to actually be any good.

I'm starting to think the opposite is just as bad, and something the skipper quoted once about nothing profiting a man- or woman, I suppose- as much as proper self conceit, yes, there has to be a sweet spot in the middle somewhere. Ignore the force for a moment; what are you good at? What can you do that you can be justifiably proud of?'


She had to think about that. Excessive cynicism for a start, it was so obvious that he was trying to help that she instinctively bristled- and had to ask, so under what circumstances would I let myself be helped, or have I really degenerated into some kind of feral thing with a mask, suspicious of all?

I know he's right. It makes sense, and the vicious circle only accelerates- and looking at it historically, the force doesn't move that quickly. There are always preliminaries, always warning signs. It's all, kriff, it is almost all coming from what I'm afraid of.

Who was it who was talking about force obesity? To extend the model, is there such a thing as Force Lupus- can my immune system turn against me, declare me toxic and condemn me to a life of the wild tides of the galactic emotional matrix, never entirely and wholly myself?

I can't fight against it directly, not without doing what it wants me to, so ignoring the force for the moment, well obviously there was where I was planning to go in life anyway, she thought. Researcher, archaeologist. Good at digging up things, not bad at wilderness survival and not being killed by automated deathtraps. Tolerable at making sense of it all afterwards.

Apart from that- not noticeably musical, not even up to her father's standard. Didn't want to be good at the running and shooting, but was- decent hand- eye coordination in general, although damn, there was the force again. Tended to be a cold and distant personality, not very good at friends. Had her father been the same way? Not likely.

Is it worth being angry with the force, or is that its' plan? No. What I'm good at is head-work, and I need to stay on those terms- emotional thinking plays into the hands of the dark side. Unfortunately, there's a limit in that.


'There's a problem there. I don't think you trust me enough to let me do what I'm good at.'

'Considering the alternatives?' One of which was having her put down. 'When you get right down to it we don't trust anyone with the force, so you have to do something that isn't force related. Or at least is only tangentially force related.

The main reason the skipper isn't saying this to you himself is that he has twenty thousand other peoples' problems to solve, and I shouldn't be having to say this for him but somebody has to...because you're his, he expects you to be able to cope.

If blood will out, and with the mystic cosmic oog field involved it tends to one way or another, then you can do this.'

'Mystic cosmic oog field?' She said, unbelieving. 'I don't see how irreverence can help.'


' "There you go again hitting me with them negative waves",' he misquoted. 'Trust me, I know a bit about weapons, and against something which imposes itself on you and demands to be believed in, irreverence, mockery, sarcasm and comedy in general are your best weapons.'

'You're more of a son to him than I am a daughter.' Rafaella said.

Aldrem looked stunned for a second, then said 'If there's any truth in that at all, and I'm not convinced there is, it's a matter of personal style. I do things, mainly. Occasionally dangerously insane things, but nonetheless.

You weren't an armchair academic, you did things, went out and chased information, maybe you got shot at a bit but as long as they miss- well, stun's the next best thing. Contemplation is only going to get you further in schtuck, sitting around brooding isn't going to make things better at all. You need to do. Way to totally miss the point, by the way.


The solution is so obvious you're looking straight past it. It's not a thinking thing at all, it's a doing thing. Why do I feel as if I'm explaining nouns and verbs? Anyway, and all right, you have a point. There will be a fair amount of tactical thinking to do, but the objective is action.

If you want a new home for yourself, if you want to save yourself, you have to make it, and that means doing things, even the things you thought we wouldn't trust you to do- no, especially, because it's only through that that we might find you trustworthy.

Thinking alone is not enough; act- act intelligently, but act.'

'You think I should just walk into the ship's offices and demand a job?' she said. Wondering whether or not to kick herself for missing the obvious. 'Claim the right to something to do, tell them that they have to put my talents to use?'

'Not unless you want to end it all by being bored to death.' Aldrem said. 'Sigint section of com-scan, that would be where you need to be. That should give you something useful to do and help keep the wibblies at bay.'

[RecklessPrudence]

Recently rediscovered the Star Wars: Technical Commentaries site, after many years without remembering it (Uni work? What Uni work?). Something caught my eye, and I thought, given the timeframe you're working in ECR, as well as the depth you're going into on the Imperial forces, that you might be interested. It's in the section "Death Star Survivors," and apart from General Tagge (the one that Vader partially choked at the staff meeting), and that TIE pilot from the EU (along with whoever else escaped on small craft between Luke's shot and the big boom), there are two confirmed survivors of high rank, both of whom worked with Vader, rather than being demoted and/or executed for fleeing in the heat without orders. Not only that, but neither of them showed the fear of Vader that some of the officers in Empire and Jedi did.

The first of the two survivors, General Bast of the Imperial Army, known to his mean as "Chief" Bast (which could be an interesting insight into the character right there, his men referring to him with slang for a senior non-com, and certainly not the fear that Imperial doctrine calls for), who was senior to Admiral Motti, the station's chief Naval representative (could that reflect how the Death Star was seen organisationally?), you may know as the officer who warned Tarkin after Gold Squadron's first failed Trench Run and was dismissed. Apparently he, knowing that he could be facing court-martial but trusting in his team's analysis, scarpered on his own authority, possibly taking his team. That's how the Emperor knew so soon after Yavin what the weakness was - he had information from the Imperials responsible for figuring out just what these two squadrons of snubfighters thought they were doing! If he did face court-martial, it's possible that Vader weighed in, as seen by the fact that he still had his rank and was operating directly under Vader (as opposed to under Tagge, which was his position on the DS1 and who was still alive, so he could have continued in that position) in the... *shudder* Holiday Special. Interestingly, in that he is - in Saxton's words - "confident as well as respectful. He does not show the terror for his life which afflicted some officers of Vader's fleet in The Empire Strikes Back." Saxton surmises that that might be because Vader sees him as a successful and competent officer.

The second is General (then Colonel) Maximillian Veers, who lead the assault on Hoth, and who was also "confident as well as respectful" to Vader, rather than terrified. To go from what had to be one of literally thousands, if not more, of Colonels on the Death Star to General in charge of Death Squadron's Army contingent, in three years... Vader was good for him.

Seems like G-canon - which much I might loath to admit it the Holiday Special is, has Vader as a relatively reasonable superior to those he sees as competent. Which leads me to wonder all the more about Captain Needa, the one whose apology Vader accepted... looking at Wookiepedia, Vader distrusted the man as he was promoted to Captain by Ozzel and was one of Ozzel's advisors - which might mean Vader considered him one of Ozzel's cronies and as incompetent as the Admiral - if he was promoted by Ozzel for political reasons, well, we all know how much Vader dislikes political issues...

Which would mean that, of the three officers Vader forcechoked, completely or partially, in G-canon, one was being actively disrespectful to him for a good minute-long rant that Tarkin, his nominal superior, seemed disinclined to stop, and he didn't kill him. The second Vader had good long years of distrusting and was looking for an excuse to get rid of - meaning that he didn't choke him out of hand, he waited until the man colossally screwed up - plus, y'know, rage from the idiot possibly making the capture of Skywalker, Vader's driving motivation at that point, impossible. And the third was, at the absolute worst in painting Vader as choke-happy, another long-term mistrust issue, tarred with the same brush as his patron. Also, officers he sees as competent, which he seems to value above almost all else, are visibly not frightened of him, just respectful and confident in their own abilities.

And from this, the EU has him choking people for the equivalent of forgetting to put a mint on his pillow?

Methinks he's been done a grave disservice as a nuanced character. Most EU portrayals would leave a man with those anger issues and executionary habits bereft of any subordinates and probably killed by Palpatine as counter-productive - even when he's seen as the Empire's enforcer, you need an enforcer that won't have a couple of gigatons applied to the back at the first opportunity. He may be a Sith, and a twisted, broken man inside, but at one point he was the charismatic Hero With No Fear who held a galaxy's hopes in the palm of his hand. Some of that would have remained.